As you get started in Chimpegration, here are a few questions that we suggest that you discuss as a team in order to best build your strategy for using the tool.

Strategy

• What is your ongoing strategy for data processing?  Who is responsible for changes in Raiser’s Edge, changes in Mailchimp and changes in Chimpegration setup?
• How do you code the emails in Raiser’s Edge that you would like to use in Mailchimp? Do you use the “Is Primary?” checkbox, a specific email type or something else?*
• When a constituent has more than one email address, how do you want to determine which to use?*
• When two constituents share an email address, how do you want to determine which one to use?*

Data from Mailchimp

• What data would you like to bring from Mailchimp into Raiser’s Edge? How do you plan to use the data from Mailchimp once it is in Raiser’s Edge? Where should it go (for fields where you have options)?
  • Mailing data (e.g. opens, clicks, unsubscribes)
  • Sign-up data (e.g. biographical info, phones, emails, addresses, preferences etc).
  • What data would you like to bring from Raiser’s Edge to Mailchimp? How do you plan to use it once it is in Mailchimp? E.g. Merge fields to use in mailings, preferences, segmentation data.
• How will you use Groups in Mailchimp? Do you want those to convert to any fields in Raiser’s Edge?
  • You can only work with tags in Export and Remove
  • Groups can be synched with various areas of RE and across all areas of Chimpegration

Ongoing Usage

• What are your regular processes? How often do you plan to update your data?  What areas do you need to use?  Will you need to use Remove Subscribers or the Automation Export on a consistent basis?
• If you are using both Chimpegration Professional and Cloud, determine which tasks you will do where and on what schedule.

*Further Resources

See our knowledge base and support articles on

• Choosing between query and export
• When a constituent has more than one email address, how do you want to determine which to use?
• How to manage constituents who share an email address
• Our constituents have multiple email addresses, how do I work with all of them in Mailchimp?
• Recommendations for Synching strategy when working with large global changes in RE
• Working with Automations and Customer Journeys