For those of you who don’t know, Golden Monkeys is a simple little app for stat freaks that sends real time push alerts whenever VIPs (we call them “golden monkeys” here at MailChimp) open and click your emails (you can read the original blog post about it here).

Here’s a breakdown of what’s new…

More Powerful Searching

Previously, you had to search for VIPs on your MailChimp list from within the mobile app. And you could only search by email address. That’s no big deal if you know *exactly* who your VIPs are, and you enjoy sifting through long lists on tiny screens. But this got cumbersome.

So now, we moved the searching process to MailChimp. Just log in to MailChimp like you normally do, click into your list, hit “View all subscribers:”

and then build a segment based on whatever criteria is important to you. Look for the “segment” link to open up the search options:

This changes everything, because instead of entering VIP emails that you already know, you can actually search your MailChimp lists to discover new Golden Monkeys.

For example, you could build a segment of “nearby fans” using our geolocation data and member ratings based on criteria like this:

Or, if you run an e-commerce store and have our eCommerce360 plugin installed, you can segment based on customer purchase activity:

Another advantage to using MailChimp’s search tool is that you can use our bulk add functionality for selecting multiple Golden Monkeys:

For example, if I want to select all members above a certain klout score, I’d bulk add like this:

Boom, I can add all of them as Golden Monkeys in one fell swoop. Note: the bulk add interface will not show any Golden Monkeys options unless MailChimp detects that you’ve installed and setup the app on your mobile device. 

We’ve also added the ability to add someone to your Golden Monkeys list from each subscriber’s “member profile” screen:

There’s a subtle little Golden Monkey icon underneath Jim’s strikingly handsome gravatar (thanks, Jim).

The icon is grayed out when it’s set to off:

and golden when it’s on:

When it’s set to on, that means the Golden Monkey will automatically sync to your mobile device and alert you to email activity.

Updated Activity Screen

We’ve also updated the “Recent Activity” screen to be more of a chronological feed (kinda like Twitter, or our own Chimp Chatter).This way, you can get a nice birds-eye view of all activity from all your Golden Monkeys:

Setup via Camera, Security Settings

We made it a lot easier to get set up, because you can now just snap a picture of your API key’s QR code (we recently added this same setup functionality to Chimpadeedoo2). Using API keys is generally recommended over plugging your username and password in, because it’s a little more secure. If someone were to steal your iPhone, you could log in to MailChimp and revoke the API key. It’s just that API keys are really long, and hard to type on your phone. Snapping a pic with your camera is easy, though.

Choose the API Key login option:

Then snap a pic:

Speaking of API key security, you might also want to activate SMS security alerts in your MailChimp account settings. We’ll TXT you whenever anyone logs in to your account, downloads a list, creates an API key, etc. If you’re interested, check out: MailChimp TXT Security Alerts

Stuff Under Settings

Click the gear icon to get to Golden Monkeys Settings screen:

From here, you can setup a passcode to lock the app. This is a good idea in case your phone is ever stolen.

We’re talking about customer data here, so you should lock this baby down:

You’ll also notice a little Truste privacy badge on the Settings screen:

This is a new service from Truste designed to address concerns specific to mobile apps, and also explains things in an easy-to-digest, mobile-friendly way (with icons and stuff):

We’re proud to be among the first mobile apps to be Truste certified.

v1 Users Must Upgrade

If you’re a current Golden Monkeys v1 user, you’ll need to update the app because v1 will not work anymore after today. Don’t worry, though. Any Golden Monkeys you’ve designated in v1 will show up when you upgrade to v2.

More to come from the Mobile Lab

We’ve come a long way since we first started tinkering with mobile technology. We built an iPhone friendly web app in 2008, then hired Pinch+Zoom to build our big native iPhone app in 2009, and launched it early 2010. By the summer of 2010, it became crystal clear it was time to invest in mobile for the long term. In July, we started our Mobile Lab. Because mobile technology is changing so rapidly (hey, who knew those crazy iPad tablet things would actually catch on?), our strategy was to build apps fast, iterate fast, and learn fast. We launched Chimpadeedoo, Chimpadeedee (on Adobe AIR), Pyow, ChimpKit and ChimpBot (for mobile developers), built our mobile optimized web app, and built ChimpNews as a way to tinker with the Android platform (which was at version 2.2 then, and now we’re already up to version 3.1). Not to mention our mobile-optimized AlterEgo web app (yeah, we’re planning a native app too). Mobile’s changing fast. So we’ve always wanted to stay flexible and just build on top of the MailChimp API (thank goodness we invested so heavily in that department), without committing too much or integrating too much with “MailChimp Proper.” Moving forward, we plan to keep iterating fast, but you’ll see things integrating deeper as our Mobile team works more and more closely with our product team. You’ll also see us launching iPhone and Android apps simultaneously. Exciting times! Our next big project is an update to MailChimp for iPhone and Android. Finally, if you’re interested, the Mobile Lab has a newsletter you can subscribe to (check out their most recent news here).

