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

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?

Makes sense, Matt.  I'll strongly consider this...

Is there any way to sync a custom field in Mail chimp with a custom field in TNT?   Specific situation:   on our mail chimp online signup form, we have a required field that says "I would like to learn how to Support You financially" - YES or NOT AT THIS TIME.     I would like Mail chimp to sync this with a custom field in TNT so that I can search in TNT by all people that selected YES on this form.

@rwdelling, TntMPD doesn't support custom fields the way you describe.

Can you tell me if it's possible to sync a Group that I've defined with a specific mail list at MailChimp.  For instance, I have a list of donors, and I also have a list of newsletter recipients.  I have the donors with email addresses in a specific group and would like to be able to sync those with my "donors" list at MailChimp.  Is this possible?  I could not find a way to do it.

Thanks!

Hi Jason,  The MailChimp Sync feature only syncs your Email Newsletter List with MailChimp.  If you want to further sub-divide this list, you can use a user field or some other optional set of fields that TntMPD can sync for you.  Click "Options..." when you first pull up the MailChimp Sync dialog to see what those fields are.

I am working through how TntMPD and Mailchimp work together to pass the information on others using the programme in the organisation. When I make a change in Mailchimp, for example Firstname, a note appears in Tnt that a change has been made. But when I change Receives Paper Newsletter from Yes to No for example, a similar note is not appearing in Tnt. What should I be looking out for to check I have everything set up correctly?

TntMPD makes Receives Paper Newsletter a read-only field (from the perspective of your partners).

When I synced my tnt with mailchimp, anyone who had more than one email address in tnt got entered as a new person in mailchimp so that there were duplicate people in mailchimp. Is there any way for it to instead add the second email address into the alternate address field or to look and see if the person is already there in mailchimp before creating a new person? Maybe I skipped something accidentally and didn't realize it!

Linda,  In TntMPD you mark each email as "Preferred" (the box to the right of each email address) if you want it in MailChimp.  --Troy

let me add that I am also getting an original address field with a tag of o_address in the form as hidden.  Is this overriding their in put during the sync, perhaps?

You can ignore the "o_address".  It's used internally by TntMPD to track changes to the address field.  That's why it's hidden.

When connecting a mailchimp account and then syncing for the first time to TNTMPD, it creates additional mailchimp fields (ex. "phone number original").

Is it okay to delete those fields?

You can delete those extra fields, but it makes it more difficult for TntMPD to sync correctly.  For example, TntMPD knows if the phone number changed, because it kept a copy of the "original" value to compare it against.  Without that "phone number original" field, TntMPD won't know if the phone number changed on the MailChimp side.