Blog – Full Service Design Agency – Multimedia Design Agency

Adding the Mailchimp Required media:content Tag to your WordPress RSS Feed Output

Tanya Steinberg — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 18:43:03 +0000

Adding the Mailchimp Required < media: content > Tag to your WordPress RSS Feed Output

For creating RSS driven campaigns in Mailchimp using the *|FEEDIMAGE|* merge tag

This tutorial requires you to make changes to your WordPress theme’s function.php file. If you are unable to make changes to this file yourself, or as a result of your website host’s limitations, we recommend the following plugin, Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email (Premium).

You’ll need to copy and paste the following code snippet to your WordPress theme’s function.php file.

The code, when executed, will check for the existence of a featured image in your current feed output and apply the required media:content tag. This allows Mailchimp to identify and pull in your post imagery when populating RSS driven campaigns.

Editing the following line of code will allow you to specify the size of your feed’s output imagery.

$thumbnail = wp_get_attachment_image_src( $thumbnail_ID, ‘large‘ );

thumbnail
displays your post thumbnail, often defaulted to 150 pixels wide maximum

medium
displays the medium version of your imagery, 300 pixels wide maximum

large (recommended)
displays the large version of your imagery, 1024 pixels wide maximum

full
displays the original, unedited, version of your uploaded imagery

TIP

If the default image size settings don’t fit with what you need, you can easily edit the dimensions.

Navigate to your WordPress admin dashboard.
Go to Settings – Media.
In Media Settings, edit the width and height dimensions to suit your values.
Click Save Changes to confirm.

Connecting Your Site to Mailchimp

Tanya Steinberg — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 20:59:19 +0000

Connecting Your Site/Store to Mailchimp

Plug in to Mailchimp’s powerful marketing automation and reporting tools

Did you know that by connecting your online website or store to Mailchimp you can leverage their powerful marketing automation and reporting features to help build your brand?

Once connected you can manage your integration on the Connected Sites page in your account. This allows you to quickly review list settings, design and publish pop-up forms, or harness the power of Mailchimp’s e-commerce tools to sell more stuff.

Mailchimp offers built-in connectivity support for some of the most popular e-commerce platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Magento 2, PrestaShop, Big Cartel, Drupal Commerce, Miva, Ubercart, and X-Cart.

If your site or store doesn’t run on any of the above platforms, no worries, you can still connect your site to Mailchimp although you won’t have access to all of the awesome marketing automation tools Mailchimp has to offer.

If you have a custom-coded website or use a site builder, like Squarespace or WordPress, you can add Mailchimp’s site code to your website’s HTML. This method allows you to use pop-up forms and Google remarketing ads but doesn’t support Mailchimp’s e-commerce tools.

To connect your website to Mailchimp manually, follow these steps.

Navigate to the Connected Sites page.
Click Get Started. If you’ve previously connected a site, click Add Another Site.
Click Get Started.
Enter your website URL. Click Next.
Click the Choose a list to connect drop-down menu, and choose a list. Click Next.
Click Copy and follow the instructions to add the provided code to your site’s HTML.
Click Connect.
You’ll see a confirmation message after Mailchimp verifies that the code has been successfully added to your site. Click Next.
Click All Done.

TIP

If your site runs on WordPress you can install the “Insert Headers and Footers” plugin via your site’s backend to easily add the Mailchimp supplied HTML code to your site’s header.

Prefer we do the heavy lifting?

Get connected!

We’re Not Just Mailchimp Experts, but Partners

Tanya Steinberg — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 05:40:27 +0000

✈
We’re back from
Atlanta
and Mailchimp HQ!

And We CAn’t WAIT to SHARE ALL THE EXCITING NEW THINGS TO COME!

We’re expanding our service offerings as not only Mailchimp Experts but Partners.

BEYOND EMAIL

Mailchimp isn’t just an email service provider; it’s the world’s leading marketing automation platform.

