Summary
At Join It, our mission is to simplify membership management. We believe this begins with seamlessly syncing your most important data across the applications you rely on to run your organization.
MailChimp aligns perfectly with this mission. We ensure your membership database stays in sync with your email marketing efforts. Once you've set up Join It, you can easily connect your MailChimp account and choose the list where new members should be added.
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 Join It
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 syncing your members to MailChimp
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.
Go to the MailChimp tile page
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 this automation to. Would you like it set up to sync over 'all' membership types to this list or a specific membership type?
Lastly, choose the MailChimp Audience you’d like to send the members’ emails to
Description of screenshot: Displaying the MailChimp automation creation page
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 to MailChimp
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 Questions:
Why is my MailChimp subscriber count different from my member count?
Here are some reasons 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 reasons (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 delete subscribers in MailChimp?
Within MailChimp you'll want to archive the subscribers instead of delete them (deleting them can cause issues in MailChimp). Archiving the Member will still do what you're looking for though.
Here's a MailChimp help article where you can learn more about archiving contacts: https://mailchimp.com/help/remove-inactive-contacts/
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: Here is a tutorial on how to build a segment in MailChimp