Bringing MailChimp Email Lists into OLX

Alex Turnacliff

My organization is transitioning from sending out our emails through MailChimp to using Online Express. Does anyone have some tips or best practices about tranferring our email lists from MailChimp over to OLX? It seems as though OLX will only let you send emails to constituents already in your Raiser's Edge database...does that mean I need to manually add all of our MailChimp contacts not already in RE as constituents before they can be added to an OLX email list?


Thanks in advance for any help!


Alex

Danielle Allen 2

We switched to OLX from Constant Contact and had to do a large constituent import of all records in Constant Contact that were not constituent records in Raiser's Edge so yes - each MailChimp record will need a constituent record in Raiser's Edge.


Are you using the hosted version of Raiser's Edge because if not - this may be of use to you? https://connect.mailchimp.com/integrations/blackbaud-the-raisers-edge

Alex Turnacliff

Danielle, 


I appreciate the reply and link!


After viewing the Chimpegration overview video, they seemed to say it is more about synching RE contacts into MailChimp, but I guess it could be used the other way to get all of our MailChimp lists into the RE database as well. We will be transitioning our Raiser's Edge to the hosted version later this month (January of 2016)...would there be an easily way to tranfer the email lists once that has taken place?

 

Jen Claudy

I would either move from MailChimp to RE/OLX well before or well after moving to Hosting.  As with Danielle, we moved from Constant Contact, and it was a commitment of my time as DBA to make it happen, as was moving to Hosting...so I would not recommend doing them at the same time.  If you can move from MailChimp before you're scheduled to move to Hosting, that's probably what I would do.  Hosting was a bit of a learning curve, in my opinion, and I was glad to have the email stuff done well before starting that process.  I was also working with a deadline to drop Constant Contact, so I couldn't delay much.


There are other threads in the Community about moving from another vendor (Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc) and I recommend checking them out, too.


Most (all?) services will maintain an Unsubscribe/Bounced list...but you will probably want to be sure you move that to RE/OLX, too, because if any of those addresses are already in RE, they won't be marked as Unsubscribes and OLX will include them in messages sent.  Think thru what will work best for your org as far as how to mark those.  I created additional Email Phone Types (we have eHome, eWork, XeHome, and XeWork...the X indicates an Unsubscribe/Bounce) to handle this, whereas others have opted for the DNC indicator or Inactive box.  On 7.95 (which is where you'll be when Hosted), there is a Phone Comment field you could also use.  That may be a reason to do the Hosting move first, if you're not already on 7.94 or 7.95...or if you know you want to use the Phone Comment field (only available in 7.95).