MailChimp’s posterous

Every business day our Twitter handle @freesourcing publishes a “Freesource of the day”. Today’s Freesource is MailChimp – MailChimp is the most impressive email marketing tool I’ve seen – “period”. Aside from MailChimp being a great submission, what I found especially exciting, was the man who submitted it: Skip Blankley, the Owner and Founder of Groovemuse Atlanta.

Groovemuse is an Atlanta-based organization led by Musicians and Artists, for Musicians and Artists. Skip and his crew focus on creating and growing opportunities for talented artists in the Atlanta area through fundraisers, recording, web design, management, promotions, and legal assistance. And as you may have guessed, Skip is now using MailChimp to boost his efforts.

A big part of Groovemuse’s success has been achieved through their community of artists, vendors, and fans. Skip mentioned that “keeping in touch with so many is a challenge, and email blasting is never enough”. Skip’s excited about the switch to MailChimp and because of useful features like analytics, custom design, add-ons, and ROI measurement, but the main item that sparked his interest was a recent integration with Eventbrite – a free event listing and management tool. Skip said “the combination is exactly what Groovemuse needs”.

Freesourcing.org would like to extend a special thanks to Skip for submitting MailChimp and especially for taking the time to speak with us this morning. On a side note, Skip declined to say which email marketing provider he was using before, but based on his endorsement, I don’t think Groovemuse will be going back.

via freesourcing.org

#4 Mail Chimp

MailChimp is the best email marketing application out there to date. MailChimp allows you to build and manage email lists, customize and design your email campaigns in HTML, and track and analyze email marketing. With over 175,000 users on the service, its defiantly a win. Plus they also have a free plan if you are on a tight budget!

Posterous and MailChimp have radically transformed the entire online publishing proposition for me. I can now publish more often in more places at a fraction of the time or cost.

-- Mike Elgan

Most reports and punditry on the death of email are a bit premature. The good old fashioned mailing list is still a good way to maintain relationships with customers, especially when done well.

The web-based mailing list manager MailChimp offers list management, tracking and analysis, and custom HTML templates for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month for free. Paid plans kick in at larger subscriber numbers. Featuring integration with WordPress, Twitter, Salesforce and more, MailChimp is the list manager of choice for an impressive list of heavyweights including Mozilla, Intel, Canon, Fujitsu, Staples and more.

Pro Tip: MailChimp has a well-documented API that allows you to integrate the service with your own existing applications, tools, content management system or CRM solution. There’s a growing list of plug-ins already created for a number of platforms.

Icons, logos, and brand images. If it's slapped on every other piece of corporate identity, a Twitter is not the place to cut slack. An image, like MailChimp's mascot below, can be used in the page design as well as the Twitter icon that accompanies every post. (via Fast Company)

MailChimp study finds Twitter Used More Frequently in Email Marketing Than Facebook

MailChimp recently analyzed more than 1 billion emails sent since January 2009 to track the inclusion of links to Twitter and Facebook. The data shows an 84% increase in email campaigns that include links to Twitter compared to a 66% increase in campaigns that feature Facebook. In 2008, neither site was linked in many email marketing campaigns - a mere 0.49% of users included any social media links in their emails.

We find Twitter, Facebook and email all serve very different purposes in our marketing strategy We use Twitter for short messages, Facebook for networking and email campaigns for in-depth information and updates. At MailChimp, we've always rolled our eyes at n00bs who proclaimed that instant messaging, then RSS, then blogs, then mobile, then was going to kill email What's important here is that they're *all* great tools for businesses to stay in touch with customers. And with MailChimp, you can mash up all those technologies into something even awesomer.

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) September 17, 2009 -- MailChimp recently analyzed more than 1 billion emails sent since January 2009 to track the inclusion of links to Twitter and Facebook. The data shows an 84% increase in email campaigns that include links to Twitter compared to a 66% increase in campaigns that feature Facebook. In 2008, neither site was linked in many email marketing campaigns - a mere 0.49% of users included any social media links in their emails.

Percentage of MailChimp email campaigns including social links

What may be more interesting about the study, however, is that social media and email are being used to complement one another. In a 2008 survey by MarketingSherpa.com, 36% of respondents predicted that social media would gradually replace email as the primary way businesses communicate with their customers. Instead, MailChimp's research shows that the two are working very well together, with each adding its unique benefits.

"We find Twitter, Facebook and email all serve very different purposes in our marketing strategy," says Candace McWhirter of 7 Stages Theatre. "We use Twitter for short messages, Facebook for networking and email campaigns for in-depth information and updates."

Twitter was founded in 2006 and quickly grew into a social-media powerhouse, allowing people to share updates, links, photos and more. Unlike Facebook, where friends must mutually agree to share information, Twitter's public publishing platform allows businesses to monitor what their customers are saying about them.

MailChimp offers several tools marketers can use to integrate Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites into their email campaigns and online marketing strategies. Auto-tweet and URL-shortening features automatically shorten the links to users' email campaigns and then post to Twitter for them as soon as their campaigns are sent. Then, MailChimp will track how many times the campaign was tweeted and retweeted and by whom, adding the data to users' reports dashboard.

MailChimp has also released a special Twitter email template within their application. In the Twitter template, the right side-column displays the sender's Twitter information as well as their most recent tweets. The user can then edit the main column to include their regular newsletter content. This template allows MailChimp users to fully integrate Twitter into their email campaigns, and further promote their social media presence.

"At MailChimp, we've always rolled our eyes at n00bs who proclaimed that instant messaging, then RSS, then blogs, then mobile, then "myfacetwitter" was going to kill email," says Ben Chestnut, Co-Founder of MailChimp. "What's important here is that they're *all* great tools for businesses to stay in touch with customers. And with MailChimp, you can mash up all those technologies into something even awesomer."

About:
MailChimp, a leading do-it-yourself marketing service, provides tools to over 125,000 small businesses, design agencies, non-profits, restaurants, and e-Commerce organizations worldwide. Customers can create professional, eye-catching HTML emails in minutes with easy-to-use web based tools. MailChimp delivers more than 200 millions emails per month from over 70 countries and in 26 languages, including Cyrillic, Mandarin and Japanese.

Recently we conducted a survey on the topic of email marketing and how to make Magento do more for our users.  We had over thousands of responses and the results showed that MailChimp was the most popular choice.  Users told us that MailChimp works well for Magento because it allows Magento Merchants to really measure the ROI of email campaigns.  Through a plug-in to Magento they track when people click from merchant email campaigns, visit the website, and hopefully purchase. All of this information is then gathered and displayed on a merchant’s MailChimp campaign report.

via the Magento Blog

There's never been a better time for small businesses to stop slogging along in their separate trenches and find a way to get together. These businesses have taken the time to make their applications work with each others' products, and now they can present them to customers as a suite of services instead of one-offs. Beautiful, isn't it?

One of the developments that caught the biggest buzz out of this year's SXSW (that's South by Southwest for newbs) music/film/interactive conclave in Austin is the recent unveiling of the Small Business Web. It's a collaboration among several technology startups focused on small-business apps, including BatchBlue, Freshbooks, MailChimp, Outright and Shoeboxed.

Business Week features MailChimp and others for rockin' the small business web.

Pictaculous (from the brilliant minds in the MailChimp Labs) takes an image of your choice and generates a selection of color palettes based off of it. With a simple upload you can turn a design-inspiring image into a functional design palette.