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE MORE THAN JUST EMAIL ADDRESSES.

With new marketing automation tools like marketing automation workflows and landing pages, Mailchimp allows you to create truly customized subscriber experiences that help grow your brand.

Learn more about marketing automation workflows

Maps were disabled by the visitor on this site. Click to open the map in a new window.

We’re Off to Atlanta (and Mailchimp HQ!)

Tanya Steinberg — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 15:00:25 +0000

✈
We’re off to
Atlanta
and Mailchimp HQ!

We’re off to Atlanta, and Mailchimp headquarters, as part of our agency Partner Program benefits.

Our team will be in Atlanta, Georgia from Tuesday, February 27th through Friday, March 2nd.

We, along with other select Mailchimp experts/partners, will be participating in an immersive multi-day event where we’ll meet and learn from Mailchimp representatives and other agency partners from around the world.

Pretty cool, right?

COME ALONG FOR THE RIDE (er, Flight?) WITH US ON FACEBOOK.

We promise more Freddie photos than you can shake a stick at.

Maps were disabled by the visitor on this site. Click to open the map in a new window.

Template Spotlight: Edoughble

Tanya Steinberg — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 18:38:33 +0000

Optional, hideable preheader/preview text

Toggle the editable preheader text on or off depending on your campaign requirements.

Optional, hideable call to actions

Toggle the editable call to actions on or off depending on your campaign requirements.

Individual editing tools for each content variant

Individual editing tools for each variant allow you to customize each individual component of your campaign down to the background color, font style, size, color, weight, line height, capitalization, letter-spacing, and more.

Quickly and easily add new or switch between content variants

Drop down toolbars allow you to quickly and easily add new, remove, or switch between any of the custom content variants included in your Mailchimp template.

Easy to edit background imagery

We make it easy to add gorgeous campaign enhancing background imagery to your campaigns.

Drag and drop variants to reorder

Your campaign, your way. Every time.

Flexible ‘bulleted’ content

Ability to include as many, or as few, ‘bulleted’ content points as needed.

Mobile styling toolbar for further customization

Tweak your variant styling in mobile environments.

Built in required footer content

Merge tags ensure that required footer content is always up to date.

Enhancing Your Campaign Imagery Using Mailchimp’s Image Editor

Tanya Steinberg — Mon, 07 Aug 2017 23:15:16 +0000

Enhancing Your Campaign Imagery Using Mailchimp’s Image Editor

Enhance your campaign imagery by quickly and easily cropping your imagery into modern shapes such as circles, hexagons, and more. No Photoshop required.

Tip

For best results, your campaign should have either a white or black background. If your campaign has a colored background you may need to apply your desired enhancements utilizing a photo editing program such as Photoshop to preserve background transparency.

Mailchimp’s campaign editor comes equipped with basic image editing tools that you can use to further enhance your campaigns. Following the steps below you can quickly and easily crop your everyday rectangular or square images into eye-catching circles, hexagons, diamonds, and more.

Upload Your Desired Campaign Imagery

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Easy

Using the Mailchimp campaign editor upload and layout your campaign imagery and content as you normally would when building a campaign.

Apply Your Desired Overlay

In the open image editing screen clicking the “edit” link will open Mailchimp’s photo editing tools.

From here you can click the “overlays” option to browse and experiment with the various overlay options to find the best fit for your campaign and branding needs.

Clicking “apply” and “save” will apply the desired overlay effect to your campaign imagery. That’s it! Quick and painless.

Repeat to enhance other images in your campaign for a unique and cohesive appearance.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Easy

Using the Mailchimp image editing tools experiment with and apply your desired image overlay.

Deliver Personalized Subscriber Experiences Using Mailchimp

Tanya Steinberg — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 22:08:42 +0000

“Subscriber segmentation is the most effective email marketing campaign strategy.” (HubSpot, 2022)

Deliver Personalized Subscriber Experiences Using Mailchimp

How to utilize Mailchimp forms, groups, and segmentation coupled with the update profile and conditional merge tags to progressively profile subscribers.

Recently, email industry experts, Litmus, posted a blog article, How To Use Progressive Profiling to Deliver Personalized Subscriber Experiences. What’s progressive profiling you may ask? It’s the practice of gathering information, over time, from your subscriber base allowing you to build a more complete profile of your subscribers and their particular needs and interests.

In this post, we’re going to focus on how to utilize Mailchimp forms, groups, and segmentation coupled with the update profile and conditional merge tags to progressively profile subscribers.

The Initial Collection

When initially collecting subscriber data it’s recommended to keep things short and sweet. Don’t overwhelm potential subscribers with a lengthy subscription form, rather, keep it simple increasing the likely hood that they’ll complete the subscription process. We recommend starting with a first name and email address at the minimum. You’ll build their subscriber profile from there, over time, through carefully crafted email campaigns.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Easy

Add a simple sign up form to your website, social media profiles, etc. to collect initial subscriber data. Stick with the basics such as first name and email address. You can achieve this by hiding other, non-essential, list fields in your signup form.

Basic Personalization Of Your Campaigns

Using the initial subscriber data available to you begin personalizing your campaigns. This includes your emails “to” field, preheader area, footer, etc.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Easy

Include the recipient’s name in your campaigns using merge tags to make it more personal and help avoid spam filters. For example, *|FNAME|* *|LNAME|* will show “To: Bob Smith” in the email instead of “To: bob@example.com”. This is more personal and may help avoid spam filters.

The Update Profile Merge Tag

If you haven’t already you’ll want to update your company or agency’s Mailchimp template(s) to include a link (or several) to allow subscribers to “update their profile”. This key link not only allows subscribers to update their email address in the event it changes, they change companies, etc. but it also allows them to edit their other profile information such as their contact details and most importantly their interests.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Add the *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* merge tag to your template(s), which will be replaced with a link to the Update Profile Form after your campaign is sent. The Update Profile link is unique to each subscriber and campaign.

Building Your Advanced Sign Up Form

Based on your company or organization’s marketing strategy you’ll need to build a framework for the type of data you’d like to collect. This will then allow you to target specific subscribers who meet that criteria via segmentation. If you are a real estate agent this may entail collecting data on potential property types or locations a home buyer may be in the market for. Therefore allowing you to target those home buyers with only properties that meet their criteria.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Collect and sort your subscribers into custom groups based on their interests and preferences. Groups function like categories in a list and are an excellent way to manage diverse subscriber profiles in the same Mailchimp list. Groups can be the basis for building list segments for sending to targeted audiences.

Building Subscriber Profiles

Now that you have built your initial subscriber profile and have begun personalizing your campaigns based on the limited data available it’s time to begin collecting additional data. You’ll do this by sending a series of targeted campaigns to your subscribers encouraging them to update their subscriber profiles. The benefit to your subscribers is that they’ll receive more targeted, relevant emails delivered to their inbox. Meaning once they provide just a little more information their experience, and future content will be tailored to their tastes and preferences.

Be creative in your use of the update profile link. While a standard update your profile or preferences link is suitable, and recommended, you should also weave the profile link into your campaign content organically as often as possible. Follow up a listing of properties with an “Update your preferences or profile to see more properties like this” statement or something similar which links to the update profile link.

In addition to the update profile form, you have the ability to further collect passive data on your subscribers via third-party integrations. Information such as products purchased, last order date, and more can be passed to your list and subsequent subscriber profiles by integrating your website, shopping cart, or contact manager with your Mailchimp list. This allows you to further drill down, sending more targeted campaigns based on a combination of volunteered and organically collected data.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Moderate

Begin building more detailed subscriber profiles through a combination of subscriber volunteered information and organically collected data.

Targeting Subscribers Using Conditional Merge Tags

To continue with the real estate scenario, let’s say you’re a realtor who sends out weekly emails to potential home buyers containing properties currently on the market. You’ve collected subscriber data and segmented that data based on how you plan to market to those subscribers.

