MailChimp basics

MailChimp prerequisites

• Free accounts: Only allow one audience. BRP cannot create its audience if one already exists. You must delete the default audience.

• Paid accounts: Allow multiple audiences.

Synchronizing addresses from BRP to an MailChimp audience

People are synchronized if they:

• Allow email mailings (consent)

• Have an email address

• Meet the criteria: Either all persons or only those with an active subscription (configurable)

A synchronization is also triggered if the person:

• Gets a new subscription

• Ends a subscription

Custom Fields in the MailChimp Audience

First Synchronization

An audiences named BRP is created (if it doesn't already exist) containing the merge fields mentioned above. Then, people meeting the requirements are synced.

The email address of the facility where the sync is first configured will be the default sender. You can change the sender in MailChimp settings after the audiences is created.

Unsubscribing from the MailChimp Audience

BRP updates during the scheduled activity that runs nightly

If a person unsubscribes via MailChimp, this is noted in their history, and their "allow email" flag is unchecked in BRP.

Unsubscribe Logic Summary

• MailChimp → BRP: An unsubscribe in MailChimp unchecks the "allow email" flag in BRP.

• BRP → MailChimp: Manually unchecking the flag in BRP stops the sync but does not remove the person from MailChimp. Users should be reminded to manage mass removals directly in MailChimp.

Outgoing Mailings

During synchronization, BRP checks if mailings have been sent via MailChimp. If so, a marketing activity with a link to the email is recorded on the person's profile.

Audiences & Campaigns

BRP synchronizes your data to an audience in MailChimp every night. This audience is the target for your campaigns.

Campaigns

Campaigns: This is the actual email. You can send to the entire audience, pre-defined MailChimp segments, or filter by the custom fields synced from BRP.

To get started, click “Create Campaign”.
When you select the audience, you can choose who in the audience you want to send the campaign to.

MailChimp comes with templates that you can modify and save after you have designed them to make it easier to have your own template when creating your mailings.

Templates

These are the base designs for your emails.

Statistics

For each campaign there is a “view report” button where you can see statistics on how well the mailing is going.

Clicks

If you have a link in your mailing, MailChimp will count how many unique clicks each link received from customers (the same customer may have clicked on the same link three times, but it only counts as one).

Bounces

When an email cannot be sent, there are two types of bounces. Hard and soft

Hard is a constant problem that the domain, address or the recipient's server is blocking traffic. Most often, people who get a hard bounce are removed from active subscribers and instead end up in the “cleaned” part of the audience and will not receive mailings.

Soft is a possible temporary problem, e.g. full inbox, mailing is too large or if their server is down temporarily. MailChimp will continue to try to send the email for three days. The person will not be removed from your subscribers and will continue to receive mailings.

“Follow up points”

You can automate mailings via BRP follow-up points using the MailChimp API.

It is possible to send via MailChimp via a follow-up point. This is possible because MailChimp supports the creation of campaigns via their API.
To use this functionality, select MailChimp as the channel in the follow-up point. This is only possible when MailChimp has the correct settings.

If you want to use this function and want the sender to be the respective customer's facility, you need to create a follow-up point and template per facility.

Segments

A segment is a selection of email addresses to which a mailing should be directed. This selection is managed by BRP and controlled via the selected follow-up point.

When a segment is created, it will be sent when a campaign is created; the people in the selection who match the existing audience (BRP audience) will receive the mailing.

Important:

In order for a mailing to reach people who no longer have an active subscription, the “syncall” parameter for the mailchimpsync scheduled activity must have the value true.

The reason for this is because the segment uses the BRP audience to match the selection. If the people are not in the BRP audience, they will not be processed further for mailing.

Templates

You must manually create templates in MailChimp to select them within BRP follow-up points.

Please note that the general and filter-specific parameters are not included from BRP to MailChimp in the follow-up point, but you can only use the own-defined fields in your audience in Mailchimp.

Campaigns

When a campaign has been created in connection with the execution of a follow-up point, there is a setting "Delete MailChimp campaign after completion of sending via follow-up point" which allows the campaign to be automatically deleted as a final step.

The default setting is that it saves campaigns, which means that you must delete them manually if necessary.