Maybe, rather than developing all of this in Umbraco directly, it would be more effective to produce a package which fully integrates a third party service like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp? If you can produce something as good as these tools, then it would be awesome to have an Umbraco-specific package, but that's a massive task.
If I had better .NET skills I'd love to be involved in something like this. Thanks for opening this idea up to the community.
We thought about integration, but it's actually an assignment for some guys at the Computer Scientist study in Aarhus, so it has to be a bit more advanced, therefor the thought of building it from scratch.
Integrating with MailChimp would definitely be great, and I think that there would be plenty of work in that. Topics like deliverability, focus on keeping the mailserver whitelisted (of course the campaigns are "white"), performance issues etc...
An example for an integration project could be
Designing the template and content in Umbraco
Adding receivers from Umbraco members & member groups, perhaps using/combining it with an external datasource - like XML, CSV etc
Merging available memberdata into the newsletter
Sending the mail through MailChimp
Getting the metrics from the campaign in MailChimp back into Umbraco, like soft bounce, hard bounce, unsubscribe, clicks etc..
Just my thought, having worked win e-mail marketing and Umbraco for many years.
Nevertheless it's a great effort. Looking forward to seeing the result, and hearing about the experiences.
I know of a few people who're currently starting development of a mailer plugin for umbraco targeting at least for an integration of CampaignMonitor and MailChimp (and a few less known esp's). I don't disencourages such initiatives, but would be better to join forces. Shoot me an e-mail (dirk at netaddicts dot be) so we can discuss this?
If you move on with the idea, and would like some inputs, test persons etc, let me know. I've been working with e-mail marketing for the last 10 years, and Umbraco the since 2005 - so I'm really looking forward to the day where the 2 can be combined smoothly.
Integrate third party newsletter service?
Maybe, rather than developing all of this in Umbraco directly, it would be more effective to produce a package which fully integrates a third party service like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp? If you can produce something as good as these tools, then it would be awesome to have an Umbraco-specific package, but that's a massive task.
If I had better .NET skills I'd love to be involved in something like this. Thanks for opening this idea up to the community.
We thought about integration, but it's actually an assignment for some guys at the Computer Scientist study in Aarhus, so it has to be a bit more advanced, therefor the thought of building it from scratch.
It probably won't be as good as those tools, but it will be free and open source.
That's cool Rasmus - it will certainly be a valuable resource regardless.
Integrating with MailChimp would definitely be great, and I think that there would be plenty of work in that. Topics like deliverability, focus on keeping the mailserver whitelisted (of course the campaigns are "white"), performance issues etc...
An example for an integration project could be
Hi Rasmus,
I know of a few people who're currently starting development of a mailer plugin for umbraco targeting at least for an integration of CampaignMonitor and MailChimp (and a few less known esp's). I don't disencourages such initiatives, but would be better to join forces. Shoot me an e-mail (dirk at netaddicts dot be) so we can discuss this?
Cheers,
/Dirk
Excellent suggestion Dirk :o)
If you move on with the idea, and would like some inputs, test persons etc, let me know. I've been working with e-mail marketing for the last 10 years, and Umbraco the since 2005 - so I'm really looking forward to the day where the 2 can be combined smoothly.
Cheers,
/Christian
Take a look at http://www.cmsmailer.com/ for 3rdparty integrated mailer
you can download our tools that make it easier to sync with mailchimp:
http://www.orbitone.com/en/CodePlex/Pages/MailChimp-Sync-Module.aspx
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