MailChimp Now Integrates with Drupal 7

The following post is by guest author Mitchel Xavier.

MailChimp has established itself as a leader in the email marketing space because it is so easy to use and offers a list of features that are constantly expanding. It is also popular because it integrates seamlessly with many applications. These applications include Wordpress, Joomla, Microsoft Outlook, Quickbooks, Magento as well as Drupal. Several surveys have shown MailChimp to be the email marketing application of choice.

If you use Drupal and you send out newsletters, MailChimp would be one of the best choices for email marketing. In 2007, Lev Tsypin wrote the Mail Chimp module as his first Drupal module. This module has become quite popular and is being used by almost 6235 sites, at this time of writing.

It was announced this year that the MailChimp module has been upgraded and that it has developed complete integration with Drupal 7. This means that MailChimp’s full functionality is accessible within the Drupal user interface. This is a fundamental change and a complete rewrite of the Drupal 6 MailChimp module.

This major upgrade has many new features, with the ability to completely integrate into Drupal applications. You can easily have registered users synchronize with MailChimp user lists. It allows unrestricted numbers of mailing lists and it has vastly improved subscription features. It also allows anonymous signups and multiple role assignments for each list.

In addition, MailChimp’s simple transactional solution, which facilitates sending and tracking emails over the Amazon simple email service, also integrates with Drupal. This means that the delivery of emails is extremely reliable on a large scale. It also means that through the MailChimp interface, Amazon is functioning in the backend and it is all administered through Drupal.

The user interface has been completely overhauled, making it more intuitive and easier to use. Performance has been improved and it has taken advantage of Drupal’s recent API development. This is welcome news for MailChimp users who altogether send billions of email every month. This is a major improvement in terms of ease of use and puts MailChimp at a major advantage over other email providers when it comes to Drupal integration.

While this is a significant upgrade, there are plans for further improvements. These improvements include integration with E-commerce 360, Analytics 360 and the ability to create MailChimp campaigns from within Drupal.

Mitchel Xavier is a specialist in Drupal CMS and is a Drupal developer in Sydney Australia.