Your Bloomerang database is the central donor management and fundraising platform for your organization, but Bloomerang likely isn’t the only app that you use day to day. We believe Bloomerang is your central system and that integrations supplement your Bloomerang database. Email marketing and automation should start from a lens that Bloomerang is core to your donor management and fundraising technology.

Bloomerang is now connected to Zapier and Zapier connects to 2,000+ other apps, including Mailchimp. The combination of Bloomerang and Zapier offers an all-in-one integration platform for automating your day to day workflows.

The goal of this webinar is to show you how Bloomerang integrations and workflow automation with Mailchimp can streamline processes, save time, and reduce effort.

During this webinar, we will:

• Highlight the key functionality of Bloomerang’s native Mailchimp integration
• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work together, and why Zapier integrations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Explore and demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app to…
  • Segment donors in Mailchimp with tagging
  • Trigger automated emails using Mailchimp custom events

 

 
Webinar transcript (not including Q&A):
Good afternoon, and welcome to Bloomerang Academy! Thank you for joining us. My name is Diana Otero, and I am the Product Engagement Manager at Bloomerang. You might recognize me from attending Bloomerang Academy classes or listening to our release and help videos.

Today, we’re talking about “Bloomerang + Zapier: Marketing automation with Mailchimp.”

[SLIDE]

I’d like to introduce our presenter today, Jessie Gilchrist. Jessie is a Zapier Certified Expert and Bloomerang Integrations Consultant at Sidekick Solutions. Sidekick Solutions is a Bloomerang Partner, specializing in system automations for Bloomerang. Sidekick Solutions has been a Bloomerang user since 2013 and most recently was part of the Bloomerang team that launched the Bloomerang Zapier app, which is a key component of today’s webinar.

We’re excited to have Jessie here today to share her expertise and explore how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app with Mailchimp to automate your marketing efforts.

Thank you Diana. Hello everyone! It’s great to be here.

[SLIDE]

The goal of today’s webinar is to show how a Bloomerang integration with Zapier and workflow automation with Mailchimp can be an integral part of your fundraising efforts.

Our webinar today will…

• Highlight the benefits of Bloomerang’s native Mailchimp integration
• Introduce Bloomerang + Zapier, how they work togehter and why Zapier integrations are a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy
• Explore and demonstrate how you can use the Bloomerang Zapier app to…
  • Segment donors in your Mailchimp audience with tagging
  • Automate emails using Mailchimp custom events

We have demos throughout the webinar to show you how to set up these automations for your organization!

As Diana mentioned, feel free to submit any questions during the presentation. We’ll take a couple of breaks to answer questions and then open up for more questions at the end.

[SLIDE]

First, a quick poll to see how many of you are currently using Bloomerang’s native integration with Mailchimp.

Thank you for that feedback. While the focus of this webinar is on integrations between Bloomerang and Mailchimp using Zapier, we recommend native integrations as your first option before proceeding to automated workflows with Zapier. The native integration in Bloomerang is a solution you can implement today as part of your fundraising strategy and requires minimal setup.

Since we have a few of you that are new to Boomerang’s native Mailchimp integration, I’ll give a high level overview of this integration’s key functionality.

Bloomerang’s native Mailchimp integration allows for data to flow in both directions; from Bloomerang to Mailchimp and from Mailchimp back to Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

Let’s start by talking about how the native integration can sync your data from Bloomerang to Mailchimp…

1. Build templates of constituents in Bloomerang and push them to an audience in Mailchimp. All of your fundraising data lives in Bloomerang and can be used to segment your constituents before pushing them to Mailchimp for a targeted email campaign.
2. Map Bloomerang constituent data to merge fields (custom fields) in Mailchimp. This includes constituent standard and custom fields, as well as giving history information such as lifetime revenue, first transaction date/amount, and latest transaction date/amount.
3. Create a unique tag in Mailchimp for each Bloomerang constituent template. This allows for easy segmentation in your Mailchimp audience.
4. Add subscribers to Mailchimp groups based on constituent email interests in Bloomerang.