In addition to their basic contact information, you’ve broken your subscribers down into groups based on their “interests”. For example, you have one grouping that separates home buyers based on the type of home they are looking for (multi-family, single home, townhome, condo, etc.). Another grouping includes neighborhoods they are interested in.

This is where targeting subscribers via conditional merge tags come into play. Using conditional merge tag statements you can show condos in Greenville to only those subscribers interested in condos in Greenville. Alternatively, you can show multi-family AND single home listings in Acme, Greenville, and Leadville to subscribers expressing interest in any or all of those “interests” or groupings.

ACTION ITEM

Difficulty Level: Advanced

Incorporate conditional merge tag statements into your template(s). To show unique content to subscribers with different profiles, you’ll need to create multiple versions of your content to display, then use conditional merge tag blocks in your templates/campaigns that reference the subscriber data stored in your list.

Need Some Help?

Hire one of our Mailchimp experts to help you complete any, or all, of the recommended steps above to begin progressively profiling subscribers today!

Email Best Practices: Typography

Tanya Steinberg — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 18:12:07 +0000

Email Best Practices:

Typography

When it comes to typography and email the number one rule is to keep it simple. For the best, and most consistent results, we recommend choosing one (or more) of the cross-platform compatible fonts.

Best Bet Fonts

Choosing from the list of cross-platform compatible fonts is your best bet! These fonts are available on virtually every platform making them an ideal choice when typeface consistency is key.

Sans Serif Web Safe Fonts

Arial
Arial Black
Tahoma
Trebuchet MS
Verdana

Serif Web Safe Fonts

Courier
Courier New
Georgia
Times
Times New Roman

Monospace Web Safe Fonts

Courier
Courier New

If you’re looking to get a little fancier with your fonts Mailchimp now supports a limited number of Google Web Fonts. Of course, web fonts are still experimental at best and are not yet widely supported across email platforms. For those clients that don’t yet support web fonts, a backup font family will be specified.

For example, if you chose Open Sans we’d specify a backup font family such as Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet MS to ensure your font renders in a cross-platform compatible font in unsupported environments.

Use Experimental Web Fonts With Caution

A (really) small number of email clients support the use of web fonts provided through services like Google Web Fonts. These include Outlook 2000, iOS Mail, Apple Mail, Android (default client, not Gmail), and Thunderbird.

Why can’t I use any Google Web Font with Mailchimp?

Instead of opening up the entire library, Mailchimp hand-picked fonts that match some important criteria. Mailchimp decided that the new typefaces should:

Look great no matter how they’re styled – italics, bold, and underline.
Include international character sets in addition to English.
Be flexible enough for use in both body copy and headings.
Have some personality, but nothing so intense that it could limit broad appeal.
Already be relatively popular amongst Google Font users.
Be an adequate mix of serif and sans-serif typefaces (plus a slab serif or 2) for typographic variety.

Mailchimp Supported Google Web Fonts

Email Best Practices: Background Imagery

Tanya Steinberg — Thu, 13 Oct 2016 23:23:13 +0000

Email Best Practices:

Background Imagery

For best results your background imagery should enhance your campaign, not define it.

Beautiful imagery is a great way to add interest and flair to your email marketing campaigns with minimal effort. However, when it comes to background imagery and email things can get a bit sticky.

While background imagery displays wonderfully, and for the most part, consistently across web browsers the same is, unfortunately, not true when it comes to consistency across email clients.

In our custom advanced Mailchimp templates, background imagery is controlled and made editable, via CSS (cascading style sheet) code embedded in the head of your Mailchimp template. The problem is CSS support isn’t yet equal across email environments with some clients supporting certain CSS functions and others not. It makes designing for email quite the challenge, to say the least!

