We've built an integration with MailChimp that makes email marketing simple, powerful and effective. MailChimp is FREE to sign up, and free to use with list sizes of less than 500 members. As soon as you need to send more than 100 emails, then you can sign up to either their monthly pay plans, or else you can buy pay as you go credits.
There are 2 basic things that you need to send a mailshot:
1/ The List : all the email recipients
2/ The Newsletter : The HTML content
The two of these go to make a Campaign, which can be saved in draft mode before actually sending.
Getting started
Create a MailChimp account
First off, you'll need a MailChimp account. If you sign up by clicking the links within Brightpearl, then you'll get $30 credits free! Find your way to Contacts:Marketing:Mailing campaigns and you'll see the signup link.
Set up the API key
Once you've registered, log in to your MailChimp account then go back to Brightpearl. Visit the Marketin:Mailing campaigns page and click the link to get your API key. This allows your Brightpearl system to talk to your MailChimp system. Copy and paste this into the box in your Brightpearl system and save. All ready to connect!
Create a list
You don't need to do this any more since a new Mailchimp account already has a List. You only need one, since we're going to be using "interest groups" to segment your database of contacts.
If you do want multiple lists for any reason, then Brightpearl will handle this too. If you were on our previous system whereby you needed one list per segment, then you can leave it like this, or move everyone into one group (which will save you credits too).
How does it work ... Tags and Interest groups
You have Tags in Brightpearl to segment your contact database. You can choose to connect up to 30 of these Tags to Mailchimp Interest groups. Whenever you add a connected tag to a contact, that contact will automatically be added to the Mailchimp list, and given the correct interest group. You can have multiple tags on a contact, and of course this will put the contact in multiple interest groups in Mailchimp.
Removing a tag from a contact in Brightpearl will remove them from the interest group in Mailchimp, but will leave them on your Mailchimp list.
Any time that you use a connected tag, Brightpearl will talk to Mailchimp and make sure that everything is A-OK.
Connecting Tags to Mail lists
Visit the Contacts:By Tag:List/edit tags screen, and edit a tag that you want to connect as a "mailing list segment". If your Mailchimp connection is OK, then all your Mailchimp Lists will appear in the drop down menu.
Select the list that you want to create an interest group in, and save. Brightpearl will then create the interest group in Mailchimp for you.
To move a Tag to a different list, you'll need to save the Tag without a list, then go back in and save it to the new list.
Connected Tags appear in bold.
Sending an email campaign
Briefly:
- From within the Contacts zone, click Marketing : New email campaign
- Choose a previous newsletter to start from, or click a template
- Edit the template, add a subject and click Save & continue
- Select the tags (interest groups) that you want to send this to
- Send a test to yourself
- Send it out to the recipients!
Setting up and sending out your email
You'll need to have sent at least one campaign to a list (not just a test)
Create a "test list" in MailChimp, then create a "test tag" within Brightpearl, and attach it to the list as above. You can then send a real campaign to this small list. You'll need to include the *|REWARDS|* tag at the bottom of your email to comply with the MailChimp free account requirements. You can take this off once you're on a paid account, but you get credits if people sign up as a result of clicking it, so it's no bad thing.
You'll need to have had your MailChimp account reviewed
When you attempt to buy credits, MailChimp will manually check your account to make sure all is OK - that you're not a spammer abusing the system, which would affect the quality of delivery for everyone. Note that they are in the USA so it will generally be during their working hours.
Once you've had your account reviewed, you can sign up for credits and send as many mails as you like.
Don't forget that to pass the anti-spam requirements you'll need to include the unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails (it's available as a widget from the drop-down list in the newsletter edit screen), and also a postal address.
Another video with some more tips:
Who's read my mail? - Advanced reporting
You can see the number of opens, clicks and so on from within Brightpearl on the Marketing:Mail Campaigns screen, and also from within your MailChimp account. MailChimp do offer an extended reporting level call "A.I.M." - which is a paid add-on to the standard package. We're working on a super-tight integration with MailChimp which will allow you to click the "opens" number and see everyone in Brightpearl CRM. Subscribe to our blog feed to that you're kept up to date!
Unsubscribing
Every email recipient will get the unsubscribe link in the bottom of the mail. If they click this they will be marked as unsubscribed from the list. Contacts will automatically be marked as unsubscribed in your Brightpearl account too. Once unsubscribed, they cannot be added to the list again, and you won't be able to update the "newsletter" status within Brightpearl:
Bounces, cleaning and list management
There's a lot of information within the MailChimp help sections - read their documentation for a good general overview of email marketing and how it works with your system. Each time a contact email address bounces or is cleaned, Mailchimp sends a message to Brightpearl, which will appear on the contact timeline:
WebHooks
MailChimp can send a signal to Brightpearl to remove contacts from your lists automatically, as they unsubscribe themselves, or as MailChimp decides that the email address is no longer valid (after a hrad bounce, for example). This connection is called a Webhook, and is set up automatically by Brightpearl as you add Tags to mailing lists. The great thing is that they pop a note onto the contact note history, eg "UNSUBSCRIBED my@email.com". Note that Webhooks can sometimes take a couple of hours to arrive from MailChimp.
Creating folders
Folders allow you to sort your campaigns - perhaps you have "trade news" and "retail news". It makes big lists of historical campaigns easier to manage. Visit the Marketing:Mailing campaigns screen and enter a folder name into the "add folder" box to create a new one.
Handy tips
It's easier to see which of your contacts are subscribed to newsletters if you add the "newsletter" column to your CRM screen search results - click the blue link at the top of the CRM screen to edit your column settings.
Always use the "newsletter" field when creating SmartForms for capturing new leads. It's set to "yes" by default. If it's not on your SmartForm, then the user will be created with "newsletters" set to "no".
You can only add a tag to one of your lists, but you can create as many tags as you like, and add multiple tags to a contact. Batch add/remove tags from contacts using the options on the left hand side of the contact search results screen.