And that is just the functionality for syncing data from Bloomerang to Mailchimp.

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The native integration also allows for data to flow from Mailchimp back to Bloomerang for subscribers who were synced to Mailchimp as part of a Bloomerang template.

For subscribers who were sent to Mailchimp through a Bloomerang template, the integration will also…

1. Update email interests in Bloomerang based on changes to group preferences in Mailchimp.
2. Update Bloomerang email interests to Opted Out for constituents who unsubscribe in Mailchimp.
3. Create interactions on the constituent’s timeline with open/click data for email campaigns sent using a tag created from a Bloomerang template

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If you’d like more information on how to set up the Bloomerang native Mailchimp integration and configure constituent templates, visit the Bloomerang knowledge-base and YouTube channel.

Diana is going to share a link to Bloomerang’s Intermediate Class on Bloomerang emails and native Mailchimp integration in the chat. Go ahead and copy that link to view the recording later. I recommend watching this recording if you’re interested in setting up the native Mailchimp integration.

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Before we move onto how you can automate your marketing efforts further with the Bloomerang Zapier app, let’s take one or two questions about the Bloomerang native Mailchimp integration.

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Now, we want to do a quick poll to see how many are using Zapier and using it with Bloomerang.

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Thank you for that feedback. Since we have a few of you that are new to Zapier, let’s start with a high level overview of “what is Zapier” and why we believe it is a key feature of your Bloomerang system and fundraising strategy.

You might be wondering why we are talking about Zapier, when this presentation is about Bloomerang and Mailchimp. That’s a fair question. And it offers an exciting answer.

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Zapier-enabled integration between Bloomerang and Mailchimp can supplement Bloomerang’s native Mailchimp integration and provide additional functionality for:

• Marketing automation
• Workflow and drip campaigns
• Automated list building

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Zapier is the software that enables additional Bloomerang integration and fundraising opportunities. It’s a middleware that sits in between your Bloomerang database and other apps like Mailchimp, helping them “talk” to each other.

Zapier is automation software. With Zapier, you can build one integration or many, automating hundreds of tasks around your Bloomerang system within a single platform.

So, why get excited about Bloomerang Zapier integrations?

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Three reasons…

First and most important, Zapier connects to 2,000+ other apps. Any apps in Zapier’s directory can be connected to Bloomerang. If it’s on Zapier’s list it can be integrated with Bloomerang. That includes Mailchimp!

Second, Zapier was designed for anyone to build integrations. You don’t need to know how to code to build Zaps. Anyone can build and maintain a Zap. We’re going to walk through some builds today so you can get a feel for what that looks like.

Third, Zapier enables custom integrations. You aren’t limited to one-size fits all workflows, mapping, or formatting. You can build the integration that is perfect for your organization and your workflows.

Now, let’s dive into how you can use Zapier to automate workflows between Bloomerang and Mailchimp.

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A primary use case for Bloomerang’s Zapier app to integrate with Mailchimp is an automated sync. In it’s simplest form, an automated sync can add/update subscribers in Mailchimp for newly created or updated constituents in Bloomerang.

We are going to take this use case a step further today by demonstrating an automated sync paired with tagging for fundraising activity. This will allow for easy segmentation in our Mailchimp audience.

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We are going to focus on a sync of Bloomerang donors, with tagging based on the constituent’s giving focus.

For each new transaction in Bloomerang for constituents with an email address and who are not opted out, the workflow will add or update the subscriber in Mailchimp before adding the subscriber to the tag for the Campaign on the transaction.

Adding a tag in Mailchimp for each Campaign a constituent gives to supports your fundraising efforts by allowing you to segment your Mailchimp audience easily for targeted solicitations based on past giving.

[DEMO // 7 SLIDES]

Now, let’s hop into Zapier and set up our Zap.

