Email marketing can be a one way conversation sometimes. It doesn’t have to be that way.

For example, whenever I send our MailChimp newsletters, I usually get a couple dozen replies and I reply back to every single one of them. Sometimes, the conversation gets really interesting and it’s a shame that all our subscribers can’t join in.

So in our upcoming v5.3 upgrade, we’re adding Facebook Comments functionality to MailChimp campaigns. This way, you can keep the conversation going with your subscribers after you’ve hit the send button.

Here’s how it works…

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When we heard that our friends at Chopping Block were planning a “celebrity apes” t-shirt, we of course told them that they had to include Freddie, the world-famous MailChimp mascot and universally-recognized symbol of “awesome email,” among all those icons:

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Voting is underway for SXSW 2011 panels, and this blog post is a shameless plug to drum up support for our MailChimp guys and gals who need your votes. Since SXSW is a community-driven event, the staff and organizers rely on community input to help gauge sentiment for the panels they’ll ultimately select. That being said, I’ll give a quick run down of MailChimpsters who’ve submitted panels, and link directly to where you can give them your thumb’s up.

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I’ve always recommended that companies send their email newsletters using a role account for their reply-to. For example, instead of using my personal “ben@” email address, I’ve always used “newsletter@.” Mostly because I might get hit by a bus or something, and somebody here might have to replace my role (hence “role address”).

But today I changed all that, because of an email newsletter I got from Jon Swanson. I subscribed to his blog updates a long time ago, because he was one of the first people to try our RSS-to-email tool.

All I wanted to know is whether or not our tool was working properly for people. But I ended up staying on his list, because I like his writing and his content. Heck, I’ve ended up purchasing books he’s recommended (that’s what’s so interesting about influence, and the social web).

Anyway, in Gmail, since I have Rapportive installed, I saw Jon’s face right next to his newsletter (that’s him over to the right). I can also see some of his recent tweets, which  include links to more photos.

This makes his email newsletter really personal, and really human. So if you have Rapportive installed in your Gmail, and you got my most recent newsletter, there’s me:

When I first wrote about MailChimp’s integration with Rapportive, I was only thinking about how you could use it to learn more about your customers. Never even thought about using it so that customers could learn more about you(r brand).

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We surpassed 10,000 fans on Facebook earlier this week and noticed some changes to our page that are kind of interesting. So first of all, a huge thanks to all 10,100+ MailChimp Fans. We promise to keep listening, innovating and making email fun so that you can focus on growing your business, organization or fan base. Capeesh?

When you hit the 10,000 fan mark, Facebook gives you access to new and exciting metrics for your wall posts– impressions (the number of times a story has been seen on your wall and in the news feed of your fans) and feedback (the number of comments and likes per impression), which provides a rough approximation of how engaging your content is. These Insights show up for the page admin when you mouse-over.

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