Bloomerang + Zapier: Automating Recurring Donor Communications with Mailchimp [Webinar]

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 using Zapier and workflow automation in Mailchimp can streamline recurring donor communications, save time, and reduce effort.

During this webinar, we will:

  • 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…
    • Trigger a recurring donor stewardship series
    • Automate email acknowledgments for recurring donation payments

 

 
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: Automating Recurring Donor Communications 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 communications with recurring donors.

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 with recurring donors.

Our webinar today will…

  • 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…
    • Trigger a recurring donor stewardship series
    • Automate email acknowledgments for recurring donation payments

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

[SLIDE]

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.

[SLIDE]

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

[SLIDE]

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?

[SLIDE]

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.

[SLIDE]

Mailchimp’s ability to support fundraising efforts goes far beyond list segmentation. Instead of merely segmenting subscribers, take advantage of Mailchimp’s Customer Journeys functionality to develop automated workflows based on subscriber activity.

Customer Journeys in Mailchimp 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 custom event is added to a subscriber’s Activity Feed

We are going to focus on this last trigger in our use cases today.

[SLIDE]

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

[SLIDE]

Our first use case is going to showcase how we can create a custom event on a subscriber in Mailchimp when a new recurring donation schedule is established. This event will trigger an email series designed to steward recurring donors.

[DEMO // 12 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 Recurring Donation Schedules, excluding all other types of transactions.
  • 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.
  • 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, the email is not bad, and the constituent is not opted out. There are three criteria we need to add to our filter:
    • Primary Email Value: Exists
    • Primary Email is Bad: Boolean is false
    • Email Interest Type: Does not exactly match “OptedOut”
  • After we’ve set up our filter, we’ll add our first action step. Before we can create an event in Mailchimp, we have to make sure the subscriber exists. So we will choose to add or update a subscriber in Mailchimp first.
  • 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 have set up a number of custom merge fields to track data from Bloomerang. For this workflow, we will sync 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.
  • In this use case, we want to include the recurring donation start date and installment amount in the first email of our stewardship series. However, they aren’t in the format we want to see. We want the start date to be MM/DD/YYYY and the installment amount to reflect as currency. Therefore, we need to add two formatter steps.
  • First we’ll set up a Formatter step for the start date. We will reformat the Start Date to MM/DD/YYYY and use the output from this step to map to the custom event properties.
  • Then, we’ll add another formatter and convert the Amount to currency with the dollar symbol and two decimal places.
  • Next, we will add our Mailchimp action to Create a Custom Event in for the new recurring donation schedule. We’ll select our audience and map the constituent’s email address to the subscriber email field. We will customize our event name to “recurring_donation_schedule” and set our properties, which is data within the event to provide additional context. We are going to set up properties for…
    • Start Date
    • Frequency
    • Amount
    • Fund
    • Campaign
    • Appeal
  • 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 create a new recurring donation schedule. If we go into the subscriber record in Mailchimp, we can see the event on the subscriber’s record for the recurring donation schedule with the properties we assigned.

Now, let’s hop over to Mailchimp and walk through how you’d set up the Customer Journey for an email series that is triggered by the recurring_donation_schedule custom event.

  • We’ll log into Mailchimp and go to the Automations page
  • Click Create and then select “Customer Journey”.
  • We’ll call our automation New Recurring Donation Schedule Stewardship Series
  • Then, we need to choose a starting point for the automation. This is the criteria that will pull a subscriber into this automation. We are going to select the API & Integrations category and then choose the Event API starting point.
  • Next, we need to select what custom event type will trigger this automation. We’ll select the recurring_donation_schedule event our Zap is creating on subscriber records.
  • Once we set up our starting point, building the automation works similarly to building a Zap in Zapier. The starting point serves as our trigger and we can add actions, such as delays or emails, in an automated workflow.
    For example, let’s say we want to send a three email series, with the first email sent 1 day after the recurring donation schedule is set up and each subsequent email 1 week after.

    • We’ll click the “+” to add a delay of 1 day after the custom event is created in Mailchimp before sending the first email.
    • Then, we will click the “+” to add an action to send an email.
    • Add another delay, this time for 1 week, before adding another email. Then, repeat this again for the 3rd delay and 3rd email.
  • Once you’ve set up your actions, you can go into each Email and customize the email settings. For example, you may want to edit the From Name and Email Address, Subject, and set the Schedule for sending these emails. The Schedule feature can be helpful if you want to ensure an email is not sent early in the morning or late at night.
  • Then, select a template to begin building your email content. You can copy a previous email campaign as a template, or use one of Mailchimp’s templates.
  • When drafting your email content, you can pull in the data from the properties we set up on the custom event that is triggering the automations. For example, in the first email in the series, you can acknowledge the new recurring donation and provide the amount and frequency as confirmation.
  • You will need to manually create the merge tags to pull in the properties from the custom event. These should be formatted as *|EVENT:{{PROPERTY NAME}}|*. You will need to capitalize the property name and replace any spaces with an underscore (ex: Donation Amount > DONATION_AMOUNT).
  • Once you finalize all of your email content, you can turn your Customer Journey on and begin sending the email series to donors when a new recurring donation schedule is set up in Bloomerang.

