[ic] How to create mailing lists?

[Thomas J.M. Burton]

...snip...
> That aside, I'm still not clear on how the mailing lists got created
and
> recognized by Interchange in the first place. The demo has four
listed:
> Special Offers, Newsletter, Alerts and Recalls, Upgrades. Here are my
> questions:
>
> 1. How did those mailing lists get created? For my own site, do I
have
> to do that myself, outside of Interchange?

I haven't really looked into those lists myself, but I'm assuming that
they are just in the foundation demo as a "suggested use" and don't
actually have any backend programming or actual lists set up. If anyone
knows this to be otherwise, please correct me.


> 2. If the mailing lists are part of another program, how does
> Interchange know about them? Where is the part in Interchange where I
> can add/delete mailing lists? I'm not talking about signing up
customers
> here.
>
> 3. If the mailing lists are part of another program, how does
> Interchange send an e-mail to the list, and restrict others from
doing
> so?

We use majordomo for our mailing lists, and don't use IC to manage the
existence of any lists. Each of the catalogs we run currently has only
one list, and on the checkout page I have a "Would you like to receive
our free newsletter?" area with a "Yes/No" select list.

At the top of the etc/mail_receipt file for that catalog (I have e-mail
address required and don't give customers an option not to receive an
e-mail receipt, so this file will always be processed), I've added
lines like this:

    [if value mail_list == 1]
    [email to="listname-request@domain.com"]
    subscribe [value email]
    [/email]
    [/if]

This sends an e-mail to majordomo requesting a subscription to the
list. If you have e-mail receipt as an option for the customer, you
might want to put the above code into the etc/report file instead of
mail_receipt.

That's my two cents. Hope it helps. :)

-Tom

___________________________________
Thomas J.M. Burton, Design/Production
Global Focus Digital Media, LLC
www.globalfocusdm.com