Golden Monkeys helps you keep up with your VIPs. You select the folks you want to keep up with, then sit back and let Golden Monkeys alert you (in near real time)  whenever they open or click recent campaigns.

Golden Monkeys for Android isn’t quite ready but it will be available soon. Just a heads-up: it’ll require Android 2.2 (for push support).

At MailChimp, we have a name for those people: Golden Monkeys.

Sometimes we’ll send them email newsletters with links and inside jokes, specifically to see if a certain customer clicks something (we recently sent an email with a link to this, to gauge their geeky-ness). Anyway, constantly logging in to our campaign stats and hitting “refresh” over and over again to see who clicked what is a chore. We started to think up ways to make that easier, then we thought “heck, this is probably something our customers would love, too.”

So the guys in our new Mobile Lab (more on that later) have built an iPhone app that will send push notifications whenever a Golden Monkey opens or clicks anything in one of your MailChimp campaigns. If it sounds interesting, maybe you can help us beta test it.

Here’s how it basically works…

(keep in mind these screens aren’t 100% skinned yet)

You open the app, connect it to your MailChimp account, and specify your VIPs (ahem, golden monkeys):

Once you set them up, we’ll push notify you whenever a GM takes action:

You can also open up your GM list, and view all recent activity:

So what do you do with this information? Well, if the app tells you that Roger Waters just opened and clicked a spec sheet about some big new FloopJack 2.0 product you announced in your newsletter, maybe you can call Roger. Or send him some snail mail about it. Or even a sample of FloopJack. Or, if you know he follows you on twitter, maybe you tweet something like, “Sheesh, we’re running outta FloopJacks already!” to kinda make him want it more.

At MailChimp, we just like to know what some of our customers like. Personally, I always have this secret little “roundtable” of customers in my head (about 5 or 6 of them at any given time, and it rotates), and I’m always measuring how we do by how they react to our product, our customer support, our content, etc.  So if I send an email with a list of new enhancements or tutorials, I want to know that so-and-so is interested in this, but so-and-so is more interested in that. If one of our customers clicks more links to goofy memes, I may send them our “Spirit of the Wolf” t-shirt. If another customer clicks cutesy LOLcat photos a lot, I may send them a MailChimp plushy.

Help Us Beta Test

It’s piggy-backing off of the MailChimp API, but in a different kind of way (that I’m not nerdy enough to articulate). So we’d really like to get some people to give us feedback on this app.

We only have space for a limited number of testers (10, to be exact), so if we actually get more than 10 signups below we’ll have to draw numbers or something. The ideal beta tester has a relatively large list (more than 1,000), has more than one or two “golden monkey” VIPs that they’d pick from their list, has the AIM reports add-on enabled, will be sending a campaign soon, and actually has time to install a beta app on their iPhone (it’s sort of a complicated little hackity thing you’ve got to do in iTunes).

Sign up to be a beta tester?

MailChimp’s New Mobile Lab

As we announced in our most recent email newsletter to customers, MailChimp is going to be investing very heavily in social and mobile. You saw the beginnings of our social initiative in our v5.2 “Let’s Get Social” release last month. Response to those new features has been amazing. Now, you’re going to start seeing more mobile apps coming out of  MailChimp. This is in addition to Chimpadeedoo, and our first iPhone app (updates to those are coming soon as well). Not all of our new apps will be directly associated with email marketing, but they’ll always be useful for our customers (this article kind of explains it all).

See how your campaign will look on Nokia's N96 Series phone and more.

For the additional devices I mentioned above, instead of just getting a single image showing how your campaign will render, you’ll see a series of screenshots designed to simulate the action of a recipient scrolling from top to bottom when they read your email.

In addition, did you know that MailChimp can automatically create a mobile version of your campaign when you allow users to choose their preferred format? We’ll also automatically create a mobile friendly version of your campaign archive, which works with any mobile device that has a web browser.

