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Why You Shouldn’t Use Mailchimp Conditional Content

I was recently asked by an NFP customer if I teach adding conditional content in my Mailchimp classes. I have added below my response to the client. Firstly however let me explain what is meant by conditional content.

What is Mailchimp Conditional Content?

In a Mailchimp campaign, content may be shown to some recipients and not others. The content is shown based on data that in your subscriber list (i.e. the data is the condition). For example, if you have a field in your list that determines whether the contact is a volunteer or donor, then you could show certain content in a single campaign to donors and other content to volunteers.

It’s important to be aware that you need to have the necessary data in your list for each contact in order to formulate your condition. In addition note that when using conditional content blocks you’re sending a single campaign but the content of the campaign changes based on the condition and the data in your list.

Should You Use Conditional Content Blocks in Email Marketing?

Below is my email response to my client that asked whether I teach using Mailchimp conditional content blocks in training.

I don’t cover conditional content blocks in training as this is very seldom used because of how often people get this wrong when sending campaigns. The use of conditional content is explained by Mailchimp.

Conditional content blocks get complex and unmanageable very quickly. Instead of using conditional content blocks most of my clients:

  1. Create and send a campaign.
  2. Replicate the sent campaign and change the content where the conditional block would be.
  3. Send the second campaign.

There are a few advantages to replicating campaigns rather than using conditional content blocks:

  • It is quicker to replicate than create conditions.
  • There are ordinarily (far) fewer errors by replicating.
  • Reporting is better as the the two (or more) conditions can be compared in reports (using conditional content blocks results in it not being possible to compare each condition separately).

I hope this helps you to make up your mind as to whether you want to use conditional content blocks in Mailchimp.

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