As a Magento site owner, you may or may not be aware of Mandrill and/or MailChimp. Perhaps you are and you use them already, or perhaps you are contemplating the idea of making them a part of your marketing plan? Now is a great time to adopt these user-friendly, email tools, as they can now both integrate directly with Magento. Owners of Magento sites can choose to use only Mandrill or only MailChimp to send emails, or they can use a combination of them both. For example, some site owners may wish to use Mandrill to send emails and use MailChimp’s list and permissions functionality. With the advanced marketing features the two mailers offer, Magento site owners have a unique opportunity to increase the sales of their products like never before.
Mandrill, an email infrastructure service, is already used widely by eCommerce site developers as its services are tailored to meet the business needs of online retail sites. Mandrill is used to send all the types of emails that are key to the daily running of an eCommerce site. For example, password reset emails, welcome to the site messages, as well as general marketing emails are often generated and sent through Mandrill. You can send data-driven emails through Mandrill making it ideal for sending targeted and personalised messages. Mandrill was ideally intended to be used by site developers who are well versed in the art of documentation, integrations and web-hooks. It is not really recommended for developers who aren’t particularly keen on coding and using APIs.
Mandrill has a lot of great features. Because it has servers all over the world, latency is not an issue- messages are delivered in impeccably fast timing. You can add multiple dedicated IP address and then group them together and then tell Mandrill which group of addresses you want your messages sent from. In terms of analytics tools, Mandrill does not disappoint. You can search in-depth for specific emails and content with the use of some detailed filters. You can run split tests and also add tags to track certain categories of emails. Impressively, you can connect Mandrill to your own database or CRM and use its analytics to look more closely at your open rates and unsubscribe rates. You can create a wide range of different templates and set your own defaults for HTML, text, subject line etc. Other people can edit the templates conveniently without changing any of your codes.
The way you send your emails can also be customised and tweaked right down to the finest detail. You can label your tracking URLs so recipients recognise the links and Mandrill will also generate a text version of your emails, to be displayed to recipients who’s systems do not support HTML.
Mandrill also offers a wide range of integrations, including fast SMTP setup and a mobile app, allowing you to check the statuses of your campaigns from your mobile devices.
MailChimp is a fast, secure, world-renowned email marketing system for businesses that allows you to send marketing emails, automated messages and targeted campaigns. Much more of a household name than Mandrill, MailChimp developed Mandrill and added it to its family of products along with TinyLetter- an email newsletter system. Automation and personalisation are central to MailChimp. It allows you to send emails to your list of subscribers at specific times, based on analytical reports that reveal the times of day when open rates are at their highest. MailChimp allows you to target your campaigns at certain segments of your data lists, so you can aim your marketing material at specific audiences. You can test the effectiveness of your subject lines prior to sending emails and use a huge range of different design templates to maximise your ability to appeal to your consumers and encourage them to buy your products.
There is no end to how effective these two platforms are. They combine to produce the perfect vehicles for retaining your customer base with data-driven targeted messaging, whilst attracting new customers with impressive designs and quality content. The new integration with Magento is incredibly exciting given that Magento is already a world class CMS which hosts some of the most lucrative eCommerce sites out there. Using MailChimp and ManDrill in conjunction with Magento, places you the eCommerce site owner, in a powerful position. You can target your consumers with messages based on fresh information, gleaned from your analytics dashboard that will tell you exactly the purchasing and browsing behaviours of your most recent customer. You could create and send cart abandonment emails comprised of pictures of the products your consumers placed in the cart but didn’t buy, with links back to your store, so that lapsed shoppers can easily click, return and buy.
Sending real-time emails, triggered by each customer’s actions, is a great way to create that personal relationship with your consumers and increase your sales.
With the seamless integration of Mandrill and MailChimp into Magento, eCommerce site owners have more power than ever before to target their customers with all the latest product news, deals and promotions, guaranteeing a bigger potential for increased sales than ever before.
