Merge Tags can look scary to the uninitiated, but these little guys are the secret to any handsomely tailored nonprofit newsletter. They allow you to personalize emails to donors, volunteers, and fans of your organization. For instance, you might want to address donors by name or highlight different calls to action for different audiences. Merge tags make this flexibility possible.

You and I know that fundraising appeals are more successful the more personal they are. If you’d like to send out an appeal for your latest fundraising campaign, it might be helpful to address your donors by name.

All you have to do is stick the following merge tag where their name would normally appear:

(Make those vertical bars by typing shift and backslash at the same time.)

The merge tag — the part between *| and |* — will tell MailChimp to retrieve their first name and stick it right in your campaign, personalized for each email address. If you’re skeptical this will work (like I would be), just click “Popup Preview” within the campaign builder.

Then click the “view live merge info” button. You can toggle between subscribers to double and triple check.

Even if you don’t have everyone’s first name, you can use dynamic merge tags to fill in the gaps. These are like IF-THEN statements in geometry (don’t worry, I slept through that part too):

This portion of the campaign will now read, “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,” if you don’t have the subscriber’s first name. You can put any text where “Ladies and Gentlemen” currently is: “Friend,” “Bozo,” “Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags,” etc.

Here’s what a functioning example looks like in the campaign editor:

Dynamic merge tags can get powerful quickly. Let’s suppose your organization does noble but complicated environmental advocacy work in Georgia. Your mission is to improve water and air quality and protect wilderness. The trouble is, Georgia has really diverse landforms — mountains, piedmont, coast, and everything in between.

The mountain people might not care so much about the piedmont, and the coastal people are plain sick of hearing about the mountains. Don’t even talk to me about the piedmont people. Merge tags make it easy to send tailored messages within the same campaign:

If you’re from Savannah on the coast, Helen in the mountains, or Atlanta on the piedmont, you’ll see what probably resonates with you the most. Everyone else sees a generic call to action.

Don’t be afraid to take advantage of dynamic merge tags in a much more robust way. We’ve put together a merge tag cheat sheet, a merge tag guide, and a primer on conditional (or dynamic) merge tags if you’d like to learn more.

You can also start at the beginning with MailChimp for Nonprofits, our introductory guide for your organization.

Today we’re happy to announce that we integrate with one of the most popular fundraising software tools out there.

Meet Chimpegration for Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge.

Chimpegration integrates The Raiser’s Edge with Mailchimp, allowing you to send relevant, targeted campaigns to your supporters. Chimpegration has a lot of features on top of the already sophisticated stuff that you can do in Raiser’s Edge (yeah, I’m not even going to pretend to be a Raiser’s Edge expert). Below are some screencasts from the developer of Chimpegration that demonstrate what you can do.

Export to MailChimp:

Manage Campaign Results:

Synchronization with MailChimp

Viewing Records

If you are a nonprofit that uses Raiser’s Edge and MailChimp, this new integration should make your life a bit simpler. Remember that we offer a 15% discount for all Nonprofits!

Check out Chimpegration for Raiser’s Edge

Also See:

• Free guide: MailChimp for Nonprofits
• Customer Story: Atlanta Humane Society

Article: “The Newsletter is Out”

I like it because it shows the human side of sending a newsletter. It’s not all about buttons and features and technology.

Sometimes, you have to get your wife involved…

“My biggest fear in pressing the “send” button is that there will be a type-o. I always ask my wife to preview it, but sometimes we miss something. We should turn those type-o’s into a contest or something.”

I bet Adam knows very well there’s a spell-checker button in MailChimp. This is just a nice way to get closer to your family. Nice trick, Adam.

Not that they don’t use technology. Youth Ministry Exchange is taking full advantage of a bunch of MailChimp features to spread the word. Here are some things that impressed me:

• They built an archive of all their past newsletters here. It’s a page they host on their website, then they use MailChimp’s Archive Generator to embed that list. It gets automatically updated whenever they send out a new issue. Learn more about MailChimp Archive Generators
• They’ve created their own signup form, then pass the data over to MailChimp (insteading of using our default, hosted signup form). Our signup box designer is pretty nice, but it’s always nicer when you host your own.
• On their signup form, they’re using MailChimp’s Interest Groups feature, which allow subscribers to sign up to receive only specific types of content. Learn more about MailChimp Interest Groups…
• They’re using MailChimp’s HTML email designer, and they’ve really customized their newsletter design to fit their brand. The content in their newsletters is actually useful! Tips, free downloads, and commentary. Nice.
• In their newsletters, they link to their blog, and to an RSS feed. More ways to keep your members updated.

Whew. That’s a lot of technology!

Hundreds of churches use MailChimp to stay in touch with their congregations, but it’s rare to see a MailChimp customer use so many of our features like this. And it’s nice to see someone making their newsletter a family sport!