Mailchimp Integration

The Booking Rooster's marketing tab is a great place to get started on your email marketing journey.  For access to an even more powerful email marketing system Booking Rooster integrates with Mailchimp. Last we checked Mailchimp had about two-thirds of the email marketing market. The Mailchimp integration always requires an element of custom programming.  The extent of the programming required depends on the  business rules you need.  This article covers:

• Standard set-up
• Custom rules you may need
• Preparing for set-up

Standard set-up

For this feature you will need to have an active account with Mailchimp.  The Booking Rooster-Mailchimp integration passes data to Mailchimp overnight:

• For all bookings made since the previously nightly run: 

  • the booker first name, last name and email address will be added to your specified Mailchimp if:

    • the booker choses the "Emails about this booking and other (Your organisation)" updates when booking, and:

    • the email address is not already in Mailchimp.

    • Note that if the person chooses to only receive emails about that particular booking they are not added to Mailchimp.

  • new records added to Mailchimp by the API will have a time stamped note which says they were added via API.

• If an email address already in your specified Mailchimp audience is unsubscribed in Booking Rooster they will be unsubscribed in Mailchimp via the API.  This includes when:

  • • the "Emails about this booking only" option is chosen in a later booking

    • the user unsubscribes from an email send via Booking Rooster

    • the user unsubscribes from their Booking Rooster profile 

    • the person is unsubscribed in your Contacts tab

    • an email you have sent via Booking Rooster results in a permanent fail.

• When someone is unsubscribed via the API:

  • • A time-stamped note will be added which says "Unsubscribed via admin".  In this case, you could interpret the word admin as 'unsubscribed via API'. The unsubscribe may have been entered by one of your own admin team or by the person themselves. 

    • If an email address is in the specified audience already, they will be unsubscribed.

    • If a person is in another of your audiences they will not be unsubscribed.

• People are passed to Mailchimp once daily and always outside normal business hours. More frequent push to Mailchimp is not recommended.  Updates to subscription preferences are less common and are therefore completed more frequently.

• When adding contacts to Mailchimp the API looks for the email address (not name) in Mailchimp. 

  • If the email address is not there the name a email address are added to the specified Mailchimp audience and tagged appropriately.

  • If the email address is there, but the name is different the name in Mailchimp is preserved (ie it is not updated to the name in Booking Rooster. So if your Mailchimp audience has the name Bonnie Parker associated with the email "[e-mail]" and the new booking is in the name of Clyde Barrow, the name in Mailchimp will remain Bonnie Parker.

  • All specified tags are added to both new contacts and existing contacts.

Custom rules to consider

You are likely to need some custom-set up rules to get maximum value from the integration. Things to consider when preparing your integration brief or getting ready for any meeting with Booking Rooster where you will plan Mailchimp integration are:

• Audience(s) - At a minimum you will need to specific the name of the Mailchimp audience you want people placed in:

  • In standard set-up all contacts are added to one audience.

  • While it is possible to put different people in different audiences based on variables like 'course type' this requires very complex custom programming and is not covered by standard setup. unsubscribe process complex and involves extensive custom programming.  Consider using tags rather than separate audience.

• Tags - If you use tags you will need to specify which tags to apply to bookers.  It might be one or more tags for all bookings or different tags for different course types.

• Name Changes - In the standard set-up, Booking Rooster looks for the email address in Mailchimp.  If it is found it may add the email address to the right audience and tag it but does not check the name associated with the email.  So if Mailchimp has the name Bonnie Parker associated with the email "[e-mail]" and the Booking Rooster booking is in the name of Clyde Barrow, the name in Mailchimp will remain Bonnie Parker.  If you need different rules related to names you will need to specify the rules.

• Treatment of Mailchimp unsubscribes - the standard set-up sends unsubscribes from Booking Rooster to Mailchimp but does not 'bring back' unsubscribes from Mailchimp.  You can request it if needed.

• Treatment of people who sign up - the standard set-up ignores those people who sign up to your site as few people sign up without also booking.  If you want everyone who signs up before booking added to your Mailchimp, you will need to request this be added to your integration.  Some people who sign up do so only so they can be made an organiser, administrator, trainer, facilitator or the likes.  If you need these people to be added to a particular audience or have particular tags, remember to include this in your brief.  

• Merge Tags - are not currently supported by the integration and can be investigated if needed.

Preparing for set-up

To link your Booking Rooster Account to your Mailchimp Account you will need to send Booking Rooster your Mailchimp API Key and API Key Name.  Mailchimp provides a help article about API Keys -  you can find it here. They will look something like:

• API key: 03ter0a96f678v4b344j234cd60ctt3-us6
  API key name: XYZ Company 

Mailchimp provides a help article about API Keys -  you can find it here.

Since your Mailchimp integration will have some level of custom set-up it is recommended that you add a test audience to your Mailchimp. Booking Rooster will connect your staging account to your test audience first. Once you're sure the integration is behaving as specified, you request the integration to be taken live.  At that time the Rooster connects it to your specified live audience, rather than your test audience.