Geolocation tracking added to MailChimp

We’ve been scheming at this TimeWarp idea for a long time now. But in order to make that work, we first had to get geolocation data for our users’ subscribers. That took a while to collect and add to our system. For the uninitiated, here’s an article from ReadWriteWeb where they dream about the possibilities of a geolocation-enabled twitter. Here’s one trendy way twitter ended up using geo, and here’s a fun article on how Foursquare got kind of catty over Yelp’s entry into geo.

So geo’s kind of a big thing. Apparently. We just needed it to make email marketing a little better.

Anyway, after we got TimeWarp working, we decided to add geolocation as a segmentation option too. So you can now send a targeted campaign to subscribers inside a 150 mile radius around any point on the globe.

Here’s how that works…

GeoTargeting in MailChimp

Previously, in order to do any kind of location-based targeting, you’d have to add fields to your signup form asking subscribers to enter their mailing address or postal code (see: MailChimp’s ZIP code targeting). Now, you can let MailChimp automatically pinpoint their location. It’s not as perfect as getting their address, but it’s pretty close.

Here’s how you send a targeted, location-based email with our geolocation service:

1. Segment your list by specifying some region:

Choose a 50, 100, or 150 mile radius around that location.

2. We’ll show it to you on a map for verification (and for dramatic effect):

3. Click the “use this location” button, and you’re ready to go.

You might want to hit “refresh cont” on that segment to see how many people we pinpointed. For example, I’m kind of delighted to see that of my list of 25,000 MonkeyWrench newsletter subscribers, 323 are within 50 miles of me:

When I click the “view segment” link, I see lots of familiar names from business colleagues, personal friends, and customers. Made me smile.

By the way, it’s also possible to go to –> Lists –> View all members, run the very same segment criteria, then download that segment as a spreadsheet:

With the spreadsheet, I can create a new list in MailChimp. Or, I’d more likely try to do some further analysis of the list to learn more about them. For example, there’s a company called Flowtown (which integrates with MailChimp), and, if I understand this Daily Sense article correctly, can tell me which local residents are the most “influential.” I wouldn’t advocate sending them more email marketing, or emails with “hey, social dude, let’s get all social and stuff.” Don’t send stuff like that just because you know more about them (that’s creepy). But I’d probably buy them some beers, or coffee if I see them around town, or send them some extra special mailchimp shirts, or maybe even a hand-written note. That’s what “social” means, right?

We could also hold a local event just for local customers, and send them an invitation using our Eventbrite integration. Just to thank our customers and followers. We did all this manually when we took our trip to San Francisco recently and threw a little party (here are some pics, btw). But for future events, this geo thing is going to come in really, really handy.

How it all works

Whenever someone double-opts-in to your list, or opens or clicks from inside your email newsletter, they get redirected through our servers (which is how we track opens and clicks for you). As your subscribers pass through, one very common piece of information that comes with them is their IP address given to them by their ISP. We basically do a reverse lookup to find out the general region they’re in, so that you can use that information to send localized, targeted information.

Constantly Updating Geolocation

People travel, and they sometimes check email from mobile devices. Also, their ISP changes when they check email from work vs. at home. So their geolocation data changes constantly.

Yes, MailChimp tracks all that. We basically keep tabs on their location over time, and we “average” it out for you. For example, if someone normally checks their email from London, and one day she opens one of your emails from Miami, we know she’s just on vacation, and we don’t update her profile. But if, on average, most of her email interactions start coming from Miami, we will assume she’s moved, and we’ll update her geolocation profile for you accordingly.

Data is Backfilled

The nice thing about all this is we’ve been tracking geolocation data for more than a year now, and have already backfilled it for you. We’ve processed just under half a billion subscriptions. As you send more campaigns, we’ll gather more data, but you’re set to go right now.

Keep in mind that subscribers that have engaged with your emails, or double opted-in to your list, will now have geolocation data in their profiles. But if your list was imported, or if members on your list aren’t engaging, there is no geo data to track. On average, you can probably expect around 20-25% of your list to actually contain geodata.

