Compatible with MailChimp/others?

Hi @afc007,
Thanks for your message.

Yes, you can use Mailchimp or any other transactional email service with BNFW. If you install Mailchimp and route all your WordPress email through that, this will take care of everything for you.

Hope this helps and if you like the plugin, please feel free to leave an honest review.

Thanks,
Jack

Thanks for the encouragement, Jack. I have since created a MailChimp account (tested/works) but can’t get it to work with BNFW. My hosting service, wpengine, does not manage email and their tech support have been unable to suggest a solution, other than to edit spf records, and use mail gun or sendgrid (not familiar with any of those).

On the notification form that I created, I supplied as the From address my mailchimp user name and address, for Send To , I created a user from within WP with my private email address (one address only). I gleefully clicked Send Me a Test Email and got the response “Test notification sent”. But no msg arrived. The wp-engine support staff could find no outbound msg to the specified address.

Not knowing where else to turn, I installed the MailChimp for WordPress plugin, which required me to retrieve and provide an API auth number from MailChimp. Did that.

Can you see any way forward here? I very much want to use BNFW because it will accomplish exactly what I need.

One final note: in creating the sample notification, the pulldown menu offered very few options (far fewer than the video shows). Absent was Posts (alert when new post is added). Do I need to purchase an addon to get that to work?

Thanks again for any guidance/support you can provide.

Hi @afc007,
It seems that you may have some kind of conflict if you can’t see Posts showing in the Notification select box. 99% of notifications are included with the free core plugin and then only added to with some add-ons.

Please can you make your way through this document and let me know how you get on?

Additionally, you may wish to read this about improving email delivery: https://betternotificationsforwp.com/documentation/getting-started/how-to-improve-email-delivery/

Thanks,
Jack

Jack, thanks again for the helpful advice. I’ve been able to get BNFW to send email notifications from my gmail account, have created a notification form based on Posts which now works, but haven’t been able to mesh outbound notification alerts with my MailChimp “campaign.” To make that work, I need to enter a value in the notification form template for Send To: that MC understands. I can easily create an outbound list by adding users through WP; the challenge is to use the subscriber list that MC have generated.

All info about enhancing outbound email, spam avoidance very helpful and I am actively reserarching that and other suggestions that wpengine (hosting) have made. I am sure I will ultimately be able to get good connectivity but I remain curious about how to get MailChimp to play nicely with BNFW. Are you aware of any successful integrations?

Many thanks, once again,

Alexander

Hi @afc007,
Pleased you got the initial sending part working.

Are you able to explain what it is that you’re ultimately trying to achieve with BNFW and Mailchimp? If I knew the context, I might be able to make some suggestions.

Thanks,
Jack

Jack, thanks for getting back to me. I know we can a solution here somehow.

Here’s my goal:
Automate (the sending of) email notifications to 237 email addresses every time a new post or comment occurs on williams68.org. I want to use MailChimp (MC) to send out the email messages. I have a MC account and have created a “campaign” (their term for mailing list). I need to know how to “feed” the information that BNFW captures to MC so that they can do the actual email sending.

If you can, please look at the BNFW form I’ve created here: https://williams68.org/bnfw-screen-capture/

The area in the red box is where I believe outbound email addresses are entered.
What should I enter there to get MC to send out my notifications? I can get gmail to send out notifications to my list created with BNFW, but not seemingly with MC.

I have asked MC about this problem. They have no easy answers were able to provide the information below. I’m not enough of a programmer to take this forward but perhaps there is something useful there for you.

Again, many thanks,
Alexander

<mc_support>
You’ll find all our API at: https://developer.mailchimp.com/documentation/mailchimp/ <https://developer.mailchimp.com/documentation/mailchimp/&gt;

I’m also going to include a few articles that can provide more steps on the integration process.

About API Keys: https://eepurl.com/b9a05b <https://eepurl.com/b9a05b&gt;

View Integration Options: https://eepurl.com/ciWT9v <https://eepurl.com/ciWT9v&gt;

Getting Started with Integrations: https://eepurl.com/bCsh6f <https://eepurl.com/bCsh6f&gt;

You can reach out to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> too for API heavy questions.
</mc_support>

Hi @afc007,
Ah, I see.

I’m not sure BNFW will be a good fit for you in this situation. The two suggestions I have are:

1. Use Mandrill to send the email for you.
2. Set-up RSS feed emails in Mailchimp using a sign-up form they provide.

Option 2 will mean that BNFW won’t be used. I think this is the ideal scenario for you.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Jack