MailChimp Blog

MailChimp Blog Moving

FYI, I'm in the process of moving this MailChimp blog over to MailChimp.com. If you're one of the 7 or 8 people who actually read this blog, please bookmark (or RSS or whatever) the new location:

Warning: It's really, really ugly right now. I'm working on it.

http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/

We've switched from TypePad to Wordpress, and so far so good.  I love TypePad, because it made it super easy to get started with blogging. But I want the traffic for all this blog content on our own domain. I'm just greedy that way. And I want to be able to customize the design any way I like (which is starting to sound more theoretical than practical).

Holiday HTML Email Templates

MailChimp customers - we've posted our free holiday e-card graphics in the Resource Center. Download them, modify them if you want (use something like Photoshop or Fireworks) and then use them inside your MailChimp Postcard HTML email template.

Show us your work!
Send us your holiday e-card to get listed in our client showcase!

Spell Checker Added to MailChimp

After launching a string of pretty powerful new features, this one's just kinda silly in comparison. But I bet it'll be used more than anything we've ever programmed.

We just added a spell checker button to our campaign content editor:

So if you ever need some speling help:

Find a MailChimp Expert

MailChimp has always catered to small and medium sized businesses (and their agencies) who want a simple, affordable way to get their email marketing done. People who just want an easy way to design an HTML email, send it to their list, and get some stats on their campaigns.

But In the last 3 months or so, we added a slew of new power features to MailChimp. These upgrades are attracting lots of larger companies.

Stuff like:

• A/B Split Testing
• List segmentation
• Inbox Inspector
• More Powerful API

That's nice. But because of all these new features, we kinda created a new problem.

New Problem:
Those big customers have been asking us for help getting their internal systems (CRMs, CMS, E-commerce carts, databases, etc) integrated with MailChimp. And since we're a do-it-yourself product, we can't help them with those services. 

Find a MailChimp Expert:
So we put together a list of MailChimp Experts. These are developers who know MailChimp, who use MailChimp, and who can help companies integrate with MailChimp. Some of them specialize in super nerdy stuff, like programming and databases and APIs (heck, some of them have actually helped contribute to our API). Some specialize in HTML email design and coding. Most are jacks of all trades and can handle anything. We've got experts from Australia, Austria, the UK, and USA on the list (and it's growing everyday).

If you're a freelancer, or run a web-dev shop and want to get listed (and you have a MailChimp account), we'd love to send some business your way. Go to http://www.mailchimp.com/experts/ , scroll to the bottom, and click the "get listed" link.

API Upgrade (for nerds only)

If you're one of the web geeks who use MailChimp, we've got something you might want to tinker with over turkey day (yeah, we know you're gonna be online).

If you're a marketing person who uses MailChimp, ignore this. We'll be sending out an official email (with cool, pretty pictures) for you after Thanksgiving.

Fellow Nerds:

We've just completely overhauled the MailChimp API. If you're using the older API, don't freak---it still works. But there's so much more you can do with the new API.

What's different?

In a nutshell, the old API just accepted data from you. It was a one-way street. With the new API, MailChimp talks back. A lot...

If you've ever said, "Man, if only MailChimp's API would sync back with my internal database, I could _____. " Then you'll love this.

You can now pull just about any piece of data you want from MailChimp. Some ideas:

• Download unsubs, bounces, FBL reports, etc. from MC to clean your inhouse lists
• Pull campaign stats from MC, and assemble your own crazy reports
• If you've got our A.I.M. Reports add-on, sync recipient email activity (like opens/clicks) to your customer database to do some "behavioral targeting" (make sure you give your marketing person ample warning before you mention this, because they will crap their pants as soon as the words come out your mouth)
• Pass customer status (like subscription info) into MailChimp, and only send campaigns to "active" members
• Do you send campaigns on behalf of clients? Create special pages for them in your CMS, where they can vew their campaign stats

Some new functionality you can do with the API:

• BatchUnsubscribe
• Sending the double opt-in confirmation is now optional for API-imported lists. If you've handled opt-ins on your end, no need to re-confirm them again when passing to MailChimp. But it's on by default, just in case you need it.

The new API makes it easier than ever to add the power of "THE CHIMP" into your CRM, CMS, or e-Commerce system. Oh wait, I thought I was talking to the marketing people again. Sorry. Back to the nerdy stuff...

The API is available in three forms – php, which is what our auto-generated client class uses, using php serialization strings, JSON, and XML-RPC.

You can read the auto-generated documentation at:

(we're not finished polishing these pages, but we thought we'd get this posted asap before the holiday break)

http://www.mailchimp.com/admin/api/

The auto-generated PHP client class can be seen here:

http://www.mailchimp.com/admin/api/MCAPI.class.phps

Happy Thanksgiving!

A/B Split Testing Made "MailChimp Easy"

People in the email marketing business (myself included) are always talking about running experiments with your email campaigns. Test different subject lines to see what works best with your subscribers. Test different send dates or times. Test different from names. Test different content.

The most common form of email testing is the A/B Split test. You take your list, split it into 2 random groups, and send two different campaigns (Group A vs. Group B). Later, go back and check your stats. Whichever one got the better open rate (or click rate, or whatever you're tracking), use those settings on your "real" campaign (learn more about A/B Split tests at Clickz and at MarketingExperiments.com).

But have you ever actually tried to run an A/B split with your email campaigns? It's a lot of work! Very few email services even offer A/B testing. If they do, it's some complex process where you "generate random slice segments" or "even/odd" lists, then setup two separate campaigns, then check results, then send yet another campaign based on what you learned from the test.

Never mind the fact that most small business owners barely have time to send one campaign. The real bummer is you're supposed to be doing this all the time.

