The power of Mailchimp, in every app
In the world of marketing technology, Mailchimp is a roaring success. Launched as a side project 20 years ago, Mailchimp’s email marketing platform now sends billions of emails per month to its users’ customers and fans.
Mailchimp’s reach and reputation among marketers and small and midsize businesses is unparalleled. But Mailchimp also wanted to reach and empower the developers who work with marketers.
For years, Mailchimp offered two powerful APIs that developers could use to add email and marketing capabilities to their own apps. The APIs lived on different websites, had different types of documentation, looked and felt like they were from different planets, and one appeared to be unmaintained for years.
Launch by NTT DATA’s mandate was clear: To unify Mailchimp’s developer products in a single, best-in-class experience, and in the process, establish Mailchimp as a modern, world-class technology company.
The documentation is the product
In the world of software, users judge apps by how they look and feel. In the world of software development, developers judge the quality of an API by its documentation. By definition, an API doesn't have a user interface. The documentation IS the user experience.
Strategy: Rebuild Mailchimp’s credibility with software engineers
We set out to get a deep understanding of what developers need and how they want to work. Our product design team interviewed dozens of developers: developers who work with marketers, and marketers who work with developers.
From those discussions, a key insight guided the rest of the effort: Developers don’t want to be marketed to. They’re busy professionals on a deadline who prefer to skip the fluff and get the info they need to build working software quickly and efficiently.
A single place by developers, for developers
Mailchimp Developer had to speak to developers in their language, in an experience tailored to them. This premise guided every visual and user experience choice as well as our content strategy.
Mailchimp’s commitment to supporting and empowering developers meant they needed one cohesive solution that could grow to accommodate new products and APIs in the future. Mailchimp’s own developer team needed to communicate early and often with their developer customers. They had to show off all the power and functionality of their platform in a single place. They had to make it as obvious as possible how to get started, and guide developers to the right solutions for their users.
Comprehensive guides & easy integration
To help empower their developers, Mailchimp’s new API Reference and Developer Guides feature interactive, working code snippets, in all the major programming languages that developers need. From JavaScript to PHP to Ruby to Python to cURL, Mailchimp APIs can integrate with apps written in any language.
A unified, state-of-the-art developer experience, built to expand
The all-new Mailchimp Developer features:
- Rebranded APIs that live side-by-side in a unified experience
- A completely redesigned, state-of-the-art API Reference, featuring choose-your-language interactive code snippets
- New client libraries in multiple programming languages for both APIs, distributed via package managers everywhere
- Refreshed step-by-step Guides that walk developers through how to accomplish specific tasks with each API
- A fresh new dark-mode-inspired look and feel
- An all-new Release Notes area and Engineering Blog
- A mobile experience optimized for developers looking up answers or troubleshooting on the go
- A developer-specific search function that makes it easy for developers to find what they need
