Sorry for the late post on this, but we launched v6.4 on Monday. The changes were subtle, but significant:

1. Totally rebuilt our Facebook integration to make it easier
2. Local currency options: Euros and British Pounds
3. New templates for the holidays
4. AlterEgo native iPhone and Android apps

New Facebook integration

After listening to user feedback on our previous Facebook integration and performing some usability research, we came to the scientific conclusion that it pretty much sucked. For some people, it worked brilliantly. For others, it was a complete p.i.t.a. So we totally rebuilt it.

Setup is much easier, and you can more intuitively specify the Facebook page you want to manage, what list you want to sync with, and customize your tab label and overall look and feel. Here’s a screenshot:

Payment in EURO and GBP

Our internationalization efforts continue. Over the last few months we’ve been prepping our banking and billing infrastructure to handle local currencies, so that our customers around the world don’t have to pay in USD. The road ahead is still long, but we’ve started taking our first few steps:

More currency options will be added soon. We’re also well on our way to translating the MailChimp app. We anticipate launching MailChimp in different languages starting early 2012 (we’re trying not to make too many major changes to the app during the insane holiday season).

New email templates for the holidays

Fabio, our resident email-jitsu-5th-degree-black-belt-in-templates master, will post a more detailed update on this (as usual), but we’ve again added a bunch more templates in this release. When you create a new campaign and choose your template, go to predesigned–>holiday and you’ll find a bunch of new options to choose from. I just like watching the fake companies and logos that our design team keeps coming up with, like Chuck’s Tree Hut:

AlterEgo for iPhone and Android

When we first launched AlterEgo (our free 2-factor authentication security service for MailChimp) earlier this year, it was only available as a web app that you accessed in your smartphone’s browser. This week, we launched native iPhone and Android apps to make the experience super fast and snappy. Plus, it’s got cool sword sound effects. Details on this blog post.

We have one more release planned for November, but it will be extremely “lite” as the holiday season has officially begun in email service provider land (seriously, there are Black Friday campaigns getting spooled up already). So most of our efforts from now until January will be on adding servers and resources to keep MailChimp stable and speedy, as opposed to new functionality. Our focus will also be shifted over the next few months to our other apps (some of them listed here), more new templates, and new mobile apps. We will resume normal disruptive email innovation in January 2012.