Guess it’s a big deal

Like I was saying, TimeWarp was our real goal, because we just wanted to make email scheduling easier across all the timezones across the globe. And I’m pretty sure MailChimp Labs took this project on because someone said it would be extremely useful and cool, “but probably impossible to automate.” So it’s really nice to stumble upon this whole “geolocation” thing and then discover how fascinating it is to so many people in the “social” world.

And to be able to offer it free to email marketers is just icing on the cake!

Also see:

• ZIP code proximity targeting in MailChimp
• GigaOM interviews Gowalla CEO Josh Williams, discuss stumbling into geolocation, and the future of geolocation

My answer? Buy your traffic, not your list:

You’re an expert at something.

That’s why you started your business in the first place. Maybe you got frustrated about a problem, and your business solves it.

Well, write about it. Open up Microsoft Word (or Google Docs or whatever), and write. Give it a personal tone, because it’s faster and easier to write that way. Don’t try to be all professional and corporate. It’ll never get done. And be funny if you can. No fart jokes or anything — just make people smile while they read you. Oh, and make it meaty. You know what’s worse than downloading a big heavy whitepaper? Opening it up to learn it’s 2 friggin’ pages. Write lots of good, useful material. Save it as a PDF.

Give your knowledge away.

Now post that glorious PDF guide to your website or blog. Make it free to download. No, don’t make people register for it. You just started your company, so who the heck are you, and why would I register? Just let people download the awesome guide and read it.

Advertise Yourself.

Throughout your awesome guide, insert full page color ads that tell people you’ve got a really awesome email newsletter too, and point them right back to your list signup form. Full page ads are normally  expensive, but not when it’s your guide. And not when it’s all digital. Go nuts. Try to make the ads  entertaining. The sky’s the limit, because it’s your friggin publication! Or, be low key about it. Whatever.

Buy traffic, not lists

Now here’s the part where you get to spend all this money that’s burning a hole in your pocket: go pay Google for some PPC ads that point to your awesome free guide. You can set a really low budget and gradually increase it later.

But basically, you need to buy traffic for your site, not emails for your lists.

But I’ll let you in on my little management secret for making big decisions like this…

I pretty much make all my important “businessy decisions” by stock-image searching. It’s the modern day magic 8-ball. Sure, you could scour Harvard Business Review for case studies. But pictures are worth a thousand words. And quicker to read.

Anyhoo, when I googled “sales guy” I got images like this:

and when I searched for the keyword “programmer” I got totally rad stuff like this:

As you can see, the programmer has a much better sense of humor. “Hey, your head’s been replaced by a monitor! Oh wait—veeeerrry funny programmer duuuude.”

So of course we took the API route.

Good thing, too.

MailChimp now has more than 19,000 API users.

That’s more users than any one sales guy could ever get for us (unless he was really, really fast with the cold calls and powerpoint presentations). In fact, when I started this blog post, my title was “18,000 API users.” Over the last few days while writing this post, we surpassed 19,000 users (yeah it took me more than one day to write this masterpiece. So what?).

In the past, we didn’t have anyone actually dedicated to the API. It was just an afterthought. After our programmers were finished coding some new feature, they’d think, “Hey, we better go back and code this into the API.” But let’s be honest: who likes to do their work twice? Especially when you have new features to work on for the next point release? So the API work got done, but it took too much time. Investing in a full-time API team was a big step for us, but totally worth it.

RTFM

In the beginning, our API documentation pretty much sucked. I know this because people constantly sent API questions to our customer service team, and so we constantly tinkered with how to design our API home page to look so unbelievably complicated, that only the most advanced programmers would actually click the link to dig deeper.

But once we got a full-time person in place, the documentation got better. It took time to write it all up, because we were busy coding new features into the API (and fixing problems from the previous versions). But over time, we pretty much filled in all the cracks.

Our documentation is so thorough (check it out at mailchimp.com/api/rtfm), that most integrations happen w/out us knowing anything about them (which has its pros and cons, but that’s a topic for another blog post).

Open and Free

Some companies require you to register, or even pay a fee before you can access their API. MailChimp’s API is open and free, which encourages other developers to link their apps to ours. Combine that with great documentation, and users will surprise the hell out of you. New integrations pop up that you’ve never heard of.

One of the first, “wow, someone integrated w/out even talking to us!” integrations was with Batchbook CRM. They’ve got a great app, by the way. I’ve never found a CRM that I could actually stick to, but theirs is different. Anyway, the folks from Batchbook went on and founded the Small Business Web, which is a whole network of web apps who interlink w/each other via our open APIs. If you run a web app, and you have an API, you definitely need to join the Small Business Web. Hurry.

Companies like Freshbooks, Batchbook, Zendesk, FormSpring, Wufoo, Outright, Shoeboxed, and more are on the SBweb. Once you start linking into them, things snowball and you get integrations like this (pulled from the MailChimp Extras page):

API As Business Model?

If you’re a small business with a web app, invest in your API, then join the Small Business Web. I wish we’d done all this sooner.

Because when you integrate with other apps, you extend your functionality and reach. On the cheap.

Cheaper than a giant staff of salespeople.

It’s like this old interview with Brett Crosby (one of my favs, and required reading at MailChimp). In the article, he says:

“Our philosophy was always to create a product that was fairly simple to get going and didn’t require a tremendous amount of technical support. We built our business around a very scalable product, which allowed us to do things like target hosting companies and get massive numbers of users with one deal, rather than focusing on one very complex deal.”

Well, having a robust, well-documented API lets you do just that, except you don’t even need a sales guy like Brett to do the deal.

And I know I was just joking around earlier about our programmer having a better sense of humor, but it’s true. When our API guy (his name is Jesse, btw) joined, we asked him to contribute something to MailChimp Labs. His contribution? The MailChimp LOLcode Interpreter.

But, how do you create email communications that succeed?

One thing you can do before you even choose your first template is sit down and write out your Email Marketing Plan. Just like any endeavor (such as your general marketing plan, or your business plan) outlining your purpose, your audience and your general Plan of Action will save you mucho time later on. You can begin your email marketing efforts with a clear idea of what you’d like to accomplish and how you are going to accomplish it.

Plus, your email subscribers will know exactly what they are going to get from you and what they aren’t. If you know your email marketing plan from the begining you can easily tell your subscribers what they are signing up for (i.e. “Sign up to receive industry news and updates,” or “Sign up to get the latest offers and product reviews”). This is a great thing because people don’t like to get emails that they aren’t expecting. If I sign up thinking I’m going to get industry news and instead I get ads for your latest products, I’m probably not going to be too happy about it.

Sound like a good idea? Awesome. To help you outline your plan, we’ve created a short and painless How-To Guide for Creating An Email Marketing Plan. Go ahead and download the guide to get started. Don’t worry, I promise it is easy and won’t take a lot of time.

Here’s what’s Inside the guide:

Introduction
Step 1: Defining Your Readers
Step 2: Determining Your Purpose
Tips on Creating & Gathering Content
Step 3: Outline Your Goals
Step 4: Determine Your Email Frequency
Step 5: Create a Timeline
Wrapping Up
Appendix

Download the How-To Guide here.

Other free guides from MailChimp:

• Your First Email Marketing Project
• Build Your Audience (an Email Marketing Guide for Bloggers)

Rick Whittington just posted a great case study on his blog about how he did this very thing for one of his clients. He also details how it all affected their subscriber count and overall email performance.

I won’t steal his post’s thunder, but here’s what he goes over:

• How many members were slashed from the list
• How high open rates went up, and bounce/complaint rates went down
• How far above their industry avg. their click rate is now

It’s a very thorough post, with great step-by-step advice, caveats, and ideas I wouldn’t have even thought of myself. Be sure to check out the article, and please thank Rick for taking the time!

How to prune your e-mail list and reduce abuse complaints in MailChimp

Happy anniversary email -- from your camera?

Everybody knows by now that you can use email autoresponders to send a birthday greeting to your customers (here’s a tutorial on sending belated birthday autoresponders). But why not pick a big-ticket item from your store, and send a triggered “happy anniversary” email? While you’re at it, throw in some useful tips for the customer, some feedback/social links, and upsell opportunities (in that order).

Click the thumbnail to zoom in on an example I put together in a few minutes.

No need to do this for every item in your store (that’d get annoying fast). Just pick one or two big ones, setup the autoresponder, then just put it on autopilot.

