Multiple Distribution Lists With Contact Form 7 Plugin and SendGrid

  • I wasn’t sure where to put this post but here it goes. I am trying to setup something where during registration a user is automatically enrolled to a mailing list based on a drop-down selection on the registration form. I am using Contact Form 7 as my registration form. Basically I am a National Organization with multiple Chapters and each user will be registering for a mailing list of their Chapter.

    I also want to aggregate all Users into a global mailing list, in addition to the more specific, Chapter level lists. Each Chapter Admin will be able to manage their own lists and send out emails to their own Chapter level lists. The National admin users will be able to send out to the global mailing list.

    Ideally there would be some sort of Newsletter Plugin hooked up to something like SendGrid. I am not sure where the lists should live or how best to manage those. I think I might just have to try out SendGrid and play around with some things but wanted to ask for advice if anyone has done something similar. I am not sure what the lists that are on SendGrid are used for because I thought SendGrid was just an API mostly for handling email messages. It seems it might be able to do more than that and even be able to handle sending the newsletters as well but I have to look into it further.

    I hope you understand my goals and I am just asking for general advice on how to best set this up. Thanks for your time and I appreciate any advice.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Thread Starter nobenati

    (@nobenati)

    I thought I was using CF7 for registration but I forgot I recently switched to Ultimate Member and use those forms for registration. Not seeing an easy solution. Maybe hooks with the SendGrid API?

    Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    I don’t think you should maintain any mailing list at all in the conventional sense. Rather, keep track of the user’s mail preferences in user meta. When time comes to do a mailing, point your browser to a specific page that is a dynamically generated mailing list reflecting the current user states.

    Thus all your registration form does is collect mail preferences. This dynamic mailing list page is based on a custom page template. It queries for all users having specific user meta, then loops through the results, outputting the users and email in whatever format is appropriate – CDF, XML, whatever. Or if an API exists for your newsletter mailing app, the page can directly interface with the API to setup the mailing.

    The user mail preferences in user meta can be exposed on the user profile page via action hooks, so users can manage their own preferences after registration. Their current status is then of course considered when the dynamic page is generated.

    Thread Starter nobenati

    (@nobenati)

    Do you have any suggestion for a newsletter/service that allows the dynamic population on-demand of the list (via the meta data)? I’ve been trying to search for a robust and manageable solution for quite some time now.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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