We are looking for an email API service that allows us to send emails to specific users (not just list by list but user-by-user). Usually that would be considered transactional email and you would use an API like Sendgrid or Mandrill for it.
However, we have been using the Mailchimp service so far and we really like its dashboard and what it allows you to do from subscribing users manually, to sorting and searching, etc. We also like how Mailchimp handles unsubscribes, subscription confirmation, and preference updating of subscribers.
is there any API service that combines the two?
SendGrid actually has all of the features that you mentioned in your question. We have a dashboard that will allow you to:
Subscribe users manually
Sort and search through your list of users
Handle unsubscribing
We don't force you to opt people in (subscription confirmation), but that would be super easy to build if you really wanted it.
More details about all of this on our website and in our documentation. You can also contact our support team (which is available 24/7 by phone, email, and chat)
Related
Several vendors (SendGrid, MailChimp, SendInBlue) have "transactional" emails (sent via an external program relayed through the vendor) and "marketing" emails (managed in the vendor app through HTML templates). The vendors also have unsubscribe management and build up lists of people who have unsubscribed.
How do you use the unsubscribe information in the transactional mail side? If you try to send to X and they've unsubscribed, does it just drop the email sent to X? If not, do you have to check unsubscribe information in your own app before generating a transactional email?
What are best practices in managing this subscribe information across transactional and marketing applications? I have been searching the web, and I just find guides on how to set up the unsubscribe links (sendgrid, mailchimp, sendinblue) , but not how to use the information properly on the transactional side.
For SendGrid, if someone clicks on a global unsubscribe link, then future sends through the SendGrid transactional email API will drop it. You can see the Drop in the "Activity Feed" after the unsubscribe:
The unsubscribe list can be edited manually (to either add or delete names) through a web UI or an API.
There are also unsubscribe groups if you don't want one global unsubscribe list.
I still don't know the easiest way to integrate two systems, though. Presumably a scheduled job to copy from one system to another.
If company already subscribed to MailChimp do they need also Mandril to send transactional emails such as app welcome, invites to join or befriend, password recovery etc.
Can one send password recovery or welcome email as one person campaign programmatically using MailChimp alone? Or is it too expensive or too cumbersome?
I've been using Mailchimp for a while and what you are seeking can be partially managed with a featured called automation within Mailchimp. It allows you to:
Set up any number of emails as chained emails (so to say) which are triggered individually when something happens within the Mailchimp list. For example if someone joins your list, it triggers a welcome message. This automation requires in some cases no code and can be done relatively easy. You can see more automation examples here (of course you can use their API for more cool stuff).
For password changes notifications, email verifications and such transactional emails you could use Mandrill, but as an add-on within Mailchimp which has a separate pricing, where you can start free for the first 2000 emails.
I believe the automation on Mailchimp + a good use of their API to make changes on the list, could easily be put to good use to your advantage (haven't tried this combination yet but will do in the future, let me know if you find out something).
To answer more directly your question, yes, you can achieve a certain degree of automation with the automation part of Mailchimp (which is relatively new), but for a more granular control you definitely could use Mandrill as an add-on within Mailchimp.
Techically, you could create single person campaigns via the Mailchimp API.
But, Mailchimp has developed it's own anti-spam AI (Omnivore) that kicks in every time the campaign is ready to be sent, which analyzes the campaign and list data.
Since I had Omnivore block some of my campaigns for trivial reasons, I think it would be a matter of time before it finds a pattern in your workaround.
I am a bit confused with Mailchimp and Mandrill, what I need to do seems to need both, let me explain:
A social network needs to send at 1am everyday a notification email to their users that have not logged in during the last 24 hours. Emails have to be personalised.
On the top of that, there are different campaigns for different list of users.
My first thought is to use the mandrill API, but I need to be able to see who unsubscribe from what campaign (a user might want to unsubscribe to one campaign but stay subscribed on another one). I cannot seem to find something that fits the bill with Mandrill... Subaccount? Tags?
Thanks!
I'm not 100% sure this will answer the question, but let me try:
Mandrill actually belongs to MailChimp, and was created for interfacing with it. You can use the "mandrill-api" gem - https://mandrillapp.com/api/docs/ - to interface with many of the Mandrill and MailChimp features to do the things you wanted.
A lot of times if you are attempting to do so, and run into errors such as "XXXX not found", you have to send it FROM MailChimp TO Mandrill. For instance, when you create a template in MailChimp, click the dropdown menu next to the template, and click "Send to Mandrill". You should be good from there.
Other than that, I wish you luck. While the mandrill-api gem can do everything, it has absolutely abysmal documentation. There are multiple third-party gems that provide similar functions (mandrill-rails is a popular one) that you might have better luck with, but I have not used them myself.
Notifications = Mandrill = 1:1 emails
Campaigns = MailChimp = 1:many emails
Typically, notifications are 1:1 emails - your system sends a single user an email as a result of some trigger within the system. The trigger might match multiple users at the same time, but emails are sent to them each individually - probably via a loop in your code. Mandrill supports templates to personalise these emails if required.
Campaigns are sent to mailing list members in bulk, where the same (personalised) email is sent to multiple users at the same time. This is either triggered by hand (you manually create and send a campaign) or is based on a scheduled trigger (eg autoresponders or scheduled campaign mailing).
Notifications are generally system-related emails and while you do have the technical ability to let users unsubscribe from them in Mandrill, typically I would consider that a configuration option you'd give them in their personal control panel on your site.
Campaigns are something you MUST allow users to unsubscribe from to comply with anti-spam laws, so will contain unsubscribe links in the footer of every email.
Ok i currently send information to my customers through my magento website. I'm curious to know what the difference is between sending emails through my website's server and using a service like mailchimp or mandrill?
Mailchimp has a lot of list management features for the admins such as sub-dividing your list into the most responsive vs least responsive subscribers so you can tailor your message to each (for example), MailChimp has your campaign analytics built into their dashboard, they have fully implemented sign-up buttons for your website, automatically sent subscription confirmation emails, and subscription management forms for the users to decide which lists they want to be on. These are just a few benefits.
Basically:
You could do all that with Magento and Google Analytics and a bunch of custom backend code, but it would be a huuuge amount of work. Then again it all depends on how much you intend on focusing on email marketing. If you're sending a newsletter to a small list, then you're probably fine with sending emails from Magento.
I have a database as part of my web app that stores user emails, age, gender, etc. Is there a way, through the API to send a bulk email to a lsit of users? Previously I've used their API to create new entries from my database in MailChimp's system, and then we'd segment our users through MailChimp's web application. The issue is that sending your data to MailChimp has so many issues. For example, to store a user's age in MailChimp, you have to create an individual "group title" for each age when done thru the API. You can't just specify that the field "age" is a number and then add whatever you like. Also, each user selects a city when they sign up through us, and if we add another city to our selection list, you have to manually add it on MailChimp, otherwise you get an error.
So the simplest solution would be if we could do the segmenting on our side and send an email through the API, unless there is another, easy way to do this. I know that Amazon SES let's you email through an API, but I want other features of MailChimp, such as sent email history, analytics and providing and easy unsubscribe feature for users - Amazon SES doesn't do any of that.
Is there an answer to my conundrum?
Have you checked out Mandrill? It's a newer service from MailChimp that works like SES, but has those incredible MailChimp marketing sensibilities you know and love (open/click tracking, email audit log, plus lots of new stuff.)
It won't connect directly to your data in MailChimp (yet), but it sounds like you've got all the relevant data in your own DB already and can do the segmentation and content generation yourself.
Bonus: you'll also get a discount if you're already a paying MailChimp customer.