On 13th March 2014 at 2109hrs UTC the first commit was made in the Mautic open source project, which is the engine powering the marketing for over 40,000 websites around the world. 

Today, as we kick off the celebrations of our 10 year anniversary, we stand proud of the journey we’ve shared and celebrate our remarkable community that has fueled our success.

From the very beginning, Mautic has thrived on the collective effort of our open source community. Our journey would not have been possible without the contributions from our members, sponsors and partners; our passionate community; and the countless organizations that have championed the open source marketing automation revolution.

A Decade of Collaboration and Growth

The early days of Mautic were marked by a spirit of innovation and a relentless pursuit of building a user-friendly, open source marketing automation platform which persists to this day. At the time there were no open source alternatives to the many closed-source proprietary tools – Mautic truly was a disruptor in the field.

Who created Mautic?

Mautic was created by the founder, DB Hurley, with the vision of giving every person the power to understand, manage, and grow their business or organization by getting powerful marketing automation software into the hands of everyone.

Mautic was built by a small team of passionate developers working for the founding company Allyde, which rebranded to Mautic, Inc. in 2016. Later in 2019, Mautic Inc. was acquired by Acquia to become a part of their market-leading Digital Experience Platform. Acquia supported Mautic’s growth as an open source project in many ways. Without their support and collaboration, Mautic would not be where we are today – a growing and thriving independent open source project. 

As Mautic matured, more and more agencies and businesses saw the power of open source marketing automation and started to adopt Mautic in large numbers. As adoption grew, so did the open source community. 

Mautic’s growth and reach today

Today, Mautic powers the marketing experience for over 40,000 websites in 85 countries around the world – a truly worldwide presence.

A small proportion of those organizations using Mautic also contribute back to the project through financial contributions as a Member of Mautic, by giving their staff time and resources to contribute practically, and by helping to spread the word of Mautic. If you’ve not yet joined them in supporting Mautic’s growth, read on for more information on how you can be a part of Mautic’s future sustainability. 

A vibrant, welcoming worldwide community

The true heart of Mautic lies in this vibrant community of contributors. Our community has been the driving force behind our innovation. Their consistent efforts, from writing code and crafting documentation to contributing to discussions and organizing events around the world, have shaped Mautic into the powerful platform it is today.

A Heartfelt Thank You

This 10 year anniversary is an opportunity for us to celebrate every single one of you who has played a role in Mautic’s story. 

Celebrating our Community

To our members, partners and sponsors: your belief in our vision and your financial backing have been instrumental in our growth – none of this would have been possible without your support. 

To our developer community: your code, documentation, and unwavering dedication to improving Mautic, helping the product to grow and develop are the very foundation of Mautic. 

To our wider community of contributors: open source projects are nothing without the non-code contributors who keep the project running. Without you, so many aspects of Mautic would never happen, from the awesome online and in-person events to our amazing and vibrant forums, you keep the heart of Mautic beating around the world. 

To the organizations that use Mautic, thank you for choosing us. Your success stories are what motivate us to innovate and keep pushing the boundaries.

A Glimpse into a Bright Future

As we embark on celebrating our 10 year anniversary, we look towards the horizon with immense excitement. The future of Mautic as an independent open source project is brimming with potential. We are constantly evolving, embracing new technologies, and refining our platform to empower businesses of all sizes to achieve extraordinary things. 

Just recently we were officially recognized as a Digital Public Good, showing the importance of what we’re doing with Mautic – enabling equitable growth and empowering organizations worldwide to compete on a level playing field by making available powerful open source marketing automation software.

At the core of our vision remains a deep commitment to fostering a collaborative environment where our community can continue to thrive, and in which we can continue to innovate and develop our world-leading open source marketing automation platform.

We warmly invite you to join us!

Be a Part of Mautic’s Exciting Journey

The next chapter of Mautic is in your hands to help write. The future of Mautic depends on each and every one of you.

Whether you’re a seasoned marketer, a budding developer, or an organization seeking to unlock the potential of marketing automation, we welcome you to join us.

How you can be a part of Mautic’s future

• Become a Member of Mautic: As an individual, as an organization – if you love Mautic and/or it helps you with your organization, become a member at $100 for individuals (or the prorated amount using the Big Mac index) and from $1200 for companies with some great perks for organizations!
   
• Contribute to the project: Our thriving community is always looking for passionate individuals to lend their expertise. Find out how you can give back to Mautic in our Contributors Handbook.
   
• Contribute to the 10 year anniversary project: Follow our Assembly on the Community Portal and join us on Slack in #wg-10-years-celebration to help us plan celebrations and events marking his historic year!
   
• Become a Mautic champion: Share your Mautic success story in your local community, on your blog and social media and at conferences, and inspire others to try Mautic.
   
• Embrace the power of open source marketing automation: See how Mautic can empower your business to achieve its marketing goals. Watch this space for the launch of our new official Mautic Trials towards the end of March!

Here’s to the next decade of Mautic! Together, let’s keep building a future where open source marketing automation continues to empower organizations to deliver world-class digital experiences.

Here’s an update from the Community Leadership Team of where we’re at.

Trademark ownership

We have completed the transfer of trademarks from Acquia to Open Source Collective, who are holding them on behalf of the Mautic project.

This includes the registered trademarks and also all the domains that Acquia held relating to Mautic.

Governance updates

When we made the announcement back on 18th April, we shared that our next steps were as follows:

1. Share update with Mautic community 
2. Research and review proposals for Mautic’s new organization structure and governance model
3. Finalize governance proposal and share with community
4. Implement new structure and governance model we are now here

We have had extensive discussions within the Mautic Community in the Governance Working Group about what we wanted to see when it came to a governance model in Mautic.

This resulted in sharing a proposal on the 16th May which we held open for review, debate and alteration over a month on the Mautic Forums. Next, we shared a final version which we proposed to adopt and had another week where people could comment and make suggestions.

In the current governance model, we had not made provision for changing the model itself, so we discussed how best to approach the formal side of adopting a new model.

It was determined that the best approach would be for the existing Community Council to vote to adopt the new model, which was completed a week after the review period was closed.

We are now in the process of implementing all the infrastructure, tooling and workflows that are going to be needed to support the new governance model. We will be sharing more in due course.

Introducing the Mautic General Assembly

A key aspect of the new governance model is the General Assembly. 

The General Assembly is:

… where decisions are taken on everything that has to do with the governance of the project.

It will meet in ordinary on a yearly basis, and will be held online to ensure we make it as accessible as possible to the largest audience base.

Becoming a member of the General Assembly

There are three ways that you can become a member of the General Assembly:

• As an individual contributor by
  • Financially supporting the project at an annual rate of $100 per year or adjusted to your country rate in accordance with the Big Mac Index (see the rates here) 
  • Practically contributing and self-certifying at least 6 months of contributing 5 hours per month (approx 1 hour per week)
• As a corporate member by financially contributing on an annual basis at the amounts determined by the tiers
• As an honorary member proposed by the community for outstanding lifetime contributions to Mautic

These tiers will be established on Open Collective shortly.

Benefits of membership

Individual contributors, companies and honorary members will have one vote each for any motions which are put to a vote.

There will also be perks available to members at different levels which we will be sharing soon.

Implementing a community hub

We will be implementing a community hub which will be the central place for all things community from making decisions to team and working group meetings, leadership and council elections, meetup groups and more.

We will be kick-starting the process to get everything set up during the community sprint in Vienna from 20-22 July (option to join remotely) so if you would like to join us please be sure to register!

We are seeking proposals from providers to offer trials to potential adopters of Mautic. The provider will be responsible for setting up a Mautic instance with appropriate limitations to be agreed, for a trial period of 14 days, and providing all necessary support and onboarding to the trial users. 

The provider will also be responsible for converting the leads into sales, and will share at least 40% of the revenue generated from each customer who becomes a paying client back to the Mautic Community.

We will consider proposals which provide worldwide coverage, and we will also consider those which cover clearly defined regions of the world which would run alongside other providers – for example provider A is selected if the visitor chooses country A, but provider B is selected if they choose country B. Please make it clear in your proposal what you are offering.

Scope of Work

The provider will be responsible for the following:

• Setting up a Mautic instance based on the Open Source version of Mautic without any additional customisations (we expect this to be within 20 minutes of a trial request being received) 
• Enabling the installation of plugins and themes, with appropriate limitations to be agreed
• Providing a trial for a period of 14 days for trial users
• Providing all necessary support and onboarding to the trial users
• Converting the leads generated from the trials into sales
• Sharing at least 40% of the revenue generated from each customer who becomes a paying client back to the Mautic Community
• Providing a public-facing dashboard with export capabilities showing the key metrics of trials to include at a minimum
  • Number of trials signed up by month
  • Number of conversions to paying customers by month
  • Source of referral
  • Country of signup
  • Revenue share generated for Mautic

Proposal Requirements

The provider should include the following information in their proposal:

• Company background and experience with Mautic
• Details of the proposed trial setup, including any limitations and restrictions proposed
• Details of proposed mitigation against abuse of trial accounts
• Description of the support and onboarding process for trial users
• Proposed strategy for converting trial users into paying customers
• Proposed strategy for ensuring full data portability when users wish to change providers
• Proposed strategy for engaging and supporting a worldwide audience
• Proposed revenue sharing model and how it will be executed
• Pricing for the conversion from the trial service
• Any additional value-added services that will be provided during the trial, and available post-conversion for paying customers
• Any contributions to the Mautic Project that will be made in the course of the contract

Evaluation Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

• Experience and expertise with Mautic
• Existing involvement with the Mautic Community
• Quality and feasibility of the proposed trial setup and support process
• Effectiveness of the proposed strategy for converting trial users into paying customers
• Clarity and fairness of the proposed revenue sharing model
• Pricing competitiveness and value for money
• Additional value-added services offered
• Benefit to the Mautic project and community

Submission Information

Proposals should be submitted in writing to the contact person listed below no later than Friday, 21st July 2023. 

RFP timeline

1. Release RFP: Monday, June 19, 2023
2. Deadline for questions: Friday, June 30, 2023
3. Responses to questions provided: Monday, July 3, 2023 – questions and answers are available in this Google Sheet.
4. Deadline for proposals: Friday, July 21, 2023
5. Evaluation of proposals: Monday, July 24 – Friday, August 4, 2023
6. Feedback provided to all bidders: Monday, August 7, 2023
7. Contract negotiation and award: Tuesday, August 8 – Friday, August 18, 2023

Any questions or requests for clarification should also be directed to the contact person.

Ruth Cheesley

Mautic Project Lead

rfps@mautic.org

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Mautic has experienced strong growth over the past years since the acquisition by Acquia of Mautic Inc.

We’ve seen a vibrant, welcoming international community coming together to build Mautic and support each other in being successful with Mautic. We’ve also made some great strides when it comes to developing the product.

Mautic is clearly on a strong trajectory of growth, which is very exciting to see!

Time for change

Currently the Mautic Community has quite a unique governance structure. Acquia features heavily in the governance model and has significant control in the project. Acquia also owns the Mautic trademark and brand.

Back in 2019 as part of the consultation process for establishing the first Community Governance Model, we added a clause for the Mautic Community Council to review with Acquia each year whether the model was still fit for purpose.

Until now we have not felt the need for changing the governance model, but increasingly myself and Acquia feel that it is the right time to consider some changes to our structure to support Mautic’s future growth as an independent, self-governing open source project.

Why do we believe this is the right step for Mautic?

Being supported by Acquia has given Mautic a great opportunity to establish our project governance model, develop teams to take up responsibility for areas of the project, and really start to drive the open source project forward. 

Speaking personally, being able to work on a full-time basis for Mautic supported by Acquia since mid-2019 has been a huge privilege and has meant that a lot of things could get started and move forward to support the community’s growth which would not have otherwise been possible. Likewise, having Acquia engineer John Linhart’s expertise for half of his working time at Acquia has allowed us to focus on improving code quality and driving further improvements.

We have continued to make great progress since 2019, with both the uptake of Mautic-based solutions and community contributions increasing strongly. We have seen multiple businesses start and thrive in the Mautic ecosystem and this trend is continuing to grow. The project and community has a palpable momentum, and I feel that the time is right for us to step into our own space in the world.

Furthermore, Acquia has a clear vision for its product portfolio, and believes that in order for Mautic to reach the next level of its growth, it would be best for it not to be controlled by a single corporate entity. They support the view that for Mautic to truly grow to its full potential, we should do so as an independent open source project.

Moving forward together

The Mautic project and our whole community needs to move forward together. 

I believe that the Mautic Community has the necessary resources to drive us towards a future of real and sustainable growth, and am excited for us to take the first steps on this path. 

Acquia has offered to provide fixed-term seed funding to the Mautic Project to help us with establishing our future governance structure, and also to transfer the ownership of the trademark, brand and domains to the Mautic Community, to be held by the Open Source Collective on our behalf. 

Our next steps are as follows:

1. Share update with Mautic community (completed 18th April 2023 – this blog post)
2. Research and review proposals for Mautic’s new organization structure and governance model (completed 11th May 2023 – see Working Doc)
3. Finalize governance proposal and share with community (completed 29th June 2023 – see Google Doc, Forum Threads and Final Model)
4. Implement new structure and governance model  we are here (completed 18th December 2023 – Council elected and model adopted)

What does this mean for Mautic?

Project Lead’s employment

I (Ruth Cheesley, Project Lead) ceased to be employed by Acquia on 14th April 2023, and will become employed by the Mautic project, through the Open Source Collective’s employment facility, until such a time as the organizational structure and governance model are finalized. This will ensure that there is continuity, and the seed funding from Acquia will help to support this financially.

