Mailchimp Integrations & Subscribers
By Brandon Scivolette on Thursday, 09 February 2017
Posted in Technical Issues
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Good Afternoon,

I've successfully configured EB to use Mailchimp for subscriber notifications. As I was configuring the process I realized I have a few questions that I need answered about how the integration works and what I should expect.

1) Does the integration understand the type of subscription the user requested? I wonder about this since there is only one list associated with the integration and the data passed to Mailchimp doesn't appear to specify the subscription type.

In other words, if User A subscribes to a category and User B subscribes to the entire site, will Mailchimp know to only send notifications to User A if there is an update in the category?

2) I tested the subscription process as a user and I confirmed that I was correctly added to the Mailchimp list. I did notice, however, that my test subscription isn't shown in the EB "Subscriptions" list. Is this normal?
Hey there,

I am really sorry for the delay of this reply as it is a public holiday for us here.

1) Does the integration understand the type of subscription the user requested? I wonder about this since there is only one list associated with the integration and the data passed to Mailchimp doesn't appear to specify the subscription type.

In other words, if User A subscribes to a category and User B subscribes to the entire site, will Mailchimp know to only send notifications to User A if there is an update in the category?

If I recall correctly Mailchimp API do not allow to pass different kind of subscription type into Mailchimp, I will test on my test site and let you know the result later.

2) I tested the subscription process as a user and I confirmed that I was correctly added to the Mailchimp list. I did notice, however, that my test subscription isn't shown in the EB "Subscriptions" list. Is this normal?

Yes, that is normal once you have setup integration with Mailchimp.
Arlex Wong
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Thursday, 09 February 2017 10:53
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If I recall correctly Mailchimp API do not allow to pass different kind of subscription type into Mailchimp, I will test on my test site and let you know the result later.


So then it's pointless to have different types of subscriptions, right? I'd assume that all subscribers by default would be subscribing to the entire site?
Brandon Scivolette
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Thursday, 09 February 2017 12:07
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Yes, that is correct based on what i test.

Mean when the user subscribe on your single category page, they also consider is subscribed on your site wide, so when the new blog post published on your site, they will get notified as well.
Arlex Wong
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Friday, 10 February 2017 00:16
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Hi Arlex,
Can you all make these issues a little more clear in the documentation? I assumed that after turning on the integration, the right subscribers would still somehow get the right updates. But after the first blog published, it sent it out to our entire list of 47,000 people. Needless to say, that was a big mistake.

The documentation should say:

1) You need to create a new list on Mailchimp just for this purpose, and existing EB subscribers need to be migrated to that list on Mailchimp.

2) Once enabled, all subscribers will be subscribed to all blogs. The differentiation between being subscribed for just a specific blogger, or specific category, just doesn't exist anymore.
Brent Williams
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Tuesday, 01 August 2017 22:45
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Hello Brent,

Thanks for the input on this. I have logged this down into our issue tracker and we'll update the documentation to ensure that others would avoid such an issue in the future.
Mark
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Tuesday, 01 August 2017 22:48
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