Introduction

Mandrill is a scalable and affordable email infrastructure service, with all the marketing-friendly analytics tools needed to run successful marketing campaigns. Uluro has integrated the functionality that comes with Mandrill into the Campaign Manager to offer real-time analytics by providing Mandrill with a web hook target that stores the Mandrill events.

This paper will help you set Mandrill to supply these analytics and more.

****Please note you must have the following programs before you can utilize Mandrill; Web version 3.2.1.7 or later, Usetup version 6.1.1.30 or later, and PDFEmail version 6.1.3.3****

Getting Started

Setting up Mandrill

The initial setup of a Mandrill account is simple and straight forward.

1. Open your web browser and navigate to www.mandrill.com.
2. Click the Sign Up button.
3. During the sign up, supply a payment method. The first 12,000 sends are free per month.
4. Select Settings from the dashboard.
5. Select New API Key from to create a key. This will be your main account key.
6. Select Webhooks from the menu on the top of the page.
7. Select Add a Webhook.
8. Select the trigger on events desired for reporting.
9. Enter the Post to URL value. This will be the URL that the webhook sends data to. This will be <Root>/trackingcallback/mandrillcallback.aspx where <Root> is the valid URL for a customer. Example: http://www.myutilitycustomer.com/trackingcallback/mandrillcallback.aspx. This will process all events for all customers of the PSP. Only one is required. Duplicates to the same web application will result in duplicate records!
10. Enter a description for the webhook and save your entry.
11. If this is the main key you will be using, set the Email Tracking Api and Web Hook Key in Global settings\Email Tracking in uSetup

    If this is for a particular client set the Tracking API key and Web Hook Key in the uSetup Customer Email Settings\Tracking page 

    Customer Email Settings\Tracking page                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     See “Mandrill Email Tracking User Document.docx” for more information.

12. Install the uEmailTracking windows service and modify the uEmailTracking.exe.config file with the following:
    1. RemotePrint connection string. This will point to the Uluro Database.
    2. UluroCPMDB connection string. This will point to the Uluro Web database.
    3. MandrillUserName app setting. This will be the valid email address that was used during the Mandrill setup.
    4. MandrillKey app setting. This will be the value that was obtained in step 5.
    5. MandrillTrackOpen app setting. Either Y or N depending if email open tracking is desired.
    6. MandrillTrackClicks app setting. Either Y or N depending if email click tracking in the body of an email is desired.
    7. CheckEvery app setting. This will be a whole number between 1 and 65556. This is the number of minutes between processing attempts. It is defaulted to 10.
13. Save and close this file.
14. Open the computer manager.
15. Navigate to the services window.
16. Find uEmailTracking and ensure it is set to run automatically.
17. Select start to begin the service.

Updating Mandrill Settings

If for any reason it becomes necessary to change the values of the Mandrill Process, stop the UEmailTracking service and follow the directions in the Initial Setup. The Mandrill key can be changed by going to the mandrillapp.com site, logging in and selecting Settings/SMTP & API Info. Then select Delete the API key and generate a new one. Make sure that you follow the instructions in 11 through 17 of the Initial Setup instructions.  

Where to find error messages

Unforeseen errors occur in any system. Errors for this system can be found in the ExceptionErrors table in the web database.

For more information on Mandrill please refer to the Mandrill Support Guide.