Mailchimp Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (Apricot) [Video]
Sidekick Solutions has deployed solutions on Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) endpoints and integration protocols since 2019. Automating data flows for Bonterra Impact Management empowers organizations to transform simple business rules into efficient automations. By automating tasks and the flow of data between apps your organization uses day to day, you can save time, resources, energy, and more.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the deployment of email marketing automations with Mailchimp for Bonterra Impact Management. This solution can be customized to your organization’s needs and deploy any of the flows below:
- Sync subscribers to Mailchimp
- Update Tier 1 profiles with unsubscribe statuses from Mailchimp
- Trigger customer journeys (email series) in Mailchimp
Interested in deploying email marketing automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Watch time: 13 minutes
Video Transcript
[SLIDE]
In this video we are going to explore use cases for automating your email marketing efforts for Bonterra Impact Management using Mailchimp.
[SLIDE]
Sidekick Solutions specializes in Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) software and is a leading provider of Bonterra Impact Management customization and support services in the United States and Canada. We are a Bonterra Platinum Certified Implementation Partner and our consultants are Gold Certified Bonterra Impact Management Administrators.
Sidekick Solutions is a Zapier Certified Expert. We work exclusively with nonprofit and public sector organizations, specializing in integrations and system automation for case management and donor management/CRM software.
Our team of integration experts supports Zapier-enabled integrations and custom developed integrations using the Bonterra Impact Management API, Bonterra Impact Management Connect API, and Bonterra Impact Management Automated Import (SFTP) tools.
[SLIDE]
We started developing on the Bonterra Impact Management API in March 2020 and released a number of products since then including the Connect Auto-provision application, Zapier connector, and private API. Additionally, the launch of our IWS platform opened dozens of use cases for Bonterra Impact Management users.
This slide includes a list of our automation deployments to date, across a variety of iPaaS platforms, applications, and solutions.
[SLIDE]
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology.
The goal of case management software is to do less paperwork and serve more people. From our view, automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision.
This is why our team at Sidekick Solutions develops integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software.
[SLIDE]
The challenge most users face in Bonterra Impact Management is that the product does a great job of building an electronic record, but it is “click heavy”. Because service delivery is a dynamic experience, the only way to reduce time is to reduce clicks and to do so smartly.
This means we focus on:
- automations and workflow rules that run conditionally
- integrations that reflect Bonterra Impact Management’s strengths as a customizable platform
- remove double entry
- expand capability and capacity without requiring more human capital
[SLIDE]
Bonterra Impact Management is a constituent relationship management platform with a primary function of case management.
It is geared toward serving individuals, engaging them, and interacting with them. But, Bonterra Impact Management may not be the only system you use. As a result, we think of it as a hub.
Bonterra Impact Management is a strong end user business application and serves well as the central hub of a tech stack. We find that users enjoy the look and feel and it does a great job of building a case file per participant.
[SLIDE]
Because Bonterra Impact Management is a hub product, we have the opportunity to extend it with spokes.
We think about that process in six steps. You can use this to plan for extension of your technology stack with Bonterra Impact Management.
When exploring new technology to extend Bonterra Impact Management, we encourage you to focus on your mission, strategic plan, and organizational goals, allowing real use-cases to drive the adoption of new tools/apps.
[SLIDE]
When we think about integrations, it’s helpful to think of it as stacking bricks. Once you have one automation in place, you level-up to the next layer, and so on.
This is how you can, over time, build a complete technology stack or ecosystem around your Bonterra Impact Management system.
The journey to full-system automation is never over. As more use cases require automation or other apps are added to your organization’s tech stack, you will need to continue improving and expanding the solutions integrated with Bonterra Impact Management.
[SLIDE]
Now, let’s transition to use cases for email marketing automation with Bonterra Impact Management.
For these use cases, we will be using Mailchimp as the email marketing tool. Similar automations can be deployed with other email marketing platforms.
[SLIDE]
The first use case is a subscriber sync from Bonterra Impact Management to Mailchimp. When a new Tier 1 record is created or an existing record is updated, our automation will trigger.
Conditional logic will be applied to only continue if the Tier 1 record has an email address and has not previously unsubscribed/opted out of receiving email.
Then, our automation will add/update the subscriber in Mailchimp. This step can support assignment of the subscriber to groups and custom field mapping on the subscriber.
We recommend having a custom field to store the Tier 1 record ID in Bonterra Impact Management to support automations that sync data back from Mailchimp to Bonterra IM.
The last step our automation takes is to add the Subscriber to applicable Tags based on the Assigned Programs in Bonterra IM. This allows our organization to appropriately segment our audience in Mailchimp for different communications.
Tagging in Mailchimp can be accomplished based on a variety of activity in Bonterra Impact Management and often serves as the primary point of segmentation within Mailchimp. For example, instead of tagging based on the Assigned Programs on the Tier 1, we could trigger on creation of a new Tier 2 Program Enrollment and tag the subscriber for the specific program they were enrolled in.
[DEMO]
[SLIDE]
The next use case is to sync unsubscribes in Mailchimp back to Bonterra Impact Management to reflect the communication preference.
Our automation will run each time there is a new unsubscriber in Mailchimp. We will first search for the Tier 1 record in Bonterra Impact Management by the subscriber’s email address. Then, we will update the Tier 1 record to reflect the unsubscribe.
[DEMO]
[SLIDE]
The last use case we want to explore will take your email marketing automations from a basic audience sync to a more robust automation solution.
Similar to our subscriber sync, this automation will trigger when a new Tier 1 record is created in Bonterra Impact Management. We only want to trigger when new records are created (not updates to existing records) as our email series will be a welcome/onboarding series for new participants.
Following creation of a new participant, our automation will add/update the subscriber before creating a custom event in Mailchimp.
A custom event in Mailchimp is an activity associated with the subscriber that tracks engagement outside of emails. In this case, we will use the creation of this custom event to trigger a customer journey in Mailchimp.
Customer journeys in Mailchimp allow you to build automated marketing workflows for your subscribers. For this participant welcome/onboarding series, we are going to send a sequence of 3x emails with a 7-day delay between each email. This allows for a drip of information to the new participant.
This basic series/flow could be further customized or segmented to distribute different resources to participants based on assigned program in Bonterra Impact Management.
[DEMO]
[SLIDE]
These use cases are the tip of the iceberg for email marketing automation with Mailchimp for Bonterra IM. If you are interested in exploring deployment of this solution for your organization, contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to get started.
Free Download
The Essential Kit to Apricot Best Practices
- 3x PDF Guides
- 2x Template/Worksheet
- 1x 60-minute Webinar
- ( checklist + slides )
Join the 250+ users that already got their kit!
DOWNLOAD NOW