[SLIDE]

Before we move onto our next use-case, let’s take a quick break for any questions.

[SLIDE]

Stewarding recurring donors is only part of the equation. We can use a similar workflow between Bloomerang and Mailchimp to automate acknowledgements to recurring donors for each installment/payment. This can save a significant amount of time for your organization if recurring donations are a large part of your fundraising stream.

[SLIDE]

In this use case, we will create a custom event on a subscriber in Mailchimp for each new recurring donation payment. This event will trigger a single email acknowledgement to the donor.

[DEMO // 12 SLIDES]

Now, let’s hop into Zapier and set up our Zap. This Zap looks very similar to the one we just set up for new recurring donation schedules, but with a few key differences.

  • Select make a Zap. We are going to use Bloomerang’s New Transaction trigger for this workflow. Instead setting the type to Recurring Donation Schedule like we did in the previous use case, we will select Recurring Donation Payment.
  • 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.
  • 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, the email is not bad, and the constituent is not opted out. There are three criteria we need to add to our filter:
    • Primary Email Value: Exists
    • Primary Email is Bad: Boolean is false
    • Email Interest Type: Does not exactly match “OptedOut”
  • After we’ve set up our filter, we’ll add our first action step. Before we can create an event in Mailchimp, we have to make sure the subscriber exists. So we will choose to add or update a subscriber in Mailchimp first.
    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, as we did in the previous workflow.
  • In this use case, we want to include the recurring donation payment date and amount in the acknowledgement email. However, they aren’t in the format we want to see. We want the donation date to be MM/DD/YYYY and the installment/payment amount to reflect as currency. Therefore, we need to add two formatter steps.
  • First we’ll set up a Formatter step for the donation date. We will reformat the Date to MM/DD/YYYY and use the output from this step to map to the custom event properties.
  • Then, we’ll add another formatter and convert the Amount to currency with the dollar symbol and two decimal places.
  • Next, we will add our Mailchimp action to Create a Custom Event in for the new recurring donation payment. We’ll select our audience and map the constituent’s email address to the subscriber email field. We will customize our event name to “recurring_donation_payment” and set our properties, which is data within the event to provide additional context. We are going to set up properties for…
    • Donation Date
    • Donation Amount
  • 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 create a new recurring donation payment. If we go into the subscriber record in Mailchimp, we can see the event on the subscriber’s record for the recurring donation payment with the properties we assigned.

Now, let’s hop over to Mailchimp and walk through how you’d set up the Customer Journey for an email acknowledgement that is triggered by the recurring_donation_payment custom event.

  • We’ll log into Mailchimp and go to the Automations page
  • Click Create and then select “Customer Journey”.
  • We’ll call our automation Recurring Donation Payment Acknowledgement.
  • Then, we need to choose a starting point for the automation. This is the criteria that will pull a subscriber into this automation. We are going to select the API & Integrations category and then choose the Event API starting point.
  • Next, we need to select what custom event type will trigger this automation. We’ll select the recurring_donation_payment event our Zap is creating on subscriber records.
  • Once we set up our starting point, building the automation works similarly to building a Zap in Zapier. The starting point serves as our trigger and we can add actions, such as delays or emails, in an automated workflow.
  • We are going to add a 1-hour delay and a single email.
  • Once we’ve set up our actions, we can go into the Email and customize the email settings. For example, you may want to edit the From Name and Email Address, Subject, and set the Schedule for sending these acknowledgments. The Schedule feature can be helpful if you want to ensure an email is not sent early in the morning or late at night.
  • Then, select a template to begin building your email content. You can copy a previous email campaign as a template, or use one of Mailchimp’s templates.
  • When drafting your email content, you will want to pull in the donation date and amount in the custom event properties as merge fields to customize the acknowledgement. Similar to the last workflow, you will need to manually create the merge tags to pull in the properties from the custom event. These should be formatted as *|EVENT:{{PROPERTY NAME}}|*. You will need to capitalize the property name and replace any spaces with an underscore (ex: Donation Amount > DONATION_AMOUNT).
  • Once you finalize all of your email content, you can turn your Customer Journey on and begin sending automated acknowledgements when recurring donation payments are made in Bloomerang.

[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.

Automating stewardship communications and acknowledgements with recurring donors are an easy way to free up time, allowing you to focus on other cultivation and mission-driven efforts.

[SLIDE]

Next step is getting started.

  1. 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
  2. Connect your Bloomerang and Mailchimp accounts to Zapier and set up simple Zaps to build your comfort and confidence in your workflow
  3. Design your Customer Journey in Mailchimp for a single automated email or an email series
  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.

[SLIDE]

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.

[SLIDE]

[SLIDE]

Let’s take a few final questions.

Thank you to everyone for joining us today. We, at Bloomerang, are very excited for 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.

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