Mailouts with MailChimp

Introduction

Messaging is a core part of ManageMyMatch. Users can get messages for a variety of events like club balance update alerts or court booking alerts as well as messages from fellow members and club officials.

Messages are displayed in the app but may also be alerted in browsers and non-apple devices. A user may also elect to receive an email for various types of messages. These are set on by default, but once users are used to using ManageMyMatch’s built-in messaging they will probably prefer these to be turned off.

But apart from the above, ManageMyMatch allows club officials to send out smart emails to any segment of the membership for other purposes. These would be emails that are not part of the core messaging of ManageMyMatch and instead are club-originated communications. Typically this could be a broadcast email to all members to advertise a social event. But they can also be more targeted messages to, say, members with a specific subscription or members participating in a particular tournament.

MailChimp is the tool to use for this purpose. MailChimp is the premier service for this kind of job and allows you to create smart, engaging, eye-catching, rich media email campaigns. It conforms to anti-spam legislation and provides rich tools for tracking emails and for managing your mail-outs.

It also involves a modest learning curve to get up to speed with using it effectively. It’s not just a matter of typing up an email. You spend more time designing your message (although templates can be easily maintained) and ensuring the right people are targeted. But time invested here reaps dividends because your email will get noticed and members will get a positive impression in terms of the club’s presentation and professionalism.

ManageMyMatch integrates with MailChimp so that your membership list is automatically synchronised into MailChimp.

Setting up MailChimp

First, the club must set up a Mailchimp account if it has not done so already. You can do this at https://mailchimp.com.

This is not intended to be a tutorial on MailChimp. MailChimp’s documentation is comprehensive and complete and there are plenty of other resources on the web to help. But you are advised to ensure appropriate people in the club have logins to your MailChimp account and that you thoroughly set up all details in the “Account” section. For example, verifying the club’s domain is highly recommended. Each list also has quite a few details to properly fill in. In short, some initial care and attention is required.

You are also highly encouraged to set up at least one (maybe many) email templates so that you can use these again and again as design pro-formas when you want to send out your emails.

Setting up ManageMyMatch

Next you need to connect ManageMyMatch up with your account. As a club official, you will have access to ManageMyMatch’s “Manage clubs” page. If you choose the “Integrations” tab, you’ll see one of the items is for MailChimp. Click on the “Connect” button and you will be asked to log into your MailChimp account. Once you do this, ManageMyMatch and your account will be linked giving ManageMyMatch the authorisation to feed MailChimp with your membership details.

Synchronising

Synchronising the clubs membership details needs to be done frequently or whenever you want to be sure that MailChimp has the most up-to-date details of your membership before sending out an email. To do this go to the “Integration” tab in “Manage Clubs” and press the “Synchronise now” button for MailChimp. But generally this should not be necessary as ManageMyMatch automatically synchronises its membership data with MailChimp once every day.

If you are migrating your membership from a legacy system you can also synchronise member details as held in the legacy system. Go to the “Migration” tab in “Manage members” and you can import a CSV file from your legacy system. Once done you can synchronise that list with MailChimp by clicking on the “Synchronise now” button.

In both cases, ManageMyMatch will need a list set up in your MailChimp account. It the list is not there, ManageMyMatch will tell you the name of the list you need to add in MailChimp. You must log in to your MailChimp account and set that list up. Once set up, go back to ManageMyMatch and try to synchronise again. It should then work. It may take a few minutes for MailChimp to reflect the synchronisation but you should see all your members reflected in the list.

MailChimp List Content

The following details are synchronised with MailChimp:

• Email address (unique identifier)
• First Name
• Last Name
• Member Id: Member Id as recorded in the legacy system prior to ManageMyMatch
• Joined user: “Yes” if the user is currently associated with the club - i.e. they are "linked" up with the club. This does not necessarily mean they have a membership. LEGACY - use "Linked user" below as this field will be removed in the future
• Linked user: “Yes” if the user is currently associated with the club - i.e. they are "linked" up with the club. This does not necessarily mean they have a membership.
• Current member: The user is a current member ("Yes" or "No"). For a family head, this will be set to "Yes" if any of the family members are members. This is in order to ensure membership mail outs reach non-member parents of children who do not have emails themselves.
• Recent member: The user has been a member since 10 months ago or is a member for the next 2 months ("Yes" or "No")
• Continued member: The user has a membership that is current after 2 months from now ("Yes" or "No")
• Lapsed member: The user was a member but is has not or will not be renewing their membership ("Yes" or "No")
• Automatic renewal: The user is paying their subscription on a monthly basis and is open ended, meaning that the monthly payments continue for ever until stopped. Use this to filter out these members from receiving renewal reminders  ("Yes" or "No")
• MMM verified: “Yes” if the user has verified their email on ManageMyMatch, otherwise “No”
• Club managed: “Yes” if this member has been added manually by the club thus making the club responsible for maintaining the member’s details. “No” if the member is using ManageMyMatch and maintains their details themselves
• Legacy matched: “Yes” if the member has been matched with your legacy system. “No” if the member is not identified to have been a member in your legacy system
• No photography: “Yes” if a family head has requested that their children under 16 are not to be subjects of club photography. “No” otherwise.
• Products & subscriptions: Lists the products or subscriptions that the member currently owns or holds
• Events and tournaments: Lists the upcoming, current or recent events that the member has engaged with
• Sex: "Male", "Female" or "Unspecified"
• Date of Birth: Members date of birth (YYYY-MM-DD)
• Age: in years
• Membership expiry: Date on which the current or last membership expires or expired

Note that only members with email addresses can be transferred. If a family head has email-less family members their subscriptions and tournaments will be recorded against the family head. If, for example, a family head has a child participating in a junior tournament then choosing members who are participating in that tournament will include the family head - so the email concerning the junior will be received by the parent.

Member status management

In keeping with good mail-out protocols your members will be able to opt in or opt out of mail-outs that you choose to send. This is all part of MailChimp’s functionality and you can see who is subscribed or unsubscribed in your membership list.

When ManageMyMatch synchronises with MailChimp, this subscribed/unsubscribed status is not changed. But new additions to the list are first set to “subscribed” thus ensuring that the member will get emails at first.

When a member unlinks from the club, ManageMyMatch will set the “Linked user” field to “No”. Whenever you send out mails you should be sure that, in normal circumstances, you filter out members who are not currently linked with the club. Note that the member data is never removed from the list. Thus your list in MailChimp will grow as members come and go. You can always remove members yourself and you should be aware of Data Protection laws concerning your retention of membership data in your MailChimp account.

If the member were to relink, the “Linked user" field will be set back to “Yes”.

Sending emails in relation to membership renewals

At renewal time you can target users dependent on whether or not they have renewed. The key details to filter on are as follows:

Lapsed member: Filter on this if you want to target individuals who have been a member in the past but who have not renewed even after 2 months of their membership expiring. In Manage Members you can also manually set a member as "Lapsed" if you know they will not be renewing their membership when it expired. For renewal reminders you would want to exclude any user who is "lapsed".

Continued member: This is set to "Yes" for any membership that extends beyond 2 months ahead. If you are within 2 months of an expected renewal you can use this filter to mail out to people who have renewed. For renewal reminders you would want to exclude any user who is "Continued"

Recent member: This is set to "Yes" if a user was a member during the year that spans 10 months prior to today and 2 months hence. These are people that you would expect to renew so for renewal reminders you would want to include any user who is "Recent".

Current member: This is set to "Yes" if the user holds a membership subscription as of today

Automatic Renewal: This is set to "Yes", if the member is on a continuous monthly payment scheme

You can set a "Segment" in MailChimp (their terminology for a subset of a list) that represents the set of users you'd want to remind to renew. This filter would look like:

• Linked user: Yes
• Lapsed member: No
• Continued member: No
• Recent member: Yes
• Automatic renewal: No

This will catch everyone who is expected to renew within 2 months of current membership expiry or who's membership has already expired over the previous 2 months

Sending Emails in MailChimp

Again, documentation in MailChimp is expansive and the user interface well designed. But the basic concepts and functions will need some familiarity.

Each time you send out an email to your membership (or part of it), you create a “Campaign”. It then guides you through the familiar components of an email: Who it’s going to, who it’s from, what the subject is and what the content is.

Designing the content entirely depends on how fancy you want your email. It can be just a simple piece of text, but you are better off spending a bit of time making the email attention grabbing. Make sure the key message is in large type at the top of the message. Include pictures if possible/relevant. Include links if they might be helpful (for example a tournament organiser could include a link to sign-up to a particular tournament in ManageMyMatch).

You include attachments not by actually attaching a file, but by uploading a file to MailChimp and then setting a link to it in the mail. That’s a far better way for all concerned.

Once you’ve sent your “campaign” there is lots of goodness to see who’s opened the email and when - a plethora of information to tell you how well your message has reached your audience.