MonkeyWrench: December 2009

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Twitter Promo Case Study
When we had the idea to run our t-shirt giveaway on twitter, we were kinda scared nobody would want them. But when we posted our first tweet, 50 shirts were gone in 3 minutes. Then it kinda just grew from there:

Next thing we knew, our follower count grew, re-tweets started rising, and people were lining up for the next batch of shirts (and getting antsy). So we started experimenting with posting on Facebook instead, then Posterous.

trendrr twitter graph

Amanda, our Chief Twitter Officer, documented everything we learned in this case study:

Part one: Using Twitter for Promos w/out Being A D-bag
and here's a link to part two of the case study, which includes fancy charts and graphs.

Webinar vs. Online Training
webinar ab test

So we run these weekly webinars.

We've got links all over our site that say "Attend a MailChimp webinar" and point people to this landing page.

One day, our website testing guru Stephen decides to test the word "webinar" against "online training" and "live training" to see if we could get a few more clicks.

We ended up increasing clicks by 101%

Will Critchlow from agency Distilled tweeted another keyword to A/B test (thanks, man!)

Pruning Your Email List
You've read and probably suggested to clients/managers that it's a good idea to prune inactive subscribers from your email list, and only focus on the engaged ones.

But have you ever wondered what would happen to your list if you actually did prune it? How many would be cut? Would response really rise?

Well, send Rick Whittington a thank you note, because he just posted this detailed case study on how he pruned his client's email list with MailChimp's Member Ratings, and boosted open and clicks, reduced abuse complaints, and saved his client some money.

Are The ISPs Really Watching Me?
Yes, they are. Here's an eye-opening article on how AOL's postmaster team dealt with a company trying to get their emails out of the AOL spam folder. They really do investigate your permission practices. Stop and think about how your company adds people to your list(s). Anything give you the heebie-jeebies? Better fix it soon, because ISPs can see it. BTW, our compliance team frequently does the exact same thing to investigate some users. Oh yeah, take note of their use of the "engagement" principle.

AOL Postmaster Blog: Permission vs. Request

Changes for ESPs
Lots of people ask MailChimp (and I imagine other ESPs) why we're so strict about lists and permission. Why does every email need a permission reminder? Why is an unsub link needed, even if this isn't a marketing message? Well, it's complicated. Just to give you an idea of what we deal with at an ESP, you should try reading through all these links:
A Series of Warnings (for ESPs)

Can Twitter Tell You Best Time To Send?
Use Twitter to determine best time to send your email:
http://www.toddle.com/stuff/use-twitter-to-tell-you-when-to-send-your-email-newsletter/
found via Mark Brownlow
Also link to our own BARF report (but check to see if you can determine same thing)

Increase in Facebook Fans after running our t-shirt promotion.

We recently sent a survey to our customers asking if they'd recommend MailChimp to a friend. Over 4,000 responded. We took the results and calculated our Net Promoter Score (an interesting way to measure customer loyalty).

Here's how we ranked, in relation to other companies' scores:

net promoter score - 69 percent

Source: NetPromoter.com

It's nice to know we're in the same(ish) ranges with those great brands, but clearly we have a lot more work to do. I'd like my company's score to at least be better than my high school GPA. I dunno, just a personal goal. Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey!

- Ben

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