Each and every email campaign sent out with MailChimp is given a permanent, unique address in our Campaign Archive.  This is the location we link to from the campaign header text: Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. (click to view the example shown at left)

In MailChimp v3.4, we’ve added an elegant new feature that will automatically translate your campaigns into a mobile friendly version when viewed in a mobile browser.  It’s automatic and the feature just works! There is no need to change your opt-in form to provide a mobile option under “preferred format” because we’ve built this functionality into the system for you.

At left, you’ll see an email campaign sent from Soup Studios just as it appeared in my iPhone mail.  All I have to do to view the mobile device optimized version is click on the “View it in your browser” link in the email header.  This automatically opens the link in my iPhone’s Safari browser– which MailChimp can detect– and displays a mobile version of the campaign.  Pretty cool stuff, huh? (see screen shot below)

Automatically Optimized for Mobile Devices

One more point worth mentioning is that if you’re on the go and want to view a campaign, you can easily check out the mobile version on your hand-held device.  Unlike when you opt-in to a list and select “mobile device” as your preferred email format, with MailChimp you will still have the original email available for viewing when you get back to your computer.

This works for all mobile devices with a web browser, so it’s not just for iPhone users.  It comes as no surprise that four out of five doctors recommend taking advantage of mobile versions of email campaigns in conjunction with MailChimp for iPhone, Android, or Yahoo Blueprint enabled devices.

• View Mobile Version: When recipients on mobile phones click the “View this in your browser” link to see your campaign’s archive, we’ll redirect them to an automatically generated, mobile-browser-friendly version of your campaign. Speaking of mobile: See MailChimp’s versions for iPhone, Google Android, and Yahoo Widgets.
• Auto-Designed Email Templates: Whenever you create a new email template, MailChimp will visit your website, find your logo, look at your CSS code to determine your brand’s color scheme, fonts, etc., then he’ll automatically design an email template for you that matches your brand. It can be a real time-saver for people who don’t have their own graphic designers on staff. And it’s free!
• E-Commerce Integrations: MailChimp now integrates with Magento, ZenCart, and osCommerce so that you can track sales, conversions, who bought what (and more) from your email campaigns (kind of like our Google Analytics 360 integration). Plus, you don’t have to add code snippets to your website, and you don’t have to “tag” links in your campaigns. It’s all automatic. Just in time for the holidays! Read more about it here.
• New Language added: We’ve added Serbian to our list of languages (thanks to Nate and all our friends at the Serbian Cultural and Arts Center)! We’ve also added a few more “pseudo” languages, just for fun (including “Swedish Chef,” Jive, Hacker, and Elmer Fudd). This brings our list of languages to—honestly, I’ve lost count. Something like 25 or 30.

All of the new features are free to MailChimp customers (they’re already live in your account), and we’ll be posting details, screenshots, and tutorials shortly.

You’re welcome.

MailChimp Campaign Stats on iPhone

The guys in the MailChimp Lab have just launched a mini-MailChimp for the iPhone.

MailChimp customers: just go to MailChimp.com on your iPhone and sign in (or go straight to admin.mailchimp.com), then we’ll redirect you to the iPhone version.

It’s not a fully functional MailChimp account where you can create a full blown HTML Email campaign. Think of it as “MailChimp Lite.” It’s a way for you to log in to your account, quickly check the stats (Mmmmm, pie charts) for your recent campaigns, read your “Chimp Chatter” to find out what’s going on with your email marketing, and it’s a handy way to subscribe people you meet (such as at trade shows and events) to your email lists.

When you’re logged in, you’ll see this:

Home page when you log in to MailChimp for iPhone

1. Click on “dashboard” to go to your Chimp Chatter. MailChimp will give you a bird’s eye view of everything that’s going on with your email marketing.
2. Click on “reports” for a list of recent campaigns. Then, click a campaign to see its stats.
3. Click on “subscribe” to see all your managed MailChimp lists. Then, pick a list, and you can add a subscriber to the list.

Check your recent campaign stats

Special Report: iPhones & Email Marketing – 10 Pros & Cons

The article starts with

“It’s clear that the iPhone is more than a fad. In a little more than six months, 3.7 million Americans and around 400,000 Europeans have purchased an iPhone.”

and then covers the following:

- How the iPhone renders email
- Is file size an issue
- How to really get an iPhone user’s attention

More iPhone goodness:

Here’s a movie we created on how HTML Email looks on an iPhone.

Here’s a very long, very cool movie of Edward Tufte discussing the interface design of the iPhone