CiviCRM MailChimp Integration

[polestar]

Hey Guys,

There was some discussion around CiviCRM and MailChimp Integration some time ago. Just starting a discussion to find out what features should be integrated in a CiviCRM Extension which allows you to send newsletters/campaigns using MailChimp. Here are the two basic features:

• Synchronise Contacts (Subscriptions and Unsubscriptions) with MailChimp List using a cron job
• Synchronise Groups as Groups in MailChimp List

Anything else that you can think of?

There is a possibility that the module will be sponsored by MailChimp and it will then be provided for free to all the users.

Regards
Rohit

[Dave Greenberg]

Rohit - This would be pretty cool. Some other possible features:
- report undeliverable emails back to CiviCRM / put them on bounce hold - during synch (so that folks know about bad emails on the CRM side)

- (not sure if this is practical / scaleable but ...) insert Bulk Mailing activity records for mailing recipients (as done by CiviMail) - so users can see what mailings a contact received from the Activities tab etc.

[polestar]

Hi Dave,

Yes definitely good idea about the undeliverable emails.

I will check if it is possible to fetch the sent email from MailChimp and we will include it as well.

Regards
Rohit

[Hershel]

See here: http://drupal.org/sandbox/arielqgold/1104954

[polestar]

Thanks Hershel.

We are planning to develop one module for CiviCRM which works for Joomla and CiviCRM. Also, the project that you pointed to, doesn't seem to have any code available even after the request from various people.

[fen]

polestar -

How has this project been going?

@arielgold was to update original code from @poieo but unfortunately did not get started on it.  I also grabbed @poieo's code some time ago and started cleaning it up (much more to do still!) but posted the code to my git sandbox on drupal.org (http://drupal.org/sandbox/fen/1233314).

I'm (re-)starting work on the CiviCRM <-> Mailchimp integration today and hope to have it completed within a week or two.  If you're interested in collaborating on this, please contact me.

[polestar]

Hi Fen,

It is almost complete. As per the suggestions provided to us in another post we have decided to make it a cron job.

We are testing it on Joomla at the moment but I don't see why it won't work with Drupal.

[fen]

So yours will be cron based?  I may have a cron-enabled section in the code I'm putting together (see updated description at http://drupal.org/sandbox/fen/1233314) but I'm aiming for more real-time updates.  Basically, when a contact is added to or removed from a CiviCRM group that is associated with a Mailchimp list, the Mailchimp list will be updated immediately.  (There may be a problem with bandwidth overloading during, say, bulk contact imports, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.)  In the other direction, the Mailchimp webhooks API can notify CiviCRM of subscribes and unsubscribes, but not sure about bounces.

One question I still haven't answered: how are you associating CiviCRM groups with Mailchimp lists?  There are at least two ways I can think of: either by exact match of unique names, or via an admin panel that where associations are explicitly created.

I started building this as a Drupal module but I'm thinking it's really more of a CiviCRM module or extension.  In any case, much of the code should be applicable to Joomla.  I'm interested in seeing what you've got - is it posted somewhere?

[fen]

@polestar - more questions:

• Do you handle smart groups (I'm considering them, though this http://civicrm.org/index.php?q=civicrm/contribute/transact&reset=1&id=3 would have made it a lot easier)?
  
• How do you handle the "Do Not Email" option in CiviCRM?  Do you unsubscribe the user from Mailchimp and ensure that he/she won't be re-synced?
  
• What about the other direction: when a user opts-out from Mailchimp?  Do you set the "Do Not Email" option and then (again) ensure that he/she won't be re-synced?
  
• Do you have a way of handling email address changes, like if Bob switches from bob@aol.com to bob@yahoo.com?  If the user does this in Mailchimp, how do you know what contact to update in CiviCRM?  If done on CiviCRM, I suppose a pre-hook can capture the potential change on the CiviCRM side and do the right thing...
  

Well, that's enough questions for now.  I hope that you (or someone) has some answers for me, as I'm stumped on some of these.

[fen]

I've just posted an update at http://drupal.org/sandbox/fen/1233314 - still a lot to do, but I've refactored the code to make it simpler.  The next pass, which will include some cahcing/optimization, should make it simpler, still.

It's safe for testing, but not yet ready for production.

[jtbayly]

Hi Fen,

I just tested your latest version, and I really like what you've done. I hope you are able to keep working on it. I just wanted to give you a thumbs-up and some encouragement.

Thanks much,
-Joseph

[fen]

Thanks, Joseph.  I keep getting called off to other projects, but I expect (hope?!) to come back to civichimp soon (read: within the next few weeks).  I have two new features I want to add, too, that will require some major refactoring: 1) dry-run mode will report all changes to either db that would be made without actually making them, and 2) full support for multiple main mailchimp lists (right now, civichimp only supports a single main list with multiple sub-groups and interest lists - it's a confusing collection to map).

If you have any suggestions or more specific comments, I would love to hear them.  And in any case, thanks again for checking it out!

[kenlyle]

Nice work.

I spoke to the developer of the Joomlamailer extension about Smart Groups, and his idea was to dynamically create a segment in MailChimp via the API, then mail to the segment.  I hope that might help.

Best,
Ken

[jtbayly]

I would recommend tackling the multiple mailchimp lists idea after you get it a bit more production-ready (since that's all I care about at the moment). But that might not be practical, since you say that will require refactoring.

Dry run would be nice in giving people confidence that they can trust this module, and would probably help drive adoption. I like that idea.

I'm really excited to be able to use this module. I hope you can get back to it soon.

-Joseph

[Habbakuk]

Hey Guys,

There was some discussion around CiviCRM and MailChimp Integration some time ago. Just starting a discussion to find out what features should be integrated in a CiviCRM Extension which allows you to send newsletters/campaigns using MailChimp. Here are the two basic features:

• Synchronise Contacts (Subscriptions and Unsubscriptions) with MailChimp List using a cron job
• Synchronise Groups as Groups in MailChimp List

Anything else that you can think of?

There is a possibility that the module will be sponsored by MailChimp and it will then be provided for free to all the users.

Regards
Rohit

Will there be any more features, and these are just the main ones, or are these the only planned changes?