mailchimp template export to mandrill issue with merge tags

Question

I have made templates in Mailchimp and would like to export them to Mandrill, so it can be automated when a new user signs up on our website, as a Welcome email and Getting Started email.

In the Mailchimp template, I have added the mc:edit="name" in the html as my mandril JSON looks for the name tag to personalise. Code is below

<p>Hi <span mc:edit="name">&nbsp;</span></p>

When I Send to Mandrill and view the source code, it ignores the mc:edit tag and shows this below

<p>Hi <span></span></p>

However, when I manually change the mandrill template to include the mc:edit, the personalisation works.

Is there some setting that I need to add in Mandrill (or Mailchimp) for this to work? It is really cumbersome to modify the mandrill template all the time because as we make changes to the mailchimp template, the mc:edit gets overridden as soon as I export it.

Answer 1

In my MailChimp template I use the following format to specify merge tags (named name and product):

<p>Hi *|name|*!</p>
<p>Thanks for downloading *|product|*.</p>

You will have to authorize MailChimp to access your Mandrill account. Assuming you have already done this, you shoud send your MailChimp template to Mandrill. You do this from the Templates page: click the Down arrow on the Edit button and select 'Send to Mandrill'. You should now see your template in you Mandrill account on the Outbound -> Templates page.

Assuming that you want send a new transactional message through Mandrill using a template, then you POST the following JSON to https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/messages/send-template.json:

{
    "key": "***apikey***",
    "template_name": "name-of-your-template",
    "template_content": [],
    "message": {
        "subject": "Thanks for downloading",
        "from_email": "[email protected]",
        "from_name": "yourcompany",
        "to": [
            {
                "email": "[email protected]",
                "name": "John",
                "type": "to"
            }
        ],
        "merge": true,
        "merge_language": "mailchimp",
        "global_merge_vars": [
            {
                "name": "name",
                "content": "John"
            },
            {
                "name": "product",
                "content": "Awesome 1.0"
            }
        ]
    }
}