What’s New with MailChimp – Use Your Newsletter To Build Your Business

by | Aug 13, 2011 | Did You Know, Email Marketing Tips, HOW TO: MailChimp | 0 comments

I personally use Constant Contact and a lot of my customers do, but many also use the free MailChimp email newsletter service. Although its free, they are always improving their service and features. They have now integrated with SurveyMonkey, a popular, free online survey application, as well as launched 33 new email templates!

What's new with MailChimp!

I just received this in my inbox and wanted to share it with you in case you are a current MailChimp subscriber or if you are researching which email marketing application to use for your personal or business use.

Upgrades to your MailChimp Account
Every four weeks, we launch new features in MailChimp. We'll try to keep you updated on all the changes in a quick, easy to read way. Here's a summary of what we launched most recently…

SurveyMonkey Integration

We integrated with SurveyMonkey. So you can build your survey inside SurveyMonkey, then link over to MailChimp. We'll load up one of our new SurveyMonkey email templates, then all you have to do is click "send."

Cool Benefits:

  1. You'll get survey stats inside your MailChimp campaign reports, including who started the survey, who completed the survey, and who's still in progress
  2. You can send to targeted list segments (look for the blue "send to segment" button), based on survey completion status. So you can send a reminder email to those who haven't completed the survey, or send a thank you email to those who have. 

The full story is on the MailChimp Blog (including details on how to get the limited run "this is bananas" t-shirt) and our Knowledge Base has some step-by-step instructions, and if you prefer your news from simians with tails, you can read SurveyMonkey's take on all this.

Delivery Speed Improvements

Our delivery ops team has been working hard on optimizing and speeding up our delivery engines. You can follow along with Matthew in:

Those of you with very large lists should see your emails getting delivered much faster. The rest of you should feel things getting a little zippier in general, because those large list deliveries aren't backing up the system as much. 

In case you missed it
Love,

— The MailChimp Team

Again, I personally use Constant Contact and love that program and its ease of use. Some of my customers are now moving to Aweber due to their auto-responder features.  So if you are looking for a newsletter program (email marketing), I would definitely look into the following and see which best suits your business or personal needs:

  • Constant Contact
  • MailChimp
  • Aweber
  • My Newsletter Builder
  • iContact
  • Vertical Response

Which is right for you?

Here is a comparison sheet I created last year. It contains a quick review of features and pricing for all the applications above but Aweber. Aweber wasn't being used by my clients at the time but you can go here for more info on Aweber.

Benefits of Having a Newsletter – Gotta Get One!

It's a great way to keep your customers updated on current happening with your life or business, separate from your blog – you can offer specific stories, offer special coupons to newsletter subscribers. More so, use your newsletter to drive traffic to your blog!!!!  You can begin a specific story in your newsletter and then do a "read more" link to a full story on your blog; or you can customize your welcome page to have new subscribers go to a "hidden" page on your blog to get a free gift or featured article, coupons and more!  Having a newsletter can really help build your business as well as drive traffic to you blog!

Newsletter Design – Let Me Help You Get Started!

I also design newsletter templates for these applications. I am most familiar with Constant Contact and MailChimp, as those are the most popular amongst my clients, but I would be happy to help you with whatever email marketing service you choose. Newsletter designs begin at $50, add $25 for in-banner navigation (clickable banner). Email me for more information or click here for recent samples (which happen to be mostly Constant Contact).

For Stampin' Up! Demonstrators, be on the look out for a new newsletter service I will be offering to help you build your stamping business!

Chat with you when I'm back from vacation 😀

Heather Wright-Porto
www.BlogsByHeather.com 

 

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