Hi all,
I’ve finished up the coding (I’m sure there’s still a couple of loose ends somewhere) and have secured 1 beta tester.
I’m looking for a 2nd beta tester that hopefully has multiple languages operational on their site. I would also like this person to be experienced with mailchimp. I am by no means a mailchimp expert so I can’t answer questions about how this or that can be used, I can only address generalities. So having a mailchimp expert will help put the addon through its paces.
I’ve completed the first round of documentation. It can be viewed here:
[url]http://www.ez-ms.com/docs/mailchimp.pdf[/url]
Assuing that I get the 2nd beta tester in the next few days, the addon should be available within about a week. It will be priced at $59.99. I need at least 30 buyers to break even, so I hope this meets most of your needs.
does the emails sent out from mailchimp have the unsubscribe links and such? i can never get the unsubscribe link to work in my cs-cart newsletters.
Also, when mail chimp sends out emails, does it send from their servers? Just wondering because when I send emails out some email clients filter and flag me as spam. Not sure if it’s because of my domain or mail host or what.
@purelife: Yes, the unsubscribe links are super easy to insert. Mailchimp does send from their servers. Some clients will still filter you as spam based on your message content. Mailchimp has a lot of tutorials on how to make your email messages more likely to get through. Using Mailchimp will give you better deliverability overall because they take care of the basic technical requirements that help ensure you won’t be blocked from sending to certain domains. For instance, when I tried to do it on my own, I often got blocked by aol.com or yahoo.com because of the volume and had to go fill out forms requesting to be unblocked. It’s a major PITA. Mailchimp also automatically cleans the list when emails bounce. Doing it on your own, this can become a nightmare, and if you don’t remove bounced emails, email providers will begin to think you are spammer and block you for that reason alone. I really can’t afford not to use a service like Mailchimp. I’m currently on a newsletter sending hiatus, so I switched to the pay-as-you-go plan and I’m basically paying nothing to host my lists there. When I’m ready to send again, I’ll upgrade to the monthly fee plan.
Note also that Mailchimp has a compliance team that you will work with if you don’t honor unsubscribes and/or get too high a rate of “spam reporting” from sending to unsolicitied email addresses.
They are professional but their technical and marketing side is a bit like a black hole. Their customer support is very good. I usually hear something back within a few hours at most.
tbirnseth,
Any updates on the MailChimp Addon?
Thanks,
Adam
Still beta testing. We’ve exported over 20K customers and sent Ecommerce activity for over 23K orders.
Expect to have this within the next week available. Beta testers (and I) have other things going on too this time of year.
Didn’t want to keep bumping the thread with updates. Thought folks would just want to know when it’s ready.
Thanks for your effort with this addon. I think it will greatly improve store owners ability to market products, services and whatever else. Your documentation looks good and look forward to it’s release.
Stu
Im in on this one, a great addition to any business is a solid marketing strategy, to have one integrate with CS is even better news.
thx for the efforts, cant wait to get my hands on this one
JOhn
[quote name=‘tbirnseth’]Still beta testing. We’ve exported over 20K customers and sent Ecommerce activity for over 23K orders.
Expect to have this within the next week available. Beta testers (and I) have other things going on too this time of year.
Didn’t want to keep bumping the thread with updates. Thought folks would just want to know when it’s ready.[/QUOTE]
Hey Im interested… so what did you do? You sent 20K customers an email and got 23K real orders?
Where you able to add the unsubsribe functionality?
Thanks
B
We “EXPORTED” 20K users and 23K customers. This creates subscription lists in mailchimp to be added to as new orders/people come along. This captures the history of your store for future marketing campaigns.
Exporting that many users and orders is actually quite a feat given Apache/PHP timeouts, memory restraints, etc.
Unfortunately, this is usually only done once (but can be done to seed other lists) but is generally a key starting point for integrating other aspects of your store with mailchimp.
Hi all, just a quick update.