Organization and governance structure changes

We are proposing some substantial changes to the organizational structure and governance mode. We recognize that this needs to be done with careful consideration of Mautic’s long term future at the heart of everything we do.

We will be sharing research, proposals and decision making processes in the public domain, allowing everyone in the community to be involved in reviewing, discussing and providing input into the future of Mautic as we have done in the past.

Planning for the future

In November at Mautic Conference South America, I shared our mission and vision, and our longer term goals (check out mau.tc/future if you missed it!). 

I also shared some of the areas we will be focusing on over the next three years – we plan to review these goals as part of the process, to ensure that they remain relevant given the new structures that we will be implementing.

We have ambitious goals for Mautic, and we will still need your support to achieve them, both financially and in terms of practical contributions. We will be sharing how you can get involved soon.

Questions (and answers)

Will Mautic continue to be open source?

Absolutely yes. We will continue to be an open source project, and the license will not change.

Who will now own the brand and trademark?

Acquia has agreed to donate the brand and trademark to the Mautic Community, which will be held under legal contract by an impartial third party – the Open Source Collective – who are currently our fiscal host. 

A license will be granted to Acquia so that they can continue to use the term Mautic as they currently do, but the Mautic Community will be the owner of the trademark, its domain names and the brand.

The Mautic Community will continue to manage the use of our Trademark aligned with our Trademark Policy and will continue to take enforcement action against reports of misuse, with legal support from the Open Source Collective who we already partner with as our independent legal advisors.

Is Acquia stopping using or supporting Mautic?

Acquia continues to use Mautic in their Campaign Studio marketing automation product. There are no plans to change this. 

They will provide seed funding to help us get started, and will continue to contribute code and resources to Mautic, and support John Linhart in his community contributions. They will also continue to be a Mautic Community Partner.

Acquia wants to see Mautic grow and thrive, and is committed to doing everything they can to ensure that our next phase is a success.

Will a non-profit organization be created for Mautic? 

A non-profit organization is not being discounted, it will be one of the options that we review in the next steps of this process. There are several different options that we will be considering including whether a non-profit organization is necessary or not, and if deemed to be necessary, where to geographically locate the organization.

More questions?

I expect you have a lot of other questions about this which we haven’t covered above, and we’re setting up a series of webinars over the coming weeks to give our international community the opportunity to ask questions and share feedback.

Upcoming webinars

English language : Thursday 20th April at 2pm UK time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87644421946?pwd=blBxSnBxTllYZEZqOUNXU2pjdjE2Zz09

Meeting ID: 876 4442 1946

Passcode: 263299

Portuguese language: Tuesday 25th April at 10am Brasilia Standard Time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87893312489?pwd=T0ZBUC9nWDl6alV1QlJIM1owM3JtUT09

Meeting ID: 878 9331 2489

Passcode: 008835

Spanish language: Thursday 27th April at 6pm Central European Time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83094600035?pwd=V2xmV2F6UmUrTjZ5V3hPb1NSV0x4dz09

Meeting ID: 830 9460 0035

Passcode: 751190

German language: Monday 24th April at 5pm Central European Time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82620287734?pwd=V3JCVnVORmJ5Rmg5MUc5OXdKcWsxUT09

Meeting ID: 826 2028 7734

Passcode: 610725

French language: Tuesday 2nd May at 3pm Central European Time

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83248118998?pwd=LzBRNmJrZmhNN1ZiOVQ1Yy9CZXh4QT09

Meeting ID: 832 4811 8998

Passcode: 794064

Would you like to facilitate a session for your community? Drop Ruth an email at ruth.cheesley@mautic.org.

Project Lead Office Hours

I will continue to hold my regular Office Hours and have added a few more over the coming week. These are an opportunity to drop into a video call with me and chat about whatever you might be interested in discussing.

These are next on:

Wednesday, 19th April at 0700hrs UK time (my office hours are at this time every fortnight) 

Video call link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87562856285?pwd=TEJSSFJUQkd1ODJXK1VGK3lDR0I0Zz09

Meeting ID: 875 6285 6285

Passcode: 210498

Thursday, 20th April at 1500hrs UK time

Video call link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87471995567?pwd=cXdNaXNjWFJWcGF5Tmg2R1BYdFp2Zz09

Meeting ID: 874 7199 5567

Passcode: 296492

Friday, 21st April at 10am UK time

Video call link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85052425009?pwd=OWIvTUNrUTBPYjIvT28xeUhOalFSQT09

Meeting ID: 850 5242 5009

Passcode: 148977

Thursday, 27th April at 2pm UK time (my office hours are at this time every fortnight) 

Video call link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86824099822?pwd=eWk1Q0NnMXQwOEdBQ21wbDdaeGhyUT09

Meeting ID: 868 2409 9822

Passcode: 535689

We have answered some of the questions that we anticipate you might want to know the answers to, but please do use the forum thread linked at the bottom of the page to share any further questions, ensuring that you bear in mind the Mautic Code of Conduct while doing so.

