MailChimp Template Language Dreamweaver Extension

To make coding your email templates even easier, we’ve created a Dreamweaver extension and TextMate bundle with tons of template language snippets and shortcuts. The Dreamweaver extension adds a series of commands to the Commands menu from editable CSS blocks, to Twitter share links and everything in between. The Sample Layout command builds a complete email template that you can modify to serve your purpose.

MailChimp Template Bundle for TextMate

For Mac users, the TextMate bundle also speeds up template development. It has all of the same code snippets as the Dreamweaver extension, but TextMate makes it even faster to access with shortcut commands like “mccss” followed by a tab key press and an editable CSS property appears:

/*@editable*/ background-color: #ccc;

Download these free plugins and some pre-built sample templates from the MailChimp resources section of this site, where you’ll also find documentation on the template language.

You’d think that seeing “Google, Mountain View” on your caller ID would make us pretty excited. But the truth is, it’s more of a frightening experience (along the lines of, “Oh God did we break the internet?).

Turns out it wasn’t so bad…

They had opened up access to their awesome Analytics product through an API. This basically means you can program applications that go in and grab stats from a Google Analytics account.

They wanted to grant us (along with some other lucky beta testers) special access to the API, allowing us to greatly improve our old Google Analytics integration (which involved scraping email reports sent to you by Google — not very reliable if you got duplicate emails, or emails got junked, or if they changed the format of emails).

Long story short, that API experience eventually allowed us to create this new feature.

Google Analytics Stats Within MailChimp

In addition to all the other cool reports you get with MailChimp, you can now see how your email campaigns are affecting your overall site traffic:

Google Analytics stats embedded in MailChimp

The graph in the screenshot represents your website traffic. The little blue dots are email campaigns you’ve sent. If you hover over any of those little blue dots, they make a tiny little monkey-screaming noise (just kidding) and we provide a link to your email campaign archive  so you can see which campaign caused traffic to spike.

You’ll love this new feature if you’re an e-retailer (because I know you people are stats freaks).

You can click the tabs above the graph to filter results by “organic traffic, cpc traffic, email-generated traffic,” and more:

There are a bunch of other stats that we pull from your Analytics account below that chart:

How to turn it on

To get the stats, you’ll need to integrate your MailChimp account with your Analytics account. You do that under the “Account” page in MailChimp, then go to the new integrations panel:

MailChimp integrations panel

Activate Google Analytics syncing there, then you’ll see your stats under the “Reports” tab:

Click on the new “Site Analytics” button:

The idea isn’t to totally replace Google Analytics. If you’re a stats freak (like me), you’re still going to go log in to Google Analytics, CrazyEgg, Mint, YouCalc, Wordpress stats, etc. It’s just a way to show you more relevant stats while you’re logged in to MailChimp and checking campaign performance.

In addition to, “how many opens, clicks, and purchases did my email get?” we can also directly answer the question, “how much traffic did my email campaign actually drive to my website?”

There are so many now, that managing your different integrations can be tough. So we created this new “Integrations Dashboard” under your Account page.

It’s a great birds-eye-view of all the apps you’ve linked to MailChimp, and what their status is. If you’re experiencing any issues sync’ing data with one of them, this is where you can go to diagnose.

When you log into WordPress and look at the dashboard for your awesomely new WordPress Analytics Plugin, you’re probably wondering how you can limit the data to only your blog traffic.

Here’s how we did it at MailChimp…

First you’ll need to log in to Google Analytics and find your site in the “Website Profiles” list.

1. Adding a New Profile

Then, click +Add New Profile next to the web site that has your blog attached to it.

Add a New Profile to Google Analytics Account

You’ll arrive at the Create New Website Profile page. Make sure you select Add a Profile for an existing domain. Then check to make sure your main web site is selected in the “Select Domain” box.

Create a New Profile

Give your new profile a meaningful name. How about “Name of Your Site Blog”? Click “Continue” to save the profile and let’s see how the magic filtering happens.

2. Create a Filter for Your New Blog Profile

Now that your new blog profile is created it’s recording the same exact data as your web site. Don’t worry! We can filter the current data to only include your blog (aka “The Magic”).

Find and click the Edit link for the new profile you created.

This page contains all of the settings for your new profile, but we’re only interested in one area: Filters. Look for the Filters Applied to Profile section and click +Add Filter.

Profile Settings Page

Make sure Add New Filter for Profile is selected and give the filter a descriptive name, like “Blog Traffic.”

The filter type you want to select is labeled “Include only traffic to a subdirectory”  and you’ll want to use Google’s example as a baseline for finding the subdirectory. Something like “^/blog” where “blog” is the name of your main WordPress directory.

Your new profile has been added.

Save your changes and head over to your WordPress Admin.

3. Use Your New Profile in Analytics360 for WordPress

After you log in to WordPress, look under the Settings menu for Analytics360 and click over to your Analytics360 settings.

Under Step 2, you’ll want to select your new profile from the “From now on track:” select box. Click “This One!” to activate your new blog profile for Analytics360.

Your Analytics360 Settings in Wordpress

What gives? There’s No Data?

It’s going to take about 3+ hours for some data to start rolling in, like when you setup Google Analytics for the very first time. It’s actually best to give it a full 24 hours, so you’ll at least get a full day’s data in your Analytics360 Dashboard.

Be patient! All is well in the world of WordPress Analytics now.

