MailChimp Newsletter Sidebox

If you're looking for a way to improve the quality of your newsletter, take a look at MailChimp (https://www.mailchimp.com). They offer html templates, double opt-in, archive management, multiple lists and loads more features for a very affordable price. They only charge per email (not a monthly fee like Constant Contact), so it's quite affordable for the small merchant who only sends newsletters once in a while.

Code to integrate the "subscribe" form for MailChimp as a sidebox is provided here:

http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=425

Even if you're not yet ready to start a newsletter, it's worth visiting their site to check out some of the resources and guides they offer to anyone considering email marketing.

Good luck,
That Software Guy

If you are using this contribution, you may also wish to use the Newsletter Discount contribution, which has an option to determine whether the customer is a MailChimp newsletter subscriber. See the support thread at:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=534664#post534664

Scott

Hi!

I am installing the MailChimp contribution and it says in the instructions:

Your signup URL will look like this:
http://list-manage.com/subscribe.phtml?id=1234567890

Mine looks like:

http://list-manage.com/subscribe?u=abcdefghi123456&id=a97ddaa914

So can I just paste that into includes/languages/english/extra_definitions/mailchimp_sidebox_defines.php as is or will it break the form?

I did try but got: An error occured; please try later.

So I thought I'd ask just in case!

Thanks
Ernie

You want both parms. I have updated my documentation on the web and will update the README file next time I release the contribution.

Hi!

OK, thanks - I am still getting the error message though.

In your example it says my sign up link should look like:

http://list-manage.com/subscribe.phtml?.....

but mine doesn't it begins:

http://list-manage.com/subscribe?.....

(but the form in the sidebox naturally references /subscribe.phtml)

Do I need to change something in tpl_mailchimp_sidebox.php as well?

Thanks
Ernie

I have updated the doc.

You are right, the form should reference subscribe not subscribe.phtml. This is the new API.

But you shouldn't be getting errors; I'm still using the old style signup on my site. You should talk to MailChimp if you're getting errors.

Does this mod work with v1.3.8a?

Where can I find the updated documentation?

Yes it works with 1.3.8 a.
The documentation is on my home page. The URL is provided in the README file in this contribution.

swguy:

I have updated the doc.

You are right, the form should reference subscribe not subscribe.phtml. This is the new API.

But you shouldn't be getting errors; I'm still using the old style signup on my site. You should talk to MailChimp if you're getting errors.

does not work for me either. perhaps new accounts on mailchimp are not able/allowed to use the old API?

from the mailchimp form example looks like we need both params in form:

<form action="http://list-manage.com/subscribe/post" method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="u" value="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx">
<input type="hidden" name="id" value="yyyyyyyyyy">

or:

http://list-manage.com/subscribe?u=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&id=yyyyyyyyyy

I spent some time checking their website and like the mailchimp system. It seems like to really be useful this should integrate a little better with the zencart newsletters however. As it is, it appears that customers will have to sign up twice, once for the cart account, and once for the newsletter. Have you looked at how hard it would be to integrate that process, perhaps through the use of the mailchimp API?

Full integration is something that's on my list.

Re: Your previous question: I'm updating it to fully conform to the latest API spec; will release this week.

MailChimp Newsletter Sidebox version 1.2 is now available in the downloads area. It fully implements the latest version of the MailChimp API and removes some of the ambiguities from the documentation that were introduced by changes to the API.

I would love to get this working on my site. I have followed the instructions for installing it, but I keep getting error messages when I try to add an email address. I get a page that says monkeys must have stolen the page.

One thing I noticed: Where the tpl_mailchimp_sidebox.php says:

$content .= '<form action="http://list-manage.com/subscribe/post" method="post">';

My code generated from mailchimp doesn't say /post. It says ```
http://mistkits.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=

I tried changing the includes/languages/english/extra_definitions/mailchimp_sidebox_defines.php to reflect this, but then got a different error message. This one just says an error occurred.

Also, do I have to edit the CSS to get everything centered in the sidebox? It doesn't look so good right now.

I have disabled the sidebox so customers will not use it.

Response by PM.

I will be doing a more complete MailChimp integration in the next month or so which will enable your customers to sign up for your MailChimp newsletter at login time. Stay tuned.

swguy:

I will be doing a more complete MailChimp integration in the next month or so which will enable your customers to sign up for your MailChimp newsletter at login time. Stay tuned.

sounds excellent. I will be happy to help with testing etc. :clap:

Mr. Wilson,

Thank you for putting work into this excellent plugin and your continual work on integration with the User Registration portion of Zen Cart. I think that's great. Will this integration allow access to fields other than just the email address?

There are ways I'd like to segment my mailings that would relate to some of those fields (such as birthday) and I've read in other places that readers are more likely to open your mail if you personalize it with their name -- so that they know they opted-in. Will the new version of your plugin (is that the right term? I'm mainly a Wordpresser...) support additional fields?

Thanks!

Alex

Adding fields is precisely the kind of customization I do for clients on a commercial basis.

I am very interested in this so will be keeping my eye out on the new one you are working on. Any idea when it will be available?