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How to connect your store to MailChimp
Your store can seamlessly integrate with a MailChimp account in just a few short steps, which this article will cover.
If you require any assistance with how to manage and use your MailChimp account, please refer to MailChimp's knowledge base:
1) Find/Generate an API Key in your MailChimp account
MailChimp Users with Manager permissions can generate and view their own API (application programming interface) keys. Users with Admin permissions can also see API keys for other account users.
- Click this link to navigate to the API Keys section of your Mailchimp account: Your API Keys
- Click the Create A Key button;
- Name your key descriptively, so you know what application uses that key;
- Copy the key you have just created.
2) Add the MailChimp API to your Cloud POS Back Office
Once you have your API Key, login to your Cloud POS Back office and add your API Key to the configuration settings: https://pos.citruslime.com/backofficeux/configuration.aspx
3) Wait 24 hours for the Integration to upload to your MailChimp account
Once you have added the API Key to your Cloud POS back office, the integration will automatically begin the upload process to your MailChimp account. After 24 hours, your full Citrus-Lime Ecommerce database will have uploaded to an audience named:
'Citrus-Lime Cloud POS - *Your Store Name*'
https://us1.admin.mailchimp.com/lists/
4) Before you start sending
Once all Ecommerce data has uploaded to your account, you'll need to make sure your audience information is correct. To do so, head to the audience overview and click on the arrow next to the audience, then Settings: https://us10.admin.mailchimp.com/lists/
The two areas that will need checking over are:
- Audience name and defaults
- Required email footer content
Make sure all fields in these settings match your store information.
And you're done!
You're now able to start sending campaigns using the audience. MailChimp contains plenty of powerful automated features that can help build your brand. If you're looking for somewhere to start, we'd recommend exploring some of these automations that can generate a good source of passive income once they're live!
Create a Winning Welcome Email
https://mailchimp.com/resources/make-lasting-connections-with-welcome-emails/
Get Shoppers back to their carts
https://mailchimp.com/features/abandoned-cart/
Already have an existing MailChimp account?
If you have an existing MailChimp account, you can still follow the above steps to integration your Ecommerce store. However, it is important to manually move your unsubscribe list and any legacy data in your existing audiences to the new one before you use the data in the audience.
To do so, you'll need to follow the below process.
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Export your current audience(s)
https://mailchimp.com/help/view-export-contacts/#View_or_export_an_audience
You'll need to do this for every audience in your account. Each export will provide you with different spreadsheets for your audience data, split out by the Email Marketing Status (Subscribed, Unsubscribed, Cleaned). We recommend you keep this data for safe-keeping.
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Import all audience information to the newer audience
https://mailchimp.com/help/import-contacts-mailchimp/#Import_new_contacts
For each audience, you'll need to follow the import process as specified in the article above. You'll need to do this for each spreadsheet you received for the export, making sure you import to the contacts exactly matching their status (E.g. importing 'Unsubscribed' addresses as Unsubscribed').
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Bulk Unsubscribe the email address
https://mailchimp.com/help/unsubscribe-people-marketing/#Bulk_unsubscribe
As good practice, we recommend using MailChimp's Bulk Unsubscribe feature to be certain that all unsubscribed addresses have indeed been imported as unsubscribed.
-
Remove the other audience(s)
https://mailchimp.com/help/delete-audience/
To avoid paying more than you need to for you account, we suggest that you only have the one audience in your account. The above guide goes in to detail about how you can do just that - though we'd always recommend that you backup your account data before doing so: https://mailchimp.com/help/export-back-up-data/
Once all audience data has been transferred to the newer audience, you can start sending with confidence. If you require any assistance with this or encounter any issues, please get in touch with our support team.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my new audience meet GDPR compliancy?
Each contact in your audience is assigned a field labelled 'GDPR Allowed' that directly relates to how a customer has set their contact preferences at certain stages of your Ecommerce store (signing in, post-checkout). Depending on what option they select, this field will be populated with one of the below:
- 1 = This indicated that a customer has given you their unambiguous consent and is eligible for email marketing;
- 0 = The customer has specifically opted out of email marketing and does not wish to be marketed to*
- Blank = The customer has uploaded without any preference (E.g. basket abandonment) and has not given or consented to receiving email marketing.
You're able to create segments in your audience to target this field before sending your campaigns. For example:
* - This field doesn't relate to the MailChimp subscription status (subscribed / unsubscribed / cleaned), in the sense that a customer with a 0 can still be sent a marketing email unless you create a segment to exclude them.
You can read more about Citrus-Lime and GDPR here: https://howto.citruslime.com/42246-platform-updates-changelogs/306251-gdpr-and-you-and-us
MailChimp offer different levels of accounts, mainly dependent on your audience size. Most plans also have a maximum audience limit. If you're reached the limit with your plan, you will see this message on the audience overview plan: https://us14.admin.mailchimp.com/lists/
If you see the above message, you'll need to export and remove the audience before the new audience can upload. Follow the steps in 'Already have an existing MailChimp account?', but remove the audience before you begin the import.
Other common issues:
- Does your API key match in both your MailChimp account and Cloud POS Back Office?
- Is your MailChimp account suspended?
If none of the above apply, please contact the Citrus-Lime support team for further investigation.
You'll need to switch these automations over to the new audience. To do so, you'll need to create a new automation and target the newer audience instead. Luckily, you can quickly save any automated emails as templates to then import into your newer automations:
