If you accept payments via PayPal, you can automatically add customers to your MailChimp list instantly and seamlessly whenever they buy from you.
This is perfect if you sell stuff on Etsy, eBay, or your own e-commerce store.
It’s also great if you’re a non-profit or church and take donations on your website/blog.
Here’s how to set it all up…
We’re basically using PayPal’s “Instant Payment Notification” service.
You’ll need to have either a Premier or Business PayPal account.
Just log in to MailChimp, go to the Account tab, click “Add-ons” (marvel at all the wonderful add-ons we offer), then activate the PayPal 360 plugin:
Once it’s activated, click the configure link, and a new pop-up window will appear.
1. Select the list where you want PayPal purchasers’ emails to go to. Don’t just dump them into some newsletter list (unless you explicitly told them on your purchase form that they’d be receiving newsletters). Rather, create a totally separate list for “customers” who have purchased stuff from (or donated to) your organization.
In the settings for that list, your permission reminder can say, “You’re receiving this because you purchased something from our store and…” Remember, never “surprise” your recipients with email marketing they weren’t expecting. This completes our email etiquette session.
2. MailChimp will generate a secret code. I’m just calling it a secret code to make this tutorial feel more intriguing. Select that code and copy it to your clipboard.
Then, go log in to your PayPal account, and click on the “Profile” link:
On the next screen, look for the link to “Instant Payment Notifications” (it’s kinda hard to find in all those links. Here’s a clue:
The next screen will look like this:
1. Check the box.
2. Enter the secret code that you got from MailChimp.
3. Do a little dance of joy (yes, MailChimp can tell if you don’t dance).
Remember, this only works for Business or Premier accounts in PayPal.
How many of these can be set up? For example, what if what I’m selling via paypal are multiple e-mail-based tutorials. Each different tutorial would be its own list.
Possible?
Maybe you could use one main list but segment them into separate campaigns according to which product was ordered. You’d probably have to create a field name to correspond with the item id from your Paypal button, then set MailChimp to auto-segment your list.
Crystal … when you create a paypal button – go to the STEP 3: Customize advanced features Tab. Click ADD ADVANCE VARIABLES. Copy & Paste … notify_url=https://www.mywebsite.com/PayPal_IPN into the text field. Change the url to the Paypal IPN url that MailChimp gives you for your specific list.
Same question as Pearible above. I have 2 products we are selling (both email based tutorials) and we want the users to decide which list they sign upto.
I know this is possible via using the ‘form based signup’ but that means the user has to have another step of confirming their subscription via email. We want it to be as seamless as possible.
Hmmm. Just tried this and still getting ‘no connection’. Got a fully verified PayPal Business account, too.
Unfortunately this old blog post has steps that no longer match. For example the navigation to find the paypal add on is not longer under add-ons. It is now under “Integrations”.
Likewise the paypal add-in is not called paypal 360 anymore.
Finally there is a step within paypal besides pasting in the code from mailchimp. After you past the code you have to click a button that says to send IPN messages.
Even after all of those steps the integration does not work because I get a “no connection” as the user above also described.
I have a similar problem with the twitter integration.
Perhaps the APIs for those services changed and mail chimp has not changed with them.
This is really cool. Now is there a way to unsubscribe customers from a previous list once they have made a purchase?
E.g. They are a normal subscriber, then they make a purchase, so they automatically get unsubscribed from the subscriber list and now only exists on the paid customer list?
I have the email, first, and last name going into my list, but is there a way to include other variables from Paypal? In particular, I would like to include the amount they paid in the email (ie Thank you for your recent payment of $100)
In addition to that, I’d like to be able to import in MailChimp the Product that was purchased. I’ve got an autoresponder setup for my PayPal customers that I’d like to segment according to what they’ve bought.
Does this support any ‘subscription email’ service – where people pay a monthly fee by subscription and as long as they pay it, they get a paid-for email that we prepare every day?
