If you know the secret code, it unlocks some cool discounts on useful stuff…

Okay, there’s no secret code. You just click the links to get our partners’ promo codes. But secret codes would be cool, cuz then we could do decoder rings.

The discount codes are cool nonetheless.

Anyway, you can get very special discounts from our friends at Eventbrite, Squarespace, Moo cards, Batchbook CRM, iStockphoto and more here:

Unlock special discounts from MailChimp partners

We recently published a 32-page guide for bloggers that covers everything you’d ever want to know about promoting your blog with MailChimp. It’s jam-packed with step-by-step tutorials, helpful tips and other useful information. So, why should bloggers be concerned about email?

For one thing, people have different preferences about how they consume information. Some people want to come to your site and browse your latest posts; some are interested in what others are saying in the comments; and some just want to skim your content via RSS and never visit your site at all. There’s another group of people that prefer reading your blog in their email clients. It’s true! They may not have many sites they care enough about to warrant managing a feed reader, or they just like getting email instead of visiting your blog. Whatever the reason, it’s a nice option to offer your readers so they can engage with you in the way that suits them best.

Also, aside from promoting your regular blog content, there may be other ways you can use email to engage your audience and track the effectiveness of your communications. You could send exclusive content to your mailing list, like special articles or sales. You could inform them about updates and news that may be outside the scope of your typical blog postings. The bottom line is this: When people sign up to receive updates from you, they’re telling you they want to hear from you. They’re saying, “I’m interested in what you have to say. Please keep me informed.”

You may not know how engaged your average reader is. You don’t know who’s reading your RSS feed, or how devoutly they’re reading it. But you know that people who give you their email addresses are indicating a certain level of commitment in asking to receive updates from you. And with a service like MailChimp, you know who those people are, and you can actually track their engagement by how often they open your emails, what they click on and what they share with their friends.

Sounds pretty good, right? Here’s an outline of all the topics included in the bloggers guide:

Building Your Mailing List
Sign-Up Form Plugins
Setting Up an RSS-to-Email Campaign
Using Feedburner with MailChimp
Merge Tags for Bloggers
Templates
Frequency (Interest Groups)
Social Sharing
Reports
Analytics360 for WordPress
Blog Publishing Tools
ChimpFeedr
Yahoo! Pipes
Mobile Campaigns

DOWNLOAD MailChimp’s Guide for Bloggers (PDF, 16MB)

Interested in seeing these tools in action? Sign up for one of our bloggers webinars:

November 11, 2009 at 11AM EST
December 2, 2009 at 11AM EST
December 16, 2009 at 4PM EST

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.“

They included some beautiful new holiday templates, plus some new themes like “Environment” (for all the green and earth-friendly businesses we’re seeing in MailChimp) and “Functional” for use in very specific applications, like, say, Autoresponders.

What’s cool is that since we’re using our new Template Design Language, some of the templates have some unique MailChimp features baked right in. I’ll show you what I mean…

To find them, create a campaign. When it’s time to pick your template, go to the “Gallery” tab:

You’ll notice a pulldown menu where you can sort the template by category:

Under “Holidays” you’ll notice some elegant options, like:

Mmmm, turducken (what the heck is a “turducken?“).

Under the “Functional” category, we have new templates that you can use for very specific cases, like an annual autoresponder when it’s time to come in for a checkup:

Under the “Environment” category, you’ll find this template:

Let’s take a closer look at this one.

In the right column, you’ll notice a series of tips. We’re using MailChimp’s nifty ability to create addable content blocks:

Just keep clicking the little “+” icon, to add more tips.

Yes, Style and Versatility

I know this template is called “Live Green,” but this particular template is actually versatile enough to be used for other applications.

Like, saaaay, a plumber’s newsletter.

Let’s use the iStockphoto integration in our image gallery to search for “plumber” pictures:

and plop it into the left column of our template:

After that, I can tweak the colors, fonts, and other styles to match my brand.

Exportable for Template Hackers

Here’s a power tip from Fabio (yes, that’s his real name). He’s one of the DesignLab scientists who contributed a bunch of these templates, and is working on many more.

“Most of these pre-built templates are kind of rigid, but if you’re handy with HTML/CSS, you can take any one of them and export the code in order to tweak it exactly the way you want:

Tip: You’ll want to brush up on our Email Template Language (here’s a handy video tutorial).

Then, re-import your custom template back into MailChimp by clicking this button:

just copy-paste your code into our template editor and hit save:

We hope you find these useful. Stay tuned, because we’ve got a lot more email template announcements to make!

But the fact of the matter is the safest thing you can do is generate a screenshot of your YouTube video player, insert that image into your email, then link it to your actual video landing page.

It’s a miserable process that we just made easier with our YouTube (and Blip.tv and Vimeo) merge tag…

If you want to include a video in your MailChimp campaign, and it’s hosted on YouTube, Blip.tv or Vimeo, just get the video ID, and stick it in our new video merge tag like this:

MailChimp will go to the video, grab its keyframe (a still image from your video), then overlay some video control elements to make it look playable:

Whenever users click, it’ll take them to the hosted version of your video.

