How can I set up an automated email campaign through Mailchimp?

You can use Wherewolf and Mailchimp to create and send emails to your guests, from one-off campaigns to regular automations!

Wherewolf sends the guest's name, email, and other selected fields, to your designated Mailchimp Audience. Read this article for a step-by-step guide, followed by some definitions and further readings.

First, create your Mailchimp account.

You can start setting up the integration between Wherewolf and Mailchimp as soon as your account is live by following these instructions (you'll still need to contact us before any guest information is sent to your account).

When your account is live, you can start designing a template for your company's emails.

This template can be re-used across multiple audiences and campaign types, and a great way to get to know the Mailchimp email builder (scroll down for more information and links on Templates and Campaigns). 

Next, narrow down your goals and how Wherewolf can help.

Some common examples are:

1. Sharing all guests to your Mailchimp audience, and using Mailchimp to send automated follow-up emails after their tour. 
2. Use the "where are you from" responses to separate your local guests, for remarketing experiences or offering discount codes. You would have one Audience for guests who selected your state/region, and a separate Audience for your other guests.
3. Promote intermediate-level activities to participants of a "beginner" level experience by filtering by their activity type or indicated experience level. You would have an Audience set up for each experience level.
4. Find out why your guests came to you, and send them some more information on how you cater to their events or other local providers you partner with. For example, guests of a birthday party can all be sent one list, and provided information on your birthday packages. Guests for a bachelorettes weekend can be sent to another Audience and receive a discount voucher to a local vineyard.
5. Growing a master Audience in Mailchimp to send holiday specials, shoulder season discount codes, or new tour promotions.

Based on your chosen approach, create your Audience/s in Mailchimp, and retrieve the Audience ID for each audience you wish to integrate with. 

Contact [e-mail] with the Audience ID/s and let the team know how to sort your guests into each Audience (or if they should send all guests to a single Audience).

They'll also need to know what details you'd like to share (name, email, etc). 

When this is authorised, any future guests are sent to your Mailchimp account. You can download any historic guests from Wherewolf and upload them as a CSV, if you need to.

Now, you're almost there!

Create a campaign for your Mailchimp Audience using your template, with customised content and merge tags. Send test versions to yourself until it's just right.

Set the email to auto-send to new subscribers at the chosen delay – for example, a number of days after their tour.

Take into account your Wherewolf follow-up email and when this is sent too, so you can time these emails effectively.

If this is a one-off campaign, like a Holiday Season Special Offering, you can send at your chosen time/date (instead of based off the guest's attendance). 

Continuously monitor the results and adjust the campaign as needed.

Mailchimp has a lot of handy reporting tools you can use to refine things based on real customer engagement.

We'll cover off some basic Mailchimp tips here:

What is a Mailchimp Audience? 

Your Mailchimp Audience is the name for your list of contacts. You can set up one audience, or multiple audiences to cater to different customer cohorts.

For example, you may have an Audience for your customers who are from out-of-state, and send them invitations to review you online. You may have a separate audience for guests from within your state/region, and send them refer-a-friend discount codes. 

Or, you may have one Audience to cover all your guests.

This Mailchimp guide explains how to set up an audience.

How does Wherewolf fill an audience with guests?

You tell us!

We can send all guests to a list, or we can separate them into unique audiences based on your business needs. All you need to do is tell us what audiences to send your guests to, and we'll do the rest.

Why use Audiences, instead of Segmentation and Tags?

Wherewolf can automatically filter your guests into Audiences. We do not support Segmentation or Tags. 

If you'd prefer to use one Audience and organise your contacts using Mailchimp Segmentation or Tags, this need to be applied outside of Wherewolf.

For example, you can download your Wherewolf database by following these instructions, then clean up any information you don't wish to share to Mailchimp. In Excel or CSV, you can separate your contacts into unique files depending on your chosen Segmentation or Tag. 

What is a Mailchimp Template?

In Mailchimp, you can create a template to re-use across multiple campaigns and emails. These are useful for you keeping your brand consistent – even when the email content changes. 

You can create your own template from scratch using Mailchimp's drag-and-drop interface, or customise one from their pre-designed library.

When you've designed your templates, you can use them across multiple campaigns.

What is a Mailchimp Campaign?

A Mailchimp campaign is the email you're sending your customers. In our example above, the "local" email vs the "out-of-state" email are examples of two campaigns. 

The difference between templates and campaigns is explained in this Mailchimp guide.

What is a Mailchimp Merge Tag?

A Merge Tag inserts information into the emails for you. "First Name" is an example – you can add a Merge Tag to the greeting line to address each recipient by name. The guest details we send over to Mailchimp can be used as Merge Tags.

More on Merge Tags by Mailchimp here.

Extra Tips:

Subject Lines - The subject line is your email’s first impression. Make it compelling, concise, and relevant to the content. Including a sense of urgency or personalisation can boost open rates.

Call-to-Actions (CTA) - Every email should have a clear purpose and a well-placed CTA, whether it's a button or link. Ensure your CTA stands out and directs recipients toward the desired action, such as leaving a review, clicking a link, or learning more about you.

A/B Testing – test your campaign with A/B testing! This allows you to send two versions of the same email to the same audience – you can test what colours, subject lines, and more works best with your customers.

Track and Analyse Metrics - Use email marketing tools to monitor important metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Analysing this data helps you refine future campaigns for better performance.