I’d love to know the same thing. Can MailChimp be used for a fee/premium subscriber email service via PayPal integration?
I actually do think that we’ve heard from some customers who’ve kinda hacked things together like this. Will ask around.
[waits patiently]…
I asked around, and the answer is “sorta, but not really.” Basically, it’ll work if you want to make people pay money to get ON your list. But the link between MailChimp and Paypal stops there. So if someone wanted to unsubscribe from the list, they can do that fine in MailChimp. But refunding them or adjusting their payments to you would be a disconnected process. You might try letter.ly?
I already have an IPN script and it sends the user a custom email, but I would like the person to have their email added automatically to the list when they buy an item. How would I combine these 2 scripts?
Why did you copy that and past it again??
Strange. No idea what happened there. But that dupe is now deleted. #moderatingfromabroad
I hope this works out. The last time I toyed w/ IPN I got major headaches. For anyone interested, you can set your notification url on a button by button basis (in case you want to use different lists or have multiple email address receiving money) by adding the following the following into the form code paypal generates.
in case my code gets stripped, its
input type=”hidden” name=”notify_url” value=”mailchimp_link”
but with the requisite html open and close brackets around it
As Business Web Coach says above. this is old and now out of date – and most importantly, doesn’t actually work
Now, that’s pretty poor Mailchimp!!
…Do you actually read you Blog comments?
Hi, I need an email with a link and password sent to customers automatically after paypal payment, setting up paypal integration has been seamless, thanks for such a great service. But as it doesn’t trigger the opt-in emails so the ‘final welcome email’ doesn’t send and the auto responder page says this is the only way to send an immediate email, I’m at a loss as to what to do. Theres no way round it I need to send an immediate email to customers, what can I do? (and is it all correct and legal that customers don’t get to opt out of your list if paying through paypal?)
Thank you, Kirsty
Hi Kirsty, I’ve asked our support team to follow up with you via email.
I also have the same need as Kirsty. Could you explain to me how to do this? Thank you!!
So will this solution enable me to post mailchimp code in my wordpress or html landing pages and then when people signup they will be asked to pay via paypal and then their email will go into my option list for following up?
thank you
Stephen
No, it’s more like:
1) Someone buys something from your store, and you use PayPal.
2) The buyer gets added to your customer list hosted on MailChimp.
3) If you ever want to send followups to your customers, there they are in MailChimp.
Hi Ben,
If I then wanted to segment my list by ‘people who have paid with paypal’, would this list include people who weren’t subscribe before, but are now as a result of buying something through Paypal?
And, sorry, I have another question.. I also want to take orders of products which don’t cost anything. Is there anything which integrates with Mailchimp where I’d be able to track these free orders but not be charged?
Thanks for your time!
Ben, i need to the solution mentioned about where i have a landing page where they enter their email and then goto a paypal page and purchase the product and at the same time their email gets added to my mailchimp list for follow up.
Are we essentially talking about the same thing here?
Cheers
Stephen
We’re probably talking about the same thing, yes. I’d test to make sure though.
Is there a way to automatically sort the paypal additions into a group? i.e – I have a Master List that I can select paypal additions to be added to, but within that list I have a previously created GROUP named Paid Subscribers. It doesn’t seem like there is an option within the integrations tab to add them to a group . . . help! Thanks Ben.
Not sure that this still works? I have it all implemented and my connection status still says “not connected” ?
Am I doing something wrong?
Do you have integrations or know of any hacks to do this with Authorize.net?
This simply DOES NOT work in any way!
I’m a programmer and system admin and tried MailChimp integration both with a regular PayPal business account and via the Developer Sandbox. NOTHING gets added to MailChimp but PayPal History registers that the IPN was successful.
C’mon, MailChimp… You have an awesome product. Can you please update these instructions to work with your latest version? Do some testing? And verify that this actually works and provide better step-by-step instructions?
Much appreciated…
Here here! Mail chimp is great but this paypal problem is really bringing it down.
I’m trying to set up a PayPal donation button to work from the mailchimp email I’m creating for an event to benefit domestic violence.
The button on our website works, but I can’t get the same url to work on the donation button on my message. It tells me Fatal Failure. Do I need to generate an additional https: url to make this work? I’m not sure if this is a Paypal or Mailchimp functional problem or User error.
I followed all of the instructions above to integrate the accounts.
Thanks,
Ellie
Hmm, this one’s detailed enough to warrant contacting our support team: http://blog.mailchimp.com/support
When using AWeber, they have an email address that is used by PayPal to add people to the list (i.e. my New Book Sales@aweber.com). I don’t see a similar Mail Chimp list address for that final step. I think that several of the above comments are also finding this between sale and list sign-up broken.
I have a PayPal button on my site, but it can only accept payment. There`s nothing there for them to add their mailing address to receive the product. Is there an integration between Mailchimp and PayPal for this, how can I get their full address in order to mail the product?
Thanks.
we have a download link for each customer. can that be sent through this?
It depends on how you generate the unique links for each customer. You should contact our support team with details, and they can recommend the best approach.
Hi Ben,
I followed the instruction above but for some reason it’s not working. I got a message from paypal saying, messages sent to the URL are not being recieved.
What am i doing wrong?
Hi, I am using the paypal integration for Mailchimp and when a customer purchases a product via paypal, the first name, last name and mail address are added to my mailchimp list.
That’s great, but I was wondering why there is no need for opt-in confirmation using the paypal IPN. It looks like the subscriber is automatically added to my list without him getting a mail to confirm his subscription. Is this the normal flow?
Also… I want to add an autoresponder to this list so the system will send a thank you e-mail 1 day after the purchase (signup to the list). But the autoresponder is not sending mails. If I check who will get the autoresponder next, it doesn’t show any values either (when it should because there are people on the list that should receive it…)
Is it because they didn’t manually opt-in for the list that the autoresponders aren’t working?
Based on user feedback. Basically, the assumption is that a purchase means you have a relationship with that recipient, and they won’t be too surprised to receive emails from you. Also, this was a feature that people wanted specifically to create “paid subscription” newsletters, long before we eventually rolled out a feature for that. But enforcing double opt-in would be ideal here, yes.
Yes, that’s exactly why. When we first built Autoresponders, we were very concerned about the potential for it to be abused (intentionally *and* unintentionally). Some time has passed now, and we have systems in place to help mitigate that a little. So we’re in talks now to modify our Autoresponder behavior in future releases.
Until then, you might consider contacting our support team about what you’re trying to accomplish, specifically. They may be able to help you with some workarounds.
You might also want to look at the recent Performable integration to see if that would help at all: http://blog.mailchimp.com/performable-integration-with-mailchimp/
I also would like to send out a customer “Thank You” emails a few days after they have purchased something then automatically delete them from my paypal list.
I remember a few years ago there was a blog post which claimed someone was already doing this, I think it was for an iPhone app design pad company.
However this still seems to be totally impossible.
Thanks for your comment Ben.
I did contact support and they adviced me to use a date field so I can use autoresponders that get triggered by that date.
I just think it would be great if the autoresponder would be able to get triggered by the signup date, because it’s already there. For now, when someone makes a purchase I will have to go to Mailchimp and manually add the date…
Hope this feature will be available soon.
Thanks!
I have the exact same requirement as Bram above. I need to send out a welcome letter upon PayPal purchase. This should of course use the signup date, without the need for custom dates. I can’t believe this is hard for you to solve. Aweber has this service, and this missing piece means I won’t migrate. I’m stuck with Aweber’s crap product, please help out…
Thanks for an otherwise awesome product!
/Mats
Hi Ben
I’m going to try this. But I’d like to know up front;
1. What if someone who purchases is already in my other list (ie they opted-in via sign up form)?
2. Can I move people from the paypal list to normal opt-in list?
Thanks!
