Anyone using RE with third party email marketing platform?

We're using MailChimp, but we are NOT (yet) using the MailChimp integration plugin.


Honestly, it's kind of a pain because MailChimp uses email addresses as a primary key.  So if someone's primary email address changes MailChimp literally doubles up the records.  We're also stuck in a little bit of a feedback loop where bounced email through mailchimp are sent to us, we code in RE, and then send new lists back to MailChimp on a regular basis.  But if a "bounced" email is actually a good email address then we have to sort of work around MailChimp's own bounce list.


Right now our marketing team doesn't even have access to Raiser's Edge (long story) so it's the best we can do... Would love to hear from others!

Claire Davies-Frishman:

Hi, 

We are considering moving to a new email marketing platform but are anchored in RE as our database. Does anyone currently use a third-party email marketing platform (BB product or not) that offers integration wtih RE; and if so, do you love or hate it?


Thanks for your help, RE community!

~CDF

I'm not affiliated with Zeidman development (other than drinking beers with David at BBCON) but Mailchimp folks should really checkout his Chimp-e-gration plugin for 2-way sync between Mailchimp lists, RE queries, unsubscribes, etc.

This is probably veering away from original question, but I'll just throw in that in my organization, we now use MailChimp for our broader marketing emails and only use BBNC email for our 'operational' emails - BBNC account confirmations, onlne donation acknowledgements, online event registration confirmations.  If we have a query-driven list, we're now exporting data from RE and setting it up as a MC list.

• This allows people to sign up for communications easily within MailChimp, they can choose whatever email they want to use (it does NOT have to be their Preferred email in BBNC), and they can adjust their subscriptions at any time without having to log into an account with a username/password.

So we now have somewhat 'separated' these two worlds of email.

• We've chosen to basically go only in 1 direction -- monthly we'll query RE to find anyone 'new' who meets our basic marketing criteria and set them up in MailChimp (we pull over their RE ID into MC so we know they have an RE record).
• Also monthly I manually check MailChimp unsubscribes and put a 'NoMarketingEmail' solicit code on their RE record - more for informational purposes so we know how they've reacted to marketing communications and we don't pull them back into MC for any further lists.
• We do NOT transfer that unsubcribe to an RE unsubscribe -- since we're using RE really for operational purposes we want that email to still be actively used UNLESS they specifically unsubscribe via BBNC email or have verbally requested to not get anything.

We're fairly low volume so this manual process works for us -- 

Claire Davies-Frishman:

Hi, 

We are considering moving to a new email marketing platform but are anchored in RE as our database. Does anyone currently use a third-party email marketing platform (BB product or not) that offers integration wtih RE; and if so, do you love or hate it?


Thanks for your help, RE community!

~CDF

We use Engaging Networks (we're UK-based):

https://www.engagingnetworks.net/uk/

It was originally called e-activist (in the UK?)

Like someone else who's mentioned MailChimp, Egaging Networks uses the email as Primary Key. Also every time a supporter takes an action, the address they put in overwrites what's in the system already, so over time with lazy, unconstrained, unverified entry the addresses get garbled! Combined with the lack of proper Primary Key, anytime a colleague calls it a database I correct them very strongly.

That said, for doing emails and handling them - great.

There's no RE integration yet, but we're assuming an API for NXT will happen.

Sorry to jump on the back of this thread, but it is a related question. I am looking to stop using BBNC for marketing emails and move to Mailchimp with Chimpigration. I would be really glad to hear of anyone's experience using the Chimpigration plug-in - particularly if they are hosted and have made the same transition away from BBNC.

Tom Klimchak:

We're using MailChimp, but we are NOT (yet) using the MailChimp integration plugin.


Honestly, it's kind of a pain because MailChimp uses email addresses as a primary key.  So if someone's primary email address changes MailChimp literally doubles up the records.  We're also stuck in a little bit of a feedback loop where bounced email through mailchimp are sent to us, we code in RE, and then send new lists back to MailChimp on a regular basis.  But if a "bounced" email is actually a good email address then we have to sort of work around MailChimp's own bounce list.


Right now our marketing team doesn't even have access to Raiser's Edge (long story) so it's the best we can do... Would love to hear from others!

Claire Davies-Frishman:

Hi, 

We are considering moving to a new email marketing platform but are anchored in RE as our database. Does anyone currently use a third-party email marketing platform (BB product or not) that offers integration wtih RE; and if so, do you love or hate it?


Thanks for your help, RE community!

~CDF

 

 

Tom Klimchak:

We're using MailChimp, but we are NOT (yet) using the MailChimp integration plugin.


Honestly, it's kind of a pain because MailChimp uses email addresses as a primary key.  So if someone's primary email address changes MailChimp literally doubles up the records.  We're also stuck in a little bit of a feedback loop where bounced email through mailchimp are sent to us, we code in RE, and then send new lists back to MailChimp on a regular basis.  But if a "bounced" email is actually a good email address then we have to sort of work around MailChimp's own bounce list.


Right now our marketing team doesn't even have access to Raiser's Edge (long story) so it's the best we can do... Would love to hear from others!

Claire Davies-Frishman:

Hi, 

We are considering moving to a new email marketing platform but are anchored in RE as our database. Does anyone currently use a third-party email marketing platform (BB product or not) that offers integration wtih RE; and if so, do you love or hate it?


Thanks for your help, RE community!

~CDF

We've separated out our BBNC email and now primarily use MailChimp -- and basically we do our best to keep the information aligned.  We pull over the constituent ID into MailChimp -- so we can see which emails were imported from RE and which were entered independently.  


But for now, we live with a bit of inconsistency between RE and MailChimp - someone can change their email within MailChimp so it no longer matches what we have in RE - we may merge duplicate records in RE so the constituent ID may no longer match what's in MailChimp, that sort of thing.  


But our primary goal was to provide an easy way for our constituents to sign up and manage their email subscriptions - which NetCommunity never offered.  And our Communications group loves MailChimp because it's easier to use, has better analytics.  So we're willing to live with the lack of total 'lock-down' between the two systems.