Well, we just made A/B split testing "MailChimp Easy" by automating the entire process. It's  a pretty unique way of handling things (so unique it's patent pending), and we think you'll find this a very useful, powerful tool for optimizing your email marketing.

Read on: A/B Split Testing Your Email Marketing Campaigns

 

 

System Upgrade This Weekend

As announced in our recent System Alert, we're launching a major upgrade to MailChimp this weekend. I personally think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, but we'll see how it all plays out.

The upgrade will begin sometime around Saturday morning at 12am. We've alloted the entire weekend for the upgrade, and should be live again Monday morning at 9am EDT. During the upgrade, we'll still be processing bounces, unsubs, and campaign stats. Scheduled campaigns will go out fine as well. You just won't be able to log in over the weekend.

If anything happens (to delay re-launch), we'll be posting updates here on the blog.

Campaign Previews With Images Off and Vert/Horiz. Preview Panes

We just updated the MailChimp Inbox Inspector to include an additional 20 campaign preview screenshots, saving you even more time testing your email campaigns.

Now you can preview your email campaigns in different email programs like Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc., PLUS see them when images are turned off, PLUS see them in different preview pane configurations (vertical preview panes vs. horizontal).

Screenshot:

Anybody can use the Inbox Inspector to test their campaigns (whether you're a MailChimp customer or not). Sign up for it here.

Click below for some examples. You spend so much time working on an HTML email design, only to find out a tiny sliver is actually displayed (if at all).

Here's a recent MailChimp campaign we sent to our customers. That's how it looks in an ideal setting, with all images on, and inside your nice, big browser window.
 

But I used our Inbox Inspector to see what it looked like in different email programs...

Mozilla Thunderbird, vertical preview pane:
The entire right column of my newsletter (where all my press release links are) is hidden from view for recipients using the vertical preview pane setting.

Mozilla Thunderbird, horizontal preview pane:
Only a tiny little 220px sliver peeks out from the preview pane here.

AOL 9, images OFF:
My logo is entirely missing when images are turned off in AOL (which is AOL's default setting).

Yahoo Mail, images OFF (vertical preview pane):
Here's a full screen preview of our campaign with images turned off, and inside Yahoo's default vertical preview pane.

The Takeaway?

Knowing how your HTML emails look in all these different configurations will help you optimize the designs of your templates. You've got to make sure your logos "peek" out from the preview panes (in horizontal AND vertical settings). You've got to use alt-text (you can put CSS on that alt-text too) on your images. The new Inbox Inspector campaign previews can save you a ton of time troubleshooting under all these conditions.

If you'd like to use our Inbox Inspector to test your email marketing campaigns, click here for more information.

MailChimp + SurveyMonkey like peanutbutter and chocolate

We just recently partnered with one of our most favorite websites ever: SurveyMonkey. The partnership basically offers their customers email marketing services that they can combine with their online surveys.  

SurveyMonkey (recently featured in Inc. magazine and MarketingSherpa) is hands down the best, most affordable, online survey tool out there. We're very proud to be working with their team (we use SurveyMonkey all the time at MailChimp, and we think everyone should make online surveys a regular thing with their subscriber lists).  Plus, I mean, c'mon: Monkeys and Chimps? It's fate!

Related: MailChimp Partner Program Expands With AuthorizeNet

New & Improved MailChimp

Some extremely cool, super-useful MailChimp features just went live over the weekend:

• List Segmentation - Now you can target a sub-group of subscribers within your "master" lists on MailChimp! Examples and details here.
• Point-and-click customization - Customize every single step of your double opt-in process with our new template design system and pre-built themes to match your brand (no HTML coding required)
• Interest groups on signup forms - Let subscribers specify their interests when they signup for your list
• Video demo of new features

And as an added bonus, we upgraded our Inbox Inspector to include even more preview screens of the different email programs. More on that (plus some screenshots) in a later post.

List Segmentation in MailChimp

MailChimp will be down this weekend for some major upgrades. The planned outage will start Saturday morning (10/13) at midnight ET and we'll be live again on Monday morning (10/15), 9am ET. During the upgrade, none of your scheduled campaigns, tracking, unsubs, etc. will be affected. Everything will run as normal, but you won't be able to log in.

MailChimp Is Even More Useful-er

We will be adding lots of cool new features that you've been asking for:

• List Segmentation
• Interest groups
• Easier form customization

Plus some interface enhancements and minor bug fixes.

List Segmentation in MailChimp
If you've never heard of list segmentation, it's a hoity-toity marketing term for "sending a campaign to a targeted sub-group of my entire list, so that it's more relevant to them, and so that we can get more bang for the buck".

We've just made list segmentation super easy in MailChimp (no hoity-toity marketing experts required!). Now, you can send special offers to people based on a number of criteria that you specify, such as:

• The date they signed up to your list
• What company they're from
• Their postal address (State, ZIP code, etc)
• Send only to people who are members of specific interest groups
• Send to people with first name "Bob"
• (Click that thumbnail to the right for a screenshot of the interface)

Best of all, list segmentation is totally free to all MailChimp users.

PLUS: If your MailChimp account has our optional AIM tracking add-on, you can send a targeted campaign to people based on whether or not they responded to a previous campaign:

• Send a campaign with a different subject line to those who did not open a previous campaign.
• Send a followup campaign to people who clicked to download your whitepaper in a previous campaign

Read more information & see an example here:

Email List Segmentation in MailChimp

Interest Groups
We've also added interest groups to MailChimp. That means on your signup forms, you can now offer checkboxes so that your subscribers can indicate what their interests are.

For example, you can ask your subscribers if they want to receive your monthly newsletters, special promotions, weekly sales alerts, etc. That way, you never send weekly sales alerts to people who just wanted quarterly news.

