Odoo and MailChimp: A Beginner's Guide to Smooth Integration

Are you looking to use Odoo and MailChimp for your CRM and email marketing? Siloed information can be a huge problem without a careful integration process. Moreover, manually syncing contacts, maintaining duplicate data, and exploring consumer insights is quite chaotic.

Let's take a look at what the integration offers, common integration approaches, and a helpful checklist for you to achieve a successful integration process.

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Why do businesses integrate Odoo and Mailchimp?

In today's data-driven marketing era, firms are continuously looking for methods to increase efficiency, tailor consumer interactions, and maximise ROI. Accordingly, Odoo, a robust open-source ERP and CRM platform, integrated with MailChimp, a top email marketing provider, provides a great solution.

1. Streamlined workflows and boosted efficiency

It is acceptable to have a manual data entry error rate of 1%. However, if that number increases, it can cost a company millions of dollars (Havard Business Review). Integrating Odoo and MailChimp reduces the need to manually enter client information into both systems, freeing up significant time for strategic marketing activities.

• Automatic contact synchronisation: When new leads are added to Odoo, they are automatically updated to your MailChimp subscriber list. This ensures you always have the most up-to-date contact information for focused campaigns.
• Streamlined campaign management: You can create and manage email campaigns in Odoo, with automated processes. Your processes are usually triggered by specified events (such as abandoned carts and welcome emails) for a more effective marketing process.

2. Enhanced data management and deeper insights

In a Hubspot report, 77% of marketers say data is important to their marketing strategy. However, 47% of marketers say that silos are their main issues when it comes to exploring data insights (Entrepreneur). By integrating Odoo and MailChimp, you can create a central hub for customer data with a holistic view of their interactions across different marketing channels.

• Consistent and accurate data: You can get rid of duplicate data entries and discrepancies by ensuring that it flows consistently between Odoo and MailChimp.
• Data-driven decision-making: Odoo's extensive customer data (buy history, interactions) is integrated with MailChimp's email engagement data (open rates, click-through rates). This helps you to make better marketing decisions.

3. More scalability and secure ROI

MailChimp offers powerful capabilities and functionalities for managing large email lists and handling high campaign volumes. This ensures that your email marketing campaigns can scale efficiently as your company grows.

• Reduced costs and increased efficiency: Streamlined workflows, automated tasks, and improved data management help you reduce operating costs while increasing marketing team efficiency.
• Data security and compliance: Both Odoo and MailChimp prioritise data security and privacy. They follow applicable industry rules and provide strong security measures to protect customer data.

Read more: Odoo & WordPress A Guide to Know Whether You Need Both (with Integration Methods)

The common integration approaches

1. Pre-built apps for self-integration

Many third-party developers have developed pre-built integration apps to enable users to integrate Odoo with MailChimp. These apps are the bridge between the two platforms and they have specific functionalities that allow seamless data flow. You can go to the Odoo Apps Store, pick a suitable app with capabilities that meet your integration requirements, and start the integration on your own.

Once you've decided on an app, follow the installation instructions supplied by the app developer. This may involve:

• Installing the app in Odoo and setting up integration configuration for both Odoo and MailChimp. The setting also depends on the app's available features
• Mapping certain data fields between Odoo and MailChimp (such as contact lists, campaigns, or templates)
• Checking the integration results. Some advanced apps allow you to create automated workflows, such as adding new leads from Odoo to specified MailChimp lists or activating email campaigns depending on customer activities in Odoo.

2. Professional services for custom integration support

The best option is to seek professional help to set up and manage your Odoo and MailChimp integration. Professionals typically provide Odoo integration services with extensive knowledge of many platforms and experience in integration techniques. We recommend looking for official Odoo or MailChimp partners. For example, Odoo offers a worldwide certified partner network. These partners provide a wide range of services, including Odoo customisation, integration, and implementation. 

When working with professional partners, remember that you should:

• Clearly explain your needs and desired integration capabilities
• Create a timeline, outline the services, and select and configure apps or custom workflows
• Check on their support before, during, and after the integration.

