Summary
Our mission at Join It is to make membership management simple. We think this starts with making all of your most important data syncs across the applications that you’re using to run your Organization.
MailChimp is right in line with this mission. We keep your membership database in sync with your email marketing efforts. Once you setup Join It, you can connect your MailChimp account and select which list you want new Members to be added to.
Step by Step guide
Step 1: Setup your MailChimp profile
If you do not have a MailChimp account yet, you can create one quickly at www.mailchimp.com/
Just to help you learn about the integration, we would suggest creating a quick ‘test’ email list -- this will give a good idea of how Join It works with MailChimp
Step 2: Link MailChimp to your Join It account
Next, we need to enable the syncing between MailChimp and Join It.
From your Join It Dashboard, click the “Automations” link on the left, also available here
Locate and click on the MailChimp tile
Confirm the linkage by clicking the green “connect MailChimp” button
Enter your MailChimp credentials
Step 3: Start adding your members to your MailChimp lists
Finally, it’s time to create the automations to help you manage communication efforts with your members. Note: it is important that you have your various lists set up within MailChimp before you proceed with this step.
From within the Automations link, click into the MailChimp tile
The “Connect MailChimp” box will guide you through the allocation of membership types to your different lists within MailChimp
Membership type: select which membership type to apply the current automation to
Lastly, choose the MailChimp Audience you’d like to send the members’ emails to
Description of screenshot: Displaying the MailChimp automation creation
Benefits of Integration
Once you’ve synced your Join It and MailChimp profiles, your organization can benefit from:
Real-time syncing between Join It and MailChimp
Data from your Join It membership database gets pushed to MailChimp when a new member joins
List segmentation
Map members to multiple lists and build MailChimp segments of the additional information that gets pushed into MailChimp (details below).
Emailing based on membership type
Set up different configurations by membership types
Fields that Sync
Once you're set up to start syncing from Join It to MailChimp, you'll notice that Join It sends some extra data to MailChimp that can be useful for segmentation. The fields that sync from Join It to MailChimp lists are:
Email Address (unique identifier in MailChimp)
First Name (Merge Variable: FNAME)
Last Name (Merge Variable: LNAME)
Membership Type (Merge Variable: MEMBERSHIP)
Membership Status (Merge Variable: MSTATUS)
Expiration Date (Merge Variable: EXPIRATION)
Address, if available (Merge Variable: ADDRESS)
Birthday, if available (Merge Variable: BIRTHDAY)
Membership ID (Merge Variable: MID) - optional setting
Joined Date (Merge Variable: JOINEDDATE) - optional setting
Frequently Asked Question:
Why is my MailChimp subscriber count different than my member count?
Here are some reason as to why your 'membership' count numbers might not always match up to your subscribers in MailChimp:
Members have unsubscribed (if someone unsubscribed from MailChimp, they aren't included in the count).
Memberships can have duplicate emails (they'll only be counted once in MailChimp)
Memberships can have 'no email' address associated with them
Members has been removed/blocked by MailChimp for other compliance reason (e.g. GDPR or other regulation)
Will Membership updates sync over to MailChimp?
If a membership updates (e.g. membership information, status, membership type, expiration date, etc.) that information will flow through to MailChimp.
However, MailChimp uses the 'email' as the unique identifier. So if a member updates their email address, that won't update automatically within MailChimp.
Are my 'Inactive' members automatically unsubscribed from my lists in Mailchimp?
Nope! By default, we keep all of the memberships added to your lists "subscribed" - so if a member is unsubscribed, it's not something that the integration with Join It has done on their behalf.
However, we still make it simple to send emails to only your Active Memberships. To do this, you can build a Segment where the Merge Variable for Membership Status (MSTATUS) is set to "ACTIVE". And the best news, is that you only have to create this Segment once - and then it'll dynamically update as we keep your memberships in sync.
How can I resubscribe a member in Mailchimp?
Here's a great help article in Mailchimp with instructions on how to resubscribe a member in Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/help/resubscribe-a-contact/
Can I build complex Segments in MailChimp with Membership Data?
Absolutely! Join It pushes in several pieces of data about each membership (see above for exact details) and updates this information in real-time.
So you can build complex segments, making it easy to target specific customers (e.g. 'Active' members only, or members of a specific Membership Type).
Description of video: This is a tutorial on how to build a segment in MailChimp