Building a brand with Mailchimp
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The document discusses MailChimp's evolution from a tool originally designed for programmers to an easy-to-use email marketing platform. It provides tips for crafting effective emails, including testing content and design, segmenting audiences, and focusing on relevance and brevity. The overall philosophy emphasized is to "be human" by respecting people's time and connecting with subscribers in a genuine way.
Building a brand with Mailchimp
- 3. What we’ll explore today: - MailChimp’s background - Our marketing evolution - How we craft and use email - Brands that are email rockstars - Free tools of the trade
- 4. The Rocket Science Group
- 5. MailChimp - RSG clients requested email marketing - MailChimp built as an app they could use - Originally designed for programmers - Users bought credits, paid with checks - Upload a list of recipients, paste in HTML - Bon voyage!
- 7. Tough Decisions What is the future of the Rocket Science Group? Web design/consulting or MailChimp?
- 8. A Dedicated App - MailChimp team gets focused - Bring in devs and UI designer - Focus on single core product - Build easy, powerful app folks want to use
- 9. Blossoming Brand - Originally wanted to remove the monkey - Freddie gets a makeover - Introduce Freemium Plan: 500 → 3,000
- 11. Swag Strategy - Think of swag as a gift rather than a promo - By giving users quality swag, we could convey the quality of the app - Give folks things they’ll want and be delighted in vs “here’s some stuff” - Reward users for engaging and ask them for help to improve the app...
- 12. APIE Awards: Awesome Performance In Email
- 13. Traditional Marketing - Begin to sponsor events - Focused on design and content events - Don’t push MailChimp on people - Built trust with attendees - Still maintain philosophy and will be silent sponsors to help be supportive of events
- 14. Billboards Designed for existing users. Winking Freddie for folks that know him.
- 16. MailChimp’s Emails “The only way to figure out what works for your list is to keep testing.” -Bradley Gula - Simple and clear doesn’t have to come at the expense of comprehensive content - Always experiment with content, design, language, and images→ use images from website for consistency - Switch up the creation process with voice & tone - DoSomething’s 20 subject lines per email - Use click map in reporting to see where folks respond - Success judged in different ways - If new feature, maybe look at opens? - If specific segment, maybe clicks best? - What’s driving the engagement or
- 17. MailChimp’s Email Philosophy “I think the overriding philosophy I follow is to ‘be human.’ With each email, we’re asking people to commit to a measure of their time, and we try to be respectful of that.” - Fabio Carneiro, MailChimp Email Designer
- 18. Design Within Constraints - Know what you can and cannot do within email and various email clients - Design for the lowest common denominator - Experiment to learn how each email client handles emails - Create email accounts with Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and Outlook - Create test list with them, send throwaway campaigns to test new features - Think outside the box: videos → gifs
- 20. Design For Distraction - Emails are designed to be easily used and usable regardless of the email client - Should NOT have a disruptive impact on a subscriber’s workflow or life - Keep it short and sweet - Use links to drive traffic to your site for more info - List metrics help you know which clients people use - Desktop vs Mobile?
- 21. Design With A Purpose - Can’t please all your subscribers with a massive, all-inclusive, generic email - Segment your audience and build emails accordingly - Know who you’re sending to and why you’re sending - Relevant content lets your subscribers know you care - Spotify music recommendation emails - Irrelevant content is a huge turn off for subscribers - Think iOS vs Android app updates - Concert ticket emails
- 22. Really Good Email - Use your inbox as a research tool - “I pay attention to how the emails are designed and built, and what sort of content each message carries.” - Fabio - Sign up for lists of companies, people, or brands you admire - Look at what works well for some but poorly for others - What reactions do you have as the reader of an email? - “What works for one customer might be disastrous for another. The only way to figure out what works for your list is to keep testing.” - Brad
- 23. Cards Against Humanity “CAH is at it’s strongest when we can point to hypocrisies and absurdities in the culture around us, while also obviously being apart of that culture.” - Max Temkin, Founder - Extend brand’s humor into emails, rewarding subscribers with email only content - Philosophy: only send when you have something to say - 15 sent within 3 years, 75% open rate - “If your job is to write emails, you should always be fighting to send fewer things and make sure each email you send is so incredible that it’s a rare treat to hear from you.” - Max
- 24. CAH’s Black Friday Sale - Never believed in cutting the price of the game - How do you separate yourself from other emails? - Poke fun at Black Friday - Language within image - Campaign went viral for being so ridiculous - Increased seasonal “Your entire life changes, starting today.”
