mailchimp

I have a Drupal 7.21 / CiviCRM 4.2.2 install.
It uses CiviCRM, MailChimp and Profile2. I need to put the first name and last name from a CiviCRM contact into the MailChimp for the mailouts. What I planned on using to make the linkage is Custom Token. I didn't want to write a custom module to pull this off if Custom Token were available to do almost the same job.

Here is what I built:

<?php
if (module_exists('civicrm')) {
$user = user_load(arg(1));
civicrm_initialize(TRUE);

require_once 'api/v2/UFGroup.php';

$userID = civicrm_uf_match_id_get( $user->uid );

This month, I wrote a custom module for a client, that import newsletters (or "campaigns", as MailChimp calls them) from a given MailChimp account into a Drupal site as nodes. (As many of you know, MailChimp is a rather nice third-party newsletter service.)

How it works:
- Depends on mailchimp.module, using the same account configured in mailchimp.module settings.
- Uses a custom table to store ID's of imported messages.
- Checks MailChimp account for new messages on every cron run, or when an admin pushes the big shiny "Import campaigns" button.

I'm looking for the best way to set up a email newsletter service within our Drupal site.

We currently send weekly emails to a subscriber list that exists outside our CMS (we use CommuniGate Pro: LIST Module), but it is limited to simply managing the mail list and we want to move to a system that will give us options like tracking, reports, and perhaps even integration with taxonomy, etc.