Connect Facebook Lead Ads to a Mailchimp email list

These days, every marketer understands the power of Facebook Lead Ads. They're an easy way to collect customer information through social media ads themselves, without sending customers to a new page—which can lower your conversation rate. 

But the work doesn't stop there. Once you've collected your leads, you need to move that information into the apps and systems you use to reach your customers—such as email marketing tools like Mailchimp. Doing this manually quickly becomes untenable if you have a lot of leads, so you should think about automating the process instead.

In this article, we'll show you how to connect Mailchimp to Facebook Lead Ads two different ways. First, we'll walk through setting up Mailchimp's native integration with Facebook Lead Ads. Then we'll look at how to use Zapier's Facebook Lead Ads Mailchimp integration to connect the two apps. With Zaps—our word for Zapier's automated workflows—you can add new leads to your Mailchimp list, speed up your follow-up, and scale your lead management with less manual work.

Table of contents

• How to set up Mailchimp's native Facebook Lead Ads email integration

• Why you should use Zapier instead

• How to connect Facebook Lead Ads to Mailchimp with Zapier

• Further reading

How to set up Mailchimp's native Facebook Lead Ads email integration

If you want to set up a native Facebook Lead Ads email integration, you'll first need a Mailchimp account and a Facebook account (with a business page). 

Log in to your Mailchimp account to get started. Once you're inside your workspace, you'll need to:

1. In the left sidebar, click Integrations. 

2. Search for the Meta Lead Ads integration and click on it. 

3. Click Connect.

4. Once you've been redirected to Facebook, log into your account and select the pages you'd like to connect to Mailchimp.

5. You'll be brought back to the Integrations page in Mailchimp where you can further customize the integration by selecting which lead form you want to connect, mapping data fields, and more.

6. Once you've finished setting this up, click Sync now.

Now, all your new leads from Facebook Lead Ads will automatically be added to Mailchimp as new contacts. From there, you can segment them however you like.

Why you should use Zapier instead

While Mailchimp's native Meta integration lets you add new leads to the email marketing tool, you'll still need to segment them into lists yourself. And that's a significant amount of busywork.

With Zapier, you can instantly and automatically add your Facebook leads to a Mailchimp list. As soon as someone clicks on your Facebook ad, Zapier will send that lead straight to Mailchimp in real time. This speeds up the follow-up process, improving your chances of turning those leads into actual paying customers. 

Plus, Zapier doesn't just connect with Mailchimp. It securely connects with more than 8,000 tools you already know and love using. And Zaps can perform more than one task—so you can create customized, multi-step automations that fit your marketing workflows perfectly. Let's dig into creating your Facebook Lead Ads email integration with Zapier.

How to connect Facebook Lead Ads to Mailchimp with Zapier

Zapier lets you create automated workflows called Zaps, which can do lots of common work-related tasks for you—including moving information from one app to another. You can create your own Zap from scratch without writing any code, but we also offer pre-built Zap templates to get you started quickly.

We've included a template for connecting Facebook Lead Ads and Mailchimp below. Just click it to get started, and you'll be taken to the Zap editor. If you don't already have one, you'll need to create a Zapier account. Then follow the directions below to set up your Zap.

Set up your Facebook Lead Ads trigger step

First, you'll need to set up your trigger step—the event that starts your Zap. Search for and select Facebook Leads Ads as your trigger app and New Lead as your trigger event. If you're using the Zap template we provided earlier, these fields will already be set up for you. 

Next, sign in with your Facebook Lead Ads account, if you haven't already, and click Continue.

Now it's time to customize your trigger step by selecting the Facebook page and form you want to use in this Zap. If you don't already have a form for your Facebook Lead Ad created, take a moment to set one up. You can follow Facebook's tutorial if you're not sure how.

Once you've selected a page and form, click Continue. 

Next you'll need to test your trigger step to make sure everything is working correctly. After you click Test trigger, you'll need to choose a lead to use while setting up the rest of the Zap. 

If you don't have any leads from the page and form you selected earlier, you can use Facebook's Testing Tool to create customized sample data for the form. If you still need help, you can check out our guide for more details.

