Email Marketing, Business & Monkeys
If your site came before your blog, you probably installed WordPress into a subdirectory like we did at http://www.MailChimp.com/blog.
When you log into WordPress and look at the dashboard for your awesomely new WordPress Analytics Plugin, you’re probably wondering how you can limit the data to only your blog traffic.
Here’s how we did it at MailChimp…
Someone over in the MailChimp Jungle asked, “Do spam filters read Alt-text descriptions?” I honestly had no idea, so I took my most recent MonkeyWrench email newsletter, replicated it, and I typed in the most awful, disgusting alt-text descriptions that I could think of.
Seriously, I had to wash my fingers after typing such nasty stuff, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for a day or two.
In addition to the yuckiness, I typed in a bunch of stuff about gambling, and some phishing type content. And I made sure to use all caps, with lots of exclamation points (see why spam filters hate that).
Then I ran it through our Inbox Inspector’s Spam Checker tool…
Last week, I got a call from someone who wanted to switch from another ESP because he had a sneaky suspicion they were getting blocked by Yahoo too often (btw, DKIM can really help in this situation).
Blocks occasionally happen to everybody, so I told him we wouldn’t be immune. And believe it or not, ISPs have been known to have email problems themselves. What sucked about the guy’s situation was he couldn’t tell for sure if he was having a problem.
In MailChimp, if you want to know if your email campaign had troubles with any ISPs, you can always check your Email Domain Performance report:
In the stats above, 39% of all emails to comcast.net were bounced. It’s not a full 100% bounce rate, but it’s way above the average bounce rate for his industry. This particular user wrote me an email asking what they should do…
I’m trying out a service called Skribit. It’s this thing where readers can tell me what they want me to write about, and then other readers can vote those suggestions up or down (Digg-style).
They call it a “cure for writer’s block” but that doesn’t do it justice imho. My problem is the opposite of writer’s block. I can write stuff all day long, but I have no idea if it’s the stuff our customers actually want to hear about. Some customers contact me directly with questions. Our customer svc team gives me topics too.
But Skribit is finally a way for me to see how many other readers are interested in that topic. Suggest a topic for me to write about
In every one of your MailChimp campaign reports, there’s a section called Email Domain Performance:
It can answer important questions like, “Are any ISPs blocking me?” and “Which ISPs do my subscribers use most?”
It can also answer expensive questions, like, “Should I invest in email certification services like SenderScore (which gives you some benefits with Hotmail, Roadrunner, and Cox), or Goodmail (which gives you some benefits with AOL, Comcast, and Yahoo), or SuretyMail (which works with AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Earthlink among others)?
Email certification can get email past spam filters and into inboxes with images on by default, and in some cases, video will work.
But are they too expensive? Why not test? Here’s how:
When you setup a MailChimp account, you can customize your signup process (subscribe form, thank you pages, welcome emails, etc.), just about any way you want.
Did you know you can ALSO translate your signup process to over 25 different languages?
Simply select it from the pulldown:
Here’s a list of supported languages (it’s constantly growing):
In the year-end MailChimp survey that we sent out, lots of people said they “wished for some kind of giant report that they could download, and then manipulate themselves.” We’ve already got this feature in place, and call it a “BARF” Report, aka Big Ass Report File.
click image to enlarge
When you’re on the MailChimp dashboard, just click over to the “Reports” tab. Then just click on the big orange “compare campaigns” button on the left side of the screen.
Click the button to download a spreadsheet containing stats for ALL your campaigns, ever. It’s chock full of all kinds of data, will let you run your own reports in Excel and then you can build just about any pretty graph you or your boss could ever want.
Tell us what other kinds of innovative things you’re doing with your reports as well. We love to hear from you!
Someone recently asked us, “Is there a way in MailChimp to find out my best day to send, based on my list’s history?” The answer is yes, and here’s how.
1. Log in to MailChimp
2. Go to the “Reports” tab, and click on this link under your graph:
Here’s a common question I get: “My list is puny. If buying email lists is evil, how can I grow my subscriber base? Fast?”
Well, one way to get more people to signup for your email list is to give them something free when they subscribe. To make it automatic, you can add e-coupons, or links to whitepapers inside your welcome emails.
For example, let’s say you’re a music store, and when people signup for your email newsletter, you want to send them some free music tips. But you want those music tips to be customized to their interests.
If someone rocks the pan flute, they should receive a welcome email with an embedded link to download a PDF called “Zamfir’s Pan Flute Secrets.” If someone is a guitar hero, they get a free guide on guitar playing. You get the gist.
Here’s how to do this in MailChimp…
Free HTML Templates →Templates tested in all major email clients, ready for customizing.
Compare Us →Check out how we compare against other email marketing providers.
View Pricing Plans →MailChimp offers flexible plans for every budget.
Sign Up Free →Manage up to 500 subscribers, send up to 3,000 times/month for free.
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