18) MailChimp Integration

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MailChimp Integration

Watch our YouTube video about MailChimp (specifically, finding the api key and list IDS needed for integration) at https://youtu.be/oLRG7F-Q2iU
(if this link is broken because we’ve posted a new version, go to our channel at https://www.youtube.com/SMMware to get to the new video)

MailChimp is a 3rd party service which provides mass email functions but also Marketing Automation. When integrated with MailChimp, SMMware can copy new items (and update existing) to MailChimp mailing lists (‘Audiences’ in MailChimp vocabulary), one each for Clients, Contacts, and Associates. Whenever you create or modify a Client, a Contact, or an Associate that information is sent to MailChimp automatically. You don’t need to perform a separate step, but you will see a popup messages noting that the copying was done.

If you want to take advantage of the free account at MailChimp which comes with just one Audience, all three SMMware lists (Clients, Contacts, and Associates) can point to the same MailChimp Audience.

MailChimp allows you to use ‘tags’ to form up an email to a subset of the overall audience list. SMMware Contacts copied to MailChimp will have tags that match any SMMware categories they are assigned to. If the Contact has ‘Refers Business to us’ checkmarked, they will have a ‘Refers Business’ tag as well as their category tags. Clients will have a tag of ‘Current Client’, ‘Past Client’, or ‘Sales Lead’ as appropriate. Associates will have tags of ‘Active Associate’ or ‘Inactive Associate’. Tags are a powerful tool allowing you to target ‘all realtors’, ‘all senior living center’ etc. for your email campaigns. Be aware that when SMMware updates an existing audience member at MailChimp, SMMware matches the tags at MailChimp to the ones SMMware uses. If you add tags used by SMMware directly in MailChimp, they may be deleted the next time SMMware updates that audience member. If you want to add your own tags directly in MailChimp, just make sure they are different than the ones SMMware uses.

Once the integration is setup, you may have a blank audience at MailChimp if the account is new. You can have SMMware copy Clients, Contacts, and Associates to Mailchimp so that the audience is populated. First, make sure your Associate Profile has “Marketing Role Privileges”. This makes a new page available, Admin->MailChimp Commands. There, you will find the three commands for bulk copying to MailChimp. If you already had a MailChimp account and it is populated, be aware that these commands update the tags at MailChimp including the deletion of tags not used by SMMware. But these commands won’t duplicate an audience member or delete one.

MailChimp offers great Marketing Automation tools, and SMMware in combination with MailChimp form a powerful team.

To get the integration set up, we need a couple pieces of information from MailChimp. You can watch the video below to see where to find it. Or if you would prefer not to deal with it and feel comfortable sharing your MailChimp login, we’ll be happy to fetch the information for you.

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