- 25. Robocat - Only send a few times a year - Want to reward folks for their time and subscription - “When we send a message to someone, we are essentially asking them for a bit of their time, a bit of their privacy. It’s important that our readers are rewarded for that investment.” - Robocat - Used negative appstore review to launch their most successful Kickstarter campaign to date: $35,000 Goal with $336,018 Pledged
- 26. ElevationLab - Design Apple iPhone docks and iMac stands - Send sparingly, test frequently - - Design Apple iPhone docks and iMac stands - Use imagery to display quality and design of their products - Send sparingly, test frequently - Several iterations of each email to whittle down content
- 27. Always Be Experimenting “There’s a lot of room for experimentation in the development, design, and content arenas, and that’s my advice to anyone starting out: always experiment. Develop the emails using different techniques, be open to departure from your established design language, and play with the voice and tone of your emails.” -Fabio Carneiro, MailChimp Email Designer
- 28. Reduce Irrelevance: Send Relevant, Concise Content “But, in general, if we have to think too hard about if something should be included, it’ll probably fit better in a future email to a better audience.” -Bradley Gula, MailChimp’s Email Dude
- 29. Be Human “I think the overriding philosophy I follow is to ‘be human.’ With each email, we’re asking people to commit to a measure of their time, and we try to be respectful of that.” - Fabio Carneiro, MailChimp Email Designer “Email marketing is your chance to connect with your customers in a human way. Be human!” - Ben Chestnut, MailChimp CEO
- 30. Resources Email Design www.reallygoodemail.com inspiration.mailchimp.com Website Design wix.com/sample/website Additional Help arena.wix.com experts.mailchimp.com Free Tools www.wix.com www.mailchimp.com www.canva.com www.pixlr.com www.image-maps.com
Editor's Notes
- #5: Founded 2001 after the .com burst and mp3 radio went under. Originally focussed on website design and consulting, graphic design, database design, custom marketing solutions. If it was involved with the internet, RSG was gonna try to do it.
- #6: Keep it super simple. Upload your list, buy credits, paste in your HTML code. Primarily designed for programmers and devs that were building out email designs with their marketing teams.
- #7: “We just figured we’d put a monkey somewhere in it and people would want to use it.”
- #8: -RSG was signing larger contracts for web development, but noticed that folks were beginning to signup for MC. -As they looked at MC, they realized that they weren’t having to rent projectors and do sales meetings to get clients. -Google search terms to get up at the top of the search results, folks were signing up.
- #9: -At this time in the company, everyone was all hands on deck. Co-founders were answering support/compliance tickets. -Were getting 1-2 signups per day, 4 in a day was huge! -One day got 30 signups and started shutting them all down -Aaron Walter’s design class signing up for email and app design, please let us back in! the kids need to learn! -Ended up coming on full time to head up UX -Focus on single core product -Build a strong app with an easy to use interface and folks will tell their friends -Relied heavily on the app for marketing so kept focusing on a single core product.
- #10: -Struggled with brand’s identity. Built for programmers and marketers, but have to dress it up to make it “professional” b/c email is serious business -Lots of pushback from community about potentially removing Freddie as folks came to love him, so he got a makeover - 2009 Jon Hicks gave Freddie a new look and our logo is formalized.
- #11: Aaron Walter comes back from SXSW and introduces MC to “Twitter” so they ran the 1,000 shirt giveaway on Twitter alongside launch of Freemium plan.
- #13: Were getting requests for more templates so we crowd sourced and made a contest: “Template Throwdown” -Winners got a belt and their templates within the app
- #14: -2010 move into more traditional marketing channels -First event was future of the web - Wanted to sponsor events but stayed towards the back, didn’t want to shove marketing materials down peoples throats -Ended up building trust with attendees because we weren’t there to pawn off white papers
- #16: Marketing aspects moved into emotional marketing rather than informational marketing.
- #24: “If your job is to write emails, you should always be fighting to send fewer things and make sure each email you send is so incredible that it’s a rare treat to hear from you.” - CAH
- #25: Holiday Bullshit - 100,000 available, 12 gifts, $12. - Announced via email, sold out in 7 hours.
- #26: “The therometer analogy we used in Thermo was obviously displaying the outside temperature, as the iPhone can’t possibly measure the immediate temperature around you… But that got us thinking… What if it could?”
- #27: “We’ve found that it’s the most effective [marketing tool] by far. We do it for new product announcements, about 75% of people open it, and we get a ton of business from it.” - Casey Hopkins, Founder “We iterate a lot, a couple dozen of those to whittle [each email] down until it’s good and concise. We’re all in the same office, looking over each other’s shoulders.”