Read more: Manage Odoo on Google Cloud Why It’s Powerful & How to Start

A helpful post-integration checklist for beginners

1. Common post-integration issues

A seamless integration between Odoo and MailChimp is the key to improving your marketing automation effort. However, technological difficulties do happen. Here, we'll look at some common integration concerns to keep in mind:

#1 Data synchronisation errors

While the purpose of integration is to execute a smooth two-way flow of data between Odoo and MailChimp, discrepancies can occur. This results in missing or duplicate data showing in MailChimp, or data only flowing in one direction:

• Missing or inaccurate information in MailChimp: Check that your Odoo and MailChimp field mappings are configured appropriately. Ensure that the data types (e.g., email address, text, or date) are consistent across both platforms. Check for any errors or irregularities in field names
• One-way data flow: If data only goes in one direction (from Odoo to MailChimp or vice versa), check your integration settings. Some apps may require two-way syncing.

#2 Campaign delivery issues

Critically, your email campaigns must reach the intended audience. However, variables such as spam filters and segmentation problems can affect your campaign delivery.

• Low open rates or delivery issues: Analyse your email campaigns with MailChimp. Search for spam trigger words in your content or subject lines. To avoid emails ending up in spam folders, make sure MailChimp's authentication mechanisms are set up properly
• Your campaign does not reach specific segments: Examine your audience segmentation criteria in MailChimp. Check that the merge tags you've chosen in Odoo are correct for the MailChimp audience segments you're targeting.

#3 Contact list discrepancies

Maintaining consistent contact lists across both platforms is important to have efficient marketing initiatives. However, differences may occur owing to manual errors or data mapping issues:

• Duplicate contacts: Identify and remove duplicate entries from Odoo and MailChimp.
• Missed contacts: Investigate why certain contacts may be missing from your MailChimp list. Ensure that your Odoo data selection criteria for list synchronisation are correct and include all relevant contacts.

2. Key aspects to verify your integration success

Following the setup, it is critical to ensure that everything works as expected. Here are the key points to ensure a smooth connection between Odoo and MailChimp:

• A two-way flow of data: Determine whether data flows smoothly in both ways. Add a new lead in Odoo and ensure it shows on your MailChimp subscriber list within the timeframe specified. Update a contact's information in Odoo and ensure that the changes are reflected in MailChimp accordingly.
• Data field mapping accuracy: Ensure that your Odoo data fields are correctly mapped to their MailChimp counterparts. To ensure correct information transfer, verify that data types (templates, audience, mailing list, campaigns, etc.) match between both systems.
• Campaign performance data: If your integration method supports email report synchronisation, ensure that MailChimp campaign data is consistent and fully transferred. For example, check if the main metrics (open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe, bounces, etc.) are displayed accurately in your Odoo campaign reporting dashboards.

Accordingly, each method will provide different ways to run data integration of Odoo and MailChimp. Note that you need to understand how that method works, for example, some connectors will automatically update real-time data or some require you to trigger an action to update that data. Additionally, it can become more complex if you need to check some specific data types (i.e. newly added data) that usually require the support of a developer. 

If you are not sure about technical initiatives, reach out to the method provider, MailChimp support or dev document, or Odoo support provider as they are the reliable parties that can help solve the problem.

Ready for your integration?

If you have fully understood the basics of integrating Odoo with MailChimp, it's time to take action. Understanding the integration process can be even more difficult, particularly for those with unique business requirements. In case you are unfamiliar with technical concepts, you should contact an Odoo professional service provider. With their experience, they can assure a smooth and effective integration that meets your specific objectives.

References:

• Harvard Business Review (2014). Even the Tiniest Error Can Cost a Company Millions
• Hubspot (2023). A Crisis of Disconnection: Three Workplace Trends Slowing Business Growth
• Entrepreneur (2022). How Siloed Data May Limit Your Business Growth (and How to Prevent It).