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  • Mailchimp error: Failed to create a subscriber in Mailchimp Error from halted execution: The subscriber is not a member of the selected audience.

Hello!

I have been occasionally experiencing a strange issue with a zap trying to modify a subscriber in Mailchimp, and notably tags.

My tag modification has two steps: in the first step, I update a subscriber with renewed company, address etc. and alongside, pass a new list of tags to Mailchimp.

The intent is to override the existing tag list, however, as you know, Mailchimp simply adds those tags to the subscriber’s tag list. So far so good.

I then determine the list of tags that are *not* a part of this new taglist, and then issue a “Remove subscriber from Tag” action step with the list of “extraneous” tags. 

At this step, I get the following error:

Failed to create a subscriber in Mailchimp

Error from halted execution: The subscriber is not a member of the selected audience.

 

I have gone back and checked the setup and the audience list is correct. Thinking that this may be because the record is in some weird locked state for update, I have tried to re-execute the initial add/update subscriber, and that has worked fine. Only the Remove From Tag step for this subscriber does not work!

Has anyone encountered this issue, and any pointers/tips on what could be going on?

I would also like to draw attention of Mailchimp Support if they are listening!! 

UPDATE: I found that if I send in the Tag ID instead of the Tag Name into the failing step, then everything works ok. Also, a list of tag ID’s does not work. If a list is passed then only the first item in the list is accepted as the tag id. Other entries are ignored, and one must create a loop for removing a subscriber from multiple tags.

This is the resolution but there are two issues with this:

  1. The Update Subscriber does update the taglist based on names, not ID’s. Therefore, the Add/Remove Subscriber from Tag should also support this, for consistency.
  2. If ID’s are mandated, then there should be some easy way for Zapier to publish the list of tags alongside the ID’s. Currently they all need to be mined statically and then placed in some sort of a lookup table for proper substitution. In a typical Marketing system tags change all the time, therefore this is not a sustainable solution. Zaps need to be constantly tweaked. This is a major usability issue.
  3. It would be nice to offer for Tag management an interface similar to Groups in Add/Update Subscriber, where we get to pick replacing, overriding and leaving unchanged the current interest list, and can update multiple interests in one operation.

Hi @ClayPotter 

Thanks for your thoughts on this and I’m sorry that adding and removing tags from Subscribers isn’t a smooth experience. The reason for the difference is due to the MailChimp API (the way that it sends and receives information), though I agree that we could do more to make it easier to use. 

We do have a feature request to update the way that we handle updating tags for subscribers in MailChimp and I’ve added you as an interested user on that, which means that we’ll send you an email when we have an update. I also included your comments as I think you make some good points. 

Just so you know, I’m going to mark your reply as a best answer as you described your solution really thoroughly, thank you!

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