Related: Target emails by purchase activity, MailChimp Autoresponders, MailChimp API. This blog post inspired by this article from Loren McDonald.

We’ve just posted a 36-page guide for Etsy Sellers that takes you through everything you need to know about marketing your Etsy Shop with MailChimp.

I know you might be thinking, ‘But, Amy, I make things by hand. I’m all about the DIY movement. Why would I do email marketing?’

I’ve got good news. Creating your own email newsletters is totally DIY marketing. Plus, it is actually really effective. Unlike paid advertising or annoying SPAM emails (which we hate) your newsletter is sent only to a list of people who have asked (by signing up) to receive it.

You see, you have people that really want to know about your Etsy Shop, your products, your process etc. These are your loyal customers and fans. Give them what they want! Make them feel really special by sending them exclusive and useful content. Previews of your new products, special discounts, and an inside look at your handmade process are all great ideas for content.

Email marketing allows you to share your craft and your personality with more people. Plus, with MailChimp, not only is it free for lists with up to 500 subscribers, its also easy, fun and powerful.

If this sounds good to you, here is an outline of all the topics covered in our guide for Etsy Sellers:

Building Your Mailing List
Creating an Attractive Newsletter
Sending Your Campaign
Social Sharing
Pay Pal Integration
Tracking and Reporting
Google Analytics
Autoresponders
RSS-Driven Campaigns
Segmenting Your List

Download MailChimp’s Guide for Etsy Sellers (8.6 MEG PDF)

p.s. Just in case you were wondering, we are in no way affiliated with Etsy and this guide is not intended to imply any endorsement or certification by Etsy of our services. Also, Etsy is a registered trademark of Etsy, Inc. And of course, please consult a physician before attempting any crafty projects.

Segment your list based on customer purchase activity

There are several different ways you can use this new segmentation feature…

Segment by Products Purchased in the Past

You can send an email to people who’ve purchased a particular product from your store:

Segment by “Big Spenders”

And like I mentioned here, you can now search for segments under the “Lists” area of MailChimp, too.

So maybe you want a list of all the subscribers who’ve spent more than some amount:

you can download that list of “big spenders” and make a new list, or do some kind of external research on them in your own database:

Segment by Amount Spent on a Single Order:

Generate a list of people who’ve spent more than some amount on a single order

Combine Segment Criteria

Or, you might combine segment-by-engagement and send to your most loyal customers who spent good money with you recently:

Add ZIP Code Proximity

If you collect address information, you can even add ZIP code proximity to your segmentation criteria:

Activating Ecommerce Tracking in MailChimp

To make all this work, you need to have our ecommerce360 plugin installed (Magento, Zencart, osCommerce, and Prestashop versions available).

Drupal user? There’s talk of a Drupal/Ubercart plugin here.

After you’ve got your plugin installed, whenever you send a campaign, open up the “advanced tracking options:”

Then check the box for e-commerce tracking:

We’ll automatically tag all your product links with tracking code, and the rest is magic.

Email Marketing ROI Reports

But wait, there’s more! In addition to all the great segmentation options, you should activate our Analytics360 tool to get these handy ROI reports for each of your MailChimp campaigns:

We basically calculate how much money the email campaign cost, and compare it to how much money your campaign made.

You can totally print this report out and leave it on your manager’s desk with a little sticky note that says, “why I deserve a raise.“

So if you’re thinking about revamping your email marketing for the holidays, you might want to check out their free PDF Guide: “Get Ready for the Holidays”

Their guide covers a wide range of topics, including:

• A/B testing (also see: MailChimp’s A/B testing tool)
• Subject line writing tips (also see MailChimp’s Subject Line Suggester)
• Creating a special “holiday email series” (also see MailChimp’s Autoresponder)

If you like their tips, you should also bookmark their Retail Email Blog, where they cover all the trendy topics in the world of email design.

Major email domain market share

Yahoo and Hotmail are tops, but Gmail is on an upward trend (related study: Gmail Users More Engaged?). AOL has some work to do, and Comcast is pretty flat.

BTW, if you like email marketing stats, or need data to print and show to your clueless boss, bookmark MailChimpCharts and EmailStatCenter.