MailChimp issues

[JamesChevalier]

Received three emails:

Hello James, I tried your launch soon project, and found some problem with the mailchimp api.
When i try to subscribe reffered user, there is problem in updating the referral. It is not working even
on your demo app, so i think it is problem of the mailchimp api.

Could you please update it? Thank you.

web ...
http://launch-soon-example.herokuapp.com/

user come with ref ... http://launch-soon-example.herokuapp.com/?ref=6744cfdc9f5b3f934d1b4d4d7ec97697

problem message:
There was a problem updating the referral at MailChimp

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i think that i found the solution, there was not a conversion from string to integer, so
it was unable to increment

new_count = referring_member['merges']['RCOUNT'] + 1
changed to
new_count = referring_member['merges']['RCOUNT'].to_i + 1

---

Mailchimp needs to have double opt-in and if new user is created and not confirmed,
refferal cannot be found. I found a solution by turning double_optin to false, so users
do not need to confirm subscription.

mailchimp.lists.subscribe("#{MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID}", 
{'email' => "#{email}"}, 
{'RCODE' => "#{@referral_code}", 'RCOUNT' => '0'}, false, false, false)

I found that when I updated
new_count = referring_member['merges']['RCOUNT'].to_i + 1

I could never go above 1 in my list so I also updated the following:
mailchimp.lists.update_member("#{MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID}", {'euid' => "#{referring_member['id']}"}, 'RCOUNT' => "1")
to
mailchimp.lists.update_member("#{MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID}", {'euid' => "#{referring_member['id']}"}, 'RCOUNT' => new_count)

As for the second part, I'm not too concerned if that is the case - but it did have me wondering, is there a way to track who has referred who?

Well I added a mail merge field 'SIGNUPS', then added this line:
new_member = referring_member['merges']['SIGNUPS'] + email + ","

And updated this line:
mailchimp.lists.update_member("#{MAILCHIMP_LIST_ID}", {'euid' => "#{referring_member['id']}"}, 'RCOUNT' => new_count, 'SIGNUPS' => new_member)

And now I just feel silly considering mailchimp limits fields to 255 chars and this is not very robust...