Combining Audiences in Mailchimp

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our many years of helping businesses succeed with Mailchimp, it’s that the more audiences you have in your Mailchimp account, the more problems you’re going to have.

That’s why we help businesses big and small combine their audiences into a single unit, benefiting from lower costs and a more GDPR compliant database, but still giving them the flexibility to communicate with different segments – usually the reason they had multiple audiences in the first place!

Three things to know…

If you’re considering getting Chimp Answers to combine your audiences, here are answers to the top 3 questions we get asked about this service, to help you understand how it can help your business.

Why can't I do it myself?

In many instances, combining audiences is simple, and in those cases, you can combine them yourself, but from experience, if you’ve got lots of data, automations and different forms, it becomes very easy to make a mistake and ‘break’ your system

How do you make sure you do it right?

We know all the pitfalls there are when it comes to audience combining and so have a clear checklist we go through everytime we combine things to ensure that nothing gets missed and that data goes exactly where it needs to be

Will this temporarily stop my email system?

Because we’ve combined many audiences for many businesses we will do everything we can to ensure that there is minimal disruption in your ongoing email marketing activity, and in many instances there will be no disruption at all

One audience to rule them all

Back in the day, Mailchimp was very flexible on it’s free account and gave customers the chance to create multiple audiences – and many did.

With no understanding of the other ways of segmenting their database or creating different capture forms, businesses kept creating more and more audiences, and started to cause themselves problems.

Firstly, they realised that a single email address could appear on multiple audiences, which was costing them extra. Then they realised that if they wanted to send an email to ‘everyone’, they couldn’t. They had to send it to each audience separately, and if someone was in more than one audience they might get the email twice.

…and then came GDPR – and the knowledge that if someone unsubscribed from one audience, they probably should be unsubscribed from others… which would have to be done manually.

In most instances, businesses should have a single audience in Mailchimp, but getting to one audience when you’ve got lots is not a simple task.

You need to consider the data that needs to be moved, forms and where they link, and automations both in the audiences to be removed AND the final consolidated one.

That’s why combining audiences is not a simple job, and if done incorrectly can cause irreparable harm to your most valuable business asset – your database, and why hiring a specialist like Chimp Answers is your best option to ensure it goes smoothly.

If you’ve got multiple audiences in your Mailchimp Account, then chances are you’ve got multiple problems. Contact us and let us help you consolidate everything into a single audience and still be able to target and communicate with individual segments.

Robin was a fantastic presenter and knows Mailchimp inside and out. This is the course if you're looking to get started or want to have a better understanding of what Mailchimp can do for your business.

Larry Snow

Business of Executive Protection

I thought the whole session was excellent. We covered more than I thought we would and Robin took time to understand my business, my capabilities and what I wanted to achieve. He made it easy for me to follow and the practical run throughs were brilliant. I really did learn something that will be valuable to my business.

Amanda Rees

Owner, Bumpalicious Maternity

Fancy a bit of DIY?

If you’re thinking of doing this yourself, these articles might help…

Why Choose Chimp Answers?

Certified

We're Approved Mailchimp Pro Partners, so you can be assured we know our stuff

mt|assignment|

Business

This is not about vanity, this is about results. Our projects deliver every time

Loved

We've glowing reviews and feedback from all of our clients on their experience.

How it works

Once we’ve identified the specific problems you’re facing and your plans for the future on a 30 minute discovery call, we spring into action.

We conduct a full audit on your account, understanding all the ways you capture and use data, and then develop a clear plan for consolidating everything forward, ensuring that it’s done in a managed and systematic manner, and that your customer would not know it has happened.

Once signed off, we implement the plan and bring everything together under one roof, making sure at each step is completed fully with no implications.

..and then we conduct a handover and training session, so that you understand how to make the most of your nice new single audience, and how we’ve moved everything around to maintain database integrity.

So you’re left with a tidy, organised and well structured database that allows you to carry out effective and efficient email marketing activity moving forward (which is kinda the whole point of it!!!).

Preparation

The first step is to complete a full audit of your Mailchimp account.  We call this a Mailchimp Medical and it gives us the details of everything that’s going on, both in terms of stuff you know, but also stuff you maybe didn’t know. Before we can start any rebuild, we need to know what exactly the existing state of the account is – that way we can keep what works and change what doesn’t.

Development

The next step is to review the medical results and then sit and plan the project out in detail. This usually includes a 90 minute Email Systems Planning (ESP) Meeting, where we combine our knowledge of Mailchimp & Marketing with your knowledge of your business to sketch out the specifics.

Planning

From this initial discussion and sketch we create a detailed implementation plan and fire it over to you for review. This will be fully costed up, and if you decide you want to proceed with doing the project yourself, or have other resource available, this plan can be implemented with our involvement.

Implementation

Most of our clients are however, happy for us to proceed, so we can then dive into the project and make it happen.  We will still come back to you for content/images to populate the system, but we’ll do all the heavy lifting – and once done, guide you through the system in a comprehensive wrap up meeting.

 Pricing & Timing Guidelines

Of all the work we do with businesses, Audience Consolidation is the one with the most variability as it really depends on how complex your account is and the number of audiences you have currently. Basic audience consolidation projects can start at as little as $350 (£250) and be completed in a couple of days. However, more complex ones can easily cost over $1,000 (£750) and take a couple of weeks to finish.

But in every instance we’ve been able to save money on both monthly Mailchimp costs and in the hours that are no longer wasted managing a messy

 

“He really know his stuff…

I started working with Robin & Chimp Answers in 2015 and since then they've proved to be an essential part of my business.  When it comes to Marketing and MailChimp he really knows his stuff and have been able to not only help us build a marketing system that has increased our revenue, but develop a foundation to our business that will support us for many years to come.

Tone Tellefsen Hughes

Clinic Director, Lucks Yard Clinic

Book A Discovery Call Today

If you are thinking about combing audiences in Mailchimp and you want to have a chat with us about how we could do this, then why not book a discovery call with us to see how we can help you.

Just pick a date and time and we can spend 30 minutes discussing your challenges and how we can help.

Not based in the UK? read this…

Chimp Answers are based in the United Kingdom, but we help Mailchimp users all around the world. To avoid any confusion or disappointment, please make sure you adjust the time zone setting to your own time zone before making the appointment. This ensures the appointment is valid and we can get straight into things…

Any Questions?

We've tried to cover every base regarding Mailchimp optimisation, but if we've missed something or you want to know more before taking the next step, why not get in touch.

If your actively considering working with us in some capacity, why not book a chat with us.  Just click here to get started.

If you just want to fire us a quick email about this option, then use this form and we'll do our best to get back to you as soon as we can.

Name(Required)

Need help with something else?

Mailchimp Medicals

“Am I doing it the right way?”

Your Mailchimp Account reviewed and rated against identified best practices

Audience Cleansing

“My audience is full of zombies”

Cutting your database’s dead weight to improve your deliverability and save you money

Account Management

Account Management“Can you run my account for me?”

Managing and maintaing your account so it’s always running at it’s peak efficiency

A Full Email Marketing System

“I need a complete system”

Starting anew or working with an existing account to build a complete working email marketing system