At its core, mediafeedia is a content management system for Facebook that allows you to manage your business pages, schedule posts and interact with your customers. But it also provides a powerful tool for creating, delivering and tracking special offers through Facebook. That means you can create a special offer landing tab for your business page, collect opt-in email addresses when people sign up for your promotion, and then seamlessly import them into MailChimp once the user confirms opt-in.

I recently read an interesting post by Andrew Blakeley, who tackled a one-week challenge to like every brand that asked him to (on Facebook of course). The experiment was borne out of the frustration that brands and marketers seem to be constantly asking us to find them on Facebook, yet they rarely offer a reason for us to do so.

In fact, Blakely found that only 10 of 46 brands across a whole spectrum of industries, both on and offline, offered a reason to like them. He goes on to say, “In 2011 it’s more or less a given that your brand can be found on Facebook, and consumers know that. What they don’t know is why they should bother.”

mediafeediaOFFERS wants to help bridge the disconnect by giving you the means to grow your Facebook audience through page likes and opt-in email. So not only will your customers see your content in their newsfeed on Facebook, you’ve also established the basis for engaging with them through email by offering a special incentive. If you’re looking for a way to kickstart your email marketing program, mediafeediaOFFERS is a great place to start.

Still not convinced? Read how Squeeze Bar in Charleston grew to over 1,000 fans and 400 new customers after implementing a mediafeediaOFFERS tab on their Facebook page. That’s an impressive 40% response rate, and it translates into measurable ROI.

To create a special offer tab on Facebook, mediafeedia charges $99 for setup and then a monthly fee, starting at $9.99 per month. But because we really like this integration and think you will too, the first 500 users to sign-up for mediafeediaOFFERS and synchronize it with MailChimp will have the setup fee waived. (You can use mediafeedia as a content management system for Facebook free of charge.)

If you’re a business with a Facebook page, mediafeediaOFFERS can help you take your marketing efforts to the next level. We’d love to hear how you’re using this integration in the comments below.

epic million-user cofounder chest bump

Liquidating thirteen thousand items– including MailChimp tshirts, monkey hats and plushies– is no small feat. But to do it in just 18 minutes and via the internet? Now that is impressive.

About a week before we projected we’d be hitting one million users, Ben blogged about our great million-user giveaway. Step one complete.

We kept a close watch, and yesterday morning when we were sure we’d hit our mark, our marketing team sent out an email to folks who signed up to be notified of future MailChimp promotions. Then we started dropping little hints via Twitter and Facebook which really got people excited. The tension was palpable.

When one of our users tweeted the following photo, and we knew it was getting really close.

I mean, how could I not share this photo? Adorable!

It also made us realize we needed champagne on hand! Luckily Video Josh came to the rescue, bringing back the bubbly just in the nick of time.

When we finally hit the million-user milestone, we tweeted the news and posted to Facebook, and you guys went crazy. Literally. We have realtime video evidence!

And here’s a chart of our Twitter activity from yesterday that I pulled from Topsy, which has an awesome and free Twitter analytics tool.

Last but certainly not least, we wanted to offer folks a way to be notified of future promotions because we LOVE giving away goodies! We collected emails on our landing page, and the list growth chart is pretty astounding.

See? Giveaways do work for increasing your subscriber list, even with double opt-in forms.

All you need to do is add the following merge tag in the body of your text at the location where you want the button to show up:

*|GOOGLE:PLUSONE|*

By default, the merge tag will link to the campaign archive version of your email and use your subject line as the title. You have some additional options for customizing how it works though.

*|GOOGLE:PLUSONE[$url=http://yourwebsiteurlhere.com]|*

The optional variable $url=http://yourwebsiteurlhere.com specifies the URL shared. If not specified, links to your campaign archive.

*|GOOGLE:PLUSONE[$title=title of my post]|*

The optional variable $title=title of my post specifies the title of the page being shared. If not specified, uses the subject line of your campaign.

And to enable +1 sharing for individual items in your RSS-to-email campaigns, just use:

*|RSSITEM:PLUSONE|*

Just add

*|TUMBLR:SHARE|*

to the body text of your campaign, and you’ll see the little Tumblr icon appear.

Then, when a subscriber clicks on the icon in your email, they’ll be taken to a web archive version of the campaign. Clicking the icon again brings up the share dialog.

Then just as you would share any other content (like a link or image) from the Tumblr bookmarklet or web interface, you’ll have the option of editing the name (the default is your campaign’s subject line) and link description.

There are a few options to further customize the URL or title that you’re sharing.

*|TUMBLR:SHARE[$url=http://yourwebsiteurlhere.com]|*

The optional variable $url=http://yourwebsiteurlhere.com specifies the URL shared. If not specified, links to your campaign archive.

*|TUMBLR:SHARE[$title=title of my post]|*

The optional variable $title=title of my post specifies the title of the page being shared. If not specified, uses the subject line of your campaign.

And to enable Tumblr sharing for individual items in your RSS feed, just use the following:

*|RSSITEM:TUMBLR|*

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If they’re already on the list, we’ll send them an email with a link to update their subscription preferences. Clicking the “update your preferences” link in the email will then take the subscriber to a web-based version of your signup form with their current values pre-filled. The subscriber can then make and submit their changes.

