The Ecommerce Tracking plugin is a free add-on that is available for installation from your account.  We currently support Magento, Zen Cart, osCommerce and PrestaShop, or if you’re a developer, you can even create your own.

The plugin collects only the details of the order, and none of your customer’s private data.  (If you want to check it out for yourself, you can download the appropriate plugin and take a look at the code or bribe your web geek to do it.)  The details collected include:

• Order number
• Total amount
• Tax amount
• Shipping amount
• Product category
• Product id(s) and name(s)
• Quantity of each item
• Cost of each item

Once the add-on is installed (through your MailChimp account), we will automatically add some tags to links inside the campaigns you send. Then, those tags will be picked up by a plugin installed in your E-commerce store. The plugin will then track users who have followed the links in your campaign, and when a user completes a purchase, the plugin will quietly send the basic details of the order– products ordered, product categories, shipping, tax and order totals– back to us via an API call.

I want to emphasize that the installation and set-up process involves two critical steps. First, install the appropriate plugin on your e-commerce site. Second, activate the free add-on under your MailChimp account. The plugin will only be able to collect data if you complete both of these steps.

Be sure to check the box to “Add Ecommerce360 Tracking to all URLs” under advanced tracking options in step 2 of the campaign builder.

advanced tracking options

Graith Internet gives us an osCommerce plugin that adds a “subscribe me to your newsletter” checkbox to your ecommerce checkout process. Their first name and email are then added to your MailChimp list. Great for e-retailers to grow your list and send offers! Be sure to also check out our Google Analytics integration and new email campaign ROI tracking tools.

GenerationSix posted a Joomla! extension for MailChimp. I’m really happy about this one, because whenever I mention MailChimp’s API and our plugins page, all I ever hear in response is, “Any Joomla plugins?” and “Got any Joomla plugins?” and “Haven’t you guys ever heard of Joomla?” and “Why aren’t there any Joomla plugins?” Now when people ask me if we have Joomla plugins, I can finally say, “YES!” (but then people ask me why I say “yes” so loudly).

Plugins are an easy way to just plug MailChimp functionality into just about any product. Developers have created plugins for Drupal, Foxy Cart, Movable Type, WordPress, Ruby on Rails, Zen Cart, and TypePad.