Mailchimp Integration pros/cons

So who’s using this? is it worth while?

Hoping to setup more automated workflows/emails.

I currently just build my templates in mailchimp and them add code to WD.

Hey Jenna,

We use the Vintools integration and it’s about as full-featured as it can get. You probably shouldn’t replace transactional and club notification emails with Mailchimp, but all of your marketing emails should go through Mailchimp (or really any third-party ESP) because WineDirect’s email marketing tools are absolutely terrible.

Holler if you have any specific questions!

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So do you, like jennanash123, build your marketing emails in mailchimp and upload the code to WineDirect? Or do you do it all through mailchimp and because of the vintools integration, your mailchimp is linked to your WineDirect account?

We’re a little bit of a different beast than a lot of wineries in that we write our own code from the ground up and then import it into both Mailchimp and WineDirect where it needs to be.

We use WineDirect for transactional emails like receipts, shipping notifications, billing notifications, but most of our marketing emails go through Mailchimp. Using Vintools’ integration, it syncs over all of our WineDirect customers and their purchases history. WineDirect’s email tools just are not adequate to do sophisticated email marketing.

The one thing I’ll caution about if you are importing Mailchimp template emails into WineDirect is that some of the code will not work the same way. WineDirect doesn’t have a conceptual model for a lot of the template blocks, has different merge tags, and doesn’t inline the CSS. You’ll want to run the code through a tool like this before bringing it over: https://inliner.cm/

I build emails in mail chimp and then copy/edit the code over to a WD template.

Currently do not use the vintools integration but wondering if i should…

thank you, so far have not come across any issues… But will check my next newsletter via that link.

It is a shame the WD emails are just so nasic, pretty much the only thing i dont like about the system.

I have no vested interest in Vintools, but I HIGHLY recommend the integration for anybody. It’s an absolute steal at $50 and it will open you up to so many better things with Mailchimp:

  • A|B testing
  • Better HTML integrity
  • Better deliverability
  • Behavioral segmenting
  • Predictive recommendations

Just to name a few.

[quote=“jennanash123, post:6, topic:4505”]
thank you, so far have not come across any issues… But will check my next newsletter via that link.[/quote]

The primary issue is inlined CSS. Mailchimp will do that automatically for you before sending, while WineDirect’s system will not. This means that for certain email clients (Gmail being the big one), it won’t properly display your styles for things like fonts, links, and images. So make sure you inline anything before putting it into WineDirect.

Here’s the deal. WineDirect makes a niche software solution for wineries, which in the grand scheme of things, is not a giant industry. Mailchimp is the single largest ESP with millions of customers. There is no way for WineDirect to compete with a system of that size, scale, and sophistication. But that’s OK, because really good integrations exist.

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Thanks for the suggestions and advice!