Easily Create Automated Emails with CCBchimp!

The only thing is that CCB Process Queues depend on people to move the process along. And people can get busy … and forget … and then all the best communication plans go right out the window.

What if you could have great automated communication?

Enter CCBChimp.

CCBChimp is an app that connects CCB with the popular email app, MailChimp. Here’s how it’s done: you create a group of contacts in CCB. You create a duplicate group in MailChimp. CCBChimp then syncs the two groups and the magic happens all on its own.

Are you saying I would not use CCB Process Queues anymore?

No, we are Absolutely NOT saying that! The CCB Process queues are still one of the most powerful features of the system and this is one of the modules that makes CCB a cut above the rest.

If you have adequate, trained staff and/or your process does require a human decision (disciple process, onboarding a new campus leader or following up with those who are going on the big mission trip), then perhaps, CCB process queues is what you need.

However, if you just want to send 3, 10 or more emails over a period of time as soon as someone enters a group or meets a criteria in your saved search, then MailChimp FREE automation will do that for you and CCBchimp will help that process to be fully automated.

Bonus: MailChimp automated email sequences are NOT just by date. You can stop, wait or continue emails based on triggers like…   

• Previous email sent.
• Previous email opened.
• Previous email not opened.
• Previous email clicked.
• Previous email not clicked.
• Specific link in previous email clicked.
• And so much more.

…And post-sending list actions such as

• Update a merge field.
• Delete or unsubscribe from a list.
• Join or remove from a group.

Let’s look at a real simple example courtesy of Jonny Sharp of Front Range Christian Church. This one everyone can do and saves time with a few clicks.

Jonny has been using CCBChimp for several months now. In addition to saving him at least an hour a week, he is able to get lots of email tracking data unavailable through CCB—things like who is opening, who’s reading, who’s clicking, etc.

Jonny has created a specific group for first-time guests in CCB. Anyone turning in a physical connect card on a Sunday gets put into this CCB group. He has a list for this same group in MailChimp. Jonny syncs the CCB group with the MailChimp list via CCBChimp. Each Sunday, when the CCBChimp sync is run, new first-time visitors which were added manually to the CCB group are automatically added to the MailChimp list.

Jonny Sharp of Front Range Christian Church

 

Jonny has created an ongoing MailChimp email campaign for his first-time visitors. One great thing about MailChimp is that it is an automated system based on variables (as we mentioned above). In this case, Jonny has chosen the variable “number of days’. Each time MailChimp gets a new first-time visitor, it flags the person and begins the automated campaign as follows:

On the Sunday they first visited his church, first-time visitors get welcome emails. Three days after that on Wednesday, they get a second email. Three days after that (6 days after their first email) they get an invite to Sunday services. There are two more emails—one a week and a half after that and one 30 days later.

After the initial manual input of these first-time visitors into CCB, the rest happens automatically. No person has to remember to hit “Send”. No person has to keep track of the number of days lapsed.

And you can hear Jason tell you more about CCBChimp on our Facebook page.

Short webinar on automating your workflow with CCBchimp

If you’d like to take things to the next level, you could even improve on your physical connect cards. Our PastorsLine—CCB integration can offer your first-time visitors digital connect cards via their mobile phones. Find out more about that here.

Bonus: Birthday Automation

The highly anticipated “custom merge field mapping” is live. By turning this option on, you would be able to add additional merge fields to MailChimp—e.g. birthday, anniversary etc.  When you use this option, you implicitly agree to allow us to securely store your contacts (required for this feature). Birthday mapping and others.

You can turn this on by going to Profile → Tools.

Value?

This is huge for your church. You can send segmented emails based on gender or marital status from the same group. One of the really cool features is being able to send birthday wishes automatically. In fact, MailChimp has a prebuilt template that you can use.