In emergency situations, you may not be able to wait until your regular end of day email bulletin time slot, and you might want to send an email out to your subscribers immediately.
The Mailchimp system allows this via a service they call ‘Email Beamer’
Brief Overview
From your regular email service (office 365 Outlook etc) create a new email and write your message as if were a regular email. You then send it to a special secret Mailchimp email address and then in turn, Mailchimp will send it on to your subscribers.
You can find your secret email address by logging into your Mailchimp account and going here: Audience > Manage Audience > Settings > Email Beamer
More instructions on how to use the service can be found here: https://mailchimp.com/help/use-email-beamer-to-create-a-campaign
Important Notes
- This service does send branded emails with graphical headers (like your newsletter)
- You cannot send attachments with this service, but you can embed pictures within the text
- You should always copy the email text onto a post on your website, as that is the official definitive go-to place for double checking and confirmation for parents.
- Guard your secret email beamer address as if it were a password. Anyone with access to it can communicate with all your subscribers as if they were the school.