Background Image Behavior in Email

On the web, you can force certain behaviors on a background image with various declarations—from stretching it to conform to its container to applying grayscale filters. However, with email, only a few of these commands will be respected, and not across all email clients. Understanding how background images behave in email is a valuable tool in any email marketing designer’s arsenal. [Litmus]

Back It Up

When it comes to background imagery it’s always best to specify a background color as close to the imagery color as possible. This allows your content to display over a complimentary solid background color when background imagery cannot be loaded due to lack of email client support or in the event your imagery cannot be reached due to server downtime, broken image links, images-off environment, etc.

Editable background color backup is always included in our templates when a background image is utilized. Don’t forget to update your background color if you update your background imagery!

Use Background Imagery Sparingly, And Where It Makes Sense

Utilizing background imagery heavily can result in some stunning campaigns, however, if those campaigns don’t render consistently across all email environments your message can become lost in translation. We recommend utilizing background imagery sparingly to enhance your campaigns via artistic touches that compliment your template framework and campaign content such as watermarks and repeating patterns. In the event, these elements are not displayed your campaign message still takes center stage.

Take a look at the examples below for ideas on utilizing background imagery in a complementary, not primary way, for best results.

Potentially Problematic

In this product feature example, the product imagery is utilized as a background image. While this creates a strong and simple brand statement the background imagery, in this case the product imagery, will disappear in those email environments that do not support background imagery.

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

In this product feature example, the product imagery is embedded and a secondary product image is utilized as a background image. While seemingly redundant this layout ensures the product imagery is front and center whether the email client in question supports background imagery or not. In the case that background imagery is supported, the background imagery supports the content and creates a strong, and consistent, brand statement.

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Potentially Problematic

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

In this product feature example, the product imagery is embedded and a secondary, complementary product image is utilized as a background image. This layout ensures the product imagery is front and center whether the email client in question supports background imagery or not. In the case that background imagery is supported, the background imagery supports the content and creates a strong, and consistent, brand statement.

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Potentially Problematic

In this article example, the primary imagery is utilized as a background image. While this creates a strong and simple brand statement the background imagery, in this case the primary imagery, will disappear in those email environments that do not support background imagery.

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

In this article example, the primary imagery is embedded and a secondary, continuous image is utilized as a background image. This layout ensures the primary imagery is front and center whether the email client in question supports background imagery or not. In the case that background imagery is supported, the background imagery supports the content and creates a strong, and complete, brand statement.

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Email Best Practices: Including a Preheader

Tanya Steinberg — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 18:00:38 +0000

Email Best Practices:

Including a Preheader

A preheader (also referred to as a “Johnson Box”) is the short blurb of text that appears after the subject line when an email campaign is viewed in an inbox environment. This text further elaborates on the subject line affording you a great opportunity to entice your subscribers to read on.

Many email clients auto-generate this preheader text comprised of the first few lines of text, or ALT text in some cases, found in your campaign. Including a preheader in your template ensures that you will have full control of your preheader text in email environments. Otherwise, subscribers may see undesirable text such as the ALT text for your logo or header imagery followed by your campaign text, archive link, or social media icon information.

ALT text in email

Most email clients block images by default. In some cases, instead of showing the image, the email client will instead display the ALT text. This is definitely handy, especially in cases where an email design is predominantly composed of images. The ALT text can help communicate the message even if the images cannot. Alternatively, in a situation where images can’t or won’t load due to a bad connection, broken link, etc., the ALT text will appear instead of the image. [Litmus]

Including A Preheader

We make it easy, and painless, to include a custom preheader in your email campaigns. Each of our custom email templates comes complete with a customizable preheader section at no additional charge. Simply click and edit as you normally would within the Mailchimp editor.

Preheader Examples

Below are a few examples of preheader text. Notice how the campaign preview text is generated from the first few lines of text found in the campaigns.

Preheader Automation

With Mailchimp preheaders aren’t just a great way to emphasize your campaign content and increase open rates, they’re also a great place to introduce automation and personalization.

