MailChimp is an email list management service that can schedule and deliver emails to your patients, as well as manage their subscriptions to your emails. It is important to use a service like MailChimp to ensure that the emails you are delivering meet email spam laws, and to improve the deliverability rates. Often emails sent from your own server will get caught in spam filers and junk mailboxes. Using MailChimp reduces the chances of this happening.
To use the MailChimp service with your iconpractice account you must have an account with MailChimp. Their basic account is free and offers a good starting point. To integrate with iconpractice get your API key and list name and enter them in the fields in the Settings->MailChimp section. When you first activate the service we will syncronise all your patient's emails with the list. As well as email addresses, we sync first and last names and dates of birth also. This enables you to customise emails and send birthday messages in MailChimp as well.
Create a MailChimp Account
To create a MailChimp account click on the button below.
Create a MailChimp List
Once you have created an account, you need to create a list. Details on how to do this can be found here.
In order for iconpractice to synchronise properly you need to ensure that you have the correct fields in the list. When you get to step 5 in above link, you'll see this:
Click on "add more fields". Then click "add a field".
Select the "birthday" option. Make the "Field Label" something easy to remember like Birthday or DOB. Once the field has been added, make sure the the fields circled in red below have FNAME for the first name row, LNAME for the last name row, and DOB for the birthday row. This is very important or iconpractice will not be able to merge your patient data correctly. Be sure to click "Save" to save any changes.
Once you have done this, get your API key. This enables iconpractice to communicate with your MailChimp list. Details on how to find it can be found here. You also need your list ID. Details on how to find it can be found here.
Turning on MailChimp in iconpractice.
Enter these on the MailChimp page in the Settings section of iconpractice. When you first enter or change your API key and list ID iconpractice will update the MailChimp list. Thereafter whenever you add a patient with an email address or update their details, iconpractice will update MailChimp.
Turning off MailChimp in iconpractice.
Removing your API and list ID from the fields and clicking save will turn off MailChimp and remove your list ID and API key from the system. It does not delete emails from the MailChimp list. Removing emails from the list must be done via MailChimp. You can turn MailChimp back on by re-entering your API key and list ID.