Audience example: Using Audience with Mailchimp

 Audience turns the vast amount of data from your customers into knowledge about different segments and their interests. But sitting with that knowledge gets you nowhere, so the next step is to turn the knowledge into action. One way to utilize the knowledge is by reaching out to the customers through a tailored newsletter targeting the Audience with products and information based on the interests of that specific group of customers.

Download the list of emails

Let's assume you have already created an Audience - if not, we have a guide on doing that here. Within the Audience, you have defined some Segments, and from that, a list of customers has been created, all of which fit into the criteria specified by your Segments. The list includes email addresses of the customers who have given your permission to contact them with promotional material. You can read more about permissions here.

To download the list of emails, first, locate the Audience you want to reach. Log into your Hello Retail account -> click Audience -> click the Name of the Audience.

You are now presented with all the insights available for this particular Audience. At the top of the page, you can see how many customers are in the Audience and from how many of these you are permitted to contact. In this example, we are looking at an Audience that bought products from the brand Pelle Pelle. There are 980 customers, and we are allowed to contact 343 of them - quite a fair ratio, but one can improve it. We talk a bit about how to obtain more permissions here. 

 

At the bottom, you find Customers. It is simply a list of the customers in the Audience with a few details, including the email address. The customers listed as Anonymous have not given you permission to contact them. Therefore their emails are masked. Click Download emails to download a CSV file with the available emails - that means only the emails with a permission. Be aware that the permission status comes from the data at Hello Retail, so it is crucial that you synchronize your permissions with Hello Retail to have the latest data. You can read more about synchronizing permissions with Mailchimp here, and for other platforms here.

Upload customer emails to Mailchimp

You might already be a Mailchimp superuser and know how to upload lists, but just in case you don't, here's a step-by-step guide.

Log into your Mailchimp account and go to Audience -> All contacts -> Add contacts -> Import contacts.

Choose Upload file, which will be the list just downloaded from Hello Retail. Click Continue to Upload.

On the next page, click Browse and locate the CSV file you downloaded from Hello Retail. Click Continue to Organize.

Under Organize, you can choose the status of the imported customers. As the imported list consists of customers with permission, you can select Subscribed. Leave the Update any existing contacts unchecked as we are not adding any new information - we are just compiling a list of already known customer emails. Click Continue to Tag.

On the next page, you assign a tag to the imported list of customers. Name the tag something related to the Audience in Hello Retail, so you can easily find the list.

Now you'll see a short example of what is being uploaded and under what label in Mailchimp the data will be stored. Mailchimp will automatically recognize the data as email addresses. Click Finalize Import.

 Review the import and click Complete Import.

Create a campaign directed at the Audience

Now you have a group of customers uploaded to Mailchimp with a specific tag that you know meet specific criteria allowing you to target them with hyper-relevant marketing material. You find the customers in Mailchimp under Audience and Tags. Click the paper plane icon to create a campaign directed at the group.

From here on, the process is as you know it - you create a campaign with the material relevant for the Audience. In this example, we probably want to push some new fancy Pelle Pelle products, maybe with a discount code. We can also include some other brands from the "Top Brands" section under the Audience Insights on your Hello Retail account, where you can see different brands this group of customers has shown interest in. 

Include Newsletter Content campaign

Of course, Hello Retail provides tools for easily implementing products into your newsletter, namely Newsletter Content. The tool allows you to include specific products, for example, the new products you want to promote as well as from the other relevant brands. You can also include retargeted products not related to the campaign itself but created from the specific customer's interest.

A fitting Newsletter Content campaign type is the Manual campaign. It allows you to create a one-time campaign with content aligned with the interests of the group of customers from the Audience.