You can now count MailChimp amongst the long list of integrations you can add on to your Expression Engine install. Say hello to SL MailChimp Subscribe created by Stephen Lewis at Experience Internet (a brilliant developer who is a pleasure to work with). SL MailChimp Subscribe will connect your Expression Engine new user signup process to a MailChimp list and do a few more cool things too:

• Automatically add a member to one or more mandatory mailing lists.
• Specify “opt-in triggers” to allow a member to control which lists he is added to.
• Associate custom ExpressionEngine member profile fields with MailChimp Interest Groups and Merge Variables, on a list-by-list basis.

SL MailChimp Subscribe is a sweet little tool that greatly simplifies managing your lists from Expression Engine, and it is the right price too – Free! If you’re super nerdy and want to tool around with the source code, you can check out the code repository on GitHub.

Download it and give it a try. We hope you find it useful, and look forward to your feedback.

Dialect, a small web marketing company on Vancouver Island in Canada, has developed a plugin that connects your Shopify online store with MailChimp.

It works by allowing you to process a Webhook from Shopify and subscribe the purchaser to a specific MailChimp list. In a nutshell, Webhooks enable you to collect information about events as they happen in near real-time. (read more about the MailChimp API and Webhooks here)

You can grab the plugin and installation instructions here. Then, all you need to get started is your Shopify Shop ID and MailChimp List ID.

Use another ecommerce or shopping cart solution? MailChimp also currently intergrates with Magento, osCommerce, PrestaShop, Foxy Cart and ZenCart. Be sure to take a look at our extensive list of plugins for more info.

Once setup, the module will keep your Magento Newsletter subscribers automatically synchronized with MailChimp.

If you’re a Magento user, be sure to also check out our ecommerce360 plugin, which synchronizes with your shopping cart and shows your email marketing ROI.

Thanks, Brent! Some MailChimp swag is on its way.

BTW, if you’re using a CMS in conjunction with MailChimp, be sure to check out this tutorial on importing campaigns via URL. You can setup your CMS to publish news on your site, then tell MailChimp to create email newsletter versions. You can even use MailChimp tags to hide certain email-specific code (like unsub links, email CSS, etc) from the browser, but make it display in email apps.

This is perfect if you sell stuff on Etsy, eBay, or your own e-commerce store.

It’s also great if you’re a non-profit or church and take donations on your website/blog.

Here’s how to set it all up…

We’re basically using PayPal’s “Instant Payment Notification” service.

You’ll need to have either a Premier or Business PayPal account.

Just log in to MailChimp, go to the Account tab, click “Add-ons” (marvel at all the wonderful add-ons we offer), then activate the PayPal 360 plugin:

Once it’s activated, click the configure link, and a new pop-up window will appear.

1. Select the list where you want PayPal purchasers’ emails to go to. Don’t just dump them into some newsletter list (unless you explicitly told them on your purchase form that they’d be receiving newsletters). Rather, create a totally separate list for “customers” who have purchased stuff from (or donated to) your organization.

In the settings for that list, your permission reminder can say, “You’re receiving this because you purchased something from our store and…” Remember, never “surprise” your recipients with email marketing they weren’t expecting. This completes our email etiquette session.

2. MailChimp will generate a secret code. I’m just calling it a secret code to make this tutorial feel more intriguing. Select that code and copy it to your clipboard.
Then, go log in to your PayPal account, and click on the “Profile” link:

On the next screen, look for the link to “Instant Payment Notifications” (it’s kinda hard to find in all those links. Here’s a clue:

The next screen will look like this:

1. Check the box.

2. Enter the secret code that you got from MailChimp.

3. Do a little dance of joy (yes, MailChimp can tell if you don’t dance).

Remember, this only works for Business or Premier accounts in PayPal.

We just made it really easy and seamless to pass your wufoo registration data to MailChimp. It’s free, and no coding is required. Here’s how it all works…

Overview:

Every wufoo form can publish registration information to an RSS feed. You can give MailChimp the address of that feed, and we’ll import new registrations into your MailChimp list. MailChimp will check your wufoo form’s feed every hour on the hour.

Step 1: Activate Notifications on Wufoo.

Log in to Wufoo, find the form you want to integrate with MailChimp. Click that form’s “Notifications” link:

Step 2: Subscribe to “New Entries” Feed.

Look for the “to My Feedreader” options, and select “New Entries.” Wufoo will ask you for your password (for security purposes). Then, wufoo will take you to your form’s feed URL. Copy that to your clipboard, or leave it open in a browser tab/window.

Step 3: Turn on Wufoo in MailChimp

Sign in to MailChimp (do this in a new tab, or browser window). In the top navigation, click over to your “Account” tab. It’s towards the right, under the talking chimp:

On the Account page, select “Add-ons”

There are lots of add-ons to choose from. Marvel in all the glorious options. But stay focused. Get wufoo done, then come back for more later.

Activate the Wufoo add-on, then select “Configure”

Step 4: Give MailChimp Your Wufoo Settings

On the pop-up window, MailChimp will ask you to select the list that you want to link with Wufoo. Then, give MailChimp your Wufoo form feed URL, plus your Wufoo username and password.

Step 5: Jump for Joy (*required)

Jump up and down and scream, Woo-hoo! Wufoo! MailChimp will not work unless you actually do this.

After you’ve got the Wufoo notifications link setup, all new registrations to your Wufoo form will be pulled from that Wufoo feed into your MailChimp list.They’re not instantaneous. MailChimp checks every hour for new members to import, so it may take time to see the list being populated. The more you watch it, the longer it’ll take, too. It’s like waiting for water to boil.

Note that the Wufoo feed is basically your “new registrants.” If you’ve got years and years of old contact information saved in Wufoo, those can be imported into MailChimp “the old fashioned way” on our import page.