Wow. This is pretty exciting news: as previously speculated by the WSJ, Google just launched their own Apps Marketplace, and MailChimp was invited to be a part of the launch! Here’s our little listing.
There’s a video over at the Official Google Apps Blog that explains how the Apps Marketplace works, and how to install new apps. Hmm, looks like a few of our friends from the Small Business Web are listed there too. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it pays to invest in your API, fellow app developers.
We’re so excited about this because 9 years ago, we built MailChimp for our clients who were paying bloated, enterprise-sized fees for bloated, enterprise email marketing solutions. Our goal for MailChimp was to make powerful email marketing available to any business, whether big or small. And Google has that same goal with Apps. Now, to see that MailChimp is freely available with just a few clicks to roughly 2 million businesses, and 25 million users of Google Apps? Wow.
Great news – I love using Google Apps for my domain and am really pleased to see my favourite web apps (including Mailchimp, of course!) appearing in the Google Apps Marketplace.
But – with all the apps I’m trying to add (Capsule CRM, EchoSign and Mailchimp) the only route seems to be for new customers. No apparent way for existing customers to link their account with Google Apps.
Am I missing something obvious?
James, Seems like that to me. It would be great for all of my colleages that share our existing Mailchimp account to be able to auto-authenticate, but we don’t need separate Mailchimp accounts for each of us.
Hi James (and everyone else), for now, it’s for new customers joining MailChimp from the Marketplace. Not so much for existing customers. We’re being cautious and seeing how this all plays out before we devote too much time to this. So far though, we’re seeing a lot of new accounts coming, which means we’ll very likely further develop. Keep the feedback coming!
Ah — sort of makes sense. As much as I love Mailchimp, the idea that this was only to drive new accounts, doesn’t drive me bananas.
I’d love to be able to hook my current MailChimp account into GAPPS. No rush, but it will be nice if you guys ever allow this.
How do we integrate our current MC account into our Google Apps? I activated MC on my Google Apps without a hitch, but instead of giving me the option to integrate my current MC account it asks me to setup a new account. I’m uber excited to integrate the two! Please HELP!
Same here. I set up the Google App, but when I click on it, it just asks me to setup a new MC account. How do I use it with our existing account? And what exactly does it do?
This must be really exciting for you. Congratulations!
Must add a +1 to the support for existing MC customers. But here is the question, what are the specific things that I benefit from by having MailChimp and my Apps account connected?
Hi Howard, MailChimp already has so much integration with Google Analytics, Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Translate, and even a little Google Calendar, that this announcement is mostly beneficial for new customers to “discover the joys of MailChimp.” Theoretically, and if enough users requested this, we could add more specific Google Apps integration, so that a Google domain’s admin could give specific employees access to MailChimp, and integrate *their* specific google contacts, or *their* specific calendar. But we think that’s a relatively rare use-case. We’d rather not program that unless we get some real-world requests for it. So that’s why we’re here, listening to all the comments! Thanks!
Ben,
The use I see is the ability to export lists directly to Google Docs spreadsheet and also import.
Users can then manipulate these lists in Google Docs.
We could also control who can do this and who has access to particular shared folders in Google Docs.
Google account admins being able to grant Mailchimp rights would be HUGE with a church or non-profit organization. Looking forward to see where the integration goes.
I completely agree! We’re big google apps users and mailchimp users. I’d love to be able to grant access to my chapter leaders!
Yeah that’s what I guessed it would do, allow admins to give access to users in the domain. Would be useful for our small group with shifting responsibilities but not a big deal.
I’m with Howard… I’m still a little unclear on what exactly this integration does. If its just a link within Google Apps to Mailchimp so that you can acquire new subs – then thats wonderful for MC and congrats! But what does that do for subscribers, whether new or existing? Can you explain what the integration actually does other than just link to MC? I was kind of hoping we’d see better integration with Google Docs feeding into MC Lists, ability to add sign up forms to Google Forms – things like that.
Yeah, this is kinda a drag that its currently only a ploy to get new subscribers. =( What about existing customers.