Personalize your campaign preheaders with Mailchimp’s merge tags which pull subscriber data straight from your Mailchimp list into your campaign content.

Incorporate a table of contents tag into your preheader and auto-generate your preheader content for quick and easy content creation.

Blog – Full Service Design Agency – Multimedia Design Agency

Adding the Mailchimp Required media:content Tag to your WordPress RSS Feed Output

Adding the Mailchimp Required < media: content > Tag to your WordPress RSS Feed Output

This tutorial requires you to make changes to your WordPress theme’s function.php file. If you are unable to make changes to this file yourself, or as a result of your website host’s limitations, we recommend the following plugin, Featured Images in RSS for Mailchimp & Other Email (Premium).

Connecting Your Site to Mailchimp

Connecting Your Site/Store to Mailchimp

Did you know that by connecting your online website or store to Mailchimp you can leverage their powerful marketing automation and reporting features to help build your brand?

To connect your website to Mailchimp manually, follow these steps.

We’re Not Just Mailchimp Experts, but Partners

✈ We’re back from Atlanta

And We CAn’t WAIT to SHARE ALL THE EXCITING NEW THINGS TO COME!

We’re expanding our service offerings as not only Mailchimp Experts but Partners.

BEYOND EMAIL

Mailchimp isn’t just an email service provider; it’s the world’s leading marketing automation platform.

YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE MORE THAN JUST EMAIL ADDRESSES.

With new marketing automation tools like marketing automation workflows and landing pages, Mailchimp allows you to create truly customized subscriber experiences that help grow your brand.

We’re Off to Atlanta (and Mailchimp HQ!)

✈ We’re off to Atlanta

We’re off to Atlanta, and Mailchimp headquarters, as part of our agency Partner Program benefits.

Our team will be in Atlanta, Georgia from Tuesday, February 27th through Friday, March 2nd.

We, along with other select Mailchimp experts/partners, will be participating in an immersive multi-day event where we’ll meet and learn from Mailchimp representatives and other agency partners from around the world.

Pretty cool, right?

COME ALONG FOR THE RIDE (er, Flight?) WITH US ON FACEBOOK.

We promise more Freddie photos than you can shake a stick at.

Template Spotlight: Edoughble

Optional, hideable preheader/preview text

Optional, hideable call to actions

Individual editing tools for each content variant

Quickly and easily add new or switch between content variants

Easy to edit background imagery

Drag and drop variants to reorder

Flexible ‘bulleted’ content

Mobile styling toolbar for further customization

Built in required footer content

Enhancing Your Campaign Imagery Using Mailchimp’s Image Editor

Enhancing Your Campaign Imagery Using Mailchimp’s Image Editor

Upload Your Desired Campaign Imagery

Apply Your Desired Overlay

Deliver Personalized Subscriber Experiences Using Mailchimp

“Subscriber segmentation is the most effective email marketing campaign strategy.” (HubSpot, 2022)

Deliver Personalized Subscriber Experiences Using Mailchimp

The Initial Collection

Basic Personalization Of Your Campaigns

The Update Profile Merge Tag

Building Your Advanced Sign Up Form

Building Subscriber Profiles

Targeting Subscribers Using Conditional Merge Tags

Email Best Practices: Typography

Email Best Practices:

Sans Serif Web Safe Fonts

Serif Web Safe Fonts

Monospace Web Safe Fonts

Why can’t I use any Google Web Font with Mailchimp?

Mailchimp Supported Google Web Fonts

Email Best Practices: Background Imagery

Email Best Practices:

Back It Up

Use Background Imagery Sparingly, And Where It Makes Sense

Potentially Problematic

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Potentially Problematic

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Potentially Problematic

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Best Bet

Email Client with Background Imagery Support

Email Client without Background Imagery Support

Email Best Practices: Including a Preheader

Email Best Practices:

Including A Preheader

Preheader Examples

✈
We’re back from
Atlanta

✈
We’re off to
Atlanta