How Youth Ministry Exchange Uses MailChimp

January 22, 2008 – 11:14 pm

Here’s a nice writeup on how Youth Ministry Exchange uses MailChimp:

Article: “The Newsletter is Out”

I like it because it shows the human side of sending a newsletter. It’s not all about buttons and features and technology.

Sometimes, you have to get your wife involved…

“My biggest fear in pressing the “send” button is that there will be a type-o. I always ask my wife to preview it, but sometimes we miss something. We should turn those type-o’s into a contest or something.”

I bet Adam knows very well there’s a spell-checker button in MailChimp. This is just a nice way to get closer to your family. Nice trick, Adam.

Not that they don’t use technology. Youth Ministry Exchange is taking full advantage of a bunch of MailChimp features to spread the word. Here are some things that impressed me:

• They built an archive of all their past newsletters here. It’s a page they host on their website, then they use MailChimp’s Archive Generator to embed that list. It gets automatically updated whenever they send out a new issue. Learn more about MailChimp Archive Generators
• They’ve created their own signup form, then pass the data over to MailChimp (insteading of using our default, hosted signup form). Our signup box designer is pretty nice, but it’s always nicer when you host your own.
• On their signup form, they’re using MailChimp’s Interest Groups feature, which allow subscribers to sign up to receive only specific types of content. Learn more about MailChimp Interest Groups…
• They’re using MailChimp’s HTML email designer, and they’ve really customized their newsletter design to fit their brand. The content in their newsletters is actually useful! Tips, free downloads, and commentary. Nice.
• In their newsletters, they link to their blog, and to an RSS feed. More ways to keep your members updated.

Whew. That’s a lot of technology!

Hundreds of churches use MailChimp to stay in touch with their congregations, but it’s rare to see a MailChimp customer use so many of our features like this. And it’s nice to see someone making their newsletter a family sport!