• Interest groups are free.
• You can still setup infinitely many separate lists as you want, and each list can have its own set of interest groups.
• You can setup virtually unlimited interest groups on each of your signup forms.

Easy Signup Customization
We've made it easier than ever to customize the look and feel of the entire double opt-in process in MailChimp (signup form, confirmation email, thank you screens, etc).

Instead of making you code the HTML for each step of the process (and clicking that dreaded "Revert" button every time you make a change to the database), your entire opt-in process can now be customized in our brand new design tool, with no HTML coding required.

Just set the basic template once: body background colors, fonts, styles, etc., and we'll make those changes across the board. You can even upload your company logo, and it'll be added to every single welcome screen, confirmation & thank you email, and landing page in one fell swoop. It's hard to describe in words, so click here to watch a demo video.

About 20% of our users will have this upgrade automatically applied to their accounts. No action required on your part. The remainder of you have already made some kind of design customization to your opt-in process, and we don't want to screw up your work---so you'll have to manually click the "upgrade" link under your "List Customization" settings in order to be able to use the new tools.

• We bumped up the limit from 10 total fields on your signup form to 16 (email address plus 15 more)
• We've included 12 pre-built color schemes you can use (red planet, grape-a-licious, midnight oil, blue sky, etc). Pick one that closely matches your brand, then customize it to perfection.

Upgrading to the new customization design tool is free.

Miscellaneous Enhancements and Fixes:

• Added a <HR> button to the content editor toolbar. This adds a horizontal line into your campaign, so you can easily separate blocks of content.
• No more jumpy templates. In some browsers, when you went to click on a template in your template library, it would jump to the side a little. Nope, we weren't playing "catch the monkey" tricks on you---that was just a funny little coding bug. It's fixed now.
• When previewing merge tags in the popup preview on a certain step in the built-in postcard template, they all showed up blank. Bet you never noticed that. It's fixed, though.
• You can now customize the "Forward to Friend" landing page (we wrapped it into the new opt-in process designer).

As always, we hope you find the new features useful!

"Where the heck is Dan?"

If you've ever used MailChimp's live chat button, or emailed us, or called us on the phone, chances are you've spoken with Dan Kurzius, our head of customer service (he's also a co-founder). Dan's been out of the office for about a week now, and some customers have been asking about him. No worries folks---Dan and his wife just had their first baby (it's a girl!). Tell me that's not the cutest little baby ever.

Dan will be out a little while longer, but in the meantime Jennifer (our new customer service expert) is filling in. I'm even taking some calls and chats too. By the way, it hurts my feelings to hear all of you say, "Can you just put Dan on the line?"

Dan will be back soon. Maybe he'll even be up late at night now, taking the occasional live chat or email ticket?

Congratulations, Dan!

MailChimp Customer Field Trip: Gourmet Station Headquarters

We could sit around in meetings and talk about new features for MailChimp. Maybe watch our competitors, and play "keep up with the Joneses." But we'd rather visit some real customers---get into their environment, and see how they work.

We just recently visited MailChimp customer GourmetStation.com to see how they run their business, and to see how they do their email marketing.

Donna Lynes-Miller, the president of Gourmet Station, gave us a tour of their facility, and showed us how they process orders. We walked through the entire process, from e-commerce cart transaction, to downloading the order details to their local server, to printing labels, to packing boxes, to sending thank-you emails. We also talked about how their business is growing, and the exciting plans they have for the near future (there's email marketing involved! Yay!). It was amazing to see how it all gets done. She showed us the detailed marketing reports she generates, using MailChimp's campaign stats.

If there was ever a person who followed her passion, it's Donna. I'd bet all of our other small business customers on MailChimp are the same way.

We'd like to visit you too!
We got some great ideas for improving the 'chimp by visiting Donna. And I mean the kind of features you'd actually use. So we want to visit more customers. If you're based in Atlanta (or near enough for a road trip), and you don't mind a bunch of nerds visiting and asking/answering lots of questions, we'd love to stop by. Let us know.

Oh yeah, MailChimp recently added 3 new team members, and we bought Gourmet Station dinners for all of them, to welcome them to the team.  Here's a picture:

Left to right: Chad (programmer), Jennifer (customer service), Neil (marketing) and Donna (president of GourmetStation)

MailChimp's All Grown Up

The system maintenance went well this past weekend (it took us only about 5 minutes).

We just realized MailChimp's 6 years old now (August 21st was his birthday). We've been so busy we forgot to celebrate! Here's what we've been working on the last couple weeks:

• We hired a new kick ass programmer, and a new kick ass customer service person
• We hired a new marketing person to help spread the monkey love
• We moved into a new, larger office space
• We launched a brand new website, with a totally new "grown up" look and feel.
• We introduced new monthly price plans, for users who send frequent campaigns (we still offer pay-as-you-go plans)
• Inbox Inspections are available "a la carte" now, so that anyone can use them (whether they're a registered MailChimp customer or not).

Whew. Still working on even more enhancements to launch soon.

The New Website
The most common feedback we ever get from website visitors is something along the lines of, "Are you guys for real? I mean, you're a real business, right? You can do the same stuff that xyz.com offers, right?" Sigh. The old design was nice, but for some business owners it seemed a bit too happy and easy and "too good to be true."

And we had lots of web designers and creative agencies who use MailChimp, but told us they're kind of afraid of telling their clients about us. Monkey business is scary to some people.

So we changed the design to make us look a little more serious (at least on the surface). For fans of the chimp (Frederick von Chimpenheimer is his name)  don't worry. We're still going to keep things fun.

This new website design is kind of like how when your boss walks by, and you put a really serious look on your face until he's gone. You actually look like you're getting business done, and not watching YouTube. Kinda like that.

