Thanks to all our customers who helped vote for MailChimp in the Shorty Awards. We got it up to 130 votes, but we still lost to Tweetdeck, which is a great app to lose to. Congrats to HootSuite (which I’m using everyday now and am growing quite fond of), for grabbing #2! HootSuite is apparently a MailChimp customer (I just got their newsletter), so I’m kinda glad we lost to them. Heck, the ShortyAwards itself is a MailChimp customer too. Such an honor to be considered among so many other newfangled apps. I think it’s because of our social integration, which Mashable was kind enough to recognize here. If you didn’t make it to NY for the ShortyAwards, you can watch it online, via LiveStream (ahem, also a MailChimp customer). </ name-dropping> BTW, I kinda thought the Suze Orman clip, where “Mark Z” calls in to buy Twitter, was funny.

Other social-related articles you may enjoy:

• MailChimp launches Geo Targeting service
• Auto-tweet your emails, then track re-tweets with MailChimp, then mash it all up in your Analytics360 report
• Tutorial: Using MailChimp’s Twitter-to-email
• Case Study: Using Twitter for promos w/out being a d-bag
• How I use MailChimp with Flowtown

Contrary to popular belief, switching to an ESP (email service provider) like MailChimp, ConstantContact, etc., is not a silver bullet for deliverability.

Spam filters and email gateways look at two kinds of things: 1) your email message, and 2) your email infrastructure. In terms of your email message, ESPs can’t help it if you send spammy content, manage your lists like an idiot, or if a link in your email has a bad domain reputation. But as ReturnPath points out here, ESPs do have one important advantage: our infrastructure.

So if you’re managing your own email servers and delivery issues with ISPs, firewalls, throttling, feedback loops, and bouncebacks are becoming a supreme headache, you might be thinking about moving to an ESP.

This article is about how one email sender, Photojojo, decided to switch from their in-house solution to MailChimp. We’ll show you how we helped them make the transition, what we experienced, and how it impacted their deliverability.

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A couple days ago I mentioned the interesting use of flickr in Steve’s App Sketchbook email campaign. This morning I got this Halloween-ish email from ChoppingBlock that also used flickr in an interesting way: they invite you to post a high-res image from flickr to your blog, to see if you can name all the spooky characters in their latest tshirt:

Twitter and Facebook seem to be getting all the attention from email marketers now (see: Sharing with Twitter v. Facebook), but don’t forget flickr, because it can be a great way to get your subscribers to contribute to your conversation with photos!

I just found out that one of our guys at MailChimp, Steve, has sort of a side gig: App Sketchbook. (it was recently featured on The Unofficial Apple Weblog). Here’s where he came up with the idea:

“After being asked to design some iPhone® applications, I started to search around for design tips and information. There were PSD files, stencils and other paper prototyping tools available, but I’ve always sketched my ideas first. After printing out wireframe templates on sheets of paper (and ultimately losing my sketches), I decided to design my own sketchbook.”

Turns out Steve’s also using MailChimp, along with our Paypal integration, autoresponder tool, and social networking in a pretty unique way…

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We just noticed LaughYourWay.com using our dynamic content merge tags in a cool way.

In their website footer, they have an email signup box with an incentive to “win an iPod touch:”

Then, whenever they send their emails, they pick a winner and use this dynamic content merge tag in their campaign:

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