This should be especially helpful for those of you who rely heavily on interest groups for list segmentation.

Even if you weren’t able to make it this time, hopefully these animated gifs will help you feel like you’re right in the mix.

View from the 5 Seasons Brewing roof deck

The King of Pops helped folks cool off with his delicious, handmade popsicles

Ben chatting

Plenty of monkey hats to go around and swag galore!

The Mystery Men shared stellar surf rock tunes that were totally weather appropriate.

Our beloved Freddie appeared to share hugs and fist bumps with all

Preliminary Steps

When you’re setting up your drip campaign, planning is actually just as important as creating the content you’ll be sending out, apparently. So before you get started, the fine folks over at Marketingsherpa urge you to consider some of the following questions. (Seriously, I’m not an expert on this stuff but am happy to point you toward helpful resources from folks who are.)

What’s the goal of your autoresponder campaign? For example, if you have an ecommerce site, you might want to remind someone about the items they’ve left in their shopping cart and encourage them to come back and purchase. Do you have your content sorted out? Content is still king, and having well-written, informative and relevant content will help engage your subscribers and keep them interested. What’s the trajectory and duration of your campaign? What key marketing messages are you trying to convey? What’s the time period over which you plan to send your emails? Are they leading up to a specific event? These sorts of questions will help you figure out how often you want to send, and the specific content in each message.

Getting Started

Let’s imagine that you’re a wedding photographer who finds potential clients through word of mouth, via a signup form on your website, and by using Chimpadeedoo for iPad to let interested parties sign up at bridal shows.

You’ll want to make sure your signup form is capturing all the pertinent information for your autoresponder series– first and last name, email address, date (which I’ve relabeled so it refers to wedding date) and gender. Perhaps even use the 2 line description to entice people with a special offer for signing up, as I’ve done here.

Setting Up Your Autoresponders

Remember, the whole point of this tutorial is how to count down to a special date using autoresponders. Since we’ve collected the wedding date of our prospective clients, that’s the date we’ll base our series of emails on.

When I created my signup form in Chimpadeedoo, I offered an incentive– a free wedding photography consultation. In order to make good on that offer, I scheduled my first autoresponder (containing the free consultation offer) to send a few days (3) after signup. This gives the subscriber enough time to process all the information from the Bridal Show, but not so much time that they forget they ever signed up for my list. (Note: Experiment here! Is five days the sweet spot, or do you get better results from waiting a week or maybe even nine days? Leave a comment and let us know what you discover, as my guess is that things will vary by industry and use case.)

Then I created my campaign:

Next, I’ve decided that to stay in contact with my subscribers and help pique their interest in my services, I’ll send out a “tips” type newsletter one month after the subscription date. Again, in my autoresponder setup screen I’ll click the big “add autoresponder” button, then select the list I want to send to– Georgia Bridal Show 2011. Under “send settings” I’ll set my autoresponder to send 1 month after the subscriber’s signup date:

And again, I’ll then go in and create my campaign full of wedding tips and tricks. I’ll segment this one by gender, because let’s face it, you guys need a lot of help when it comes to wedding stuff. I’ll include pointers about how not to look like a total goofball in your photos, how far in advance of your wedding you should get your hair cut so you don’t have that “freshly shorn sheep” look, and even some common dance steps so that you’re not as nervous while twirling your lady during that first dance.

Once you’ve set up your autoresponder and are ready to jump into the design process, simply set the segment of your list you want to send to in Step 1 of the Campaign Builder.

Next, you know that (according to the wedding planning checklist) couples will be seriously auditioning photographers nine to ten months prior to the date of the wedding. In order to capitalize on that, I’ll set up two autoresponders– one that will send 10 months before the date of the wedding, and the other that will send 9 months before the wedding. These are specifically intended to remind my subscribers that it’s time to pick a photographer, while also suggesting my services.

Ten months out, I want to remind the subscriber where we met (the Georgia Bridal Show on June 26, 2011 at Gwinnett Center), provide some education and links to my website and portfolio, and offer my photography services for the big day. Since I collected gender information on my signup form, I might even consider segmenting on that criteria and including a bit more concrete information for the men on my list. Guys don’t always understand the nuances of wedding planning, so it might behoove me to educate as opposed to trying the hard sell.

There’s a lot that goes into planning a wedding, so when my autoresponder sends 9 months prior to the date of the wedding, I want to assure my subscribers I know what they’re going through and that LauterCo Photographers are here to help. This might be a good time to include offers from dress shops, tuxedo rental places or caterers that my company has prior working relationships with. You can even make sure those companies know you sent them business by using Google’s URL builder to generate a unique link for each vendor.

Google URL builder

Some other ideas you might want to consider

• 8 months before the wedding, send a PYOW-powered QR coupon code to a segment of those folks who “opened or clicked” your email from the 9-month autoresponder offering a discount on your photography services

• Post a QR Code outside your studio so that visitors who stop by can quickly signup for your email list

We’ve been experimenting and learning a lot, so we wanted to share our experience in hopes that you’ll find it interesting or useful.