-Dan
Hi,
Thinking about switching from aweber to mail chimp and then setting up all my clients with mailchimp instead of aweber.
But I have a program that I would like to set up where a paypal purchase triggers the autoresponder so clients automatically get their first lesson.
From these posts people are having lots of issues. Why hasn’t MailChimp created a step-by-step tutorial and/or fixed any issues?
Has something changed, because I can’t seem to find a link to add this plug-in?
Any updates on this matter Mailchimp?
Hi Bram, there are a few different issues being reported in these comments, so I’ll attempt to address them all, and separately:
1) PayPal integration does not work – It does work, but keep in mind its intended purpose is very simple. When combined with a shopping cart, we see some systems adding code or modifying code that breaks the integration. This is due to the way some shopping carts work with Paypal.
2) Doesn’t work for paid newsletters – This wasn’t intended to be used for paid newsletters. It could be rigged for that purpose, but it would be a brittle hack. We’ve since launched a Paid Subscription feature, but keep in mind it uses Amazon Payments, not Paypal: http://mailchimp.com/features/paid-newsletter-subscriptions/ (we are considering adding paypal as a payment option)
3) Does not send welcome email – It was intended to work silently, after a purchase. So technically, it was never supposed to send a welcome email. Also, some people tried to connect this to an autoresponder. But our autoresponders had a limitation to them where they were only triggered after a double opt-in. Autoresponders wouldn’t send if you imported a list, or added via Paypal. But that double opt-in limitation was recently lifted in v6.1–> http://blog.mailchimp.com/mailchimp-v6-1-launching-next-week/
Can’t access the PayPal 360 plugin, whenever I select the PayPal logo, I get looped to sign in again.
Hi, I’m looking to use this program.
I have an extensive history of customers
who have made paypal payments.
Can I import all these emails into Mailchimp aswell,
rather than just current customers via email notification?
Can I connect multiple paypal accounts to the
same mailchimp account?
Cheers in advance.
Pei
The Paypal integration is designed to send new purchaser details to your MailChimp account. If you have people who previously purchased from you, you’d want to export their information and then import that to your list in MailChimp.
You could definitely set up multiple Paypal accounts to send to the same MailChimp account. You would just need to set the appropriate IPN settings for each Paypal account.
Ben:
great for the paid newsletters feature. pls add paypal option as soon as your team can! otherwise it will not be any different from letter.ly there are a whole bunch of us who can’t use amazon.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t see Paypal 360 as an option, just Paypal, and I don’t see how to activate it. The only option is to “add comment”. I’m following the instructions above, but it doesn’t seem like I’m in the right place. Any suggestions?
Hi Rachel,
This post is a tad old, but you’re on the right track. The Paypal integration is what you’re looking for! Updated screenshots and information can be found here: How do I import my list from PayPal?: http://eepurl.com/gOHB
I have a question that hasn’t been asked here before. I am using Paypal’s Website Payment Pro system which allows customer to pay with either a credit card or paypal directly. Paypal processes both types of transactions. Will this Paypal Integration pull both types of customers information into the mail chimp account or will it only pull in the customers that pay with paypal. Please advise. Thanks.
I see this Add-On isn’t working anymore. Why is that..?
Hi Darron, Why do you say it’s not working? Did you get an error when you tried?
I’m having the same problem as Darron Mark. I followed all of the steps but nothing, no paypal button appears in my campaign email and am not seeing any instruction on how to add it. Help please and thank you :)
(Note the first instruction above is leading people astray. It says click “Add-On’s” when they should be clicking “Integrations”)
I feel the “automatic welcome message” questions have still not been answered. If I want a user to pay through PayPal and then get an automatic welcome email, can Mailchimp do it or not?
If so, how? If not, I guess we’re supposed to use a different service then?
What if you’re using something like Drupal Commerce that overrides the IPN notification URL? (Which is obviously needed, else the order isn’t marked as paid.)
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