Translations of this article

Thanks to our awesome community you can find translations of this article in:

Spanish (Julio Roldos): Towards a future of independence [ES]

Portuguese (Rodrigo Demetrio): Towards a future of independence [PT]

French (Norman Pracht): Towards a future of independence [FR]

German (Ekke Guembel): Towards a future of independence [DE]

Japanese (Katz Ueno): Towards a future of independence [JP]

Albanian (Redon Skikuli): Towards a future of independence [SQ]

Would you like to translate this article? Please add a Google Doc in this folder and use the same naming convention as others have used. The English version can be found here.

We have often been asked about our roadmap and before today there has never really been anything that we can point at and say ‘this is where Mautic is going’ other than vague blog posts and forum threads.

Today we are sharing the first iterations of our plans for the future which I first shared at Mautic Conference Europe 2021 in my keynote. It includes some great features that we have coming over the next year.

This process is new for us, and we do anticipate that there will be some tweaks made over the coming year, so please take this as our first rough outline of what we are hoping to achieve.

Some of these features will be community contributed, others may be contributed by an organization who has built or worked on it as a project for clients and are providing it back to the community.

If you prefer to view this in visual form, please head over to https://mau.tc/roadmap where you’ll be able to view an interactive graphic.

Release themes

Back in 2021 we shared that we plan to have a theme for each minor release cycle, to help us with prioritizing specific areas of Mautic to improve.

Without further ado, here are the themes we are focusing on for the upcoming releases:

If you have any questions about the release themes, please first read this post on the blog which explains how they work.

Upcoming features

Below are some of the features we are expecting to be releasing, and a rough timeline for when it is expected that they will come to the community for testing and review:

Improvements to the install/upgrade process

One of the main recurring problems we see in the forums are related to the installation and upgrade of Mautic.

With this Strategic Initiative we have introduced several new checks to prevent users from installing and upgrading Mautic where the environment does not support it due to outdated PHP or MySQL versions. This will be further developed to add extra checks, such as ensuring that the file and folder permissions are correct, and to ensure that the correct PHP modules are enabled.

In addition to this, we will be formally deprecating the ability to update Mautic in the user interface in Mautic 4.2 and removing it completely in Mautic 5. Users will still be alerted to new versions if their instance is out of date, and will be given clear instructions on how to apply the update.

We are also considering implementing automated updates for bug fix releases in the future, but this will require some community consultation and would not be considered for implementation until Mautic 5 at the earliest.

Read more about this in the dedicated blog post.

Fully functional Mautic Marketplace

With the 4.2 release of Mautic, we are implementing the ability to install, remove and search for plugins and integrations from within your Mautic instance. Currently there is a read-only preview available, but the work is almost complete to deliver the next phase of this project.

To start, we will be offering a list of plugins which the core team have reviewed and approved. Read more about this in the dedicated blog post.

Improvements to the Preference Center

Since GDPR has been introduced, the preference center is an important matter for marketers to ensure compliance and provide a helpful experience for their customers.

The current preference center presents a few limitations:

• The configuration of slots, and setting up the preference center in general, can be confusing, 
• An “unsubscribe from all” button (which is required by GDPR) is not available by default,
• There is no setting to make a default Preference Center which can be used as a fall-back in case one is not specified in the emails themselves,
• Using segments to handle subscriptions can be confusing, and in some other marketing automation tools the segments themselves are physically separated from the lists to which a user subscribes, which could be a better user experience for the marketer, and the end-user.

Webmecanik has been working on some of these challenges, and have contributed a solution which will address the first three points (see the ready to test Pull Request).
 

1. Redesign of the preference center settings. Specifically, splitting the configuration into two modes: with or without a Preference Center enabled. This makes it very clear to the marketer whether they are using a Preference Center or a direct unsubscribe user experience, and also shows only the relevant options.
2. When a Preference Center is enabled, a new slot has been added to provide an “unsubscribe all one-click action” and a configuration to customize the text of this one-click link.
3. The Channel and Frequency slots have been separated into two distinct configurations, enabling the marketer to show one or the other, or both, as they prefer
4. Add the option to provide a title for channel and frequency slots

Transactional/Operational Email improvements

There has been a lot of feedback from marketers using Mautic regarding the lack of separation between how operational messages must be delivered to the customer regardless of whether they have opted out, and other communications such as newsletters and marketing messages which must respect the opt-out preferences.

