User Interface

The “Dashboard” seems set up for the “first time user”, but the more I looked at it I realized it really wasn’t much of a dashboard. There are no stats on recent campaigns, pending reports, or metrics of any kind. In other words, there is no dashboard – just information about what you can do or links to recent blog articles. There is a tab to “chimp chatter” which at first I assumed would be recent conversions from their community users, but it is actually a stream of your recent activity. It’s interesting but doesn’t really meet the definition of a dashboard.

List Import

Importing a list was not as easy as it should have been. They want you to make sure that your list is properly formatted with the same columns as you have described when you created your MailChimp list. So, you have to pre-process your list before using their upload wizard.

Segmentation

They have “on-the-fly” segmentation which is as nice of a component as any of the other Email Marketing services, but I can’t see an easy way to store segmentation rules. You either build them out each time or possibly use the API to create reusable segmentations.

Reporting

MailChimp’s reporting makes it easy to get a high level view of your email campaign’s performance as well as some other great advanced reporting tools such as the following:

• Compare to my industry: This allows you to specfiy your industry and then compare your results to that industry average.
• Downloadable Excel report: Excel reports are readily available and easy to download.
• View abuse complaints: When an abuse complaint occurs, you can quickly access it and discover how to correct the problem.
• Opens by location: Large world map with hot spot information about where your email campaigns are being viewed.

Link tracking

Link tracking for Google analytics is pretty straight forward, though I haven’t been able to add a “term” variable to the tracking URL.

?utm_source=myFirstEmail+List&utm_campaign=cf5862a4bf-MailChimp_Test3_18_2009&utm_medium=email

I’ll breakdown the tracking string so that we can look at what information will be available to Google Analytics:

• utm_source=myFirstEmail+List: The name of my list where the subscriber came from.
• utm_campaign=cf5862a4bf-MailChimp_Test3_18_2009: The id number and internal name of the campaign
• utm_medium=email: The medium is obviously email so it is difficult to imagine them messing this one up.

Where is utm_term? After some long conversations from their support desk, they just haven’t included it. They say that it isn’t an important feature. In the standardized MailChimp reports you can see which links are getting the most clicks in the “Click Performance” section, but it is not quite the same as being able to use Google Analytics to see what the subscriber did once they clicked on a link.

Why is utm_term so important? It adds a deeper level of segmentation in Google Analytics. For example, not only can you look at the visits, page/visits, revenue, eCommerce conversion rate of an email campaign, using the keyword filter you can see how each link of the email campaign performed.

When "utm_term" is set you can see the performance of each link in Google Analytics

Analytics 360

This is a free add-on that pulls additional Google Analytics data into your email reports. I have just configured these and will see what kind of additional features this provides….

I really like this feature because it pulls in ROI data that is already set up in Google Analytics. You can see how much revenue, conversions, bounce rates and ROIs were generated by an email campaign.

AutoResponders

A feature you only expect to see with some of the Bigger Email Marketing Service Providers is Autoresponders. The difference is that MailChimp’s Autoresponder system is SOOOOO easy to set up. Their Autoresponder wizard walks you through the processes and makes this an easy and effective automated email system.

Social Links

They have an interesting feature that allows you to send a notice to many of your social media sites: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon,  Digg, Magnolia, and delicious.  It automatically creates intro text (that you can edit) and a shortened URL. The only downside is that it directs those users to the online version of your email; that might not be a bad thing if your email is a newsletter that contains the “new” content, but it isn’t as useful if your goal is to drive those visitors to the website.

API:

A rich API with plenty of example applications, documentation, and an active user community makes it easy for even the novice developer to utilize. Not only have they included plenty of sample applications, they also have wrappers (chunks of code that you can use in your application) and plug-ins that members of their community have developed for use with many different web applications such as Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and more.

The Good:

• Feature Rich: MailChimp has features you expect only to see in the larger Email Marketing Providers.
• Easy to use: With all of those features they provide plenty of hand holding to make sure you are comfortable using them.
• Video Tutorials: All of the features have video links showing how to use a particular feature which is very nice.
• Price Point: Their pay-as-you-go pricing structure is set up so that you get the “best rates” at a relatively low buy in.
• API: Yeah, almost everyone provides an API these days, but the attention they put into documentation, sample codes and developer helps sets MailChimp apart.
• Easy Authentication: To use authentication in your MailChimp campaigns you just check the “Authenticate” box in the campaign setup step (no server setup required). Your campaign will then pass DKIM, DomainKeys, SenderID and SPF authentication…super easy!

The Bad:

• List Import: Lists have to be formatted ahead of time to fit the structure of our MailChimp lists. In other words, you can’t map your internal names for columns with MailChimp’s external names, so there will have to be a level of pre-processing before you import a list.
• Saved segmentation rules: If you mail separate campaigns to the same list based on attributes, you are going to have to build that out each time. MailChimp does not have a way to save your segmentation rules for later use.
• Link tracking in Google Analytics: Not having the “utm_term” string prevents you from being able to track which link was clicked in Google Analytics.

Final Thoughts

MailChimp is a solid Email service provider, and I was very impressed with their offering. I can see our company using MailChimp as a supplement to our current setup and if things go well, we may just move the whole operation over.

Try  MailChimp and get a free 600 email trial and then let me know what you think of of their service.

