Having mulled it over for a couple of days I've taken the plunge and become a fully paid up member of
MailChimp. Having had more than 3,500 students sign up to our mailing list (yup, it surprised me too) I came to the conclusion that we couldn't manage such large numbers on an internal system. Doubtless I'll blog more about MailChimp when I've had more time to have test it, but just for now there are two features in particular that were clinchers for me.
- It puts users in control - they can unsubscribe or update their profile at any time
- It give email a social edge (no, really) by supporting Facebook page likes and adding sharing buttons
I thought I'd spotted a catch last night when I said thought they tied users in by not letting you export contact lists.
I tweeted the thought and within two minutes I had a
reply from MailChimp telling that I could export lists and with a link to the place telling me how. I was very impressed.
What I'm most concerned about now is what to say. Here's a link to a
browser based draft and there's a screen shot of it below. If you have any comments on any aspect of the email (content, tone, style) then I'd be really grateful to hear them. I plan to send it tomorrow afternoon. Or maybe I should wait until Monday morning?
Just so you know, someone's just pointed out to me the two 'of's. Thanks Marta ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're my star commenter! Good point re one specific workshop. Will have a think about that...
ReplyDeleteStu, I'd agree with Jo about tailoring calls to action to specific groups of students. Ideally you want to be capturing information about your subscribers to help you target your comms - see http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/sending-targeted-em... which might give you a few ideas. I'd imagine Monday will work better than a Friday but really you should run a split test and see what works best. P.S. Is your Intense Debate plugin broken? I commented on one of your previous posts but it's not showing.
ReplyDeleteI would be tempted to send on Monday, students might read it this afternoon and not take much notice (with it being Friday afternoon!) or they might not check there email until Monday which means it might end up squirreled away within numerous other mails anyway. Having said that, the Zone is always busy Friday afternoons so maybe that theory is rubbish! Sorry, there's no answer there :-
ReplyDeleteMailChimp looks good. I agree with Vic that Monday morning might be the better time simply to avoid being left in the mailbox over the weekend. I've nothing helpful to say about the email though as it looks professional and I simply can't see what could be improved. Can't even find a pedantic spelling mistake just to show I've read it. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks for another useful comment Brendan. I need to send one out as a 'hello' kind of email - which is what this one is. The roadshow started on Monday 4th so this is the end of the 2 weeks. I'd thought about also include something about asking them to tell us whether they are 1st years, 2nd years, etc. but think that will get lost. So I'll do that as a single item the following week. And yes, will schedule for Monday. Thansk for the heads up re Intense debate - tried to switch to Disqus but that missed your comment too so currently switched to plain ol' WP comments!
ReplyDeleteBy the way - have you used MailChimp? I need to look into the forms bit more...
ReplyDeleteI've used Mailchimp a bit before, but it was quite a few years ago, before the integration with Twitter, Facebook etc. At the time the forms were relatively straightforward. I know a lot of people use Mailchimp and they have pretty good helpfiles so I'm sure you'll be OK.
ReplyDeletetest
ReplyDeleteCool. Thanks for the link :)
ReplyDelete