Using MailChimp for Email Marketing

Owned by Daniel Renshaw
Last updated: Sept 18, 2019 by Chris Slattery
3 min read

Straightsell Email Marketing

Over the coming months we will be looking to phase out our in built email marketing functionality.

This will affect any newsletters or promotional emails you send out to your customers through the Straightsell Control Panel (Contact Management & Web Marketing > Email Marketing Campaigns).

Note: This will not affect email notifications, such as those for orders and registrations. Nor will it affect the initial Go Live email for new websites.

This decision was made as 3rd party email marketing services are better able to provide a more polished product for our customers at no additional cost*.

The service we would recommend is MailChimp as we already offer a MailChimp API Integration for websites on our V11 templates or later.

  • For more information on this integration please create a ticket in our Help Centre
  • The following guide will instruct you on how to create a MailChimp account and how to export your Straightsell Buyer File to create a mailing list
  • *MailChimp is a free service for users with up to 2000 subscribers and up to 12000 emails sent per month

Signing up for MailChimp

You can sign up for free at mailchimp.com

New users are automatically set up with a 'Forever Free' account which entitles you to:

  • 2000 subscribers
  • 12000 emails per month

Should you require additional subscribers/emails sent, monthly plans start from $10USD per month.

Finding the MailChimp API Key and MailChimp Audience Name

In order to link your Straightsell website with your MailChimp account and list, we require an API Key and Audience Name (was called List Name). Follow these MailChimp help articles to obtain these details:

Exporting your Customer Data to MailChimp

Before you can start setting up email templates to send out to your customers (review user guides here) you must first extract your data from the Control Panel and export it to MailChimp.

Downloading Your Buyer File

You can download your Buyer File from the Straightsell Control Panel (Administration > File Upload/Download):

  • Click on the Download Files tab
  • Select Buyer File from the first dropdown menu
  • Click on Download Data File
  • You will now have a file of all your customer data that can be exported to MailChimp
Exporting to MailChimp

Once you have created a list for your customers you can import your customers into that list:

  • Refer to the screenshot below for how to start this process
  • Select CSV or tab-delimited text file and click Next >
  • Browse to your Buyer File and click Next >
  • Match your customer data to existing MailChimp columns (or create new ones) and click Next >
  • Categorise the imported contacts as Subscribed and click Import
  • Your contacts will now appear in your MailChimp mailing list

Advantages of MailChimp

MailChimp offers email analytics, whereas our Email Marketing platform does not:

  • Email analytics enables a review of an email that has been sent, who opened, who clicked through, who bounced (did not receive the email), and who unsubscribed, this data can help you:
    • assist with refreshing your campaign database, and
    • tailor your email marketing campaign to better suit your customers' habits
  • Below is a screenshot of some of the analytics that is made available to you after you send an email campaign:


Some useful stats from the above:

  • Open Rate: % of recipients who opened your email (can also be seen as Total Opened)
  • Click Rate: % of recipients who clicked on any links in your email (can also be seen as Total Clicks)
  • List Average: How the Open and Click Rate compare to your previous email campaigns
  • Industry Average: How the Open and Click Rate compare to those of your contemporaries
  • Successful Deliveries:  How many of your emails were received by active email addresses (can also be seen as number of Bounced emails)
  • Unsubscribed: Number of people who unsubscribed from your mailing list after receiving the email
  • 24 hour performance: Track at what times people are opening your email