onOffice Services – Newsletter Connector

With the newsletter connector, you can connect onOffice enterprise to the well-known newsletter marketing services Mailchimp and Brevo.
You can easily start and evaluate your newsletter campaigns with both services. All addresses in onOffice that have agreed to receive the newsletter are transferred to the newsletter services and created there as contacts.
You can find instructions for both services directly at Mailchimp or Brevo. There you will find detailed information on configuring and sending newsletter campaigns.

If errors occur during the synchronization of all or individual contacts, please check the server status pages of the providers first.

https://status.Mailchimp.com/
https://status.brevo.com/
https://status.onoffice.de/

Setting up the interface
To connect the newsletter marketing services, proceed as follows:

1. Create an account with Mailchimp / Sendinblue.
  For Mailchimp, the audience (group of recipients) must be called “onoffice” (not onOffice!). If this does not exist, it is created by activating the interface in the subsequent step. The prerequisite for this is the ability to create additional audiences. Please check this. The free Mailchimp account only allows one audience. Please rename them if necessary. In Sendinblue, the “list” will also be called “onoffice”. Furthermore, only German and English field names are supported here. (First name, last name etc.)Do you already have an existing user account? Then please check at the latest before synchronization if you want to export recipient groups before synchronization. During synchronization, existing contacts are updated and tags are transferred to onOffice.
2. Activate newsletter connector in the Marketplace
3. Call up the Newsletter-Connector via the onOffice menu: “Marketplace” >> “Newsletter Connector” >> “Contact Synchronization” >> “Change Settings
4. Select service (Mailchimp / Brevo)
5. Save the API key of the service in the newsletter connector settings: In Mailchimp, click on your name at the bottom left and select “Account >> Extras >> API Keys” to look up the API key. In Mailchimp, click on your name at the top right under “SMTP & API”. Follow the link below the input field for detailed instructions.

This establishes the connection to the service.

Note on synchronization with Brevo: The assignment of the fields (first name, last name, etc.) currently only works for the user languages German and English.

Synchronization

You can start the initial synchronization of addresses in the Newsletter Connector via “Marketplace > Newsletter Connector > Start synchronization”. All contacts whose newsletter setting is set to “Yes” will be synchronized. After that, changes to the “Salutation”, “First Name”, “Last Name”, “Email”, “Newsletter” and “Newsletter Tags” fields are automatically synchronized in the background.

Please note that synchronization may take some time depending on the number of contacts to be synchronized. The display in the popup is not updated automatically. Please wait a few minutes before refreshing or reopening the pop-up.

In the newsletter tool itself, you can also see how the number of contacts steadily increases until all addresses have been synchronized.

Please note: the number of subscribers displayed in onOffice and the newsletter tool in the popup may differ slightly even after a complete synchronization.

Possible causes for this:

The newsletter provider rejects contacts (e.g. Mailchimp: Addresses that were previously deleted instead of archived. Further information from Mailchimp on cleansed contacts and deleted contacts).
Missing read permission for certain addresses in onOffice enterprise.
Email duplicates in onOffice enterprise, i.e. several addresses with the same email address. The email addresses in the newsletter tool must be unique.
Validity of email addresses. Addresses with an invalid or missing email address cannot be synchronized.

In the status bar below you will find further information on the number of duplicates and invalid email addresses as well as further information on the last synchronization.

Further information

In Mailchimp or Sendinblue, after saving the API key, a webhook is automatically created that controls the transfer of changes to onOffice.

Mailchimp
The webhook can be found in Mailchimp under ” Audience (left menu) > Manage Audience > Settings > Webhooks > Edit”

Here you can define for which actions a transfer to onOffice should take place. For example, you can deactivate that an email activity should be created after sending a newsletter.

However, do not change the webhook URL manually, otherwise the service may no longer work.

The “via the API” option must not be activated under any circumstances, as otherwise a re-synchronization of all contacts will be triggered during synchronization.

Brevo
In Brevo, the webhook can be configured under “Campaigns > Settings > Webhook”.

Special field “Salutation”
Salutations like “Dear Sir” / “Dear Madam” etc. are automatically created in Mailchimp or Brevo.
For this purpose, the field “Salutation” must be made visible in the Mailchimp contact table, if necessary.

What is transferred?

Full synchronization via the popup
OnOffice is basically the master system.
During a full synchronization, all contacts are transferred to the newsletter service whose “Newsletter” field has the value set to “Yes”.
If so-called “tags” are assigned in Mailchimp after a full synchronization, these will be transferred to onOffice during the next full synchronization. The “onoffice” tag is not taken into account here.
Tags are only transferred during full synchronization, i.e. individual changes in Mailchimp are not immediately transferred to onOffice.

In Sendinblue this possibility is not available, because only one tag can be assigned, which must be “onoffice”.

Transfer of individual changes from onOffice to the newsletter service
Basically, changes to the fields “Salutation”, “First name”, “Last name”, “Email contact”, “Newsletter” and “Newsletter tag” are taken into account.
Changing the values (Yes/No) in the “Newsletter” field will result in a Subscribe / Unsubscribe in Mailchimp or a Subscribe / Blacklisting in Brevo.
Newsletter tags can be controlled via onOffice. These are immediately transferred to Mailchimp. Tags can be both enabled and disabled.

Transfer of individual changes from the newsletter service to onOffice
In principle, all newsletter subscriptions and unsubscriptions are transferred to onOffice. This applies to subscriptions and unsubscriptions by the Mailchimp or Brevo administrator as well as by the subscriber himself.
If a single contact is deleted or archived in Mailchimp or Brevo, the newsletter status in onOffice is set to “not specified”.
The “Archive All” function of Mailchimp is ignored by the Newsletter Connector.
Individual changes to the tags are not transferred. This happens exclusively during a full adjustment. (Mailchimp)

If new contacts are created in Mailchimp or Brevo, then these are also transferred to onOffice. This can also happen when a website visitor registers for the newsletter. The transfer to onOffice can only be controlled or prevented by not creating the contacts entered by the visitor himself in the “onoffice” audience. This must be configured in the newsletter tool.

Documentation of activities or changes in onOffice:

If you subscribe to or unsubscribe from the newsletter, a corresponding activity is always created in onOffice.

For other newsletter actions, the checkboxes in the popup can be used to specify whether corresponding activities should be written to onOffice:

With Mailchimp “Delivered”: When a newsletter is sent, an email activity is created in onOffice for each recipient.

Brevo also includes “Open” (recipient opens the newsletter), “Click” (recipient clicks on a link in the newsletter) and “Hard bounce” (mail cannot be delivered due to a hard bounce).

Important
The Newsletter Connector is not yet group-enabled (as of July 2021). This means that only one Mailchimp/Brevo API key per onOffice customer version can be stored in the newsletter connector settings.

Marketplace