Newsletters & Mailchimp

For anything going to your whole list, use a platform built for it. Karani’s job is to keep that platform’s list current.

Why not send it from Karani

Bulk email needs unsubscribe handling, bounce processing, list hygiene, authentication, and a sending reputation. Getting those wrong doesn’t produce an error message — it produces email that silently lands in spam, including your one-to-one messages later on. See Deliverability.

The Mailchimp route

Create a group in Karani for the people who should get the newsletter.
Connect Mailchimp from Integrations. See the Mailchimp integration.
Link the group to a Mailchimp list. Karani keeps the two in step — adding someone to the Karani group subscribes them; removing them unsubscribes them.
Write and send in Mailchimp.
Log it. Add a Mail or Email interaction to the group with Bulk tasks & interactions, so your out of touch reporting knows those people heard from you.

The one-off route

If you don’t want a standing integration, export instead:

Download Emails for Mailchimp — a CSV formatted for Mailchimp’s importer.
Output Emails — a semicolon-separated list to paste into a mail client. Use Bcc.

Fine once. If you’re doing it monthly, connect the integration.

Paper newsletters

Two options:

PrayerLetters.com — sync a Karani group and they print and post for you.
Mail merge — download addresses and print labels yourself.

Keep separate Email newsletter and Paper newsletter groups. Some people want one, some the other, a few want both, and one combined list serves none of them.

Keeping the list clean

Someone asks to be removed — take them out of the group. Don’t delete the contact; you’d lose their giving history. See Archiving & deleting.
An address bounces — fix or remove it on the contact, not just in Mailchimp, or the next sync puts it back.
Duplicates — run Potential Duplicate Contacts occasionally, or people get two copies.