Mailchimp and tracking communication

Crystal Godbolt 2

My new org uses Mailchimp and the idea is that we want to track who has received an email from us via mailchimp on the constituent record. I was curious to know if anyone else tracks this information? And, if so, where is the best place to have this in RE? An attribute or an action? As of right now, the mailchimp emails are purely informational and not solicitations. 


Thank you

Ryan Hyde

While I don't use MailChimp, I would say that the appropriate place for this sort of thing is an action. Actions exist to track a history of communication with your constituents, whereas attributes exist to identify traits about your constituents that can't be retained elsewhere (for instance, "interest code" or "DM solicitation category" or any number of other things). 


I would create an action type called "Mail Chimp" to make it very clear at a glance what these are for, and then I would add the actual text of the email as an action note. If possible, I would add these via the Global Add feature and not import since you can add everything you need to an action via a single global add, so long as everything is the same for every record being created.

Snigdha Verma

While we don't track this, I think actions is the logical place to track this. We do track email solicitations in appeals.

Alan French

We use Mailchimp and add the emails as actions, with any activity (opens, clicks, unsubscribes etc.) recorded as action attributes.

Sunshine Reinken Watson

Online Express tracks emails as appeals. There, you can see if the constituent opened the email, if it bounced, etc. You might want to consider using appeals if you anticipate ever moving over to Online Express for emails.

Steven Cinquegrana 2

I agree 100% with tracking campaign activity with Actions. I would expect to find details of the email campaign itself in Appeals or Campaigns depending on your organization's segmentation practices but the individual email result in a Constituent Action. I don't think Appeal provides enough granularity for recording full campaign details.


Not intended to be a plug, but this is how our Springbaud email campaign management plug-in works:






Cheers,

Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions