MailChimp’s online service has seven basic email features which allow you to: Design, Publish, Share, Track, Manage, Integrate, and have Mobile connectivity. These features together with your Church Office Online account provide a robust church mass email communication program. We believe its features will vastly improve your communications to your members and attendees.
To get started you will need to do the following...
- Sign in to your Church Membership Online Account
- Sign Up for a MailChimp Account
- Prepare MailChimp to Import Your Email List: You need to create at least one “List” in MailChimp in which emails from your church will be synchronized with.
- Integrate MailChimp with Your Church Office Online Account: to do this you need to place the API Key from MailChimp into your Church Office Online MailChimp Integration Field.
Login to your Church Membership Online Account
First sign in to your Church Membership Online account and go to ADMIN and select Integrations. Click the link to “sign up for, or manage, your MailChimp account…” you will be taken to MailChimp’s Sign Up / Login Page.
Sign Up for a MailChimp Account
Once in MailChimp follow the easy instructions for a free account and note that no billing information is taken.
Prepare MailChimp to Import Your Email List
Once you have a MailChimp account you will need to create at least one Email List to store your email addresses.
Integrate MailChimp with Your Church Office Online Account
On the Integration page Church Membership Online ADMIN, choose the text link “Click here to get your API Key”. Copy the API key by highlighting it with your mouse and then (Ctrl C) and then return to your CMO program and then paste it (Ctrl P) in the API key field. Finally, click “SAVE”. You will receive confirmation on the page if it was successful.
Now you are ready to synchronize the email addresses in your Church Membership Online (CMO) account into your MailChimp account.
Synchronizing Emails Addresses in CMO to MailChimp
To do this go to CHURCH in your CMO account and select “Mass Emailing”. You will notice that there are three areas. The top area contains the feature name and links, the middle the Lists that have been created in MailChimp and the bottom area contains two data groups in your CMO in which emails can be drawn from: “Ministries” and “Membership Type”.
Any ministry (i.e. Men’s Ministry) can be selected in the pull down, which place all emails addresses belonging to those in that ministry into your MailChimp Email List. If you want to only send an E-Newsletter or Communication to an Interest group this would be the option you would choose.
When you choose Member Type it will place all emails addresses belonging to those “Member Types” whose box is NOT checked to an Email List in MailChimp. If you want to send your entire church an E-Newsletter then you will want to choose this with all boxes unchecked except Archived records. Be sure to select the desired MailChimp List (large/complete list).
Design and Publish Your MailChimp Newsletter
After your MailChimp account is set up and integrated with your CMO Account you can start designing an email newsletter or campaign using the many provided templates or design one yourself. The templates are a good start and still provide you with flexibility you need.
One note of caution: this program does not take kindly to you sending emails to people who are not members/attendees/subscribers of your church. If you get to many “Unsubscribe” or worse yet the dreaded “Abuse Complaint” you could be dropped. “Spam” is classified as unsolicited, unwanted emails sent to an email address or addresses. This program is to be used to communicate to those in your church who are members, attendees, visitors or requested to be added to your mailing.
We trust you will enjoy using MailChimp as your emailing communication tool and look forward to your comments.
Mike Smith, COO
ChurchOfficeOnline.com