When we were first given access to the Promoted Tweets beta, I spent lots of time brainstorming with Ben and our marketing team. We wanted to be sure that if we were going to run any tweet campaigns, they absolutely wouldn’t annoy our users or reflect poorly on the MailChimp user experience.

Our first idea was to align our Promoted Tweets to a particular event that we were sponsoring, like the dodgeball Tournament of Chimpions, part of the Interlink Conference in Vancouver. The idea was to login to Twitter and set up a promoted campaign targeting the #interlinkconf hashtag, and have it run through the duration of the event. This means that anytime someone searched Twitter for #interlinkconf, they’d see MailChimp’s promoted tweet at the top of the list. Kind of like this:

The problem with promoting tweets that have a definite start and end time, however, is that they come and go and are easy to forget to schedule. (D’oh!) And while we missed out on a number of event-based opportunities, we did have some fun with this promoted tweet for An Event Apart Atlanta:

Most people attending the event found this amusing, but one fellow wasn’t so pleased:

Fast forward to sometime last week when we noticed that a competitor was creating Promoted Tweets and bidding on our brand name as a keyword. That’s not really a big deal in and of itself, since it’s the kind of thing that happens with Google Adwords all the time. But the content of these particular tweets was unsavory and misleading, and literally had nothing to do with MailChimp. So we did what any self-respecting brand would do, and started our own little “brand integrity” Promoted Tweets campaign.

Overall, the effects seem positive. We’ve got a nice place to highlight useful tips or blog posts, and when people retweet them, that provides some extra brand exposure perhaps leading to some new followers. Increasing our follower count definitely isn’t our goal though, and we genuinely want to provide useful information about using MailChimp that you may not be aware of. Furthermore, since the lifespan of a typical tweet is relatively short, I’m making sure to update the promoted content every 48 hours or so.

Haters Gonna Hate

As I mentioned before, the biggest challenge we’ve faced with Promoted Tweets has been the annoyance factor. If you’re at a conference and have an ongoing Twitter search for a particular hashtag that we’ve purchased as a keyword, the Promoted Tweet can encroach on screen real estate. The problem becomes exacerbated if you’re using an iPad or netbook, since those have even fewer on-screen pixels available.

And this guy got pretty pissed off about the whole Promoted Tweets thing in general, so we went ahead and shared the backstory via LongReply. But overall, the response has been positive and people seem to enjoy learning about the neat little MailChimp hacks we share.

Here’s what the old archive bar looked like:

What is this Facebook Send Button?

So what’s this Facebook Send button (“Share” button on the campaign archive page) and why would you want to use it? When you click the Like button, it posts content to your Facebook wall and all of your friends can see it in their newsfeeds. With the Send/Share button, you can share your email campaign with a specific Facebook group, just a few friends, or even just one person. Think of the Send/Share button as a more targeted, more intimate way of sharing content.

When you share something via the Send/Share button, the message will include a link to the archived version of your email campaign, along with the title (your subject line), image, and short description of the link.

Facebook Send Merge Tag

You can also add the Send button to your campaign, just as you would the Like button. The merge tag to use is

* |FACEBOOK:SEND| * (without the extra spaces)

Here’s how it’ll appear in your campaign:

Related Links:

• Can my recipients Like specific links or images in my campaign?
• Using the RSSITEM:SHARE merge tag to allow your subscribers to share a specific link from your RSS-to-email campaign
• v5.9 Updates and the return of Social Pro

If you’re familiar with our other “360″ integrations (as in degrees, full circle)– like Analytics360 or Ecommerce360– you’ll know that we refer to them as such because your email leaves MailChimp, does a little data mingling with another service or services, and then that data ultimately gets pulled back into our application. Truth in advertising!

Our SurveyGizmo 360 integration follows the same scheme. When you send out an email containing a specially generated SurveyGizmo link and your subscribers answer your questionnaire, that data gets pulled back into your MailChimp Reports. While not as visually appealing or robust as SurveyGizmo’s built in reporting features, it will allow you to view responses at a glance.

In order to create the special link for your MailChimp campaign, click on the “Publish” tab of your launched survey and then click the “MailChimp Campaign” button. When the dialog box appears, be sure to select “Display MailChimp Subscriber Info” and then click the “save” button. This will ensure that your subscribers’ names are matched up with their survey responses in your MailChimp reports.

Once you click “save” you’ll end up back on the “Publish” tab. You’ll see a new MailChimp listing with it’s own custom URL under “Existing Links/Campaigns”, and that’s the link to your survey you’ll use in your MailChimp campaign.

Now jumping back over to MailChimp, you’ll find your survey responses under Reports ==> Advanced Reports. Your question(s) will be pulled in as column headers, and that’s really helpful when you’ve got a meaty survey with lots of questions to keep track of. You’ll also be able to see a time stamp associated with each response, and the subscriber’s name (assuming you have that option selected when you create your special SurveyGizmo link). When you elect to keep subscriber info anonymous, you’ll see IP addresses instead. Be sure to click on the image below for a larger view.

Related Content

• How do I use SurveyGizmo with MailChimp?