New docs are available at: [url]http://www.ez-ms.com/docs/mailchimp.pdf[/url]
There have been a few new features added such as allowing “opt-in” to be configurable by list for both the subscribe block and the export functions. It will also now export existing cart subscribers and is a bit smarter about whether to export Customers based on the “Allow anonymous checkout” setting.
The (hopefully) final version has been delivered to the beta tester. If all goes well, the addon should be available for purchase tomorrow. The price will be $59.99USD.
Currently all lists use the same “merge fields” (I.e. mailchimp fields). A future version will allow you to restrict the standard set down to a subset if you choose.
Any feedback on the docs would be appreciated.
Okay, the Mailchimp addon is available for purchase. Docs can be viewed at:
[url]http://www.ez-ms.com/docs/mailchimp.pdf[/url]
The product detail page is located at:
[url]http://www.ez-ms.com/addonproducts/mailchimp-integration.html[/url]
Please note that there will be subsequent upgrades to this addon to add some features that have been requested. Also note that I’m in discussion with Mailchimp and they may be willing to pay for some enhancements as well.
The goal of this first release was to export existing information as well as to provide the framework for letting customer opt-in to an email list during checkout and to provide a sidebox block for subscription sign-up.
It is assumed that your campaign templates (email templates) will be developed and managed on the mailchimp site. It is also assumed that you will send those campaigns from the mailchimp site.
Statisitics related to “lists” are displayed in the addon and are updated whenever you “Refresh Lists”.
Everyone needs to buy this! This addon will pay for itself over and over again. Even if you don’t have a Mailchimp account, you should look into getting one. Having this sort of integration is a HUGE improvement over anything I’ve ever used.
Once you have all your customers and orders exported, you can go to Mailchimp and narrow your subscriber list with the ‘segments’ feature to find things like product purchased and total spent. This opens you up to pulling a list of customers who bought product X and send them a promotional email like those “amazon recommends” emails: “Amazon.com has new recommendations for you based on items you purchased or told us you own.” You can also announce new products that may be related to past purchases. I am excited that I can segment customers by the TOTAL amount they’ve spent and send an email to my most loyal customers.
Customers can seamlessly sign up for the list at checkout or via a form on your store pages.
Tony worked really hard on this and I am excited to see future releases for this addon. 
Will purchase once I get back to the USA 
I purchased. Really looking forward to this.
Thanks for your hard work!
Adam
[quote name=‘JesseLeeStringer’]Will purchase once I get back to the USA :)[/QUOTE]
What he said just have to wait until after the holidays when I have time.
@ Jesse - did you run home for the holidays? Lucky you, it’s summer down there! Oops, you stay in Fl here so it’s summer all the time!
@jegesmaci - thanks for the purchase, I processed it this morning.
@whiplash13 - looking forward to your purchase.
Merry Christmas to all and hope for a prosporus new year…
Mailchimp provides for some good segmentation as ogia says. Kind of a filter based on order history for filtering your lists for different campaigns. I just use the free version since my volumes are pretty low. But the paid service has a few extra benefits.
[quote name=‘tbirnseth’]@ Jesse - did you run home for the holidays? Lucky you, it’s summer down there! Oops, you stay in Fl here so it’s summer all…[/quote]
Yup, I’ve got a kid due on March 16th - visiting family while I can, I’ve been following development of the add-on as I’ll need two licenses, just been too busy to participate. Merry Christmas ,)
Mailchimp will cost me $240 each month. That’s $2880/year.
Interspire Email Marketer cost me $495 one time cost.
Any interest in creating something for Interspire’s Email program?
Mailchimp also has a program where they give you 6000 emails/month for free. So if you’re paying $240, you must send a lot.
I know nothing about Interspire’s email program. If you want to email me privately and send me a link to their site containing their api specs, I’d be happy to give you a quote. You can send info to tonybXX@ez-msXX.com (remove X’s).