Comments: How does "Sync with MailChimp" work in TntConnect 3.0?

Very helpful walk-through!

Yes, very helpful indeed.  This feature is great in TNT3.

This is a really great feature and I am truly excited about it!  You have done a very nice job with it.  We have been thinking of moving off of Google Groups and on to MailChimp for a while now, but seeing this feature added to TntMPD has now caused me to actually work on making the change (which I am currently in the process of doing).  There is one issue that I am running into that I guess comes as a feature request.

I have some people on my email list that would not necessarily ever be added to my contact list in TntMPD.  This would include people like fellow missionaries.  I would like them to be on my MailChimp list, but not sync with TntMPD.  In MailChimp I can either create a whole other list for them or segment my list into groups.  The bummer about creating another list is that then I have to run a campaign twice every time that I send out an email.  However, when I create another group in my list then TntMPD syncs with the whole list, not just one group.  So I see those people during my sync as ones on MailChimp but not in TntMPD.  Is it possible to have TntMPD only sync with a single group instead of the full list?

Hi Paul, when TntMPD sync with MailChimp, it recognizes some email addresses as being "MailChimp-Only".  You can choose to import them into TntMPD or you can leave them as MailChimp-Only.  The default action is to NOT import them into TntMPD.

Really loving the MailChimp sync! I wanted to confirm my understanding on how some of these fields are working. Say I have two couples on my email newsletter list. Couple A has an email address listed for both the husband and wife; Couple B only has an email address listed for the wife. It looks like the First Name field on all three emails in MailChimp will be the name of the person to whom the address is assigned to. However, for Couple A, the Greeting field will be a single name as well, but for Couple B, the Greeting field will be both the husband and wife's name.

If this is how it works, which I think is correct, that's really helpful. That means I can use the Greeting mergetag in MailChimp whenever I want to personally address an comment in an email, and couples that only have one email will get both the husband and wife's names inputted. Great feature, if that is indeed how it works!

You are 100% correct on that, reK1NDLE.  The Greeting you see in MailChimp is consistent with the new "Email Greeting" field (which you can customize per individual when you expand all the email/internet fields).

Hi Troy,

In spanish as well as in many other languages, we have a differente "greeting" ("dear" in english) whether we are addressing a woman, a man or both. We use: "Queridos", "Querido" and "Querida". I used to use a user field for this, so couples would get Queridos, single women Querida and single men Querido. I just noticed my tnt now splits my couples when I have two email for them, BUT it does not let me define a different greeting for each, does it??

Only solution I see:

- tntmpd to let me define a different greeting for each person.

- mailchimp to let me rescue the old "greeting" field (I used this one for only names, so I had the name of the couple:  john and mary)

Thanks for your ideas,

Nacho

When you send an email through MailChimp does it log a history item for those contacts?

I'm planning on doing a segmented email, do I have to reproduce that segment and log it manually?

Hi Nacho, ask about this on the forums (normal or beta).  This exact same issue is going to be dealt with for Portuguese salutations in the next release of TntMPD.  The formatting rules for greeting and salutations are country-specific (just like for address formatting).  I'd love to show you what is being done for Portuguese salutations to see if this might provide a template for Spanish salutation in a similar way.

Jayson, TntMPD only synchronizes email lists with MailChimp.  It does not (currently) import any type of activity/history.  But this is being strongly considered for the future!

Now that the new version allows to record a different email address for husband and wife, I will probably merge the two records. But how does that work when syncing with Mailchimp? will there be two records or just one on Mailchimp?  

TntMPD sync each email address that has the "Preferred" box pressed (the box to the right of the email address).  MailChimp can't combine two emails into one record, so if husband and wife each have an email address (marked as preferred), both emails are synced w/ MailChimp.

Is there a way to sync the MailChimp "OPENS" with TntMPD history? Would be helpful to see who actually opened/read the emails. Thanks.

Another question...how does MailChimp count 'opens'? Some on my list have multiple opens. Does it simply count each time a recipient clicks to open the email OR also include opens associated with the original email (i.e. if someone forwards it to 5 friends will those opens count as part of the original recipients opens?). The implications would be that I can see who is sharing/forwarding my emails and thus a potential advocate for us.

Syncing "Opens" with TntMPD history is on my future idea list.  I'm not sure how exactly MailChimp counts opens.  You might get more eyes on this question if you post to the forums.

Troy, thanks for this - it is very helpful!  One comment/suggestion on our end (Living Waters Canada) is if the Mailchimp sync could automatically update the contact's name, address, phone, etc. in TNTMPD, while creating a "For review" note - instead of reverting the change in Mailchimp and posting a note in TNTMPD.

We thought that if someone is concerned about unexpected changes in TNTMPD they will be notified but for those who simply want a more automated way for contacts to update their info (which I expect the majority of people would want) it will take that extra administrative step out of the process. With the current setup, it ends up being almost as tedious as the TND.Dataserver Give Site updates that then need to be manually put into Donorwise.

Thoughts?