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Mailchimp

Mailchimp

Owned by Kieran Mitchell (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 12, 2022
6 min read

You can integrate your MailChimp account with Accelerate, enabling you to send targeted campaigns using information from quotes and contracts within Accelerate.

Info: Only Relationships that have an email marketing permission at the time of the action firing will be sent to MailChimp. See The Importance of Permission | Mailchimp for more on marketing permissions.

Initial Setup

Info: Firstly, you'll need a MailChimp account! Head over to their website or click the link to sign up: Turn emails into revenue | Mailchimp

Once your account has been created you should be on the MailChimp main dashboard.

Mailchimp Dashboard

Audience setup

A critical first step to getting started with Mailchimp is setting up your audience. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or bringing existing contacts into Mailchimp, your audience is where you’ll store and manage all your contacts and new contacts you have pushed from Accelerate.

Note: If you already use Mailchimp then we recommend you create a new Audience specifically for this integration, but this is not mandatory.

Here is the Mailchimp user guide for creating a Audience:

https://eepurl.com/dyilbz

Generating API key from Mailchimp

To set up your integration with your Mailchimp account, you'll need to generate an API key.

  1. Click this link to navigate to the API Keys section of your Mailchimp account: Your API Keys

  2. Copy an existing API key or click the Create A Key button.

  3. Name your key descriptively, we recommend calling it Accelerate

More information around Mailchimp’s API can be found here:

https://eepurl.com/dyijVH

Info: We recommend having a dedicated API key for Accelerate

Warning: If you are at all concerned about the security of the API key then you can create a new one and disable the old one. If you do need to change your API key, we recommend asking us to change the API key first and waiting for us to confirm the change prior to disabling your existing API key to prevent any data not being sent to Mailchimp.

Adding your API Key to Accelerate

Info: You will need to be an Accelerate Administrator to complete this section

Once you have your API key saved head over to your Organisation Settings and enter you API key into the “Mailchimp API Key Field”

 

Mailchimp Actions

Info: See Actions  and Contract Milestones  for more information on setting these up.

Mailchimp Cart & Order Actions

These actions allow you to send data to MailChimp at different stages in the process.

Carts and Orders are very similar within MailChimp. From an Accelerate perspective carts are quotes and orders are contracts. If you have an order then you will have a contract in Accelerate, however if you have a cart you may or may not have a contract as it depends on when you have set this action to fire.

Carts and orders are linked to a customer and a product and provide the link between a customer and the product/vehicle. In addition they also include an order_total field which is the monthly payment the customer makes i.e. a sum of the following figures:

  • finance payment

  • maintenance payment

  • glass payment

  • types payment

  • relief vehicle_payment

  • recovery payment

In order for a cart or order to be created in MailChimp a customer and product need to exist first. As part of this functionality we automatically check these exist before sending the cart or order information. The following useable information from Accelerate is sent to MailChimp:

Customer

MailChimp Field

Accelerate Value

email_address

The email address of the relationship or contact record

company

The relationship name (left blank for private individuals)

first_name

The first name of the relationship or contact record

last_name

The last name of the relationship of contact record

 

Info: if the relationship is not a private individual then the contact that is used is the Decision Maker on the opportunity. However, if this contact doesn't have an email address or the customer is being linked to a cart via an order, then the primary contact is used instead.

Product

Mailchimp Field

Quotevine Value

id

The vehicle type (LCV/CAR) concatenated with the CAP id and the product type e.g. CAR 78990 PCH

title

Concatenation of manufacturer, model and derivative name

Info: The title includes manufacturer, model and the full derivative name, allowing you to target customers that are linked to products containing AUDI, AUDI A6 or AUDI A6 AVANT etc. depending on how targeted your campaign needs to be.

Create Mailchimp Cart

The 'Create MailChimp Cart' action will create a new cart in MailChimp when a record is updated to a status with this action attached. Behind the scenes, e-commerce shopping carts are more functional for sellers. They present background information about your products–like inventory and shipping options–in a way that’s easy to grasp for the customer. It also collects the information you need to fulfill your customers’ purchase. This includes their payment details, billing address, shipping address, and additional preferences.

Info: The 'Create MailChimp Cart' action can only be linked to proposal or order statuses.

Create Mailchimp Order

The 'Create MailChimp Order' action can be added to Contract Milestones as this requires a contract to be created. Linking it to a contract milestone ensures that data is sent when a contract is created from either a vehicle order or manually.

Subscribes and Unsubscribes

To enable Mailchimp to automatically update Accelerate when there is a subscribe or unsubscribe from your Audience, you will need to update the webhook permissions as it is defaulted to not update.

To get there go to the preference centre on the left hand screen menu, then Select the ‘settings’ tab (as seen in the screenshots below) and click ‘webhooks’.

There will be a boxes to check (Third screenshot down) that will enable you to choose what you want to be updated on.

 

Preferences Center

 

Webhooks
Webhook Permissions

 

MailChimp List fields and *|MERGE|* tags

Set Default Merge Values for an Audience:

https://eepurl.com/dyimFr

As standard the forename (*|FNAME|*) and surname (*|LNAME|*) fields are populated from Accelerate. This may be enhanced to include additional data from within Accelerate to populate either standard or custom list fields in MailChimp.

Info: Data may come from either the Relationship, in the case of a private individual, or additionally the Decision Maker/Primary Contact in the case of a business. A list of relationship groups (comma separated), the Account Manager and the primary address may also be included.

Note: When you've created your list fields in MailChimp please raise a support ticket via the Support Hub providing us with the merge tags, field types and Accelerate data you wish to be passed to MailChimp.

Below is an example from MailChimp with additional information drawn from Accelerate into both standard and and custom list fields.

Example data pushed from Accelerate to Mailchimp

Creating a Mailchimp campaign

Mailchimp campaign is a marketing message that you share through email, ads, or some other channel. When you create the campaign you can target recipients based on the information sent from Accelerate. This can be as general or specific as needed. For example, you could target customers that ordered a Volkswagen and pay more than £150 a month.

Getting Started with Campaigns:

https://eepurl.com/dyilLv

Create a Regular Email Campaign:

https://eepurl.com/dyilc1

 

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