• Select make a Zap. Zaps start with a trigger, an event that happens in one app. The trigger prompts the integration to run. We are going to use Bloomerang’s New Transaction trigger for this workflow.
• We are going to set our filters to only trigger for transaction types with revenue (i.e., donation, recurring gift payment, and pledge payment) and a minimum transaction amount of $0.01 to exclude in-kind donations.
• Later in the workflow we’re going to map the constituent’s giving history to merge fields in Mailchimp, so we need to set the Cumulative Giving History field to True to include this data. We’ll leave the household information field blank as we won’t need this data in our workflow.
• Next step is to test our trigger and generate sample data. This will return recently created transactions that meet our criteria. These are samples only and will not run through the integration because they were created before the integration is turned on. We want to make sure we select a sample that has a Campaign value assigned as we need this field in the transaction to set up our mapping.
• Once we have sample data, we want to add a filter step to only continue the Zap if a primary email address exists on the constituent’s profile and the constituent is not opted out. We’ll select the Primary Email Value field from our New Constituent trigger and set “Exists” as our logic operator for this filter. Then, click “And” and select Email Interest Type. We’ll set the logic operator to “Does Not Contain” and enter “OptedOut”.
• After we’ve set up our filter, we’ll add our action step to add or update a subscriber in Mailchimp. We’ll select our Audience and map the constituent’s primary email from our New Transaction trigger to the subscriber email field. Make sure the Update Existing option is set to “Yes” to ensure that if an existing subscriber is found, it will be updated.
• Next, we need to map data to our Mailchimp merge fields. We have set up a number of custom merge fields to track data from Bloomerang. We will map the constituent’s lifetime revenue and latest transaction date/amount. We also recommend syncing the Bloomerang Account Number and Constituent ID, a unique identifier in the Bloomerang API for each constituent, to merge fields in Bloomerang. This is a best practice if you plan to sync unsubscribes back to Bloomerang or as reference in an import or report.
• Next, we’ll add another filter to only continue in the workflow if the transaction has a Campaign value. Campaign is an optional field in Bloomerang and if the transaction does not have a Campaign assigned, your workflow will return an error in Zapier when trying to add the subscriber to a tag in Mailchimp. We’ll select the Campaign field from our New Transaction trigger and select “Exists” as our logic operator.
• When adding a subscriber to a tag in Mailchimp, Zapier requires that we assign the tag using a unique ID number for each Mailchimp tag, not the text value. To convert the Bloomerang Campaign to the Mailchimp tag ID, we will use a lookup table. We’re going to use the Formatter by Zapier app and select Utilities as the action. Then, we’ll select the Lookup Table functionality. We’ll map the Campaign from the New Transaction trigger step as the lookup key.
• Now, we need to populate our lookup table. All of our Bloomerang Campaign values go on the left and the ID for the corresponding tag in Mailchimp goes on the right. The first step in populating this table is to add all of our Bloomerang Campaigns on the left. I’m going to add our 2020 Annual Campaign, 2021 Annual Campaign, Capital Campaign, and 2020 Gala.
• Then, we need to add a Mailchimp action to Add Subscriber to Tag. This action step is where we pull the ID for each tag. In the Tag dropdown menu, you’ll see a number in gray below each tag. This is the ID number. We need to take the ID number for each tag and add it to the right side of our lookup table for the corresponding Bloomerang Campaign. You can assign the same Mailchimp tag to multiple Campaign values.
• Once we’ve filled in our lookup table, we’ll test this step to generate an output that can map to our Mailchimp step.
• Now, we can go back to our Add Subscriber to Tag step. We’ll select our audience and map the constituent’s email. In the Tag field, we’ll click the dropdown arrow and shift from viewing the list of tags in Mailchimp to selecting a custom field mapping from our lookup table. We’ll map the output from our lookup.
• Now, we are done editing and can turn on the Zap.

Let’s go ahead and test this in real-time. I’m going to hop into Bloomerang and enter a new donation. Once I save this donation and refresh our subscriber list in Mailchimp, you can see that the latest transaction date and amount and lifetime revenue merge fields were updated, and the subscriber was also tagged based on the Campaign on the donation.