According to best practice, emails which are sent on an individual basis to a single person and not in bulk (such as order confirmation emails, password reset requests and 121 personal communications), should be treated differently to those which are sent in bulk, but Mautic does not provide any way to do this.

During the second half of 2022, Acquia will be working on this, and contributing this back to the community.

Read more in the project brief here.

A/B testing improvements

There are several features missing from our current A/B testing functionality, including being able to automate the post-test actions based on the winner of the test.

This has been blocked by a lot of the pull requests in our backlog, which we are diligently working through to enable Acquia to contribute several exciting new enhancements to this much-used feature.

This is expected at the end of Q2.

A/B testing in campaigns

Another much-requested feature is to be able to run A/B tests within campaigns, allowing the marketer to test which routes are the most beneficial and then take that route.

This is something which is being worked on toward the end of 2022 at Acquia and will be shared with the community soon thereafter.

Multi-table management (Custom Objects plugin)

Acquia is in the process of releasing their Custom Objects plugin under an open source license, which will be available at the end of Q1 2022 as a standalone third-party plugin. 

This allows users to create more many-to-many relational data tables to associate more items, such as products, orders or transactions, households, and more, with either a single contact or multiple contacts. 

For example, one family can have multiple cars from multiple manufacturers or with different models. This elaborates a 1:many relationship between the custom object (car) and the custom items (BMW, Porsche, etc).

You can read more about the plugin here: https://docs.acquia.com/campaign-studio/settings/custom-objects/

ReCAPTCHA v3 plugin for forms and email clicks

The marketer using marketing automation software often faces two major challenges:

• Email statistics are becoming less precise, especially due to new policies from key technology providers (Apple privacy, anti spam software in companies, etc.)
• Spam/bots taking action on forms and in emails which also distort the marketer analysis

Stating this, we wanted to find a way to reduce the spam and bot influence in order to lower its impact on forms and email (and tracked links in general) statistics.

Already there has been a lot of great work done by Konstantin in this third party plugin: https://github.com/KonstantinCodes/mautic-recaptcha to add the Google reCAPTCHA v2 technology on Mautic forms.

On October 29th, 2018, Google introduced the new version of Google reCAPTCHA (v3). This new version brings two important updates:
 

• Can be used to catch bots on links
• Needs less user interaction (no need to click on bikes or buses in a little box) and more magic

Webmecanik has been working on the maintenance of this third party plugin for a long time and introduced support for the v3 features. They are taking on the ongoing maintenance of the plugin, which will also be open to community PRs.

Text messages enhancements

SMS is an important part of multi-channel communication, with 3.8 billion people owning a smartphone in 2021 and 75% of customers wanting to receive offers via SMS.₁

The clickthrough rate for offer messages can be nearly 10% higher compared with other channels, and it is reported that the opening rate for SMS messages can be as high as 98%, with 60% of Americans redeeming coupons via mobile phones.

It’s definitely a channel you can’t afford to overlook!

In Mautic, Webmecanik has been focusing on revitalizing this channel by bringing several enhancements, including:
 

• Adding a character count (released in 4.1.0) knowing that the marketer pays for the SMS depending on the amount of characters,
• Add more stats to text messages (ready to test) by bringing delivery and bounce information,
• Send SMS with custom content, similar to the “send email” action from a contact profile for a quickly sent SMS,
• Add support for tokens for SMS message (ready to test) to help the marketer to introduce personalized information into SMS messages.

Improved reporting and analytics

Another area of Mautic where we have a lot of feedback from Marketers is the reporting and analytics.

While the current system is quite powerful, it often does not deliver the experience that the marketer expects, and can be confusing to work with.

At the end of 2022 and into 2023, we want to take a look at the options available to us for improving this experience for the marketer. We will be forming a working group to focus on this area, and would welcome interest from companies and individuals who would like to get involved with this project.

Project and archive system for organizing Mautic resources

This project got underway in 2021, and we have a full walkthrough of the user experience for organizing resources into projects which I featured in my keynote presentation at Mautic Conference Europe 2021.

We now need to build a team of developers to work on implementing the features of this project, which will be extremely helpful for the marketers who use Mautic on a daily basis.

If you’re interested in getting involved with this project, please join us in #i-resource-management on Slack. We’re hoping that we will be able to deliver this project in 2022, but it may roll into 2023 depending on availability of developers to work on it.

