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Mailchimp Email Marketing

MailChimp is an email marketing service that helps you create and send attractive, professional-looking email communications to stay in regular touch with your customers and prospects, and build strong customer relationships. It's better and more effective than regular email. The ProfitSystem supports MailChimp 3.0 API.

The ProfitSystem can send emails via Mailchimp instead of using your Email service provider's SMTP server.

MailChimp is used for sending bulk emails, not for one-off or transactional emails. Bulk emails are sent via the marketing or queries. Transactional emails such as automation emails and receipts are sent via automation and should use your Email service provider's SMTP server.

Getting started with MailChimp

You need to obtain an API key from the MailChimp account. To get one, log into your MailChimp account. go to Account - Extras - API Keys, create one if one does not already exists, ENABLE it then copy the API key. If you have trouble contact MailChimp support for the API key. Now bring up ProfitSystem, Go to Setup-> Stores-> Email/SMS tab and PASTE the API key into the Mail Chimp Section. That is it, log out of the system, then go back in to insure the key is SAVED and active.

To use MailChimp to send a marketing email

  1. Go to Marketing->Marketing
  2. Select one of the three options, enter criteria, and click Ok
  3. It will display the Select Letter/tag/Mailing label form to prompt for the letter or email to send. In the list, locate MailChimp Email and click Ok.

It will display a dialog box asking for a the Campaign details.

Campaign name...A unique name for this campaign. You will look up this mailing via this name later, so make it descriptive.

Subject...The subject of the email that the customer/prospect will receive.

From email...The return address for the email. This will default to the SMTP From email on the Integrations tab of the Stores form.

From name...The name on the email, such as Customer Service, or Bridal Sales. This will default to the SMTP From name on the Integrations tab of the Stores form.

MailChimp template...This will show all the MailChimp Drag and Drop type templates. Select the template to use. You must setup the MailChimp template prior, so it is ready to use during this process.

Send test email to...This will send a test email to the specified email address before the campaign is created. You can review this email and make sure it looks ok.

Click Ok to send the test email if a test email address is specified. Then the entire campaign is sent.

The campaign open rates and results can then be viewed on the MailChimp dashboard.

IMPORTANT Notes

The ProfitSystem expects a list called ProfitSystem to be present on the MailChimp account. The list should have 4 List fields added to it. The fields are: First Name, text, not required, visible, with tag FNAME Last Name, text, not required, visible, with tag LNAME Event Date, date, not required, visible, with tag EVENTDATE Type, drop down, not required, visible, with tag TYPE. Options: Customer, Prospect

When a new campaign is sent via MailChimp, the follow occurs: 1. First, check that the campaign name is unique. 2. Send all the selected email addresses, along with the first name, last name, and event date to MailChimp, and add to the ProfitSystem list you created in MailChimp. 3. Create a static segment containing all the email addresses for the campaign. 4. Create the campaign itself. 5. Send the test email, if an email addresses was specified. 6. Send the actual campaign. The integration will automatically store the MailChimp member id (unique ID for the email address) back into the ProfitSystem, on the customer or prospect record. 7. A completed ProfitSystem To-do is created for reference and linked to the recipient (customer or prospect) The to-do contains the details of the email sent, along with links to view the subscriber and campaign details on MailChimp. This is for reference to the ProfitSystem User to see & know that the Prospect/Customer has received a Mailchimp campaign and which one.