Adding tags and updating merge fields in Mailchimp are one of the easiest ways to create segments for targeted email campaigns.Let’s hop over to Mailchimp and set up a new segment using this new Campaign tag.

• We’ll go to our desired audience and open the contacts list.
• Under Manage Contacts, we’ll click Segments to go to our current segments list.
• We’ll click Create Segment to build our Campaign segment.
• In this demo, we are going to create a segment for our Events List. This will include all subscribers with a Tag for one of our event Campaigns (Gala, Annual Celebration Breakfast, and Virtual Wine Tasting).
• We’ll set that our contacts should match “Any” of the conditions we set. We’ll set our condition to the Tag field and set the logic operator to “contact is tagged” before selecting the first Tag we want to include. Then, we’ll click “Add” and repeat this for all of our event tags.
• Once we’ve added all of our conditions, we’ll click “Preview Segment” to review the contacts pulled into this list. Then, we’ll click “Save Segment” to name and save this segment with the conditions we set up.

We are now ready to use this segment to send a targeted solicitation from Mailchimp.

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Before we move on, let’s take one or two questions.

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The use cases for segmentation in Mailchimp are near endless. But Mailchimp’s ability to support fundraising efforts doesn’t stop there. Instead of merely segmenting subscribers, take advantage of Mailchimp’s automation functionality to trigger an email or email series based on subscriber activity.

Mailchimp’s automation tool can trigger an email when…

• A subscriber is tagged
• A subscriber joins a new group in your audience
• A date based merge field meets certain criteria
• A specific event is added to a subscriber

We are going to focus on this last trigger in our next use case.

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Events in Mailchimp are similar to timeline activity in Bloomerang and are used to log certain activities the subscriber has with your organization. Different events on a subscriber’s record in Mailchimp can trigger different automated emails and email series.

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We are going to showcase a workflow that will create a custom event on the subscriber in Mailchimp when a major donation is received. This event will trigger an automated email to the subscriber recognizing the major gift and illustrating the impact of this donation on the organization.

[DEMO // 7 SLIDES]

Let’s hop back into Zapier and set up our Zap.

• Select make a Zap.
• This workflow starts with the same New Transaction trigger as the last Zap we built and, same as we did in the previous use case, we are going to set the filters to only trigger for transaction types with revenue (i.e., donation, recurring gift payment, and pledge payment).
• The main difference between this trigger and the last one is that we are going to set our minimum transaction amount to $5,000 so it’ll only trigger for major donations. It is important to note that if this workflow is set up in conjunction with the earlier sync of donors, the major donations will trigger both workflows.
• Same as the last workflow, we’re going to set the Cumulative Giving History field to True and leave the household information field blank.
  Next step is to test our trigger and generate sample data.
• Once we have sample data, we want to add the same filter step as the previous example to only continue the Zap if a primary email address exists on the constituent’s profile and the constituent is not opted out.
• After we’ve set up our filter, we’ll add our action step to add or update a subscriber in Mailchimp. Having the Add/Update Subscriber step first is important to make sure the subscriber exists in Mailchimp before trying to add a custom event to the subscriber’s record. We’ll select our Audience, map the constituent’s primary email to the subscriber email field, and set the Update Existing option to “Yes”.
• Then, we will map data to our merge fields. We will map the same data as we did in the previous demonstration. For this demonstration we set up two additional merge fields to track the last major donation date/amount. This allows for greater segmentation within our major donor list.
• Next, we will add another Mailchimp action to Create a Custom Event in Mailchimp for the major donation. We’ll select our audience and map the constituent’s email address to the subscriber email field. We will customize our event name to “major_donation” and set our properties, which is data within the event to provide additional context. We’ll map the major donation date and amount to the properties to the event.
• Now, we are done editing and can turn on the Zap.

Let’s go ahead and test this in real-time. I’m going to hop into Bloomerang and enter a new $5,000 donation. If we go into the subscriber record, we can see the event for the major donation with the properties we assigned.