New Strategic Initiatives

Campaign library

At Mautic Conference Europe I also shared a new initiative which we will be working on this year, called the Campaign Library initiative. This initiative will bring the power of exporting campaigns and associated resources to Mautic, and will involve building a library within Mautic where users can view and use pre-built campaigns provided by the community or by their hosting provider.

This is one of the oldest requests in our ideas forum, and one of the most useful features we could implement for marketers who are new to Mautic, enabling them to get a head-start on using best practices for the most common campaigns that we use.

This year we will be scoping this project and breaking it down into smaller deliverable chunks which we can work on. It’s likely that this project will reach into 2023, as it’s quite a significant undertaking, but one which I am sure you will agree, would bring an immense amount of value to the Mautic project.

If you would like to contribute to this initiative, please join #i-campaign-library on Slack.

Promote Mautic

One of the clearest outcomes from the Community Survey we ran last summer was that we need to raise awareness of Mautic both within open source circles and within the wider marketing industry. 

This will help to drive interest in Mautic and the SaaS offerings that many of our partners provide, but also will help us to attract more interest from contributors and drive growth in our ecosystem.

Furthermore, with Mautic becoming more widely known and used, this will also help to drive more traction in the talent market as Mautic becomes a tool that both marketers and developers can see is valuable to work with.

Over the coming year we will be working on several projects under this initiative, some of which are already underway, including creating a pitch deck which we started during the Community Sprint at Mautic Conference Europe.

If you would like to contribute to this initiative, please join #t-marketing and #i-promote-mautic on Slack.

Year of the Contributor

Another very clear point raised in the Community Survey was that people don’t know how to contribute to Mautic, or they don’t feel that their skills can be of use in the community. This is something that we’re going to really be focusing on improving over the coming year, with this initiative focusing on improving the contributor experience.

While we’ve already made some huge steps in improving the contributor experience with our updated Community Handbook onboarding documentation and implementing new features including Gitpod support, which allows one-click installs of Mautic to test new bug fixes and features, there’s a lot more that we can do.

This initiative is going to tackle bringing more contributors into Mautic, improving the experience of contributors as they join our community, and also ensuring that we are retaining our contributors in the longer term.

If you would like to help with this initiative please join #i-yotc on Slack.

Conclusion

We hope that this is a helpful idea of the features we have coming over the next year. As outlined in the opening paragraphs, this is our first time creating such a roadmap and we fully expect there to be some tweaking as we move forward.

[1]  https://techjury.net/blog/sms-marketing-statistics

One of our biggest challenges currently is the large backlog of bug fixes and features which need to be tested, reviewed and approved before they can be made available in a release of Mautic.

At the moment of writing we have 247 of these, waiting to be reviewed.

Our Product Team is doing a great job working toward our target of having all new bug fixes and features reviewed and released within 30 days of being created, but we need a much more substantial effort to work through our backlog.

Open Source Friday Community Initiative

Last week, seven Mautic agencies made the commitment to sponsor members of their team to dedicate their time on a Friday to a regular weekly product team sprint, which will specifically focus on getting these older features and bug fixes ready to be released. 

These team members include developers and marketers – you don’t have to be a developer to help with testing. This Community Initiative is being led by John Linhart, Technical Community Lead.

The Open Source Friday Initiative is open to any other agencies or companies that would also like to sponsor team members to join us. Just drop us a message in #t-product if you will be joining us. If you are not yet on Slack, you can get an invitation at https://mautic.org/slack.

Every Friday we will be working together in #t-product on Slack – we are opening it as an all-day event as there are people from all timezones joining us. 

At key times during the day members of the core team will be online for help with testing or chatting through any problems which arise, these are:

• 0900-1000 UTC
• 1200-1300 UTC
• 1500-1600 UTC

We recommend using everytimezone.com to check the time in your local timezone.

Initial sponsors

Thank you to the initial sponsors for making this Community Initiative happen. These are:

• Acquia
• Webmecanik
• Friendly
• Leuchtfeuer Digital Marketing
• Aivie
• QED42
• Steer Campaign

What does this mean for Mautic users?

This means that we will be delivering more bug fixes more quickly, and also making sure that new features are tested and released in a timely manner. More bug fixes, more features and enhancements, more often.

For developers, this means that all those old PRs will finally be getting merged. Also, when you submit a pull request, we are committed to reviewing, testing and merging it within 30 days. No more endless rebasing, bumping from release to release, or having to unearth months-old contributions when we’re ready to test and merge them. It will take us time to work through the backlog and we do acknowledge that it will be a bit painful in the interim, but please do try to work with us through this process!

