Digital newsletters have become an accepted way of communicating with business relations. But your digital newsletter needs to have something special if you want it to stand out among the crowd. And the most important things is almost always the first impression. Of course the content matters too but the first impression is often formed by the appearance, the layout.
WinTree Office Manager makes it possible to send mailings via email so that the content of the newsletter is displayed correctly. But you can’t modify the layout because there is no extensive layout function built into WinTree. From the wide range of good affordable software that is available on the internet, TSD has chosen to link WinTree with MailChimp.
MailChimp is a professional email marketing service designed to set up professional and efficient email campaigns. The online mailing list software makes it possible for everyone to send attractively designed newsletters and to analyse the results. Additionally, the accessibility, user-friendliness and affordability were other reasons for TSD to choose MailChimp. Worldwide, MailChimp is one of the most commonly used newsletter systems, and it is constantly being developed and improved. The link between WinTree Office Manager and MailChimp consists of converting different selections from WinTree to MailChimp. The newsletter is made in MailChimp and the selection from WinTree can be linked to this newsletter as a mailing list.
Modules and parameters
No separate modules are required if you want to link selections to mailing lists in MailChimp. The link must be activated by TSD however. Additionally, it is necessary to create an account on www.MailChimp.com. An account is free as long as you limit yourself to 2000 email addresses and 120,000 mails per month (according to MailChimp, as at June 2013). If you have a bigger mailing list or you want to send more than this number of mails, you can sign up for a paid account. See the MailChimp website for the current rates.
Once you have created an account, an API Key (identification code) must be created. To do this, in the MailChimp website you must open the menu Account --> Extra --> API Key. Click on [Add a key] in the opened menu. The key will now be created. Select and copy this key (the long number in the 'API key' column). This key must be past in WinTree (parameter 2121) by TSD.
Restart Office Manager after adding this key to the parameter.
Exept from the parameter to store the API-Key, one other parameter is used for the connection with MailChimp:
| 2122 | In a mailing list in MailChimp, the company name and the name of the contact person can be stored. Using this parameter, you can define in which column the company name (column FNAME) and the name of the contact person (column LNAME) is stored during the export. |
1 = Company name in FNAME, contact person in LNAME 2 = Contact person in FNAME, company name in LNAME (default) |
Wizard for uploading
Uploading email addresses to MailChimp based on a selection is done via the menu Communication -> Upload selection to MailChimp. There is a wizard to assist you to do this.
The first wizard window shows all the selections that have been created in the menu Maintain -> Compose selections. A selection must be created using the check on email addresses ("General" tab page of the 'Compose selections' window). Select the selection by activating the checkbox. It is possible to activate more than one selection. If a selection is selected where no check has been made regarding the existence of an email address, then that selection can not be uploaded. An error message will be displayed if this is the case.
Click on [Next >>] to continue with the wizard.
The next window in the wizard shows all the mailing lists that have been created in MailChimp. You must create at least one mailing list in MailChimp. The addresses from the WinTree selection will be added to the existing addresses in the MailChimp mailing list. At the same time, all email addresses are checked. In this way, an email address will not appear more than once on the mailing list.
Click on [Next >>] to continue.
In the next window all contacts are displayed that are included in the selection. It is possible to delete contacts from this list and to add them. Select a contact that you want to delete and click on [Delete]. The selected contact will be deleted from the list.
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The contact is now deleted from this list, it is not deleted from the original selection. |
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MailChimp expects contacts to be accompanied by an email address. The WinTree user must make sure that the added contact has an email address. The added contact will only be added to this list, not to the original selection. |
Click on [Next >>] to continue.
In the next window you can assign or modify a property to any of the contacts that fall within the selection. The drop-down list contains all available properties with their values. A property can be activated or de-activated. At the same time, it is also possible to change an existing property to another property. In this way, the properties of contacts can easily be modified based on the selection.
Click on [Next >>] to continue.
In the final window of the wizard, a short summary of the upload is displayed. Activate the 'Open MailChimp in browser' checkbox to go directly to www.MailChimp.com after completing the wizard. Click on [Finish] to start the upload. Obviously you will need to have a working internet connection for the upload to take place. The upload will be automatically executed. No further actions have to be taken. Within a few minutes, the uploaded selection can be seen in the selected MailChimp mailing list.
MailChimp
This guide describes the steps that must be executed in WinTree Office Manager to upload a selection to MailChimp. It is not a guide describing the functions of MailChimp. However, TSD would like to draw your attention to a number of things so that you can make optimal use of WinTree Office Manager in combination with MailChimp.
Account
In order to upload a selection, you need to have a working MailChimp account.
API key
After creating an account, you must create an API key for the account. You must then paste this API key into the properties of the upload wizard.
Mailing list
The selections from WinTree Office Manager are uploaded to one of the mailing lists in MailChimp. For the upload, a mailing list must be created in MailChimp. The selection is added to the existing addresses in the selected list. The more selections you add to a mailing list, the more addresses will appear in the mailing list. Duplicate email addresses will not appear as this is checked during the upload. If there is more than one contact person for one company in WinTree Office Manager, then the email addresses of the contact persons will become separate addresses in the mailing list.
TSD recommends that you empty mailing lists in MailChimp at regular intervals, especially if you are using a free MailChimp account.
MailChimp also contains a function that allows the receiver of the email to indicate that he/she no longer wishes to receive any emails. He/she can unsubscribe from the list. The email address will not be deleted from the list but it will be assigned a separate property. If a list is cleaned up, TSD recommends that you allow these email addresses with the Unsubscribe property to remain in the list. The email address will then retain this property after a new upload. If you don’t want a contact to appear in a selection for a mailing per email any more, the best option is to create a property in WinTree Office Manager. The contact will be linked to this property and when a selection is made, this property will be used as selection criteria.