Email marketing using Pearl and MailChimp


We've built an integration with MailChimp that makes email marketing simple, powerful and effective. MailChimp is FREE to sign up, and free to use with list sizes of less than 100 members. As soon as you need to send more than 100 emails, then you can sign up to either their monthly pay plans, or else you can buy pay as you go credits.

There are 2 basic things that you need to send a mailshot:
1/ The List : all the email recipients
2/ The Newsletter : The HTML content

The two of these go to make a Campaign, which can be saved in draft mode before actually sending. Note that this is different from the Pearl marketing Campaigns, which are used to track visitors through your website or attaching to contacts as lead sources.

Getting started


Create a MailChimp account
First off, you'll need a MailChimp account. If you sign up by clicking the links within Pearl, then you'll get $30 credits free! Find your way to Setup:Email and you'll see the signup link.

Set up the API key
Once you've registered, log in to your MailChimp account to set up an API key. This allows your Pearl system to talk to your MailChimp system. In MailChimp, go to the red 'Account' button at the top-left:API, and click "generate an API key" - copy and paste this into the email settings in your Pearl system. All ready to connect!

Create a list

You need to create your Lists within the MailChimp account, since there are a number of anti-spam steps you need to follow. MailChimp is the best email marketing package we have found regarding anti-spam, the emails get delivered almost instantly and the deliverbility rate is superb. Follow the on screen instructions in MailChimp to create your list - you can skip the signup form creation since your emails will be added from within your Pearl account, so when you get to step 3 of 4 just click "save and exit".

You can create as many lists as you like, but start with as few as possible until you really know what's going on.

Add recipients

Go back to your Pearl account, then visit Marketing:Mailing lists in the Contacts zone. If you set up your API key OK, you'll see your MailChimp lists!
Select any number of contact tags to add the contacts to the email list. Only contacts that have an email address, and "newsletters" set to "yes" will be added. The "newsletters" field is set in the contact edit screen, and can also be batch updated using the left hand menu in the CRM screen.

As you add tags to the list, the email addresses will be sent to MailChimp. If you're adding more than a couple of thousand email addresses at once (perhaps it's a very full tag) - then wait for the screen to stop loading before moving on. You can check the list size in your MailChimp account to see how it's going.

Once a tag is attached to a mailing list, then adding or removing that tag from a contact elsewhere in Pearl will automatically add/remove the contact from the email list on MailChimp - easy list management!

Creating a newsletter

  1. Visit the Marketing:Newsletters screen in the Contacts zone in your Pearl account.
  2. Click "add new" and type away! You can use any of the Pearl drop-in templates, or start from scratch and build your own. A word of warning : MS Word produces some very messy HTML code, so if you MUST use Word, make sure you paste it in using the Paste-from-Word icon on the newsletter edit screen.
  3. Save your newsletter
  4. Make sure you set it as active by clicking the light green tick icon.


You'll need to add a few things into your newsletter for anti-spam reasons:

  • Include your postal address at the bottom of the email.
  • Include a link for your recipients to unsubscribe themselves. This is automatically updated by MailChimp for each email that gets sent - you need to make sure that the text *|UNSUB|* is in the mail footer. If you use the drop-in widget selector on the Pearl newsletter edit page it will be included in a link for you.
  • If you're still on the free MailChimp account, then you also need to include their logo at the bottom, by adding the text *|REWARDS|* to your mail. This also has the benefit of winning you credits if other people sign up from your link, so you may want to leave it in for other newsletters too!

 

Sending an email

Now that you have a newsletter, and a list to send it to, you can create your first campaign! If you're planning to send lots of campaigns, then set some folders up first (see below). To create a new campaign now, follow these steps:

  1. Click the big "new campaign" button at the top of the newsletters or email lists screen.
  2. Choose your newsletter from the list. You'll see the preview on the right.
  3. Choose the list that you'd like to send this newsletter to.
  4. Edit the subject, email and other fields if you need.
  5. Click "send test" - this will send ONE email to your email address and will save the campaign as a draft.
  6. Once you're happy that it's good to shoot, just click the "send email now" button and voila, off it goes!
  7. You can view the open and click statistics in MailChimp right away.

 

Setting up and sending out your email

You can send up to 100 emails on the free MailChimp account, but for more than that you'll need to buy some credits. There are a number of steps you need to go through before you can buy credits and send you campaign, for anti-spam reasons.

You'll need to have sent at least one campaign to a list (not just a test)
Create a "test list" in MailChimp, then create a "test tag" within Pearl, and attach it to the list as above. You can then send a real campaign to this small list. You'll need to include the *|REWARDS|* tag at the bottom of your email to comply with the MailChimp free account requirements. You can take this off once you're on a paid account, but you get credits if people sign up as a result of clicking it, so it's no bad thing.

You'll need to have had your MailChimp account reviewed
When you attempt to buy credits, MailChimp will manually check your account to make sure all is OK - that you're not a spammer abusing the system, which would affect the quality of delivery for everyone. Note that they are in the USA so it will generally be during their working hours.

Once you've had your account reviewed, you can sign up for credits and send as many mails as you like.

Don't forget that to pass the anti-spam requirements you'll need to include the unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails (it's available as a widget from the drop-down list in the newsletter edit screen), and also a postal address.

 

Who's read my mail? - Advanced reporting

You can see the number of opens, clicks and so on from within Pearl on the Marketing:Mail Campaigns screen, and also from within your MailChimp account. MailChimp do offer an extended reporting level call "A.I.M." - which is a paid add-on to the standard package. We're working on a super-tight integration with MailChimp which will allow you to click the "opens" number and see everyone in Pearl CRM. Subscribe to our blog feed to that you're kept up to date!

Unsubscribing

Every email recipient will get the unsubscribe link in the bottom of the mail. If they click this they will be marked as unsubscribed from the list. If you have set up webhooks, then they will automatically be marked as unsubscribed in your Pearl account too. Once unsubscribed, they cannot be added to the list again, and you won't be able to update the "newsletter" status within Pearl.

Bounces, cleaning and list management

There's a lot of information within the MailChimp help sections - read this for a good general overview of email marketing and how it works with your system.

WebHooks

MailChimp can send a signal to Pearl to remove contacts from your lists automatically, as they unsubscribe themselves, or as MailChimp decides that the email address is no longer valid (after a hrad bounce, for example). You'll notice that there is a Webhook URL on the Marketing:Mailing lists screen within Pearl. Copy this, and go to the "settings" for that list in the MailChimp account. Go to "list tools", then "web hooks" - and paste the webhook link in there.

If you don't use webhooks, then Pearl will update your lists (at most once a day) when you view the Marketing:Mail Campaigns screen. The advantage of webhooks is also that they pop a note onto the contact note history, eg "UNSUBSCRIBED my@email.com". Note that Webhooks can sometimes take a couple of hours to arrive from MailChimp.

Creating folders

Folders allow you to sort your campaigns - perhaps you have "trade news" and "retail news". It makes big lists of historical campaigns easier to manage. Visit the Marketing:Mailing campaigns screen and enter a folder name into the "add folder" box to create a new one.

Handy tips

It's easier to see which of your contacts are subscribed to newsletters if you add the "newsletter" column to your CRM screen search results - click the blue link at the top of the CRM screen to edit your column settings.

Always use the "newsletter" field when creating SmartForms for capturing new leads. It's set to "yes" by default. If it's not on your SmartForm, then the user will be created with "newsletters" set to "no".

You can only add a tag to one of your lists, but you can create as many tags as you like, and add multiple tags to a contact. Batch add/remove tags from contacts using the options on the left hand side of the contact search results screen.