Someone recently asked us, “Is there a way in MailChimp to find out my best day to send, based on my list’s history?” The answer is yes, and here’s how.

1. Log in to MailChimp
2. Go to the “Reports” tab, and click on this link under your graph:

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Here’s a common question I get: “My list is puny. If buying email lists is evil, how can I grow my subscriber base? Fast?”

Well, one way to get more people to signup for your email list is to give them something free when they subscribe. To make it automatic, you can add e-coupons, or links to whitepapers inside your welcome emails.

For example, let’s say you’re a music store, and when people signup for your email newsletter, you want to send them some free music tips. But you want those music tips to be customized to their interests.

If someone rocks the pan flute, they should receive a welcome email with an embedded link to download a PDF called “Zamfir’s Pan Flute Secrets.” If someone is a guitar hero, they get a free guide on guitar playing. You get the gist.

Here’s how to do this in MailChimp…

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Q: “My list is totally opt-in, yet my campaign reports show that 11 people reported me for spamming them. What gives?”

A: In your MailChimp campaign stats, you’ll see the number of people who complained about your email (by clicking on the “Report Spam” button in their email program). That number comes from MailChimp’s integration with major ISP feedback loops, like Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Hotmail/MSN, Outblaze, Roadrunner, Comcast, and more. It’s not uncommon for subscribers who requested email from you to still report you for spamming.

There are a few reasons this could be happening…

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A common question we get at MailChimp is, “how fast can you deliver emails?”

Sometimes it’s just a polite way of asking, “Are you just sending emails from some hamster-powered box in your broom closet?” We point those people to our email marketing infrastructure page.

Other times, it’s because some rookie actually wants to “blast a billion emails a minute” to their “opt-in list.” So when people ask me this question, I put one finger on the trap door button under my desk, and ask them, “Um, why do you ask?”

The truth is, our infrastructure does deliver “bazillions of emails an hour,” but that’s across all our accounts, servers, and IPs. You’ve got to do it in a very controlled way, or ISPs will think you’re obnoxious, and start throttling or blocking you.

The folks at Strongmail have a nice writeup for this. If you’re thinking about getting yourself a dedicated IP address, then sending tons of emails from it, it’s not quite that easy. Services like ReturnPath’s SenderScore Certified are supposed to help with that, but you’re going to need a good, powerful MTA as your delivery engine first.

I recently blogged about some interesting A/B Split data that I’ve been sifting through for a report we’re working on.

Thought I’d post another interesting observation from a handful of campaigns that ran A/B Split Tests on their subject lines (company names disguised as “Acme”). The first 4 are from the same company, sending emails for 4 different web properties that they run…

In almost all the examples above, the subject line with “free” had a lower open rate. So should you avoid the word “FREE” in your subject line? In my opinion, don’t use “free” if it detracts from relevance. If you replace your company name with “free” or if you remove the urgency with “free,” your open rate is going to suffer.