Are you looking for ways to make a backup of your Mautic instance fast, easy and automatic? This tutorial will give you the ability to backup your Mautic database to your Dropbox account.

You will need the following:

1. Dropbox account
2. Backup script
3. Cron job
4. Basic knowledge of the command line (PC) or terminal (Mac)

Step 1: Dropbox Account

Sign-in or create a brand new account with Dropbox then go to https://www.dropbox.com/developers/apps on your web browser, and create a new Dropbox app. Fill in the information of the new app as shown below, and enter the app name use a name that will be easy to you to remember in case you have more apps.

After you have created a new app, you will redirect to new windows and you will see a button with the text Generated access token click and copy the access token.

Step 2: Backup Script

The script we going to use is made by Andrea Fabrizi kudos to this guy. To use Dropbox backup script, download the script and make it executable.

wget https://raw.github.com/andreafabrizi/Dropbox-Uploader/master/dropbox_uploader.sh
chmod +x dropbox_uploader.sh

Then run the following command;

./dropbox_uploder.sh

Next it will ask you to insert the generated access token. Insert the provided token and confirm. To verify that you have established the connection with Dropbox, run the following command;

./dropbox_uploder.sh info

Doing so should display your Dropbox Information;

Dropbox Uploader v1.0
> Getting info... 
Name:		Joan Nin
UID:		dbid:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Email:		your-email
Country:	DO

Now let’s create a shell script that will make the import of our database.

Create a new directory db-backup and a .sh file.

cd
mkdir db-backup
nano  dbdump.sh

And copy and paste this info to the dbdump.sh file you create.

#!/bin/bash
sudo mysqldump -uMYSQLUSER -pMYSQLDATABASE-PASSWORD DATABASENAME > 
/root/db-backup/mautic.sql
## THIS LINE UPLOADS THE MAUTIC.SQL FILE TO THE DROPBOX DIRECTORY BACKUP-Mautic
./dropbox_uploader.sh upload /root/db-backup/mautic.sql /BACKUP-Mautic
## Removed THIS WILL REMOVE THE MAUTIC.SQL FROM YOUR SERVER
rm -r /root/db-backup/mautic.sql
#END

NOTE: Replace the italics text with your information.
MYSQLUSER = sql user
MYSQLDATABASE-PASSWORD = SQL Password
DATABASENAME = the name of the database you use in Mautic

Step 3: Cron Job

Now create a cron job that will automate this task for you. Using the crontab from your server create the following line;

### MAUTIC BACKUP
27 3 */15 * * echo "`date -u` `/root/db-backup/dbdump.sh`" >> /root/db-backup/status.log 2>&1

This line will run the backup “At 03:27 on every 15th day-of-month.” you can replace the with the time you prefer. Also this will create a log file with the date that the cron job will run. I think this is a pretty neat option for backup/audit.

And that’s it. A simple, yet effective way to backup your Mautic instance.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

We want to thank our community for offering insight into how they work with Mautic. Do you have a different process for backing up your Mautic instance? Comment below and let us know!

Also, if you’re interested, here’s a quick tutorial video on using CPanel to add a cron job.

Today we are happy to announce the next way for developers to start using Mautic. Docker is an incredibly powerful container-based platform that lets developers deploy images quickly through registered Dockerfiles. Because of the power this gives developers to work how they want we are excited to share the creation of the Mautic image and associated Dockerfile on the Docker Hub. We’ve also written some helpful documentation to get you started with building your image initially.

Docker containers are a fantastic way to quickly scale your website and having a Mautic instance running on Docker containers gives you the flexibility and the power to grow your marketing automation to any size you need. Quickly scale Mautic to meet your demands, rebuild, or redeploy seamlessly.

Mautic on Docker Hub

UPDATE: This Hangout is now available to be watched in our archives.

We understand that marketing automation can be confusing at times and there can be some uncertainty about the best way to structure a tool like Mautic to improve your business. Mautic is a new and exciting open source platform which allows every business regardless of size the ability to use marketing automation.

Now that you have a tool you can afford and a powerful open source product to use it is time to learn how to implement marketing automation.

In this Hangout we will get ‘Hands On with Mautic’ in a step by step walkthrough where we explore the functions of Mautic by looking at the software.

If you have always wanted to learn about marketing automation but never had the time (or money) then this Hangout is for you! Join us as David Hurley, founder of Mautic, gives some helpful advice on marketing automation and Mautic. Get your questions answered and start revolutionizing the way you do business!

Details

Google+ Hangout scheduled for February 11, 2015 at 2:30PM EST. (Check local time). Signup for the webinar and visit our Google+ Community page