New Monthly Plans
Since we launched in 2001, we've only offered pay-as-you-go plans. The pay-as-you-go model is perfect for new email marketers who aren't quite ready to send campaigns every single month. But once their list grows to a certain size and they start sending campaigns more frequently, they always ask us for monthly plans. It's probably the #1 complaint we've received since day one (from our larger clients).

Personally, we've never liked monthly plans, but we can see how they're more affordable (and convenient) under certain circumstances. Of course, our pay-as-you-go plans are still there for people who like them.

Current MailChimp customers: If your list is large, and you send campaigns often, you might consider switching to a monthly plan (here's a listing of the new plans so you can do the math). Or, you might be in one of those companies where it's a royal pain in the butt to get the company credit card from your boss every single time you want to buy email credits. Monthly plans will make life much easier for you. Otherwise, if you signed up for MailChimp specifically for our pay-as-you-go plans, you have nothing to worry about. Nothing changes for you.

MailChimp System Maintenance (Round 2)

Last weekend, we took the system down for maintenance. We couldn't finish all our work, so we're picking up where we left off this weekend.

MailChimp will be down all day Saturday, and we'll possibly go live on Sunday (but to be safe, we're officially saying Monday morning 9am).

Sorry for any inconvenience. Your scheduled campaigns, bounces, tracking, singups, etc. will all work just fine during the maintenance. You just won't be able to log in to your accounts.

MailChimp down for maintenance this weekend

MailChimp will be down for some minor upgrades this weekend starting on 12am Saturday (August 18th). We'll be back online Monday at 9am (August 20th).

The outages will be intermittent, so don't plan on logging in at all over the weekend (take a break for once!).

If you have campaigns scheduled for the weekend, there's nothing to worry about. The delivery servers and scheduled campaigns will not be affected at all.

MailChimp Is Moving

We're growing and hiring (check out the open positions) at a rapid pace, and we need more room. So we're in the process of moving to a new (much, much larger) office this weekend.

Anyways, we'll be back online Monday morning (8/6/07) at 9am ET with Live Chat and email support.

AT&T (don't you love monopolies?) won't promise that our telephone system will be 100% ready. Ever. You should be able to call if you need support, but if you experience any weirdness, you'll know why. If the phone's konking out when you call, hop on Live Chat or email us. Thanks!

 

MailChimp is Hiring

Our customer base is over 10,000 and growing really fast, so we're looking to hire:

• Software App/Developer - PHP, JavaScript, AJAX, Linux, MySQL experience essential. Perl experience is a plus. You'll be working in our technology team to build out new features for MailChimp. Full-time, great pay, health, and dental. Must like monkeys.
• Customer Support Technician - Full time or part time. Some "lite" HTML coding experience preferred (for troubleshooting purposes, not programming) and must have good communication and typing skills. Infinite patience helps too. You'll basically help train and support customers on how to use MailChimp, over Live Chat and telephone. Must like monkeys.

About Our Company:
We have a fast-paced, startup environment here, but we're stable and have been profitable from day one. Think dot-com, but with real customers and real money. Working on MailChimp is like changing tires on a moving car, but then again, we're not pulling many all-nighters either. You'll have a challenging job, but be able to have a personal life, too.

Fit the bill? Contact us.

Esquire Magazine Interview

When I was in grade school, I was one of the first kids to wear checkerboard Vans, parachute pants, and Swatch watches. I also carried a Trapper Keeper notebook with a bitchin' Lamborghini Countach on the cover (jealous?).

Being such a fashion pioneer, I've always fancied myself on the cover of Esquire Magazine.

Well folks, until that day comes, I'll just settle for tiny little side quotes in articles like this:

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/gmail-061307

Pixel Awards 2007 Call for Entries

Deep down, designers know that design awards are nothing special, and they don't validate you as a designer with real talent (unless you win one!).

One exception, IMHO, is the Pixel Award. It's a new design award (started by an actual designer) that showcases some great talent, and they give trophies that are works of art (literally---works of art).

MailChimp was a sponsor last year, so we got one of their cool robot/space invader plaques to hang on our wall. When people visit, they pass by all our other trophies (and our animatronic monkey head) and go straight for the Pixel Award. It's just too cool.

This year, they've got an artist (Tsega Dinka) making individual awards for each category. Very nice. Check out the different 10" x 10" paintings over at the Pixel Awards website:

http://www.pixelawards.com/

If you're one of those creative agencies that already has countless plexiglass trophies and golden pencils out in your lobby, you should try to win a Pixel Award this year. There are 20 categories, like "Fashion" and "Animation" and "Non-profit" and "Vegetarian" and "Weird."

We're a sponsor this year, too. Besides their nifty works of art, you'll also win 500 MailChimp email credits. If you win, you could use MailChimp to take a picture of yourself holding your prize, and email it in a newsletter to 500 friends, family members, and clients. Not to gloat or anything. Just because they'd probably be happy for you. :-)

SenderID Authentication For Your MailChimp Campaigns

MailChimp customers: You can now setup your DNS to include our MailChimp servers in your SPF record (so that your campaigns will be SenderID authenticated).

We sent out the news recently in a System Alert, but just in case you didn't get it, here are the details...

If you have access to and can modify your DNS, add this bit of code to your SPF text record to enable SenderID Authentication for all your MailChimp campaigns:

include:servers.mcsv.net

For example, your SPF record might look something like this:

v=spf1 mx ptr include:servers.mcsv.net ~all

If you have absolutely no idea what any of this means, print this out and give it to your IT group (wrap it in a candy bar to expedite it). Tell them your email campaigns will have a little better deliverability if they do this for you.

