Sending email communications to members (Benefit Product holders)

Emails are a key part of any membership communications strategy and allow you to welcome new members, explain benefits, prompt members to renew, offer benefit upgrades or special promotions and more. This article will explain how to best manage member email lists via Mailchimp and Ticketsolve (directly). 

Mailchimp and membership emails

Mailchimp automatically removes anyone on your customer email list that has not opted in at the customer account level (which, 99% of the time is really helpful). However, when it comes to Benefit Product holders, i.e. members of your Friends, Patron or Supporter schemes, it means that if you are using Mailchimp to communicate with your members and are pushing them across in a standard Customer Email List, any Benefit Product holders who are not opted in for email at the customer account level won't receive the campaigns you send.

To ensure all your members receive membership communications, you will need to:

1. Create a new Audience List in Mailchimp so that it's not linked to your Ticketsolve account automatically (which means opt-ins aren't synced automatically either).

2. Download Active members list from Ticketsolve

3. Upload the list to the Audience List in Mailchimp.

 Important

You will need to update this list each time you want to send an email campaign to Benefit holders via Mailchimp to ensure all active members are included in your campaign.

Below are the specific steps you need to take to email members (Benefit Product holders) via Mailchimp. 

Download a CSV file and upload to Mailchimp

1. Create a new members-only Audience List in Mailchimp.

2. In Ticketsolve, go to Box Office > Memberships.

3. Select All benefit products or the specific benefit product you need from the dropdown menu.

4. Select All active benefits from the second dropdown menu. 

5. Click the Download CSV icon

6. Upload the CSV file into your members-only Audience List in Mailchimp.

Remove members with expired benefits

Next you will need to remove any Inactive members from your email list. 

Go to Box Office > Memberships

1. Select All benefit products or the specific benefit product you need from the dropdown menu.

2. Select All expired benefits from the second dropdown menu. 

3. Click the Download CSV icon

4. In your members-only Audience List in Mailchimp, search for and manually archive members with expired benefits. 

 Notes

You will need to follow the steps above each time you want to email members via Mailchimp. You can of course follow the above steps to send emails via another email provider.

Email members directly from Ticketsolve

You can also email all members (of any membership scheme) or all the customers within a specific membership scheme directly from Ticketsolve. All emails sent directly from Ticketsolve will be plain text emails. 

Go to Box Office > Memberships

To email all members from all memberships:

1. Select All benefit products or the specific benefit product you need from the dropdown menu.

2. Select All active benefits from the second dropdown menu. 

3. To email all members click the Email All Customers button. 

4. To select specific members to email, click on the tickbox next to each members name and click the Email All Customers button. 

5. Edit the details in the pop-up and click Send Email to send a plain text email.