Note: If you have already set up your integration with Mailchimp and would like to know how to make use of it, this article details how to send out a campaign in Mailchimp.
What is Mailchimp?
Mailchimp is a marketing platform used all around the world to easily create beautiful email campaigns and for marketing, re-engagement and newsletters, which can be personalized to your specific client.
Trail is able to pass a wide variety of information to Mailchimp allowing you to rely on it to keep your subscriber information up to date and ensure that your clients are receiving relevant, powerful emails designed by you.
Note: Mailchimp, and other email platforms are very conscious of having spam or scams sent through their systems, be careful about the content of your emails, especially when talking about loans or mortgages, read their acceptable use policy for more.
How it Works
A contact in Mailchimp is identified by their email address, so if you have more than one person in Trail with the same email they will be grouped together as one.
In addition to these default fields and their corresponding merge tags in Mailchimp:
Client First Name - FNAME
Client Last Name - LNAME
Phone Number - PHONE
Email Address - EMAIL
How to Set Up your Integration
Step 1: Set up your Custom Fields
Trail supports the following custom fields - for more details, jump here:
The first step is to ADD the custom fields to Mailchimp that you would like to be part of the integration with Trail. This is important to set up so that when we do your initial import, you can match the custom fields to be picked up e.g. that we include a client's DOB as part of the integration.
Go to your Audience dropdown - All Contacts - Settings - Audience Fields and *|MERGE|* tags:
From this page, you can then add in your chosen fields to be used as merge tags, by clicking "Add a Field" button at the bottom of the page:
For "Birthday" type field:
Please add the following as a "Birthday" type fields in MailChimp (not any other types):
After this, you can name the fields as per below:
Client's Birthday - CBDAY
which would look like this, and you can change the date format that it shows:
Partner's Birthday - PBDAY
same sort of thing as above, just labelled differently.
For "Text" type field:
Please add the following (bulk of the list) as a "Text" type fields in MailChimp (not any other types):
After this, you can name the fields as per below
Client Id - CID
which would look like:
Partner Id - PID
Partner First Name - PFAME
Partner Last Name - PLNAME
Joint Greeting - GREETING
Client Category - CATEGORY
Mobile Phone - MOBILE
Annual Review Month - REVIEWM
Annual Review Date - REVIEWD
Contact Type - TYPE
Client DOB - CDOB
Partner DOB - PDOB
Gender - CGENDER
Adviser Name - ADVISER
Insurance Provider - INSPROV
Insurance Renewal Date - INSRENEW
Insurance Policy Number - INSNUM
Mortgage Provider - MORPROV
Mortgage Interest Rate Type - MORRATETYP
Mortgage Interest Rate - MORRATE
Fixed Rate Term - MORTERM
Fixed Rate Expiry Date - MORFRR
Mortgage Advice Pipeline Stage - STAGEMA
Mortgage Servicing Advice Pipeline Stage - STAGEMS
Mortgage Prospecting Pipeline Stage - STAGEMP
Insurance Advice Pipeline Stage - STAGEIA
Insurance Servicing Pipeline Stage - STAGEIS
Insurance Prospecting Pipeline Stage - STAGEIP
Insurance Claims Pipeline Stage - STAGEIC
Investment Advice Pipeline Stage - STAGEVA
Investment Servicing Pipeline Stage - STAGEVS
Note: The integration does not support the Address field in MailChimp.
Two more important things:
Remember to click the "Save Changes" after adding these fields.
Ensure that these fields are not ticked off as "required" or the API may fail.
Trail will try to pass information to all the available fields in each contact, so before using the integration these should be added to the Mailchimp account, that is why this step is important to make sure the name of the field matches the ones specified in Trail.
Step 2: Getting your Audience ID
Mailchimp groups subscribers into 'audiences'. When you set up your integration you will have at least one audience in Mailchimp.
In Mailchimp, go to your Audience - All Contacts - Settings - Audience Name & Defaults.
From here, you'll be able to rename the audience so that it's clear that it's linked with Trail. You can will also need to COPY the Audience ID here:
Then paste this in Trail in your Settings - Integrations - Mailchimp:
Step 3: Get your API Key
Your API key can be found under Account & Billing - Extras - API Keys:
This will then lead you to a page where you can see "Your API keys". If you don't have one, then "Create a Key". Once you have one, copy the string of text here:
To bring this over to Trail, just copy this and paste here:
And then click - CONNECT!
