Look at better ways to send newsletters

[dahacouk]

Perhaps we can find an SMTP service provider?

• https://www.mandrill.com
  • https://www.drupal.org/project/mandrill
• http://mailchimp.com
  • https://www.drupal.org/project/mailchimp

This made me feel warm inside and why we should use both:

• https://modulesunraveled.com/podcast/053-using-mailchimp-and-mandrill-send-newsletters-drupal-lev-tsypin-modules-unraveled
• http://knackforge.com/tags/simplenews
• http://knackforge.com/blog/sivaji/how-we-managed-send-75k-emails-hour
• https://www.drupal.org/node/2209119

[iAugur]

I have reviewed the integration with MailChimp on a branch (kendra-51).
there is a lot to discuss.
_First Steps_

• Create a Kendra mail chimp account & configure settings
• Enable the module and link to API key
• Manage lists: There doesn't appear to be a way of managing the bulk subscription of people from within Drupal, so i recommend exporting from Drupal and importing to MailChimp
• Consider uninstalling all of the simplenews / newsletter functionality in Drupal
• Create main newsletter list in MailChimp (attach all users to this list)
• Create newsletters in MailChimp
• Create subscribe to newsletter block in Drupal and add to the home page
• Decide is double opt-in is required (gets a confirmation email - can be customised)
• Add unsubscribe elements to user profile page

To create and send a newsletter

• Create the campaign and newsletter in MailChimp and send from there

Mandrill

• Install mandrill module
• Create SPF/TXT records for www.kendra.io - https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/205582277-How-do-I-add-DNS-records-for-my-sending-domains-
  • @dahacouk updated SPF and DKIM for kendra.org.uk as this is the domain we'll use for the moment. Also updated SPF and DKIM for kendra.io for when that may change. These have both been tested as valid. I've also authenticated kendra.org.uk with MailChimp's SPF and DKIM – this may not be a good thing – will need to check test newsletters! We can remove the authentication.

[iAugur]

I have added newsletter subscription details to the user profile page - but ot only shows up once the user data has been updated. So if you simply save a user the form appears. I have set it so that as the user or an admin you can edit the subscription status on the newsletter tab.

[iAugur]

Having discussed/tested this we should investigate updating all of the users in Drupal:

• Add a field to users 'Email Bounced' or some such - default 'false'
• Programmatically set their subscription status and save the user - this should update mailchimp
• Batch this to first 1900 users so we can send out an email to them
• Create a segment in MC - 'First Batch' so we can target them
  Process the soft / hard bounces of this first set
• Export a list of their email addresses from MC and use this to unsubscribe in MC - this will unsubscribe them in Drupal then also we should set their bounce status in Drupal - this could be done simply by updating them in Drupal and set their status in Drupal to unsubscribe (and investigate why they bounced later) and set them to email bounced = true.
• Process the next batch and send the email to these (using a new segment - Second batch)
  The result should be that Drupal and MC are in sync with the lists and

[dahacouk]

We also need views where we can:

• See a list of people who have bounced emails and they are still listed publicly on the website.
• See a list of people who have unsubscribed and they are still listed publicly on the website.

[dahacouk]

• @dahacouk needs to create a trackable link for https://www.kendra.io

[BBGuy]

OK we have two functions that we can use: mailchimp_subscribe() & mailchimp_unsubscribe()
I can write a wrapper function that takes the user ID and the List ID.
The List ID is available from the mailchimp: list->Settings->List name and Campaign defaults

• Write and test subscribe function
• Integrate into a process list job

[BBGuy]

The subscribe finction subscribed the user ok but for old user did not create the needed record in the drupal DB so ended up updating the field programmatically and that worked

[BBGuy]

Pushed new functions to dev

[dahacouk]

Bump! Can we chat about Mandrill? As I want to kill the Google Apps account that currently is SMTP server for all sites.

[andystiller]

I have tested the Mandrill integration on my local machine and committed the changes on the mandrill_mail branch. With a small amount of configuration I was able to successfully send myself a password reset email using mandrill.

[BBGuy]

I have run the mailchimp subscription script and we now have most of the users subscribed:

• Active users: 3,036
• Mailchimp subscribed: 3,024
  A few where rejected by mailchimp with:
  An error occurred subscribing [email protected] to list bbdda9b35c. "MailChimp API call to <em class="placeholder">lists/subscribe</em> failed: Internal Server Error: List_RoleEmailMember: [email protected] seems to be a role-based or known invalid email address(es), and cannot be imported. You&#039;ll need subscribe it manually. Why we don&#039;t allow role-based addresses"

[BBGuy]

@dahacouk Review and close if happy