After we sent our email about this, we got a ton of questions from our customers. So here's a little information that might help:

• Yes, authentication can be confusing as hell. For more information on SenderID authentication, visit this Microsoft website
• Why this is important: ISPs (like AOL, Hotmail, MSN, Bellsouth, Yahoo, etc.) are starting to check incoming emails for authentication. If your email is not authenticated, it looks slightly suspicious to them, and they run it through their spam filters extra, super-duper hard. If your emails are authenticated, they run them through their spam filters slightly less extra super-duper hard. Some ISPs are marking emails that are authenticated with special badges, indicating they're slightly more 'trustworthy.'
• SenderID is only one type of authentication (but it's getting very, very popular, and is pretty easy to implement, compared to DKIM authentication).
• How SenderID authentication works: Basically, when you send an email using MailChimp, but your reply-to address is "yourcompany.com" it kind of looks suspicious to ISPs. So a receiving ISP would ask, "Why does it say it's from "yourcompany.com" when I can tell it came from MailChimp's servers (mcsv1.net, mcsv2.net, mcsv3.net...etc)" But so long as your email isn't very spammy, it's usually okay, and you have nothing to worry about. They'll just let it slide. But ISPs are increasingly checking for SenderID authentication now. So when you send your email campaign and put "yourcompany.com" in the reply-to, a receiving ISP will go to "yourcompany.com" and ask if MailChimp is an impostor, or if we're truly authorized to send emails on your behalf. Adding that line of code tells ISPs, "Yeah, MailChimp's cool. You can trust him."
• The ISP where you host your website and manage your DNS might not let you modify your DNS records (it's a pretty advanced feature, not offered in common small business hosting packages). Some will let you modify your mx-records, but not SPF. You need to be able to edit your SPF record.
  
• If you can't modify your SPF record, all is not lost. We will be offering an alternative for you later (details in the System Alert we sent to all customers)
• This is not the same as SPF authentication. SPF authentication is different from SenderID authentication, even though to make SenderID work, you have to edit your SPF record. Don't ask. For a really technical explanation, go here.
  
• After you've setup your SPF record on your DNS, you can check your work. Use MailChimp to send an email to: check-auth@verifier.port25.com and you will  get a bounce back. The bounce back will tell you if the message passed SenderID authentication.
• Some people have asked us, "What if my ISP doesn't allow me to edit my DNS' SPF records?" Well, we could tell you to switch ISPs, or to use a separate DNS hosting service, but that's a huge pain, and we're not convinced it's totally worth it right now. We haven't seen lack of authentication really hurt anyone's campaigns. But having authentication can sometimes help a little (here's one case we've seen just recently). So if you can't really edit your DNS, don't worry too much about this. We'll be offering alternatives for you soon.
• We can set you up with DKIM authentication on MailChimp too. But it's only worth it if you send a very high volume of emails on a very regular basis. You will need a <a href="http://www.mailchimp.com/add-ons/">MailChimp PRO</a> account.

Updated Feedback Loop Reports (abuse complaints)

MailChimp Enhancement:

We've just been added to the feedback loop of another (very) major ISP, and you should start seeing some new data in your Abuse Reports.

For those of you who don't know, a feedback loop is sort of a secret reporting system used by ISPs to warn senders when they've been getting too many spam complaints about your campaigns. We use feedback loops to automatically remove complainers from our users' lists. More importantly, we use FBLs to find customers with dirty, old, or bad lists and who need to be shut down before they spoil things for the rest of our customers.

Read more about feedback loops here.

Who's the new ISP? We can't tell you. Because on the record, they don't have a feedback loop. They're still in beta.

So in your abuse reports stats, you'll see "Unavailable Email" if anyone from this particular ISP reports your campaign as spam. Although we can't show you who complained, rest assured we've automatically removed that person from your list.

Feedback loops MailChimp monitors for you:

• AOL
• Hotmail/MSN
• Outblaze
• Roadrunner
• SpamCop
• United Online: Netzero, Juno, etc
• (unnamed)

Memorial Day Support Availability

On the record, the MailChimp support team will be off in observance of Memorial Day on Monday, and will return on Tuesday.

Off the record, we almost never unhook ourselves from email, so we'll be watching for any tickets and issues every once in a while.

Have a safe and happy Memorial Day, and hope you get a moment to remember our heroes.

Ruby on Rails integration with MailChimp

The folks at ProjectLocker.com have created a way to integrate MailChimp with Ruby on Rails applications. It's open source, and posted at:

http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-mailchimp/

They've even got it checking an inbox for MailChimp's automated "This user has just subscribed/unsubscribed" email alerts, so they can take appropriate actions on their own hosted database.

Thanks, ProjectLocker!

Can Spammy Keywords HELP Your Spam Score?

Do you think that removing spammy keywords like "click here" and "free shipping!" will help you get past the spam filters?

Not necessarily.

GourmetStation.com recently used our Inbox Inspector add-on to check how their campaigns render in all the major email programs, and to test their work in spam filters.

Running their campaign through real, live spam filters gave us some valuable insight into how they work, and how sometimes, slashing those "spammy" keywords that we've all learned to avoid from your copy can actually hurt your spam score!

When we launched our Inbox Inspector Add-on, GourmetStation had already sent their Easter Campaign. Still, they wanted to go back and look at how that campaign looked in the major email programs, so they ran some reports on it.

(click to zoom in)

If we click on the thumbnail for Microsoft Outlook 2003, which would be used by a lot of their "at work" recipients, we can see exactly where the email scrolls on a 1024x768 resolution screen (look for the red dotted line):

Not too bad! They even got their call to action button above the scroll.

But they wanted better. Gourmet Station went back and modified their design for their upcoming Mothers Day campaign, and here's what it looks like in Outlook 2003:

You'll notice their logo and "view this in your browser" stuff at the top of the email take up less room, so now their call to action button is way above the scroll, and even allows their "$79.99 Plus Free Shipping -- Click for details" text to peek out above the scroll. It's nice that they made this text (instead of images), too. Just in case people have their images turned off.

