Have you ever signed up for something, like a white paper, or free trial account, then the company started sending you emails at regular intervals?
Those are called “Drip” campaigns. The marketer sets up a series of email campaigns and sets them apart at timed intervals. After a “trigger” of some sort (like when you sign up for something), the emails start dripping into your inbox.
When expectations are set, and when the content is actually useful, drip campaigns are really powerful and cool. But if you don’t set expectations, it can be like water drip torture.
Here’s an example of properly setting expectations for a drip campaign (click to zoom in):
Speaking of SalesForce, we are looking at moving to them for our database. Does MailChimp have a relationship with them? Can we integrate via the API easily with SalesForce?
Hi Rich, we’re looking into a way of integrating with Salesforce. It’s a powerful tool, that’s for sure.
The challenge is that Salesforce lets you store everyone you’ve ever met, or would like to meet, in *addition* to “people who actually opted-in for something.”
So the potential for abuse is quite high. A user could create a campaign and accidentally import a list of “targets” and “prospects” in addition to “customers” then get reported for spam pretty fast.
If we just did a quick and dirty integration, it could jeopardize the deliverability of our entire system for all our customers.
But I’m confident we’ll find a smart, MailChimpy way of integrating that solves this issue.
We’re gathering data by talking to customers who use Salesforce now. And we’re using it ourselves to better understand the product.
Realistically is this going to happen and is there a time scale?
I love using mail-chimp, but have recently moved to a new company who want to integrate the email marketing with their Salesforce database…understandably.
It may be I have to opt for an interim solution as mailchimp is not yet supported in Salesforce, but would like to know when to check back for updates on progress of this issue.
We’re evaluating different mail systems, and we really like MailChimp. Probably our biggest concern at this point is we’d like to have integration with Salesforce. So we look forward to seeing the solution you come up with!
Thanks,
– David
We’d use MailChimp HANDS DOWN if it was integrated with Salesforce. Now we’re just stuck with VerticalResponse!
I’m giving serious consideration to migrating nearly all of my new business online with the Salesforce for Google Apps combo. I love what’s been done at Mailchimp and would like to include it as part of my new ‘system’. Any updates yet?
We also use SalesForce and it’s an unfortunate pain to have to maintain our MailChimp database *and* our SF database. We chose it over VerticalResponse in spite of this but it would add a lot of value for us and make it a stronger product if MailChimp could integrate with SalesForce.
You mention DRIP campaigns, – a series of emails that might automatically be sent after someone subscribes.
Is that a current feature of MailChimp?
I can’t find anything about it on the site, but I might be looking in the wrong place.
Just like the above example, I’d love to set up a series of notes for users, (“lesson 1″, “lesson 2″ etc.), but it would be based on the sign up date of the user, or when they entered a particular “course”….
If not something that’s “out of the box”, does the API have the tools to allow me to build something like that?
Thanks!
Hi Tom, drip campaigns (aka “autoresponders”) are not a feature built into MailChimp yet. Working on it. Hopefully live around Jan-Feb 2009. In the meantime, if you can program the sequence, then yes, MailChimp can handle the list signup, delivery, and tracking via the API.
PLEASE and I do mean please, integrate MailChimp with Salesforce!
@Andrew: We do have Salesforce import capabilities – http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-crm-integration-with-salesforce-highrise-batchbook/ and plan to further enhance that integration in the near future.