A few weeks ago we introduced support for magically transforming your Jetpack users into native WordPress subscribers with Postmatic subscriptions. Today we do the same for Mailpoet users.

Mailpoet is a WordPress plugin which allows you to send email newsletters (including new posts notifications) directly from your WordPress dashboard. In it are lists. In the lists are subscribers. We like subscribers. If you are a Mailpoet user and would like to turn your Mailpoet subscribers into Postmatic subscribers you can do that with a single click starting right now. You can run both plugins in tandem if you like, but we don’t recommend using both for sending new post notifications.

An eye on security and privacy

There’s a reason that of the 20,000 or so emails that have been sent through our system during our beta period there have been only 4 spam complaints filed against us. Four! With this new importer we are continuing our tradition of being sticklers about spam. As in we won’t let it happen.

Here’s the deal. It’s kind of long winded.

We are making lots of ways to bring your community with you when you install Postmatic. Our invitation system, the widget, Jetpack and now Mailpoet are the first batch. There’s a few more in the pipeline as well. In all of these we want it to be easy for you and safe for your users. And what that comes down to is that we won’t make it possible for anyone, ever, to be subscribed to your site without having opted in. They could have opted in on Mailpoet 2 years ago. Great. We can use that. Or maybe they opted in via Jetpack. Awesome. Good for you, and good for your users.

How this shakes out with Mailpoet is a bit different than Jetpack. Jetpack does not allow you to bulk import subscribers to your site. It just doesn’t exist. The only way for people to subscribe is to fill out a form, then click a link in an email confirming they really wanted to join up. Getting a clean list of approved users from Jetpack is easy.

Mailpoet lets you import any users you want without them having to agree. It’s not as if they follow a more loose standard than any other newsletter service. Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor… they all do the same. I guess it’s how the newsletter sector rolls. And maybe it’s ok for newsletters because they are a one-way transaction. But we don’t do one-way and the WordPress community has a large enough problem with spam. If we aren’t careful Postmatic could make that a lot worse. We’re going to keep it clean and make sure everyone that uses Postmatic gets the highest possible delivery rates and lowest possible spam scores.

So here is how we’ll handle imports from Mailpoet

You can import your Mailpoet lists in a single click, but here is the limitation: We will not import any Mailpoet subscribers unless the following two conditions are true:

1. The user has opened an email you sent through Mailpoet: This first check makes sure the user has at least taken the time to open at least one email sent to them via Mailpoet. This isn’t enough though as it is possible to open an email just for the sake of figuring out how to unsubscribe. That brings us to #2.
2. The user has clicked a link within an email you sent through Mailpoet: If this condition is true as well then we consider them someone that probably likes your content. And no, clicking on the unsubscribe link doesn’t count 😛

When a Mailpoet import is initialized we will comb through the list, make sure all of the above is true for each user, and then leave the rest.

But here is something neat

We don’t want to leave anybody behind. Maybe someone did really want to subscribe but never actually clicked a link in an email. That happens. What Postmatic will do is let you send an invitation to the remaining users asking them to opt-in to your blog. You can personalize it and the whole deal. It uses our inviter… which people really love.

If we did not hold ourselves to a higher standard our import would allow unwilling users to be imported into Postmatic. And then they would spam or be spammed or any combination of things. Nobody wants that. Plus, if a subscriber does not open or interact with your emails maybe they aren’t all that good of a match anyway, right? Think of it as spring cleaning 🙂

Other changes in beta 10

1. We put the view this post online button back on new post notifications. By request. From many of you 🙂
2. We also added links to view the post online in comment notification emails.
3. We fixed problems with the French and Spanish translations not registering properly.
4. There is now improved styling of this content not available online notifications. These are the notices that show up if a shortcode or some advanced html is used in your post. They keep inboxes from blowing up.

Enjoy!