Here's a close up of their new, space-saving header graphic:

Some of you might be thinking, "Wouldn't the "$79.99 Plus Free Shipping" and "Click for details" text in their content set off all the spam filters?" That's what we've all been taught, right?

Not necessarily. In general, it's true that you should avoid too many spammy keywords like "FREE" in your campaign, but spam filters are a lot more sophisticated than that. That's why you've got to check your campaigns in real, live spam filters if you want to know the truth.

When we check the Spam Filter report (screenshot below), the campaign actually passes all the spam filters. Spam Assassin gave it a score of "1.7" (the default threshold for Spam Assassin is 5, so there's plenty of breathing room here).

But the email didn't get past the Postini firewall (check out the red "failed" icon):

Clicking the "Reasons" link reveals that Postini thinks it's some kind of "special offer" and that's apparently spammy to them (nevermind the fact that our recipients have opted-in specifically to receive "special offers").

At this point, we can try to tweak our copy until we get a 100% perfect score, but then again, that could hurt our conversion rates. I mean, getting past Postini would be nice, but "Free shipping" is an extremely powerful offer for retailers. I'm not sure I'd sacrifice that phrase just for a perfect score here.

Just out of curiosity, I removed the words "Free" and "Click" from the message. For example, instead of "Free Shipping" I used "Shipping's on us." That resulted in a lower Spam Assassin score (it plummeted from 1.7 to 0.2!) but it still wouldn't get past Postini.

Hmm. I then removed any remotely spammy keywords from the message: Free, Click, Shipping, $, Gift, etc. Heck, I even took out the word "brunch."

Not only did it still fail Postini, but my Spam Assassin score shot back up to 1.1!

The reason they gave me? "BODY: HTML has a low ratio of text to image area (0.9 pts)"  In plain English, that means I have too many pretty pictures, and not enough text to balance things out. All fluff, no substance.

Those "spammy" words that I removed actually would have helped my spam score!

By the way, this "low ratio of text to image area" is why you should never send an "image only" html email campaign.

As you can see, simply removing spammy keywords doesn't always help. In rare cases, it can actually hurt! The only way to tell is to actually test your campaign in real, live spam filters.

A big thanks to Donna and Jon at GourmetStation for letting us see these reports. 

Notes from Authentication and Online Trust Summit

Mark, our resident uber-nerd, is at the Authentication and Online Trust Summit in Boston right now, representing the 'chimp. He's there to learn what measures ISPs are putting in place to block spam and email threats (and what good email marketers need to know).

Is Mark sending me up-to-the-minute updates on breaking anti-spam news via his Blackberry, so that I can post them here on the blog? Nope. He won't even touch a Blackberry. He'll probably just come back next week, sit down at his desk, and quietly tweak MailChimp. Where's the fun in that? Sigh.

Luckily, Tamara Gielen's found someone who is posting updates here.

Inbox Inspector: One Click Email Campaign Testing

Last week, we launched a new feature in MailChimp (in "stealth mode"), and asked a handful of our customers to try it and give us some feedback. So far, this is what we're hearing:

"It's Christmas in April"

"This is cool as sh--"

"Passed the spam filter check by 100%! Yippee!"

What is the MailChimp Inbox Inspector?

It lets you check your HTML email campaigns in all the major email programs, spam filters, and server firewalls in one easy click...

Basically, whenever you send HTML email campaigns, you have to check it in a lot of email programs to make sure that 1) it rendered properly, and 2) it made it past the crazy spam filters.

Kind of like how you test web pages in different browsers. But 10 times worse. You have to download, install, and maintain Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Lotus, and you have to go sign up for accounts with Yahoo, Hotmail, Mail.com, and you have to pay for accounts with Comcast, Earthlink, Bellsouth, and on and on. Then there's the server firewalls, like Postini, Spam Assassin, MessageLabs, and more. Oh, and Gateway servers, like Ironport. If you're lucky enough to have the budget for all that (about 8 grand, then 1 grand a year to maintain) then you send yourself lots of test campaigns to all those accounts, then repeat the process until your email works the way you want.

Yeah, it's a real pain. It can take hours to properly test an email campaign. In fact, a lot of people just design their email, click send, and pray to the email gods that it makes it through.

Now, you can click one button, and MailChimp will do all the testing for you in minutes:

Lots more screenshots at:

http://www.mailchimp.com/add-ons/inboxinspector/

We did this by partnering with ReturnPath, one of the most trusted names in email marketing and deliverability. These guys have a solid product, and more importantly, great customer service (why we chose them). And they're constantly adding more email programs and spam filters to check your emails (they've just added 15 more screenshots that we've got to integrate---slow down, guys!).

When you click the new "Inbox Inspection" button in MailChimp, here's what kind of reports we'll generate:

• Screenshots of your campaign in 17 major email programs
• Zoom-in views of where your email scrolls on a 1024x768 screen (you'll be shocked how little your recipients see before scrolling)
• Spamminess scores, but not just based on simple keywords. We all know that "CLICK HERE!" is risky. Inbox Inspector actually passes the email through real filters and  server firewalls, so you can see how their complex algorithms truly score your emails.
• Content assessment reports (we look for broken code, typos, etc)
• Printable report that you can send to your client or designer

Anyways, we'll be launching it sometime this week, so look for it in under your MailChimp Account Tab, in the "Add Ons" section.

It'll save you TONS of frustration, prevent embarassing mistakes, and best of all, it's cheaper than what you'd charge for one hour of your time.