Once we’ve set up our integration to create a custom event for this major donation activity, we are ready to set up our Mailchimp automation. We could create a segment for subscribers with a Major Donation event, as easily as we did for subscribers with a specific Campaign tag. But, for this demonstration we are going to show how you can set up an automated email to trigger when a “Major Donation” event is added to a subscriber.

• We’ll log into Mailchimp and select Automations to create a new Customer Journey. This is Mailchimp’s new name for sending automated emails or email series.
• Click Create and then select “Classic Automations”. Mailchimp’s new Customer Journey user experience hasn’t released the ability to trigger on Custom Events, but it is coming soon. For now, you’ll need to use Mailchimp Classic Automations.
• We’ll select the API category and choose the Event API email trigger.
• After naming our email campaign and select Begin, we can edit our trigger.
• We can set a delay for this trigger, if desired. In this instance, we are going to set a delay of 2 days.
• The Event Name we enter should match exactly what we entered for the Event Name in Zapier (ex: “major_donation”).
• You can choose to add additional filters or segmentation to your automation trigger, if desired. For example, you may have different email content you’d want to send for major donors to your Annual Campaign vs. your Capital Campaign. By adding additional segmentation criteria, you can have separate automated emails for these major donor categories.
  Once our trigger is configured, we’d click “Design Email” to customize and design our email. We aren’t going to go through the full design of an email template in our demonstration today.
• Once your email is ready to send, click Next to move to the confirmation screen and launch the automation.

[SLIDE]

You may be curious about other scenarios where using Mailchimp events to trigger an automated email or drip campaign could be implemented.

Here are some examples…

• New Donors
• Constituent donated to a specific Campaign
• Constituent is assigned a primary solicitor
• Constituent registered and/or attended a class or event
• Constituent volunteered

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. We encourage you to think about events specific to your organization where an automated email or email series would strengthen your fundraising efforts.

[SLIDE]

To wrap up today’s presentation, I’ll leave you with a few thoughts on the power of Bloomerang integrations with Mailchimp.

We believe Bloomerang is your central system for donor and fundraising activity. Whether your organization pursues the native Mailchimp integration or automation using Zapier, start from the lens that Bloomerang is the core of your donor management and fundraising technology. Integrations supplement your Bloomerang database, they don’t replace it.

As we mentioned earlier in this webinar, we recommend native integrations as your first option before proceeding to automated workflows with Zapier. Look to Zapier for advanced workflows and additional automation opportunities.

By harnessing the power of Bloomerang’s native Mailchimp integration and automation with Zapier, you can segment your subscribers with ease, create targeted campaigns to support your cultivation efforts, and save time by tapping into Mailchimp’s automation features.

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Next step is getting started.

1. Link your Mailchimp account to Bloomerang today and begin creating templates for targeted email campaigns using Bloomerang’s native integration.
2. Sign up for a Zapier account to automate your Mailchimp integration — it’s free with a trial and free up to certain limits, nonprofits get a discount
3. Connect your Bloomerang and Mailchimp accounts to Zapier and set up simple Zaps to build your comfort and confidence in your workflow
4. Turn on your Zap and monitor it, watch as tasks queue in your task history, resolve errors and high-five for successes

[SLIDE]

Thank you for attending today. Again, my name is Jessie Gilchrist. My email is here and my door is always open.

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If you’d like to work with a consultant to set up Zaps or develop a custom Bloomerang integration to address a unique use case, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

I will hand it off to Diana for a quick poll before we open up for more questions.

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Let’s take a few final questions.

Thank you to everyone for joining us today. We, at Bloomerang, are very excited for the Bloomerang native Mailchimp integration and the extended capabilities through Zapier. We’re very excited to see where all of you will take it. Zapier enables integration with over 2,000 different apps and we’ve only just scratched the surface of what you can do with Bloomerang and Zapier. We hope that you can find a way to automate your processes and work better with Bloomerang using Zapier.