API Diagnostics

A little monkey love for our API users. Very soon (this weekend if not sooner), under your MailChimp –> Account settings, you’ll be getting a new screen:

It’ll allow you programmers to troubleshoot your API implementations, find out if you’re hitting our limits, and let you see overall usage by day. There’s even a handy graph to indicate any usage spikes.

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Real stats: How sending to old lists will kill your deliverability

We have a customer with a relatively large list of about 311,000 opt-in subscribers. They’ve been collecting opt-ins from their site for years now.

About 240,000 of them are “old” (inactive) subscribers. About 70,000 are relatively “new” (active) subscribers.

They recently segmented their list and sent the same newsletter to each group (separately) over the same IP address, about 6 hrs apart from each other. Around 2pm, they sent the newsletter to the large, inactive list. Around 8pm, they sent the same newsletter to the active list.

The results are eye-opening…

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Posted in Deliverability, Tips, Tricks, Best Practices | 3 Comments »

You Push A Button, And A Picture Comes Out.

By now, everybody knows how Polaroid instant cameras work: You push a button, and a picture pops out. It’s not even all that fascinating anymore, is it?

But when they first came out, it was rocket science. I mean, we’re talking about space age, high tech stuff here. Transistors, aspheric lenses, turquoise opacificier films, and self-powered film modules.

Check out this classic “product demo” of the Polaroid SX-70 (awesome movie for geeks and photography buffs).

They took from 0:55 to 1:28 to explain that basically, “you click a button, and a picture comes out.”

Granted, when this was new, they were talking to “early adopters.” And that’s how you talk when technology is new. It wasn’t a “pack of instant film.” It was an “integral, self-processing film unit, which when exposed…”

But eventually, new technology gets simple, more powerful, and easier to use. You click a button, and it works. Then the whole world can use it. Then, you can make it fun.

Today, most people talk about email marketing like this film talks about the SX-70. It’s complicated, there’s lots of back story, technology, spam laws, best practices, ISPs, and on and on. True.

But at MailChimp, our goal is to make email marketing easy and fun.

We take powerful email marketing stuff like:

• A/B Testing
• Email Tracking & Reporting
• Email Rendering and Spam Checking
• RSS-To-Email

and we make it easy.

You just push a button, and it works.

We’re even working on making email template design an easy, one-click process. Gentlemen, we have the technology…

Posted in IMHO, MailChimp Labs, MailChimp News | No Comments »

E-Checks: Who’s gonna count the money?

Back when we ran a web design consultancy, we had a client that wanted us to build their first e-commerce website. We had this unbelievably long meeting with their “website committee” who, instead of talking about functionality and business requirements, seemed to be focused more on “jazzy home page intros.” When we got down to the actual “how to make money” discussions, one of their employees wanted to call the whole thing off. Their concern? “Who’s gonna count all the money? We don’t have enough staff as it is!”

We explained to them that it might actually take some time to make any money. It’s not like they’d be drowning under a sea of checks or something. But still. It was actual cause for concern to them.

We left the meeting bewildered, and on our way back to the office, swore that if this MailChimp thing ever took off, we’d never say silly things like that: “Who’s gonna count the money?” C’mon. It’s a good problem to have.

But look at that picture above.

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Desperation Marketing

It’s the holiday season, and that means more people than ever will be procrastinating until the very last minute to “get started in email marketing.”  And that means they’ll be in a rush to “get this email blast out.” If this sounds like you (or one of your clients), be sure to read this:

Desperation Marketing Courts Email Hell

Waiting till the last minute is one of the most common email marketing mistakes.

Posted in Emarketing, Business, Spam Topics, Tips, Tricks, Best Practices | No Comments »

MailChimp Merge Tag Tricks

Here’s a video of some neat things you can do with MailChimp’s merge tags (formatting tricks, dynamic content based on interests, etc):

also see: Personalizing your welcome emails w/merge tags

Posted in Using MailChimp | 3 Comments »

Adding Social Sharing Links to Your MailChimp Campaigns

Here’s a nice example of a MailChimp customer (T in the Park) using the new social sharing links in their email newsletter footer:

This is a relatively new feature at MailChimp that lets your subscribers share your campaign via twitter, facebook, digg, reddit, linked in, and other social sites. If you’d like to add this to your MailChimp campaigns too, just insert this little tag: *|MC:SHARE|* in your footer (or wherever you want) and we’ll do the rest.

Another cool merge tag to try: *|TRANSLATE:EMAIL_LANG|*

Posted in Email Design, Using MailChimp | 2 Comments »

What’s New in MailChimp?

This past weekend, we completed our server upgrades, in order to improve system load balancing before the busy holiday season.

The holiday season is usually a time when we see email delivery volumes double or triple, so we want to be ready. On that note, we won’t be launching any new major upgrades for the next couple months, because we need to keep things niiiiiiice and stable through January.

So, we’d like to recap some of our most recent upgrades, in case you missed any of our email updates…

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Posted in MailChimp News, MailChimp Upgrade | No Comments »

Video: Automatic Email Designer

Designing an HTML email is hard if you’re not a graphic designer. Designing one that actually renders properly in all the different readers is even harder. So we made that automatic for you. Here’s a video:

Posted in MailChimp Labs, MailChimp News, MailChimp Upgrade | 1 Comment »

AOL to Begin Checking for DKIM

Word-to-the-wise reports that AOL will begin checking for DKIM Authentication sometime in 2009, as discussed in a recent ESPC call. They’re using DKIM to evaluate your overall “IP reputation” (check out the AOL blog for more on that). MailChimp customers, no need to worry. DKIM Authentication is included by default (and is free) in all MailChimp campaigns (that’s what this box means, in case you were wondering):

Posted in Deliverability | No Comments »