More Information at: http://www.mailchimp.com/add-ons/inboxinspector/

Try MailChimp free at: http://www.mailchimp.com/tryit.phtml

Bellsouth Blocking HTML Emails (sorta)

Earlier this month, news broke out that Bellsouth was suddenly and mysteriously blocking HTML email. We kinda blew it off, because ISPs try new tactics to block spam all the time, and sometimes things start off drastic, then they scale back a little (after enough customers complain). In email marketing, it's always 2 steps forward, 1 step back.

Yesterday, while sending some HTML test emails to our Bellsouth test account, we noticed they weren't showing up in our inbox at all (this is why it's important to have accounts at different ISPs---if you can afford it). Then we remembered all the news about how Bellsouth was blocking HTML emails. Could it be they were actually serious about this?

Then we noticed that our Bellsouth account was receiving HTML emails just fine from Crate & Barrel (it helps to subscribe to other newsletters with all your test accounts, so you can see if you have problems, or if everyone else has problems too). Anyways, we analyzed Crate & Barrel's email headers, and saw that they've implemented DKIM authentication.

Could that be it? We used one of our MailChimp customers' accounts (who opted for our dedicated IP address add-on with full SenderID and DKIM authentication) to send an HTML email test to Bellsouth, and sure enough, it showed up just fine.

So it appears Bellsouth is blocking HTML email unless it is DKIM authenticated. They could be accepting SenderID as well, but our test had both forms of authentication on, so we'll have to do further testing to see if they allow just one or the other.

What to do? Download your list and see if a very large proportion is using Bellsouth. If not, don't worry too much. You can switch them to plain-text mode if you want (other people have been recommending that solution, so we assume Bellsouth is accepting plain-text emails that aren't authenticated). If it's "mission critical" for those recipients to get your HTML emails, you can implement DKIM. Note: you will need a dedicated IP address to implement DKIM. There are many other advantages to having your own dedicated IP (such as email certification). MailChimp users can get a dedicated IP with our "PRO" add-on. Details here.

St. Patricks and March Madness Email Templates

A little monkey love for the restaurant and bar owners who use MailChimp:

March Madness and St. Patrick's Day are just around the corner. So we've put together a few customizable graphics that you can use in your MailChimp Email Postcard templates...

To use the graphics, log in to MailChimp, click "Create Campaign" and go to the "Layouts" tab, then look for "This Month's Free Postcard Graphics:"

Download the images you want, and modify them in your own graphics program (Photoshop, Fireworks, etc).

Then, you can use them in your MailChimp Postcard template.

Here's how they look in some example postcard templates:

Don't have an email template yet? Use MailChimp's built-in template designer. Once you get the template done, all you have to do is swap out graphics and content next time you build a campagn. Click here to watch a demo of MailChimp's built-in template designer.

How Alasoop Uses MailChimp to Help Local Restaurants

One of our customers (in Paris!) just sent us a note about how they use MailChimp.

I love this story. What's interesting about it to me (besides the whole "MailChimp" tie-in) is that it's a simple, down-to-earth, anybody-can-do-this case study about a small company helping local restaurants with email marketing. Not only that, but they're helping people avoid fast food by providing healthier, tastier options around town.

 

Here's the case study from our friend FJ:

Webstellung is a small but thriving and  successful communication studio that I founded and am currently heading. We specialize in networked communication and bridging online and offline branding. We have worked with the likes of Apple, Peter Mayer, Opsound.org, Palais de Tokyo as well as many theaters and theater companies here in Paris.

As you may already know, Paris is one of the culinary capitals of the  world, which means a great many companies within the city do not  provide lunch to their employees and, instead, opt to give them food coupons that they can use at nearby, low-quality, high-fat, high-turnover restaurants. The end result is that most employees are left  eating a re-heated sandwich in a gloomy company kitchen for lunch.

This sorry state of affair prompted us to team with great "business" restaurants offering good meals at a price affordable by most  staffers and help them distribute their menus right into the  employees' mailboxes. We branded this service "Alasoop", a tongue-in- cheek phonetic rendition of French for "Dinner's on the table". We  place special pads in partnering restaurants on which people can sign  up to receive menus. Twice or so a week a member of our team collects  these pads as well as menus from the restaurateurs themselves. We  then rely on Mailchimp or other email providers (though we are now  aiming to fold all our lists back on Mailchimp) to send the menus to  the audience of each restaurant on a daily basis. Keep in mind  restaurateurs here are typically not computer users so they never  need to touch a keyboard. Users, by getting their menus every day in  their inboxes, are more likely to go out and purchase from their  favorite outlets.

The service is entirely free to users. So far, our pilot restaurants  have noticed a strong increase in to-go sales, better turnover and  an increase in repeat frequentation. The lists are remarkably stable  and we are considering declaring the pilot program over and spreading  the word across the city. All coupons are processed, stamped and  returned to the restaurants for safe keeping and archiving.

As you can see, not a revolutionary idea but one that requires  precise logistics and reliable software to work. Thanks to Mailchimp,  we can write letters quickly (keeping costs down), send them reliably  (reaching out to users) as well as schedule sending (making the  entire menu sending program possible). I thought your readers may  like to know how we use your email infrastructure for what is a high- frequency, cannot-fail project that is helping local businesses in a  simple, but very effective fashion – keep in mind none of these  restaurants has an actual advertising budget.

Here is the site (in French): http://www.alasoop.com

----

We've seen lots of restaurants using MailChimp to send menus and 'recipes from the chef' but so far haven't seen any agencies taking such an active part in sending emails on behalf of restaurants. It's a great idea to provide the signup pads and visit the restaurant every week to get new signups.

Thanks for the story, FJ!

Create Automatic Email Newsletter Archives

You can now create a "Newsletter Archive" or "Past Issues" page on your website, then MailChimp will automatically update it whenever you send your email campaigns (here's an example).

