1 Integrating Mailchimp with UltraCart

Integrating Mailchimp with UltraCart

This guide explains how to integrate your Mailchimp account with UltraCart, enabling you to manage customer email subscriptions and leverage Mailchimp's marketing automation features.

Introduction

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing service used by millions to create, send, and track email newsletters and campaigns. Integrating Mailchimp with UltraCart allows you to automatically subscribe customers to your Mailchimp lists based on their purchases, manage abandoned carts, and utilize Mailchimp's reporting tools to optimize your email marketing efforts.

Main Menu → Operations → Marketing → 3rd Party Email → MailChimp

Prerequisites

Before you begin, you will need:

An UltraCart account.
A Mailchimp account. Mailchimp offers a free plan for lists of up to 2,000 subscribers.

Step-by-step Instructions

Integrating Mailchimp into your UltraCart account is a quick and easy process.

Step 1: Access Mailchimp Configuration in UltraCart

If you do not already have a Mailchimp account, you should create one first.
From the UltraCart Main Menu, hover over Operations and select Marketing.
Select the 3rd Party Email section in the left menu and click on MailChimp.

Step 2: Configure Your Mailchimp Credentials

Once on the Mailchimp configuration page, you will need to enter your Mailchimp API key.

Click the "Click here to obtain your api here" link to retrieve your Mailchimp API key.
Paste the obtained API key into the "API key" field in UltraCart.
Select the API Version. It is recommended to choose 3.0 by default.
Double Opt-In:
- Check this box to send an opt-in verification message to the customer after they place their order.
- Leaving this unchecked will subscribe the customer to the Mailchimp list without sending the opt-in email notification.

Step 3: Global Mailchimp List Assignment

After saving your credentials, UltraCart will display a list of your Mailchimp lists. This allows you to globally assign customers to one or more lists when they make a purchase.

Select the Mailchimp lists to which you would like to automatically subscribe customers.

Note: This is a global list assignment. When you initially configure the Mailchimp integration, if the global email list you configure already has customers subscribed to it, those customers will be toggled as not having purchased. You may want to create a new mailing list for this global assignment, or perform additional sorting within Mailchimp. Consider exporting the existing list, tagging customers as "purchased," and then re-importing them into Mailchimp.

Step 4: Item Level List Assignment

You can also configure list assignments at the individual item level within the "Other" tab of the item editor. This allows for more granular control over subscriptions.

For each list, you will see "Subscribe" and "Unsubscribe" checkboxes. This enables you to migrate customers to new lists based on a purchased item.

Step 5: StoreFront Level Assignment

For more advanced configurations, you can assign a specific Mailchimp list to a specific StoreFront host. This feature requires API Version 3.

Map each StoreFront to an existing Mailchimp list.

Step 6: Configure Cart Events and Abandonment Settings

UltraCart supports Mailchimp E-Commerce Stores integration (currently in BETA).

Send Return Cart Events: Check this box to send cart events to Mailchimp Ecommerce Stores.
Trigger return cart event after _ hours: This is the amount of inactivity time before the cart event is sent to Mailchimp. The recommended setting is 1 hour.
Abandon cart after _ hours: This is the amount of time before the cart is completely purged from UltraCart. This value should be high enough to allow the customer to return and access their cart. The recommended setting is 24 hours.

Field	Description

Field	Description
Send Return Cart Events	Check this box to send cart events to MailChimp Ecommerce Stores.
Trigger return cart events after __ hours	The amount of inactivity time before sending the cart to MailChimp. *Recommended setting 1 hour
Abandon cart after ___ hours	The amount of time before the cart is completely purged from UltraCart. This needs to be a high enough value to allow the customer to come back access their cart. *Recommended setting 24 hours

Note Regarding the Initial Import for Merchants with an existing MailChimp account: When you initially configure the MailChimp integration, if the global email list you configure already has customers subscribed to it, those customers will be toggled as Not having purchased.
So, you may want to create a new mailing list for the "Step 3" global list assignment, or otherwise you'll need to initially perform some additional sorting of the list within MailChimp. Therefore, you may want to first same the list assigned to "Step 3", and export those, then tag them as purchased and then import them back into the MailChimp list.

Logging and Troubleshooting

At the bottom of the Mailchimp configuration page, you will find a "Log" button. This log provides details of the transmissions of customer mailing list subscriptions to Mailchimp. If you suspect a problem with subscriptions, this log is the first place to investigate.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you can successfully integrate your Mailchimp account with UltraCart, automating your customer email subscriptions and enhancing your e-commerce marketing capabilities.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Can I add customers to a MailChimp group based upon the customers purchase details?

Answer: MailChimp groups are currently not supported because they are plugged into a multi-vendor email subscription management framework and "groups" are a unique concept to MailChimp and most other 3rd party auto responders do not support groups at the present time. (We may make changes to support MailChimp groups the future, if that becomes a more common concept and the framework expands.)

Helpful Links

http://kb.mailchimp.com/home

Integrating MailChimp