Monthly Archives: September 2011

Chimpegration – An integration between MailChimp and The Raiser’s Edge

Not Code, , , ,

It is finally here – Chimpegration. Integration between The Raiser’s Edge and MailChimp. With our free customisation you can export your email addresses directly from The Raiser’s Edge into your MailChimp lists, populating your merge variables in one automated process. Raiser’s Edge users have always been used to creating Word mail merges so that they can create sophisticated merge documents. Now they can do the same with email. Once the email campaign has been sent you can manage any bounces or unsubscribes directly from The Raiser’s Edge. Not only that, you can also add an action, appeal or attribute to any constituent with an email that was sent the campaign.

All that for free!

If you want more then we also offer a (paid for) Professional version appropriately called “Chimpegration Professional”. This allows you to synchronise activity between the two systems. This means that you can make use of MailChimp’s own forms to allow you users to update their own information. It then feeds back into The Raiser’s Edge. Equally any information you update in RE will feed back into MailChimp. Don’t worry, the review screen gives you complete control over which information is moved where. Also with this version you are able to see each constituent’s activity directly from the constituent record. See when they were sent the email, when they opened it and what they clicked on.

I was very pleased to have won a MailChimp integration fund award to integrate The Raiser’s Edge with MailChimp. It is such a great product and the possibilities for integration were enormous. The Raiser’s Edge manages donors really well but it never really made it into the world of email marketing. Of course there is integration with Outlook but that is not good enough when you need to send out thousands of newsletters. NetMail was a good start but their template design functionality was so limited. NetCommunity was better still but even with that product there are too many compromises (and it costs too). There are a lot of different email marketing applications out there but I have been using MailChimp for a while myself as part of my website newsletter. It has great functionality but I would never have used it if it had not been for two things; it is free for smaller volume users and it has a great API. Things could have been so different. Before looking at MailChimp I applied to get a developer licence at ConstantContact. I had to fill out a form and justify my use of it. I did that but they never even got back to me.

Chimpegration – Free

MailChimp – Free

Email marketing – now Free!

Blackbaud Conferences 2011

Not Code,

It is that time of year again. This year I shall again be speaking at the Blackbaud conference in Washington DC and in London a week later.  This year my session will look at whether we really should customise our databases. The discussion will centre around The Raiser’s Edge and around Blackbaud Enterprise CRM. What are the main reasons for customising the software? How do you go about it? What sort of things should you look out for? In the end will it really be worth it?

In Washington I shall be speaking Monday at 2.30pm in Chesapeake 3. In London I shall be speaking at 12.20pm in Edward 5&6.

There are lots of questions and hopefully my session will answer many of the questions and if not then enable you to find your own answers. Sometimes the hardest part of the process is knowing which questions to ask.

I would love to meet up with everybody. Last year in DC one of the complaints was that it was so hard to find anybody. I did contemplate coming the the conference in fancy dress – everyone would surely be able to find me then! A pirate? A cowboy, An alien? Anyway I am not sure that I would get through immigration so easily. I will be coming as myself (see here for a mug shot) but will be setting aside some time where I will sit in the main atrium at the conference centre. Follow my twitter feed @zeiddev for exact details of where I am.