I am thinking of switching to MailChimp… from iContact. My 100% biggest need is the ability to target subscribers by zipcode “radius”. As others have written above, subscribers naturally do not give their full addresses, only zipcodes.

So in order to justify switching to MailChimp, I need to make sure there is an ability to (A) collect ONLY the zipcode & then (B) email subscribers who reside within a certain radius of a zipcode/area.

So can any answer if MailChimp offers this yet? (Trying to get clarity & seems that they still require full address.)

Also, Glenn’s suggestion above to do “greater than” and “less than” numbers in a text field… is not a sturdy workaround. You need a radius– simple as that. The reason is because if you are trying to mail people in, say, the NYC area, there are just way to many zipcode variables since cities like NYC border zipcodes in New Jersey, Connecticut, etc where numbers change radically. This applies to many major cities.

Also, targetting your fans by “city name” instead of zipcode radius is not effective either, since fans in NYC might write their city name as: “New York City,” “NYC,” “Manhattan,” “Brooklyn,” “Williamsburg,” “Tribeca,” “Hoboken,” etc. Just too many variables for someone trying to target emails to fans in a given city.

Zipcode radius-targeting is the only effective method. But ONLY if subscribers are not forced to submit full addresses.

“Find Zip Codes Inside a Radius” – http://www.freemaptools.com/find-zip-codes-inside-radius.htm.

MailChimp, do you have any news for us on a simple, built-in solution to this? Are you working on it at all?

Basically if you push submit without filling out the form then the rest of the address will pop-up with n/a filled in. Otherwise it is “hidden”.

In the MailChimp database I can target by zip code radius!

Thanks