Update: Lots of our users have found the reactivation process helpful, and we’ve updated this post so the process is clearer. Updates to the original post appear in bold.

Note: The reactivation process only works for users who have a history of sending with MailChimp. If you import a list and go through this process before sending with MailChimp, chances are that we’ll unsubscribe more of your list than you’d like. That’s because there’s a rating system in the app that tracks subscriber activity and engagement, and the engagement data isn’t applied until you’ve sent a few campaigns to your list. The more history you have with sending through MailChimp, the more accurate our engagement data will be.

Last week, Ben blogged about how MailChimp allows you to segment your mailing list by activity. He gave several good examples of how you can use the tool effectively, but I’d like to show you how to use it to reactivate inactive subscribers and remove subscribers who don’t want to be on your list.

If you’ve ever received a subscription to a magazine, you know that as you approach the end of your subscription, you start receiving letters in the mail about renewing your subscription. And it’s never just one: You get a series of letters, all designed to move you to action. It may seem like overkill, but there’s good research showing that a renewal series is more effective at retaining subscribers than a single renewal notice. Renewals can get lost, thrown away, or forgotten in a pile of mail. Sending a series of renewals increases the likelihood that a subscriber will renew if he desires, or that he’ll make an active decision not to renew.

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In MailChimp v4.2, you now have the ability to segment your list by ZIP code. When you set up your campaign and choose the list you want to send to, you’ll want to click on the “send to a segment of list” option. Then select Address from the left-most drop down menu and then “is within distance”. (Sorry international chimps, but this feature is currently only available in the US.) Next, a box will appear where you can enter the mile radius you want to send to, and finally, the appropriate ZIP code. The one caveat here is that you need to be collecting address data from your subscribers when they sign up for your list. Click through to learn how.

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A couple weeks ago, Mark Brownlow wrote about segmenting your list by email address domain, and we wanted to show you how easy it is to do using MailChimp.

First, you want to create a new campaign. For this example, we’re going to choose “Regular Ol’ Campaign”.

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Whenever you create an email signup form, you should let people check little boxes to indicate what kind of content they’re interested in. Here’s an example of what I mean (from a restaurant’s email signup form):

That way, when you create a campaign, you can send it to specific groups on your list, instead of blasting out to your entire list.

Now, most marketing experts would tell you that you should do this because it allows you to send “more targeted campaigns” to your customers. Targeted campaigns sent to small segments of your list will get you better open and click rates, they say.

That’s true, but here’s the real reason you should include interest groups on your signup form:

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