All you have to do is add a little snippet of code (we call it the "Archive Generator") on one of your web pages, and we'll publish links to your campaigns for you. No more manual backups of all your campaigns!

The best part about this is you can now add a link to your opt-in welcome emails so that new subscribers can click to read all your past issues...

How does this work? How does MailChimp know which campaigns I want listed? How can MailChimp tell which campaigns were just "test" emails, vs. "real" emails? Don't worry. We're not going to link to every single campaign you've ever sent. We know a lot of them were tests.

Here's How It Works:

First, build yourself a page on your website called "Past Issues" or "Archives" or whatever you want. Here's our example.

Next, create a folder in MailChimp, and put all the campaigns you want listed into that folder. For each folder, we'll generate a snippet of code to add to your web page.

If you have different clients, or different lists with different newsletter types, no worries. Just keep them in separate folders. In the MailChimp example above, we're actually using 3 sets of Archive Generator code from 3 separate lists in 3 separate accounts.

If you haven't used MailChimp folders before, you really should. They keep things nice and tidy. They're located on the Dashboard when you log in to MailChimp:

 

Once you've got all your campaigns organized into folders, open the folders screen, and  look for the icon next to each folder:

Click on each icon for that folder's Archive Generator snippet. Copy-paste that snippet onto your web page (you'll notice some hints about how to tweak that code a little, if you want).

That's it! From now on, whenever you send a new campaign, we'll automatically update that list on your web page!

Remember how you can totally customize every step of the double opt-in process for all your MailChimp Lists? Once you've got your own "Past Issues" page live and automatically updated, be sure to place a link to that page in all your opt-in welcome messages (under your MailChimp List settings).

Disclaimer: This feature will not work for campaigns created before April 2005.

Server Upgrade Complete

Our weekend server upgrade is complete. It was our biggest server upgrade ever, and it went over fairly smoothly, as far as server upgrades go. We added a good amount of power to the chimp, so you should notice things running a bit faster now. We added some extra servers to accomodate the new growth we've been experiencing since we launched our v2.5 upgrade (HTML Email template designer), and to lay the foundation for upcoming new features. We also added a bunch more backup/safety mechanisms (we're kinda paranoid that way). Thanks for all your patience over the weekend!

8th Annual ArtPapers Art Auction

Every year, Art Papers Magazine holds a silent art auction in Atlanta that attracts a few thousand collectors and patrons. MailChimp is really proud to be a sponsor of this year's auction. If you're near Atlanta, and you like art, click the graphic below to find out how to attend...

Average Email Marketing Stats and Metrics

Our customers who are new to email marketing often ask us, "What kind of open rates should companies like mine be expecting?" and "How many bounces are too many?" or, "What's a typical abuse complaint rate?"

So we scanned over 30 million emails delivered by our system (where tracking was activated) and calculated average open rates, average click rates, average soft bounces, average hard bounces, and average abuse complaint rates, then sorted them by industry.

It's got average email marketing campaign stats for restaurants, hotels, financial institutions, churches, software companies, and more...

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/email_marketing_benchmarks.phtml

Free Holiday Graphics for Email Postcard Templates

People seem to be enjoying our new built-in HTML email template designer. Even web designers are using it, because it saves so much time. If you haven't seen it yet, you should watch our online demo here.

The nice thing is that we don't just give our customers hundreds and hundreds of templates (that all suck). We give you some basic, tried-and-true layouts, which you can totally customize to match your brand (using our built-in template designer).

Anyways, we just posted a handful of nice holiday-themed graphics that MailChimp customers can use in their email postcard templates. You can find them by logging in to MailChimp, then clicking into the "Templates Library" area.    

Here's how to get to the free holiday postcard graphics:

1. Log in to MailChimp (if you don't have an account, sign up for a free trial here)
2. Click on the "My Templates" link on the Dashboard (see diagram below)
3. Click into the "Templates Library" tab, scroll down, and you'll see a little gift box from MailChimp to you. Follow the link for download instructions. Enjoy!

MailChimp Launches Built-in Templates, Design tool, forward-to-friend, affiliate program

We launched MailChimp v2.5 last weekend. Click the link to see all the new features and changes. This was our most challenging upgrade ever. It's exciting and scary all at the same time...

We joke around that if anybody in his right mind were to sit down and plan an email marketing service today, they'd list 3 really important features:

1. built-in email templates (because not everybody can design)
   
2. a WYSIWYG editor (because not everybody can code HTML)
3. double opt-in list management (because not everybody can manage their own database)

But when we launched MailChimp in 2001, we had none of those features (somehow we still grew to over 7,000 users, so go figure).

Back then, we were web designers, and we built MailChimp for other web designers like us, and web designers can code their own HTML emails, and manage their own email lists. All MailChimp did was deliver.

Things started to change in 2003. We were seeing more and more "non web designers" sign up for MailChimp. And who can blame them? Our little chimp logo is so adorable, and just screams "I'm easy to use! Use me! Eep eep!" As you can imagine, the needs of "non web designers" (I should probably start referring to them as "regular people now")  are very different from the needs of web designers. In fact, 2003 was a horrible year for MailChimp. Our growth went backwards.

We saw the writing on the wall, and we launched "MailChimp v2" and then managed lists, then infinitely managed lists. Since then, we've been growing like crazy. Every month seems to set a new record for us. We also have more managed lists on our system than users.

So to that end, we're super excited about the new built-in template functionality. Because now, anybody can use MailChimp. Not just web designers (but web designers will love it, too!).

The scary part of all this? Growth. We launched on Saturday. The next Sunday (which is usually an extremely slow day for us) we saw roughly 3 times the normal amount of free trial signups. Yikes