No need to screenshot anything, upload to MailChimp, etc. Just use the merge tag, and you’re done.

We’re really excited about this one, because it’s our first integration-via-bookmarklet we’ve ever tried.

1. Installing your bookmarklet

Log in to MailChimp,click on the Account button, and go to the Integrations Panel (marvel at all the integrations):

Whoah, that's a lot. Go to mailchimp.com/extras to see even more integrations with MailChimp

At the bottom, you’ll see “GoToMeeting.” Expand it, and you’ll see a link to a bookmarklet.

Drag the bookmarklet into your browser's bookmarks bar

Drag that link into your browser’s bookmarks bar:

Ok, now you’ve got our bookmarklet installed.

2. Passing webinars over to MailChimp

Next time you’re logged in to your GoToWebinar account, go to the “My Webinars” page:

and then click that Bookmarklet you just installed in your browser.

That’ll grab the list of webinars on this page, and pass them over to MailChimp.

If you have multiple webinars, we’ll ask you to pick one:

Then we’ll open up a special GoToWebinar template in MailChimp (note that this template is actually hidden and inaccessible from our template options, unless you specifically pass GoToMeeting data via the bookmarklet) with your links ready to go:

While you’re here, you might want to edit the email design a little.

Maybe you can pick a different color palette, or use our iStockphoto integration to find some good pictures.

Hmm, think I’ll change the title of the event to “MailChimp Secrets” and search for “whispering monkeys” (get it? secrets?):

and insert the image into your invitation:

Because EVERYTHING is better with monkeys

Or you might even want to switch the template to one of your own saved versions. Click the “change template” link:

and we’ll stick the GoToWebinar content into one of your saved template designs like this:

Important note for template designers: MailChimp looks for a content section in your template called “main.” All of MailChimp’s default templates have this. But if you’re an advanced coder who’s using the MailChimp Template Design Language to build your own templates, you’ll need to have an editable content region called “main” in order to pass GoToWebinar data here.

Here’s a quick YouTube video on how to do all this:

When activated, it detects the preferred language setting in a visitor’s web browser, then automatically translates your signup form to match (plus your thank you screens, your welcome emails, forward-to-friend pages, etc).

This is an especially useful feature for companies with lots of international customers.

For example, say you’re a travel agency, and you build a signup form in English:

In the upper right corner of that screen, click the “auto-translate” checkbox:

Then, if someone from Japan visits your signup form, we’ll automatically translate it to look like this:

And if someone from Russia visits, it’ll change to this:

Notice there’s a link at the top that explains the page was auto-translated, so the visitor can click the link to view the original version.

Where the Translations Come From

We’ve got over 175,000 users on the system now. 30% of those users are outside the U.S. Our #1 city is London, then NYC, L.A., then Sydney. Whacky, huh? And we’re just 34 people in one little office in Atlanta. So we kinda have to be efficient with this whole internationalization thing. It’s not like we can call our office in Tokyo for help.

As you may already know, we worked with a professional translation service to provide a couple dozen different language options in our form designer (see: Does MailChimp Support My Language?). We also received some tweaks from a few kind MailChimp customers around the world with a few of the languages.

So if a visitor’s browser is set to one of the 29 languages that we already support, they’ll get that “human translated” version. But if the visitor’s browser is set to a language we never translated to, we’ll tap into the power of Google Translate. And of course if you customize any of our translated default text anywhere in the signup process, we’ll use Google Translate for that too.

See also:

• How to automatically translate your email content with MailChimp’s TRANSLATE merge tag
• Instant translation links for your email campaign archives

So now you can send a special campaign to your most loyal customers. Or, send a “come-back” campaign to the inactive members on your list before you clean them out.

Here’s why this feature is so important.

The Move To Engagement Measuring

If you follow the email marketing industry, you know that engagement is quite the buzzword lately. We recently talked about how one of the major ISPs is measuring engagement and using it to decide who gets to the inbox, and who goes to the junk folder (See: Feedback Loops Being Replaced by Engagement?).

That ISP is basically looking at whether or not your subscribers open, click, and in general, “interact” with you. If you send an email that mistakenly goes to the junk folder, then the subscriber moves it back out, you scored some engagement points. If your subscriber hits “reply” to send you a message, you get some engagement points.

Cleaning Inactives Helps Deliverability

Returnpath’s George Bilbrey goes into more detail in this article on Mediapost: “Engagement: The New Frontier in Deliverability?” At one point, he advises that senders:

“Treat inactive subscribers differently: This is probably the biggest change that most marketers need to think about.  Mailing to a lot of inactive accounts may actually make your reputation look worse at some ISPs.  Segment out inactive users and run a win-back campaign. If you cannot win back these subscribers, you may simply want to stop mailing them altogether.”