Consider this one vote for making it available to existing customers. =)
Make that 2 votes for existing account integration. The ability to simply open MailChimp right from within GAPPS would solidify the users experience of the apps.
Ben I also don’t get it… Is MailChimp a Google App? Or does it just integrate with all the Google Apps you mentioned above?
I was bit disappointed as well that a new account was required for all the Small Business Web Apps that we use.
I really don’t see any benefit to having Mailchimp connected to Apps, except for the single sign on. Lists and contact info should be two-way synced to the CRM, unless you’re using Google Contacts as a CRM or something. The only beneficial feature I could see is some type of field being carried over to Google Contacts letting me know that this contact has “Unsubscribed” from mailing.
I would love to attach a current Mailchimp account to Apps for single sign on though, I have clients and friends that this would benefit as well.
Congats. Glad to see you guys getting even more exposure.
Seriously you guys are my web app heroes. Keep up the good work.
Hi guys. My new account was selected for review after activating MailChimp for GApps. I’m confused, though. Which username should I use at the Sign Up Review Form since I did not created any.
Thanks in advance.
I’ve only just started using Mailchimp for my Google As account .. so ill close it and start again
but agree with everyone else – why offer something like this and not take care of existing customers. Kinda like mobile contracts or 12 month gym memberships
Ouch! Low blow!
This blog post was originally intended to be more like, “Hey MailChimp family! We’re about to get even more members, thanks to Google Apps Marketplace. Isn’t that exciting?” But it went a totally different direction. All cool, though. We’re listening to the feedback and the monkey scientists are taking notes. FTR, this whole project was a rapid-turnaround kind of thing, because it fell into our laps right in the middle of our v5 development. The coolest part of the Apps marketplace is the single-sign-on, which got us to experiment more with Oauth and stuff. It adds a little complexity in terms of handling multi-user permissions, which is one reason we didn’t dive too deep, but it’s got us scheming some things. Muahaha.
Thanks for your honesty, Ben. You guys are a shining example of honesty and openness as a customer support ethos. It really makes your customers feel “part of the team”. And if you say, “We did what we could with a quick deadline. Better stuff is coming,” then that’s a good enough answer for me! I’m happy to wait knowing that you guys trust your customers enough to be this open. That trust is mutual. Keep up the good work!
Ditto that Jeff. Great response from Ben and the Mailchimp team.
+1 for single sign-on. My business partner and I have an agency account – I manage the API hooks, and he manages our clients’ campaigns.
I understand that you are trying to limit your GA investment until you see how this goes; however, I too would appreciate the ability to migrate an existing account. You don’t have to bring any new features right away, just give us the same thing you are currently giving the new GA customers.
We currently create lists via an AppEngine app. This change would simplify our business by giving us the ability to administer our app and MailChimp from the same control panel. It would also open us up to new opportunities to integrate our business with our GAFYD account via your current GA integration.
Yes. Please tell us how we can wire this up to existing accounts. I’ve tried to install it, but it wants me to create a new account.
I think it is a major complaint for all companies in the marketplace. You are not the only company where the GA integration is for new customers only,
I assume this could be because of how GA provide integration or the 20% Google want. I would be none too happy giving 20% of my existing revenue away (though reading the requirements I am fairly sure it applies to new customers only)
I have to agree with everyone so far. When I saw MC in the Google Apps marketplace it was the first one I tried.
Then I tried it again, because I was confused as to why nothing happened. I actually expected this blog post to be an explanation of some glitch or how-to that I was missing.
That its just for you to get new customers… and piss off your existing ones… makes it feel like bait & switch spam email.
I expected better from MailChimp
I did the exact same thing. Then I remembered how silly Google is with it’s accounts (no migrations, massive lockin) and realised I’d be wayyyy better off keeping these systems separate.
This is cos… when you have lots of Google Accounts running, you can sometimes need to run 2 or 3 browsers (or run CookieSwap extension) to access two Google properties at same time.
Pretty sure Google will never ever fix this bug (move google account), mostly because the problem is hard to describe, and requires me putting all my emails into a forum someplace public, and I aint gonna do that.
I’m hopeful but annoyed.
