TwitterKeys is a service developed by the folks over at The Next Web Blog that allows you to insert certain Unicode characters in your tweets. Instead of posting that you have a conference call and coffee date before you head to the airport this afternoon, you might tweet something like “☎ then ♨ before ☞ ✈” To address the challenge of trying to remember all these great characters, @bomega and @sandervdv created a bookmarklet that brings up a floating pop-up window with three tabs. Once you drag it to your web browser’s bookmarks toolbar for instant access, you simply double click on the character you want to use.  Just ⌘ c to copy and ⌘ v to paste in to Twitter.

As a Twitter evangelist myself, I added TwitterKeys to my bookmarks toolbar as soon as I found out about it– and especially since The Next Web uses MailChimp!  (To read more about that, check out our recent interview with Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, one of the founders of The Next Web.)  Since the bookmarklet was occupying such prime browser real estate, and with the ease of copying and pasting characters, I started sneaking them into IM conversations.  But my obsession didn’t end there.  Like a giddy pre-teenage girl, I started using  TwitterKeys anywhere and everywhere text was involved… including email subject lines!

click to download the TwitterKeys for email marketing compatibility chart (.pdf)

It didn’t occur to me that this was a big deal (in a good way), until I was talking to Ben about successfully making contact with some very prestigious MailChimp customers using subject lines like, “MailChimp ♥ Ubercool“.  I thought about the fact that these special characters might not render correctly on the receiving end, but at that point my attempts at making contact hadn’t been very successful.  I was starting to get bummed out and a little discouraged and figured it was worth a shot.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, and it was time to try something that would make my email stand apart from the crowd.  Email marketers take note: it worked; using TwitterKeys in my email subject lines produced the response I was looking for and dramatically improved email open rates.

In order to make sure my discovery was actually something to “write home about,” I ran a battery of tests using MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector.  Inbox Inspector allows you preview a campaign in all the major email clients, test spam filtering and check firewall compatibility before you send it out to your list.  So just to give you an idea, I ran inspections both with and without TwitterKeys characters in the subject line.  Then inspections with TwitterKeys in the body of the email but not the subject line and vice-versa.  What about multiple TwitterKeys characters in the subject?  Was there any relation between TwitterKeys and spam filtering?  How about multiple TwitterKeys in the subject line, the body of the email, and no other discernible text?  You get the point here:
e x t e n s i v e  testing.

One of my most surprising discoveries was the fact that these special characters don’t have any impact on spam filtering, meaning that if you use them, your email is no more likely to be filtered out and classified as spam.  This is great news for email marketers!  I’ve compiled my findings into a one page chart that you can download and use as a reference.  It’s broken down by email client, and I’ve listed whether TwitterKeys work in the subject line (yes or no), as well as which characters (if any) will render in the body of the email.  One thing to note, however, is that TwitterKeys almost never work in plain text emails.  MailChimp allows you to copy the text from your HTML email and use it for the plain text version as a time-saving tool– just remember you’ll have to replace any TwitterKeys symbols with the actual words they represent.

One that really caught my attention was APMEX (American Precious Metals Exchange), and how their email campaign got them $157,000 in sales. Wow. And here’s another case study, from NavySeals.com.

One common thread in all the stories we’ve heard is that our customers keep logging in to Google Analytics to see revenue generated. Then, they’d pull out a calculator to figure out the ROI of that campaign (don’t ask me for the formula—I always have to Google it, then Wikipedia whatever Google tells me. I suck at math).

Anyway, we thought, “Why not just pull their campaign stats from Google Analytics, calculate the ROI, and stick all this into their MailChimp campaign reports?”

So we did that. We call it MailChimp Analytics360 (Get it? Full circle?) It’s powerful. It’s insightful. It’s easy. And it’s free.

At MailChimp, we’ve had to shut down quite a few creative agencies for their client’s bad email habits. Sadly, most problems could have been easily prevented.

We’ve posted a free PDF guide (9 pages): Warning Signs Your Client Is Spamming.

The free downloadable guide covers how to tell if your client is crossing the line, and how to gently guide them back over from the dark side (without losing the project). More specifically, we go over:

• The most common reasons we’ve had to shut down agency accounts at MailChimp
• The industries (your clients) that always seem to have the most risk (and why)
• How to define spam in words your client will understand, and how to determine when a client just needs a punch in the gut
• How to detect inexperienced clients who may be doing things to get themselves (and you) in trouble

Email coupons are far from revolutionary, but the thing I like about this one is that they host their coupon image on their server, and then swap it with an “Expired” image whenever the expiration hits.

That way, nobody can accidentally download and print a coupon that was no good. Image swapping – don’t you wish you could do that with newspapers? You could actually create some-what personalized email coupons using a little merge-tag creativity (here’s a tutorial).

Special Report: iPhones & Email Marketing – 10 Pros & Cons

The article starts with

“It’s clear that the iPhone is more than a fad. In a little more than six months, 3.7 million Americans and around 400,000 Europeans have purchased an iPhone.”

and then covers the following:

- How the iPhone renders email
- Is file size an issue
- How to really get an iPhone user’s attention

More iPhone goodness:

Here’s a movie we created on how HTML Email looks on an iPhone.

Here’s a very long, very cool movie of Edward Tufte discussing the interface design of the iPhone

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!