Fascinating? Then you’ll also like this from ReturnPath: How Engagement Metrics Influence Deliverability

Over at Clickz, Jeanne Jennings had this to say about inactive members of your list:

“If these folks really aren’t that into you, they may take the next step and report you as spam. It’s like that shunned suitor who just won’t go away; eventually the victim will consider him a stalker and get a restraining order. Keeping inactive names on your list can open you up to blacklisting and deliverability issues.”

See: Really Simple E-mail Segmentation: Reengaging Inactives

More Sophisticated Than Open and Click Ratings

Some clued-in users have asked us for ways to “segment based on those who haven’t opened the last 6 months” or “those who haven’t clicked in my most recent 3 campaigns.”

It’s awesome that people want to follow best practices and clean out their lists. But the problem with this approach is: 1) open tracking isn’t totally accurate, and 2) “my most recent campaigns” can mean something very different if you send daily emails vs. monthly or quarterly emails.

And neither of these approaches take bounces, spam complaints, and un-then-re-subscribers into account.

So we take a more holistic approach to measuring engagement, by looking at the historical activity of all your subscribers, and taking into account even more variables that are indicative of engagement.

BTW, if you’re into complicated equations, there’s some talk about metrics one could measure in “Future Vision of Email Measurement” at Deliverability.com.

How and Why MailChimp Measures Engagment

We’ve actually been tracking engagement data across our entire system for quite some time now (Chart: Gmail users more engaged?).

Then in March of this year, we unveiled our “List Activity Score” to make sure your best recipients got rewarded with the best deliverability rates.

Note that I did NOT say that our “best senders got the best deliverability rates.”

That’s because we found that our best customers often had multiple lists. And some lists were not as well maintained as others. So we stopped putting our “best senders” on our best IPs, and started sending emails to our best subscribers from our best IPs.

This is meant to reward senders for proper list management. Hence the awesome laurels you’ll find for the best lists:

But if you’re good at reading between the lines, you’ve picked up on the fact that this also means you really, really, really should clean out inactive members from your list.

And with this new release, we’ve made each of your subscribers’ activity score (or level of engagement) visible to you, so you can clean your list appropriately.

Here’s what the stars mean:

1 Star – negative rating, this person has unsubscribe and resubscribed, or soft bounced in the past
2 Star – no activity, never opened or clicked, most likely a new member
3 Star – this recipient has started opening or clicking your campaigns, limited activity
4 Star – this recipient has started opening or clicking your campaigns, a little more activity
5 Star – this recipient has started opening or clicking your campaigns, lotsa activity

How To Segment by Engagement in MailChimp

Whenever you create a campaign, step 1. is to select your list.

Click on “send to segment:”

Next, choose to segment by “member rating:”

If you want to send a special “come-back” campaign to your inactive members, you might select subscribers with 1 or 2 stars.

If you want to send a special offer to your most loyal subscribers, you’d click 5 stars:

In both cases, be sure to hit the “refresh” button to see an updated count of the segment:

Alternatively, you can perform a search on your list under the Lists tab, then click “View All” members:

Note the handy “download spreadsheet” link.

We just made this feature even more awesome by adding more scheduling options…

Scheduling Daily RSS-to-email updates:

When you schedule a daily update, you can pick the time of day to send. The time zone uses your setting under Account –> My Defaults.

Note that with this setting, it’s possible to send multiple RSS-to-email campaigns per day.

Weekly RSS-to-Email

You can specify what day of the week, and what time of day to send your update:

Monthly RSS-to-Email

Specify the day of the month, and the time of day to send your update:

(Queue the dark clouds and thunder sound effects)

But some people want MailChimp’s power without all the jokes (some people like the jokes, but their clients don’t).

So we launched a new feature: Party-pooper mode…

Go to Accounts –> My Defaults

Scroll down to “Party pooper mode” and check the radio button for “disable MailChimp humor:”

Don't like our sense of humor? Turn it off with party-pooper mode. Warning: activating this feature might cause sudden drowsiness, or the mis-perception that you are using another email provider.

We’ll turn off jokes and links to videos, and we won’t say the word “bummer” anymore. Apparently, some people are offended by that word.

Also, some people didn’t like how MailChimp said he wasn’t wearing any pants:

Yes, it’s just the suggestion of cartoon nudity, but the thought of naked apes (yes, they’re supposed to be naked, but still) is just too much for some.

So enabling party-pooper mode will remove the chimp altogether, plus his witticisms.

Keep in mind you’ll also lose his occasional compliments:

and his links to educational videos:

Seriously though.

All joking aside (pun intended), this can be handy if you’re setting up MailChimp for one of your clients and you don’t want to risk offending them or scaring them with fun. At least not in your first few meetings. After they get more acquainted with our powerful features, you can suggest they turn the humor on to make the experience more “MailChimpy.”

Also see:

• Alternatively, you can manage your client’s account for them, and just send them to their own rebrandable reports pages.
• You can also turn on party-pooper mode by typing HIDEFREDDIE while using the app. Typing SHOWFREDDIE will bring him back. For more Easter egg fun, try using the Konami code inside MailChimp a few times. Random stuff happens.