How To Integrate MemberPress With Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing platforms that allows you to send emails to specific customers and students. MemberPress has a Mailchimp add-on that you can use to segment your course subscribers and send a variety of different emails to members.

In this article, we find out how to integrate MemberPress with Mailchimp and send out automated update messages to your course members.

How To Integrate MemberPress With Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is a popular add-on to the MemberPress plugin that you can install with your WordPress web apps. The Mailchimp add-on is available for free on the MemberPress Basic, Plus, and Pro plans. Here is a step-by-step guide on how you set up your Mailchimp integration with MemberPress integration.

Step 1: Install The Mailchimp Add-On

Log into the backend of your WordPress site and go to the MemberPress dashboard. From the MemberPress Menu, go to Add-ons. On the Add-ons page, you will be able to see a link that allows you to install the most recent Mailchimp add-on.

Next, go into the Settings section of the MemberPress menu. Select the Marketing tab. At the bottom, you should be able to see “Enable Mailchimp”. Simply tick the box.

Step 2: Add The Mailchimp API Key

After you enable the Mailchimp add-on on your MemberPress site, open a new tab and go into your Mailchimp account settings. In order to find the settings, go to the drop-down arrow at the top right of the page near your account name.

Select Account and then Extra dropdown. Choose the API keys selection and then go to Your API keys area. If you can’t see a long string of numbers and letters, then you may need to create your Mailchimp API key first. Once you have the API key, copy and paste it into the blank Mailchimp API key section on your MemberPress tab.

If the API key is correct, then you will see a message saying “Everything’s Chimpy”. If you get an error message, double-check the API key. If you put in the right API key and it still shows an error message, then the API service from Mailchimp likely blocked your IP address fields.

In order to resolve this, you need to contact Mailchimp directly before you can continue with your add-on setup.

Step 3: Select Your Mailchimp Audience

The seamless integration with Mailchimp allows you to choose only a single Audience from the list. Pick your Audience below the API key field. This audience is associated with all the subscribers that sign up for your courses on your website.

Step 4: Set Up Global Mailchimp Merge Tags

Tags are important to organize your Mailchimp subscribers and relate them to your website members. The global Mailchimp merge tag applies to all new members who subscribe to any member on your website. This tag is set either to 1 or 0 for each subscriber.

If the value is set to 1, then this is a valid subscriber to whom you can send emails. On the other hand, if the value is set to 0, then the user didn’t tick the opt-in checkbox when they signed up. This means that you can’t send any marketing or update emails to them.

Step 5: Set Up Specific Per Membership Merge Tags

While you have a global merge tag in Mailchimp for all your website subscribers, you can also set up a merge tag for subscribers who purchased specific memberships. In order to create a merge tag for your Mailchimp subscribers who subscribed to individual memberships, you need to go into your Mailchimp account.

Go to your Audience tab on the Mailchimp dashboard. Next, select the dropdown menu on the right and click on Settings. Next, select the Audience custom fields and the MERGE tags option. Here, you can set up individual text fields specifically for each membership level.

This could be “Premium” or “Bronze” but you can use any text you like to describe your membership. However, it’s a good idea to keep these text fields as simple as possible. Thanks to the Mailchimp addon, MemberPress will have access to these specific membership tags.

This means that MemberPress can set these tags as active or inactive for each member, depending on their activity levels. This allows you to use your member lists more effectively, saving you time and money in sending out more targeted marketing emails.

Step 6: Set Up Member Email Segments

One of the biggest advantages of the Mailchimp add-on in MemberPress is that you can segment your members very easily to create fully targeted email campaigns.

There are a few different options that you can use to email active members, inactive subscribers, active members with a specific membership, and all members. We can use these values to schedule targeted emails for member communications.

Email All Your Active Members

Whether you made an update to your website or you want to send out a newsletter to everyone who has an active membership, then you will need the option to email all active subscribers in one go. Create a segment in your Mailchimp Audience where your subscribers match certain conditions.

If you want to send messages to all active members, then make sure you select the rule “{membership} is active”. This ensures that this segment only includes active members.

Email Active Members With A Specific Membership

If you want to send emails that are specific to a certain plan or membership, then you can create segments that apply only to certain memberships. This can be useful to keep your members updated about any changes you make to their membership or any special membership offers.

Simply create a new segment that includes the condition for members who subscribed to your chosen plan. Also, ensure to set the rule “{membership} is active”.

Email All Members

Mailchimp also allows you to send email updates and newsletters to all your subscribers, including active and inactive members. You can either use the inactive/active merge tags you created with your Mailchimp list setup or you can segment your audience with the global tag.

When set to 1, then this tag includes all active and inactive members who ever subscribed to membership on your website. The global tag is one of the easiest ways to use your Mailchimp add-on for sending emails to all your subscribed members.

Advanced Segments

If you are a Mailchimp beginner, then you will likely not want to set up any advanced segments yet. Once you are more familiar with Mailchimp and how it uses tags to segment your audience, then you can choose to create a custom field that uses other data.

You may want to create a segment for members with multiple memberships. Or you may want to send emails to customers who signed up on or before a specific date. Customized segmentation in Mailchimp means that you need to set individual conditions and rules for your chosen audience.

Final Thoughts

Integrating Mailchimp with your MemberPress plugin isn’t too difficult and it can save you a lot of time sending emails to your membership subscribers in the future. Take a look at the MemberPress Mailchimp integration guide which has lots of videos on how to connect Memberpress with your Mailchimp account.