After creating an account and doing some testing I wanted to
give an update on some of the things I find, well awesome.
QR Codes
MailChimp released a new app today, Chimpadeedoo 2. Which
besides being a very unique and helpful app for anyone with
MailChimp account to easily subscribe while out and about, uses QR
Codes very effectively. When you get to the point where you are
linking your account to the app and need to punch in the long API
key, you generate a QR Code on the web version and scan it with
your mobile device to fill in the API key field. Very smart!
Believe it or not there's more! With each list set up in the
system, a QR Code can be generated, that when scanned brings up
form fields for that list. The screen is very simple, with just the
neccessary fields for that list. This further integrates all forms
of media. Now print ads can include a scannable barcode that lets
users sign up for email communications.
Social Media
Any of the campaigns can easily send to both Twitter and
Facebook, and Facebook Comments can even be enabled. Taking the
social media angle a bit further, any paid customer has access to
SocialPro. This service allows MailChimp to fill in some
demographic data by scouring Social Media outlets for your email.
It is mostly basic (but helpful) things like name, job, age, and
whether or not your subscribers are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
or MySpace. It will even pull in an avatar from Social Media or Gravatar. I feel this adds some personality to
your subscribers and could allow you to do some marketing for new
demographics you didn't know you had!
Campaign Builder
When building a campaign there are two main options:
Templates offer a great starting point. Several
pre-designed ones, premium ones (that come with a paid account), or
starting from scratch with an outline, like Two-Column or Mobile.
If you go the start from scratch route, you can choose the basic
layout and then change the colors, themes, content, and images with
a very robust control panel. This thing will even pull in your logo
from your website!
Import lets you import your HTML from a URL or
paste in code. Very straight-forward and a little more techy.
Dynamic Senders
I contacted MailChimp about dynamic reply-to email addresses
before, and was told that it couldn't be done. They said that each
Campaign has to have its own reply-to email addresses. This is true
and false. The sender name can be dynamic, that's no problem. The
reply-to address has to have a valid email address part after the
'@' character but can be dynamic and different before.
What I mean is, the reply-to address for a Campaign going out
would have to be from name@finndigital.com where the
"@finndigital.com" has to be the same for every subsciber, but some
people could recieve an email from chad@finndigital.com, some from
tim@finndigital.com, and some from jill@finndigital.com. The name
can be dynamic and specific to the subscriber.
So if you are looking for a new Email Service Provider, I highly
recommend MailChimp. Oh, and Finn Digital would be more than happy
to help!
- Chad Schulz
Internet Improvement Engineer