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 your database, changes in Mailchimp and changes in Chimpegration setup?
• 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 your database? How do you plan to use the data from Mailchimp once it is in your database? Where should it go (for fields where you have options)?
  • Mailing data (e.g. opens, clicks, unsubscribes) NOTE: Action attributes/custom fields must be text fields.
  • Sign-up data (e.g. biographical info, phones, emails, addresses, preferences etc). NOTE: All Mailchimp merge fields should be created as text type fields, Mailchimp field types do not play well with Blackbaud field types.
  • What data would you like to bring from your database 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.
  • Tags – you can only export into tags, you cannot bring tags into your database.

Ongoing Usage

• What are your regular processes? How often do you plan to update your data? What areas do you need to use?
• Determine which tasks you will set up as realtime and which on a schedule.