UPDATE: Mailchimp integration has been temporarily disabled while we upgrade the privacy flow to align with their privacy policies and comply with GDPR requirements.
Mailchimp is a great email tool to stay connected with your athletes in keeping them in the loop about your current and upcoming events. Mailchimp is also a free forever tool that makes your entry point into mass emailing that gives you reliable delivery and statistics into your email success rates.
Here's what you need to do to setup Mailchimp in Competition Corner.
Creating your Mailchimp API Key
If you haven't signed up, create a Mailchimp account at www.mailchimp.com
Once logged in, go to your Account page
Then click on the Extras menu and select API Keys
Scroll down about half way, and click on Create A Key
Mailchimp will add a new row to Your API keys
By default, Mailchimp will name your API key none set. You can rename to something meaningful, like Competition Corner. (That's so you know what app is using that API key)
Copy the API key
Authorizing Competition Corner to use your Mailchimp API Key
Log into Competition Corner
Go to your Organizer Profile by clicking on the gear icon next to your name
Scroll down to the MailChimp API Key field and paste your API key
Click Save and Check
Make sure you get a confirmation with a green check
If you get an error, double check your API key and try again.
Syncing Your Contacts
Now that your account is setup with MailChimp, simple go to your Event, navigate to the Athlete list.
You'll now see a Sync Status with an option to import.
There are 3 statuses:
* Pending - Means your list is in queue to be synced with MailChimp
Syncing - Means it's currently syncing with MailChimp
Up To Date - Means your in MailChimp is current
* When the status is Pending, it may take up to 15 minutes to process depending on the load MailChimp is dealing with at the moment.
Once the syncing is completed, you can log into your MailChimp account. A new list will be created based on the name of your event.
From there you can start communicating with your athletes using the various features MailChimp has to offer.
Reputation
Reputation is key with Mailchimp, make sure you are in good standing with Mailchimp. If you have a low email reputation with Mailchimp, you may have issues with sending emails in which case we would suggest exporting your Athlete list and using a different mailing method.
FAQ
There's a couple reasons why athletes don't sync to Mailchimp:
The athlete provided a dead email address at the point of registration, when Mailchimp processes an email it checks to see if it exists before processing it.
The athlete did not opt-in after their record was synced into Mailchimp.