I’m excited about the potential, here, MailChimp. Hopefully there’ll be enough demand for more integration with gApps to justify doing it. However, for now I’m with the “what’s the point” crowd. I’m not going to export/import my lists, rebuild my RSS to email campaign, and lose all past stats just for single sign on. Simply not worth it yet.
Hi guys … I’ve submitted a few Help requests about the WordPress plugins – which dont want to work with the Google Apps account (as they dont have a username or password)
perhaps you can ‘warn’ WordPress users to not use these plugins with Google Apps Mailchimp accounts?
Oh, now *that’s* an interesting side effect. Google Apps requires the single-sign-on approach, so yeah—stuff that requires username and pwd gets a little weird. I suspect our team is working to get around that. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Yep, I just submitted a ticket about this before finding this comment thread. The easiest workaround would be to just let Apps users manually paste in an API key from the Mailchimp backend…?
Would like everyone to be able to access our existing MC account. Perhaps even let all of our users share that account also be able to still have their private campaigns. Some more like how google docs lets you shared docs to all members of the domain, and manage sharing of those docs.
So, we then have spontaneous MC work groups but all be on the same billing account.
D
out
I want to add my voice to this thread and state I was VERY surprised a post on the Mailchimp blog tells readers (almost all of them are probably already existing customers) that the Google Apps integration has been implemented.
How many people do you think read your blog who aren’t already users of mailchimp?
Very surprised and somewhat disappointed with this wanky approach!
Real feedback is going to come from existing users who already know how to use Mailchimp. Not from brand new customers.
Argh!!!
I’d like to add my voice to the numbers who are disappointed we can’t use GAPE with our existing accounts. I resell Google Apps, and need this feature or Google pinch all my commissions when I add apps like Mailchimp!
Freshbooks were the same, but they allow existing accounts now. Are there plans to make this available anytime soon? I have a client who needs a mailing solution – and at the moment I can’t give him within GAPE
Apart from this small matter, loving your work guys!
Rob
Goog Apps integration is great but we need to be able to import our Google Contacts Groups (opposed to just all of our Google Contacts) for this to be useful. Am I missing something?
I manage several websites on behalf of small businesses and non-profit organizations, so, I was really excited about the Google Apps oAuth integration.
I was looking forward to being able to allow my clients to access their MailChimp accounts with single-sign-on and allow more than one user for an organization access the account without sharing user ids and passwords.
As a Google Apps reseller, this would be a big plus in my sales pitch to medium sized businesses.
However, having to create new accounts and migrate their existing lists, and campaigns is a huge pain!
Also, the nice WordPress plugin is totally dependent on UserName and Password. Which means that I have to rip that out and hard-code list sign-up forms
I am a huge MailChimp fan … but I am eagerly waiting for the next update to fix these integration problems.
Cheers,RLM.
I am exited about the possibilites here, for example:
* contextual gadget to see if some who emailed you is on a mailing list
* reports in gmail block
* live campaign data in email reports
* etc.
According to the GAM page there are 2 services that are enabled now:
- Google universal navigation
- Single Sign-On through OpenID
To test this out I created a new MC account (even though we already use MC). The universal nav works great, nothing earth shattering, but a nice to have. SSO also works but there does not seem to be any obvious documentation or options as to who is given access to MC. By default it seems like everyone has access, which is not so great for us.
+1 for more work on this.
+1
Any news on this ?
Same sentiment here. I would like to integrate the GA version with my existing MC account.
Also, the gadget that would display a list of all sent newsletters would be nice, and a dynamic gadget that would display if the current user is subscribed or not.
thanks
Take a look at http://rapportive.com which has a MailChimp widget. This shows you if the sender is on your list and their latest activity.
What are the figures? I mean does MailChimp know how many of their accounts are actually Google Apps accounts? A simple poll in the newsletter might indicate what latent volume there is and thus what demand there could be. Speaking as a Google Admin this is a premium service Mailchimpers would probably pay for. Well I would, who else?
I have set MC up just fine for our gApps for Education but how can I ensure that only the Principal and 1 or 2 others have access to MC. Sure as heck don’t want students getting access to this. If this cannot be done then it is a non-runner. Am I missing something here?