Do you manage a MailChimp account for a client or boss? Maybe you’re an inhouse web developer, and the sales team keeps asking you for “those mail monkey thingy stats.” Ever wish you could send them a campaign report without giving them full access to the MailChimp account? Done.
We just launched our re-brandable campaign reports feature. We’re calling it “VIP Reports.”
Here’s how it works…
Go to any campaign’s report, and click the “share” link:
On the next screen, you can customize the report’s header and navigation tabs to totally match your brand’s look and feel. You can upload your logo, then choose from one of our built-in color palettes:
And one of my favorite little UI touches is the way the custom color form fields change as you enter new HEX codes:
After that, choose whether or not you want the report to be password protected, then email it to your client.
They’ll get an email that links them to your re-branded reports page.
Here’s an example using our “weheartfirefox” color palette:
And just to show you how re-brandable this is, here’s the same VIP Reports using our built-in “Australian Soccer Team” color palette, plus an uploaded logo image:
Notice all the colored tabs at the top, plus all the little sub-navigation? Your clients will get access to all your stats — even AIM and click maps:
In case you’re curious, we don’t mention the MailChimp name or include our branding anywhere in the VIP Reports. Even the domain that we use in the email invitation and in the hosted report is different (vip-reports.net).None of your clients or co-workers need to even know that we exist!
If you manage multiple MailChimp accounts for your clients, we’ve got even more goodies for you: MailChimp Account Keychains!
I’ve been using this over the past couple of days – it’s just what I’ve been waiting for. No more downloading .csv files, compiling them and then sending them off to clients. Well done, fantastic function.
This is just great! I’ve already used it for 3 different clients this week. Creating re-brandable campaign reports is very cool. But it would even be more awesome when you could save your theme! Like Wufoo forms does…. save your theme as the clients name and next time jobs done in 30 seconds…..
It’s sounds like you never can satisfy your clients Ben, but please understand that I’m very very happy already.
Cool, glad you like it John. We like to launch features quickly, then see *if* people even use them, get feedback, then improve. Almost none of our features are perfect when we launch, but we update fast. I wouldn’t be surprised if the team adds “saved themes” as a feature soon.
Awesome Ben! No more hours of shuffling through data and what I like to call spreadsheet hell. Thanks for this
This is exactly what I need.
Although I would like the option to have a default set of preferences for these reports. Manually setting up the report after each campaign seems like a hassle.
If each campaign could auto-generate a re-branded report url based on the default options, this would be very handy.
I know it’s only new and a very welcome addition. Thanks for the great work
I agree, saving the theme like we do in the template designer would make this feature even more nifty!
Hi Ben!
Great feature – as Amanda pointed out, no more spreadsheet hell. However, it’s not completed unbranded though. For example:
1. Inputing an incorrect URL will take you a MailChimp 404 page. Some clients still type the URLs so mistakes will happen. A quick workaround is to use a URL shortener, like bit.ly, and give the client a bit.ly URL instead of a vip-reports.net URL.
2. All the help icons around the report site takes the Client back to a MailChimp knowledgebase. For example, I can imagine my Client visiting the Bounces page, and wondering what a Hard Bounce is. He would click on the Help icon, which will immediately take him to the MailChimp knowledgebase.
It’s a good feature, but unfortunately I’ll have to stick to spreadsheet hell until the unbranding is complete ;-(
Thanks, Felix. As with all our new features, it’s a baby step. We wanted to see if it got any use, and if so, we’ll expand on it some more.
Thanks Ben, it’s a great feature and I really hope your team continue improving on it. Happy to share more thoughts when I come across them.
Cheers
Felix
I will be useing this feature. Thanks for going the extra mile.
On the who opened page. The little I next to member rating takes the user to mailcjimp branded page. Can this be removed?
I’ll send it to the team to take a look at it. Thanks!
The only thing that’s preventing me from using this full-time is within a few of the comments above.
Stuff like 404 pages, entering only http://vip-reports.net, clicking the info buttons all take you back to MailChimp branding.
Most of my clients know I’m using MailChimp and I consult for them, but large clients who I am moving over from an old system don’t know this yet and would probably get curious about it if they had easy access.
Some clients take some convincing that they should outsource their email marketing and not just get the receptionist to patch together a campaign. It’s these guys who need baby steps into quality email design and reporting, so I’d prefer not to give them excuses to try their own hand at it. I’ve seen the horror shows that clients can make when left to their own devices
Bodog – Thanks for the feedback. It’s a relatively new feature, and we do intend to refine it over time. As with all our innovation, this started off taking “baby steps” but after enough people use it (and send complaints, feedback, suggestions, etc), it’ll get better.
Bodacious!
What would be really helpful is a campaign report archive, similar to the regular newsletter archive. We currently manage over 70 mailchimp accounts for different clients. It’d be great if there was an automated way for them to access their reports without us doing anything.
Thanks Cory, sending your suggestion on to the nerds!
Is there a way of customising the email that goes out with this? That would make it perfect!
Marianne, besides customizing the logo and the color scheme, let me know what else you’d need to customize.
Hi Ben. It’s not actually those bits I’m concerned about! It came out plain text when I did a test anywayl, that’s fine – it’s the words in the email I’d want to change.
I see the point in keeping it simple, but if I’m honest, I hate what it says!
If it helps, my preference would be to see the email text as another field on the Share Report screen – perhaps located below where entering the email address to send the report to, the default text is displayed giving you the option to add or amend if you wish – like when you know you have to explain more to one person than another or want to make a particular comment on a report.
Marianne – Ah, we’re talking about customizing the email that’s sent to the client? I’ll ask if we can make that a field. Thanks!
Yep, that’s the one. Cheers Ben.
