Hey folks,
If you are searching for a marketing solution for your mailtraffic, search no longer! Because Mailchimp is the answer! I know… I hear you think
Hey there is a marketing guy talking about his product or company. I can assure you that I have no benefits talking about this webservice. The only benifit that I see is because of this article people get informed and interested for the product. The reason that I am promoting this tool is because it fits my needs. Totally! As a designer I prefer nice looking tools with logical User interfaces.
Below I will sketch my situation where I used this service and how it helps me getting marketing done. In my professional life I fill my days helping the belgian church connecting people who are interested in catholic beliefs. By using the web as medium I create websites, facebook applications, mobile apps etc to accomplish my mission. Now that the lent period is coming closer we are working on a website called ongelooflijk, where we are bringing the catholic belief to youngsters and parents and other interested visitors. By showing a lentcalender on the mainpage, people can follow the lent period on our website.
But out of analysis of our last project during the advent last year I came to the conclusion that people wanted to have the ability to receive the calendersheet inside their mailbox instead of visiting the website every day. So that’s where Mailchimp comes in… It gives me the ability to sent daily mailcampaigns for free (Free account: 12 000 mails per month / 2000 maillist subscribers).
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First after creating a profile I was suprised about the funny style/ corporate identity that Mailchimp uses. The happy monkey guides you through all processes. But after you have quit laughing and enjoyed the monkey storey behind Mailchimp the true powers comes to you. It’s so easy and yet so powerfull.
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| The first step is to create a empty list. Just furfill all the fields. No further instructions needed.
When that’s done you have to create a custom template, or select a default one from the gallery which can be edited to fit your layout. Just markup the page as you should do in dreamweaver. On the right side you can see how my template looks after advanced editing. The purpose for me was to have a modern layout, with the corporate identity of your website. Mailchimp helps you with this, and scans your companyhomepage to gather colors, info etc. After this I send myself a testmail to see in real enviroment as microsoft outlook,hotmail and my webmail how the mail would look like. The result was great! Before using this client I created a couple of newsletters myself, but none of them gave me the result that I get with Mailchimp . Both thumbs up for coders and designers who really took the time to measure the different webmail providers and applications against style and markup. It’s social time! Now the moment has come to integrate and automate the social part. Mailchimp gives you the ability to post on various social networks. This process runs automatically when the mail is sent. Personally I choose to post on my facebook profile and twitter account automatically but if you want to add more networks you can find a list Mailchimp .com/account/integrations” target=”_blank”>here which networks are available. On the link provided above you can select the services you want to link, after testing with your account settings you’re mail campaign is socially boosted. Done and done .
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That’s all folks
Allright! After these steps you have succesfully created your first mailcampaign inside Mailchimp ! Now grab a beer and relax… every mail will be sent automatically from now on. In the next tutorial I will guide you through the process how to integrate the subscribeform inside your own website with your own layout.
I hope you ‘ve liked this article and that I convinced you how powerfull and easy mailmanagment can be in 2011. In my opinion Mailchimp is the perfect example of what a modern webapplication should be, usable and lovely to use. If you have any questions, please fire them inside the comment section.
Cheers,
Lode
Lode is a Creative-Geek with passion for Graphic design , he is also into the web programming "stuff" like Adobe Flash,air and Flex . Lode loves to learn and loves to share knowledge with others.Follow Lode on http://twitter.com/stealfish