What kinds of features do you look for when shopping for an Email Marketing Service? Do you find that most of the advanced features that Email Marketing Services offer are not usually used in your email marketing program?

Problem

Comments come into my blog and they all show that the IP address of the sender is the same. The WordPress application was seeing the IP address of the load balancing technology and not the IP address of the person adding the comment. This happens because Mosso’s load balancing technology sits in front of the web servers.

The new solution

Having tried to implement my old solution I discovered that enough had changed in WordPress 2.7 that my hack no longer worked. Instead I had to change one simple line of code in the wp/include/comment.php directory.

In file wp-includes/comment.php around line 971 change:

$_SERVER['HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP'] );

into this:

,$_SERVER['HTTP_X_CLUSTER_CLIENT_IP'] );

That’s it! All of the comments will once again record the appropriate IP address associated with the person making the comment and I can start black listing those spam comment at the IP address level. Or catch companies trying to pretend to be their own customers praising their products — You know who you are!

If you find this article helpful make sure to add a comment and let me know!

Problem

Unless you can get your visitors to identify themselves (fill out a form, sign up for a service, etc.), their visit is going to go completely undetected; however, it doesn’t have to.

Solution

Within Google Analytics, there is a report called “Network Location”.   It reports on which internet service providers your visitors are using.  This report allows you to track the internet service provider (ISP) domains to which the user resolves. The domain is determined by the internet service that owns the user’s internet protocol (IP) identifier. At first this doesn’t sound like it will be of much use in determining which companies are visiting your website except for the fact that most businesses own their IP address.  So, what you see in this report is both generic ISP traffic (AT&T networks, Verizon internet services inc., road runner holdco llc, etc.) along with schools, businesses, and government agencies.

If you using Google Analytics then you already have “Network Location” reports, but like most reports you should probably create an automated processes for reviewing the results.

Setting up daily Network Location reports

When it comes to tracking corporate activity on your website, you should try to look at the results on a daily basis.  Knowing Apple came to your website a month ago isn’t going to do anything to help your sales team today.

1. Log into your Google Analytics
2. Click on the  button
3. Click on Network Properties and then on the Network Location link.
4. Change the date range to yesterday only and click “apply”.
5. Click the “Ave. Time on Site” column so that the results are sorted by the visitors who spent the most time first. (I choose “Ave. Time on Site” because it is the easiest to indicate interest level in these kind of reports.)
6. Click the email icon just above the “Network Location” title.
7. Click the Schedule tab and fill out the information. Make sure to change the Date range to “Daily(sent each morning)” and make sure that “Include date comparison” is not checked.
8. Click the “Schedule” button and you are done!

You will start receiving your daily Network Location reports via your email.

Here is an example excerpt from a Network Location report:

Hmmm...why is Apple coming to my website?

If you found this article helpful, interesting, or you want to add your two cents, please leave a comment below!

I am fairly new to Twitter, but  I am not new to marketing. I have been posting regularly, trying to add value and trying to contribute to the community. When people started following me, I was honored. I would carefully examine their Bio, their latest tweets and links to see if they added value. If they did add value I would follow them back. If they were not in my space or a space I was interested in, I wouldn’t follow them. Throught the day I would notice my follower stats would rise and fall. What was going on? Were they not interested in what I had to say or did I say something that was offensive? I have to admit I felt a little self-conscious. Well, it turns out that a lot of people on Twitter will only follow you if you follow them back–they are gaming the system.

Having spent a lot of time in Marketing, I understand how and why it is important to rank high in search result pages. I also understand that the art of “optimizing” for search is about getting away with as much keyword stuffing and link baiting as possible without hurting the user experience or getting penalized by the Search Engines. So, I also understand why people are doing the same thing in Twitter.  I read posts by Robert Scoble on the authority ranking controversy, and  I agreed with his philosophy, “No I am not going to be a part of this. I will build my network on solid, social marketing principals.”  Then I see Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan and others doing, advocating, and practicing the exact opposite strategy. The “follow anyone that follows you” approach will help grow your reach as quickly as possible. Even in the beginning Robert Scoble had the same strategy. Why do you think he follows over 20,000 people? He must believe they add some value or he would stop following them.

My experiment

What I have decided to do:

• Follow people who add value to my network.
• Contribute to my network – add my own brand of value and comments to the conversation.
• adopt the “follow me I’ll follow you” approach.
• Use applications like TweetDeck to filter my TweetStream so that I can monitor the users that matter to me (Yes, @Scobleizer you are in that group!)

You can follow me on Twitter here @LaryStucker

Conclusion

So, I guess Twitter isn’t really broken. It is following the same path of all of the other networks that reward popularity.  In the end I suppose a company will come along, like Google, and find ways of making meaning out of this system. A true Twitter rank will probably emerge as an algorithm based on followers, Keyword usage, and retweets.

Let me know your thoughts on the state of Twitter, the “follow me and I’ll follow you” philosophy, and the Authority controversy?

You can see areas where they have changed code and stopped web site functions in order to improve website retension:

/* Commenting out to try to fix exit and bounce rates in Google Analytics */

What I find most encouraging is that our new president seems to have surrounded himself with smart people.  Including people who know how to leverage technology like Google’s Website Optimizer and Analytics to improve their campaign, while at the same time keeping down their overhead.