Centralised and Combined Customer Data
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Info
Having dipped a toe into the world of Mailchimp and having the API feeds set up, It's become clear that the customer data coming via the API isn't great.
I'm now £100s into it without even having sent an email yet. It appears that the email data and consents is stored differently on POS and Merchant Tools.
Customers who have consented to marketing on one platform but not the other can cause clashes in the data and whether you can actually sent them an email or not. All the while, the API keeps adding email adresses to my audience figures which costs a fortune for Mailchimp to store.
Sales data is also inconsistant such as last purchase date or last visit making it difficult to make full use of the information.
I think there is a need for some combined platform to manage customer's data which marries up the information coming from both Cloud POS and Merchant Tools, particularly in respect to GDPR consent as I currently am finding it very difficult to manage.
Shirin Sadr
There are a lot of canny items about the mailchimp integration, it clearly needs attention.
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Jon Mayo
This is an excellent comment and idea and long been a frustration. Every customer, regardless of marketing consent, is added to Mailchimp so the cost keeps increasing. You could archive contacts that are not added as GDPR =1 by the API & POS but that is a one off action to add that field when the contact joins the audience for first time so doesn't reflect sign ups from other sources, if the customer changes consent at the till, or website or withdraws consent in the future. It's a bit of a mess tbh.
Mailchimp was the go to entry level email platform for small business but no longer. The lack of synergy between MT / POS, customer data and consent is not acceptable given the only option Citrus Lime integrate with is Mailchimp
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Scott Hargrave
The MailChimp API does need a look at, our audience is exponentially growing to the point if I wonder if customers are being auto opted in, and with that increase in audience the costs of mail chimp rises...