LatePoint Mailchimp

Your Mailchimp list counts people, not appointments

One customer books every month and another came only once. In your calendar they are very different stories; in the Mailchimp audience, each enters as one contact. The add-on moves every new LatePoint customer to Mailchimp without anyone copying their email, and what happens afterward stays in your calendar.

A list fed from the calendar grows when someone new arrives, not when someone returns, so it is for talking to people who already know you, not for measuring how busy your calendar is.

LatePoint Mailchimp is the add-on that adds your LatePoint customers to a Mailchimp audience through an automated workflow. It fits if you already use Mailchimp for your campaigns and your calendar lives in LatePoint.

An automated workflow acts as the bridge

The add-on does not work as an isolated switch. The connection is split between an integration and a LatePoint workflow:

• Connection: you enable Mailchimp under Integrations, Marketing, and enter your API key.
• Event: the workflow fires on Customer Created, that is, when a customer is created.
• Action: Add contact to Mailchimp adds that person as a contact.
• Destination: you choose the audience that receives the contacts.
• Repeat contacts: the 400 error that appeared when syncing a contact already in the audience has been fixed.

Since the event is the creation of the customer, the workflow rests on people and not on appointments. The list tells you who reached your business; how many times they came back stays in LatePoint.

The audience you choose decides how you will talk to them

If your customers land in the same list as people who only asked for your newsletter, a campaign meant for those who already know you will also reach those who never booked.

LatePoint workflows allow several actions and optional conditions, such as service category, location or number of items in an order. If you want to split customers between audiences, test with a dummy customer which conditions Customer Created accepts on your installation.

What Mailchimp and LatePoint keep doing

The add-on adds contacts. Campaigns are prepared and sent from Mailchimp, and the reminders and confirmations for each appointment stay in LatePoint workflows, by email, text or WhatsApp.

If one of your workflows uses a delay, keep in mind that delayed actions depend on a WordPress timer that only runs when someone visits the site. Under Automation, Scheduled Jobs you can review jobs, see errors and run them again.

Five steps with LatePoint already installed

You need LatePoint and a Mailchimp account with its API key. Then:

1. Check that the Mailchimp add-on is activated.
2. Open Integrations, Marketing, enable Mailchimp and paste your key.
3. Create a new workflow under Automation, Workflows, with the Customer Created event.
4. Add the Add contact to Mailchimp action and choose the audience.
5. Save the workflow and create a test customer to watch it arrive.

Keeping contacts in WordPress or automating beyond the calendar

If you prefer to keep the list inside WordPress, FluentCRM Pro stores contacts and campaigns in your own database, with lists, tags and sequences, although sending needs an SMTP service.

Uncanny Automator Pro has Mailchimp among its external services and suits automations that go beyond the calendar. And LatePoint Pro Features serves a different need: shared resources, group bookings and blocking customers who miss their appointments.

Answers about customers and audiences

Is a contact added with each booking?

The workflow event is Customer Created, which corresponds to the creation of the customer. A new booking from an existing customer does not create another customer.

What happens if the email is already in the audience?

Syncing an existing contact used to give a 400 error, which has been fixed.

Does it send campaigns from WordPress?

No. Its job is to add the contact to the audience; the campaign is built in Mailchimp.

Do my older customers move to the list?

The workflow fires when a customer is created. For those already in your calendar, check whether they reach the audience and, if not, plan their move to Mailchimp separately.

Where do I find the API key?

In your Mailchimp account. That key is then pasted under Integrations, Marketing.

What do I need besides the add-on?

LatePoint with the add-on activated, a Mailchimp account and at least one audience created to send the contacts to.