Step 4: Complete an Initial Contact Export
Once you've clicked connect, you will need to do an initial export of your current contacts in Trail over to Mailchimp.
To export your contacts, use the below button located on the MailChimp integration page "Export Clients to Mailchimp".
This will trigger the initial export file, to be downloaded.
Next, in Mailchimp, go to your Audience - Audience dashboard - Manage Audience - View audiences:
Then go into the Audience you created earlier > then 'Add contacts' > 'Import Contacts'.
After this, select the 'Upload a file' option, and 'Continue':
Click on 'Browse' and select from your computer the export file you received from us > then 'Continue to Organize' > Select status as "Subscribed"
You can then continue to create any "Tags" you wish to. And proceed to match the column labels to any earlier "Fields" you've added!
And you're done!
After this initial upload, all your contacts will be automatically synced
every 30 minutes as they are modified in Trail.
Note: The rest of this article is more technical, read it if you are going to make use of Trail's custom fields, feel free to always get in touch with Trail's support team if you have questions.
Field Definitions
Partners
If there are multiple contacts sharing the same email address, the first is considered the Client, the second is considered as the Partner
Products
Insurance policies and products are arranged according to their review date or fixed rate expiry date. Next one in line for its review date is the one passed to Mailchimp.
Partner First Name
The preferred name of the Partner, or the first name if no preferred name is given
Joint Greeting
The preferred name, or first name of the Client followed by the preferred or first names of all other contacts sharing the same email address separated by an ‘&’.
Client Entity Id
The id of the Client in Trail
Partner Entity id
The id of the Partner in Trail
Client Category
The rating of the Profile the Client is a part of (options: ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’)
Mobile Phone
If the Client has a specific mobile number this is used, if not then any phone number they have recorded is taken
Annual Review Month
This is only passed to Mailchimp if the ‘Contact Type’ field is set, and is not ‘Prospect’. The name of the month of the client’s annual review date
Annual Review Date
This is only passed to Mailchimp if the ‘Contact Type’ field is set, and is not ‘Prospect’. The date of the client’s annual review
Client DOB
The date of birth of the Client
Partner DOB
The date of birth of the Partner
Gender
The Gender of the Client
Adviser Name
The name of the adviser who is in charge of the profile the Client belongs to
Insurance Provider
The provider of the next upcoming insurance policy that the Client is an owner or a beneficiary of
Mortgage Provider
The lender of the next upcoming mortgage that the Client is a borrower of
Insurance Policy Number
The policy number of the next upcoming insurance policy that the Client is an owner or a beneficiary of
Insurance Renewal Date
The renewal date of the next upcoming insurance policy that the Client is an owner or a beneficiary of
Mortgage Interest Rate Type
The type of loans the Client is a borrower of, if they only have fixed loans, only floating loans or a mixture (options: ‘Fixed Rate’, ‘Floating Rate’, ‘Mixed Rate’)
Mortgage Interest Rate
The interest rate of the next upcoming mortgage that the Client is a borrower of
Fixed Rate Expiry Date
The fixed rate expiry date of the next upcoming mortgage that the Client is a borrower of
Fixed Rate Term
The full fixed term of the next upcoming mortgage that the Client is a borrower of
Contact Type
The status of the profile the Client belongs to (options: ‘Prospect’, ‘Active Client’, ‘Former Client’)
Stages
Trail will pass the furthest along stage for each pipeline that the client has an open opportunity in
Special Conditions
Beyond simply passing the data into Mailchimp, Trail also performs some smart actions to make sure that your contacts in Mailchimp remain up to date throughout time
Winning Opportunities
When an Opportunity is won in Trail and the contacts are prospects, the contacts are automatically changed from ‘Prospect’ Status to ‘Existing Client’.
Unsubscribing
When a profile in Trail is set to be ‘Unsubscribed’ the contacts in Mailchimp have their ‘Contact Type’ field changed to be ‘Former Client’.
Deceased Contacts
If a contact is deceased they will always have their ‘Contact Type’ field marked as ‘Former Client’ in Mailchimp.