MailChimp Integration

Little Green Light’s integration with MailChimp, will allow you to manage your email marketing lists from within LGL. After a simple setup/configuration within MailChimp and LGL, you can begin syncing information from your LGL account to MailChimp.

The synchronization process between MailChimp and LGL is a two-way process, allowing you to add and remove constituents from your MailChimp mailing lists, and automatically receiving updates when constituents unsubscribe, or have their email bounce (if the address is no longer valid).
The process looks something like this:

Note: LGL is not affiliated with MailChimp in any way. The MailChimp service is completely separate and carries its own pricing structure, terms of service, and privacy policy. Please see http://www.mailchimp.com/ for details.

Also note: You must be an administrator to use this feature in LGL. If you are not an admin, you will not see any of these features.

Connect LGL to MailChimp

The first step here is to create your MailChimp account. Then you’ll want to setup a list in MailChimp to use for the integration, generate an API Key, and connect those up to your LGL Account. We’ll review how to do all that here.

Create your MailChimp account if you don’t already have one

If you don’t already have a MailChimp account, you can create one here: https://mailchimp.com/signup/. If you do already have a MailChimp account you can skip this step.

• After logging in to your MailChimp account, click on the Lists menu

• Then, click on the create list button.

• Lastly, name your list and save it, filling out all required fields.

• As an optional 5th step, you can create groups for your list, which you can use to connect to your LGL categories (see section 3 below for full details).

Now you have a list that is ready to be connected to your LGL account.

Generate your MailChimp API Key and copy it

The next step is to generate your MailChimp API Key, if you don’t already have one.

• To do that, move mouse over the Account menu, and click on the API Keys & Authorized Apps option:

• Next, click on the add a key button to generate your API Key, unless you already have one. After it is generated, copy the full text of the API Key:

Connect MailChimp to your LGL Account

Once you have your list build in MailChimp and your API Key copied to your clipboard, you can move on to setting up the integration in LGL. Log in to your LGL account, and then:

• Go to Settings and click on the Integration Settings link
• Click on the MailChimp Integration menu
• Paste your MailChimp API Key into the form and click the Save button

• Lastly, choose the list you want to integrate from the menu, and press the Save button.

Activate automatic updates from MailChimp

As a last step, you can activate a Webhook in MailChimp by clicking the Activate button

This will allow MailChimp to automatically post unsubscribe requests, email bounces, and email updates back to LGL when subscribers change their status or information, or when emails bounce.

Connecting MailChimp Groups to LGL Categories

If you plan to send emails to different segments of constituents on a regular basis, it is best to set up a connection between some MailChimp Groups and corresponding LGL Categories. You can do this by creating a Group in MailChimp for each Category in LGL that you want to keep in sync, and then mapping the values so that LGL can understand which categories should be pushed back to MailChimp.

For example, if you allow subscribers to indicate their preferences for which types of communications they would like to receive in, you might set up a Communications category in LGL and a Communications group in your MailChimp list.

Add a category to LGL

Navigate to the Menu Items page, and click on the Add a category button, and then add the values you want to track:

Add a group to MailChimp

• Within MailChimp, click on the Lists menu, and then click the Create groups option:

• Add a Communications group, and values that will line up with your LGL category. These don’t need to be exact matches, since we will map them in LGL.

Map the MailChimp group values to your LGL Category

Now, you can map the MailChimp Communications group to your Communications category in LGL.

• Navigate to your MailChimp Integration page
• Click the Update field mappings button in the MailChimp fields section

• Make sure that the Communications group field from MailChimp is mapped to the Communications category in LGL. Then, click the Add rule button and select Map Values

• Map all the values as desired and save the form.

Now, each time that you mark a constituent subscribed in LGL, their Communications preferences will be automatically synced to MailChimp, making it easy to segment a given campaign within MailChimp by that group.

Managing MailChimp Subscribers in LGL

Setting up the MailChimp integration automatically creates a MailChimp Status category. Only those constituents with a MailChimp Status of Subscribed will be synced to MailChimp.

Restrictions

LGL will prevent you from subscribing any constituent who can’t or doesn’t want to receive email. As such, you will not be able to “Subscribe” a constituent who also has the special Do not email tag set, nor can you subscribe a constituent who has Unsubscribed via MailChimp. LGL will also prevent you from subscribing a constituent whose email is not valid or has bounced.

Subscribing an individual constituent

To add individual constituents to MailChimp, find them in a search or navigate to their details page, and then edit their MailChimp Status:

Removing one constituent from MailChimp

To remove a constituent, follow the same steps as above, but change the status to -- none --.

Bulk subscribing constituents

You can subscribe any number of Selected constituents to your MailChimp list. To do so, first search for the constituents you want to add, and then click the Select X button, to select them. From there, you can click on the More actions button and select the Update MailChimp Status:

This will pull up a form that allows you to change the status of all selected constituents:

Send targeted emails to Static Segments

Sometimes, it is not enough to rely on the synchronization between MailChimp groups and LGL categories. For instance, if you want to email an appeal to lapsed donors, you might want to create a list in LGL and then sync that list to a Static Segment in MailChimp.

Build a list in LGL

You can do this by first creating your list in LGL:

Subscribe everyone on the list

From there, you can subscribe everyone on the list (who is not excluded based on the restrictions mentioned above) by clicking the Subscribe X to MailChimp button.

Link the LGL List to a static segment in MailChimp

Lastly, you can link these constituents to a Static Segment within MailChimp:

And then you can sync it immediately:

Wrapping up

We’ve only just covered the basics when it comes to integrating MailChimp and LGL, but you should now have enough information to get up and running.