Once you've selected a lead to use during the rest of the Zap setup process, click Continue with selected record.

Set up your Mailchimp action step

Now it's time to set up your action step, which represents what your Zap will do every time there's a new lead. In this case, we want it to add every new lead to a specific Mailchimp email list.

First, create or log in to your Mailchimp account. You'll need to make sure you have an Audience set up before customizing your Zap's action step.

Next, select your action app and event in your action step in the Zap editor. If you're using the Zap template we provided earlier, these will already be selected for you. Otherwise, select Mailchimp as your action app and Add/Update Subscriber as your action event. Then, connect your Mailchimp account—if you haven't already—and click Continue.

Now it's time to set up your action step. You'll need to select, at minimum, the Audience and Subscriber Email address.

You can map data from your previous Facebook Lead Ads step by clicking the plus sign (+) in a field and selecting the data you want to use from the dropdown menu. Here's what it looks like when we map the email address of a Facebook lead to the email address field.

From here, you can specify the rest of the lead information that you want Zapier to move into Mailchimp, like the customer's name or any tags you want to include. 

If these fields don't exactly match—for example, if your Facebook Lead Ad collects full names as one field, but Mailchimp needs a first and a last name as separate fields—you have two options. You can edit your Facebook Lead Ad form to match the fields Mailchimp needs, or you can add a formatter step to your Zap.

If you would like this Zap to update the information for existing subscribers in your Mailchimp account, make sure to select Yes in the Update Existing field.

Once you're finished filling out this section, click Continue.

Finally, you'll need to click Test step to make sure your Zap is working as intended.

After running your test, you should see a new contact on your Mailchimp Audience page in Mailchimp.

If the Zap worked and added the contact to your audience correctly, you're almost ready to use your new automated workflow. Just click Publish to turn it on. From now on, every new Facebook Lead you get will be automatically added to your selected Mailchimp Audience.

Further reading

What are Facebook Lead Ads?

Ever seen an ad on Facebook you liked, tapped on it, and had a form pop up? If your contact details were pre-populated with your information, chances are you were looking at a lead ad. 

Facebook Lead Ads are an advertising format designed specifically to help businesses collect prospect information (like names, email addresses, and phone numbers) so a sales team can reach out and close a deal. 

Facebook Lead Ads are a great tool for generating qualified leads for your sales team. But you can also use the advertising tool to encourage downloads of gated content like eBooks), collect subscriber information for your newsletter, and generate customer profiles.

What is Mailchimp?

If you've listened to a podcast in the last 10 years, you know that Mailchimp is  one of the most popular email marketing platforms. Users love its straightforward functionality, email templates, and features that help grow your business.

With Mailchimp, you can design, build, send, and analyze emails, yes. But you can also set up customer journeys to nurture your audience, build an online presence with a website, schedule social media posts, and manage your campaigns within one dashboard. 

How to use AI with Facebook Lead Ads and Mailchimp

If you like using this Zap, but you're wondering how AI can take the workflow to the next level, try this. Drop an AI by Zapier step between your Facebook Lead Ads trigger and Mailchimp action. The AI step can analyze your lead data and categorize each contact based on rules you define in your prompt.

This is especially powerful if your Facebook form uses open-ended text fields instead of dropdown selections, multiple choice answers, or checkbox selections. Without the AI step, you'd only be able to segment leads based on exact, structured data from your Facebook form.

As an example, let's say your Facebook form asks leads to describe their business or share what they're interested in. You can prompt the AI to read those responses and determine:

• Lead score — hot, warm, or cold

• Segment — agency, eCommerce, SaaS, etc.

• Stage — researching vs. ready to buy

When you set up your Mailchimp action, you can map these AI-generated outputs to tags or custom fields. Then every new lead will be intelligently scored and segmented the moment they enter your list.

With this Zap, your email campaigns and customer journeys will align with where each lead actually is in the buying process. And you don't have to hand-tag a single entry.

For more inspiration on ways to use AI by Zapier, check out our feature guide.

This article was originally published in February 2023, written by Kaylee Moser, with later updates by Elena Alston and Khamosh Pathak. It was most recently updated in February 2026.