No, nobody will find out who vip-reports.net is… unless they google it!
Is there any way to retrieve the report link via the API?
It’s possible, but I’m a blogger and not a programmer, so I’m not sure. Your best bet is to ask the community over here: http://groups.google.com/group/mailchimp-api-discuss/topics
Great feature! Two requests:
1) I’d like to be able to download these pages and save as a pdf package.
2) Any plans to include the list average and industry average in the summary? The competitors in my company would love to see how they stack up against others…
Thanks!!
This looks like is per campaign (i.e. newsletter issue) but it doesn’t allow you to just send one specific ad client’s info to them; it would show them the info for all the ads and click-throughs, which we do not want to share.
Is there a way to send client-specific reports?
I’m not totally sure what you mean, so I don’t want to give the wrong answer. Are you trying to send a report about all campaigns for a particular list?
Thanks for asking for clarification. Let’s say I send out a newsletter that has 3 ad spaces on it, filled with 3 different advertisements. I see that Mailchimp can only create one master report, per email that was sent.
What I need to do for each newsletter sent is provide a report for each ad space (each advertisement individually), to send to each of my 3 clients that are advertising.
Hi Ben, on “who was sent, who was opened and who didn’t open” didn’t show any list. It just says “loading…”
Do you have a clue?
Hmm, could be something with your list, or our system’s busy. If it’s still acting up for you now, I’d contact support, so we can take a closer look: http://mailchimp.com/help
Thanks for your response, Ben.
Yes, still no list on ‘who was sent/opened/didn’t open’ in Vip reports, but all excel files generated from ‘download to excel’ show the list perfectly.
The admin report in http://us2.admin.mailchimp.com/... also works great. So this problem only happens for those 3 pages in Vip reports.
I’ve tried 3 different browsers and tried to send another campaign, but still have no luck.
I have emailed MailChimps’s support, and got a ticket code: LTK152060454919X, and still waiting for response from support team.
Is there a feature/function to get a “Report Archive Link” for an archive of our reports, on a Per List basis (or any basis, for that matter) I have setup similar archives for some of my client’s list, as shown here:
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-can-i-set-up-an-archive-of-my-campaigns/
Which is Awesome, BTW! But that’s only half my battle as i have to send reports to them too. Currently, i have to manually create a report, or email it to client on a campaign by campaign basis.
I have spent alot of time searching around and convinced it doesn’t exist. Any reason why?
Thanks, Blake
Hmm, we buit this with sort of a “black and white” kind of approach. We figure people who’d want to use this would either be:
a) An employee sending some reports to his boss. They (for obvious reasons) want to keep their pointy-haired-manager out of the MailChimp account, to keep them outta trouble. So sending individual reports wouldn’t be a big deal to them.
b) Creative agencies who want to keep their clients out, and send reports individually (and of course bill them for the time it takes).
We figured that if someone wanted to be totally hands off, they could just let the client have full access to the account.
Heh, I’m not saying that was the correct assumption. That’s just what we assumed back when we built this.
So that’s the backstory as to why we wouldn’t have that available now. As we get deeper and deeper into this (especially now that we’ve launched cobranding: http://blog.mailchimp.com/introducing-co-branding/) I imagine we’ll end up building something like what you’re asking for.
Until then, here are some alternative solutions.
1) If you’re handy w/programming, I know a lot of people build reporting tools for their clients with our API.
2) there are a few 3rd party services that will aggregate your MailChimp stats:
http://connect.mailchimp.com/integrations/metricly
http://connect.mailchimp.com/integrations/youcalc
3) You could set them up with our iPhone app. It’s got basic stats (not as detailed as VIP reports, but decent and instantaneous enough to perhaps tide them over), and since it can use our API keys (instead of uname+pwd) and since it doesn’t send campaigns, it will keep them out of trouble. While you’re at it, they might be interested in Golden Monkeys if they have a handful of VIPs they care about: http://mailchimp.com/features/golden-monkeys/
And maybe another caveat. When I “email a campaign report” (to myself for testing) it comes “from” mail server/user:
trans-83645-36529-{user=domain.com}@mail2.mcsignup.com; on behalf of; Account Name
Which is showing the main ESP “mail2.mcsignup.com”. So inquiring minds will go to:
http://www.mcsignup.com
Which takes you to the MC API website, therefore exposing all of Mailchimp and what we thought was “rebranded”
Is/Was all of this part of “white label reports” that was once discussed: http://blog.mailchimp.com/private-label-mailchimp-reports-for-your-clients/
This is very true, but for the record, inquiring minds can hunt down the origin of the email no matter what. It’s why we’ve setup domains like “mcsignup” so that it’s not “mailchimp.”
Thanks Ben. It’s not a big deal to me, but the fact that the blog post implies that all is nice an hidden from clients where it says:
“In case you’re curious, we don’t mention the MailChimp name or include our branding anywhere in the VIP Reports. Even the domain that we use in the email invitation and in the hosted report is different (vip-reports.net).None of your clients or co-workers need to even know that we exist!”
And it’s the fact that mcsignup.com actually goes to a domain. I’ve seen some ESP’s use domain names that have NO web presence, only a mail server.
But, There was another comment that i posted just before this one that was actually more related to why i came to this blog post in the first place. Can that be shown, and commented on?
Ok, just wanted to make sure the proper expectations are set w/this feature. We obfuscate our identity a little, but we can’t totally hide ourselves (the ISP abuse desks don’t like complete anonymity — looks suspicious). FWIW, the “on behalf of” part of the address you’re seeing isn’t always visible, depending on what email program the recipient is using.
I’m working through a backlog of comments (not in chronological order) so I missed your earlier comment. Will tend to that now…
im a big fan of mailchimp, but with this, man, you guys rock…