Goooal is a new way to segment your MailChimp list based on what people do on your website when they visit from an email campaign. Goooal works by installing a tracking pixel on your site, and then adding “Goooals” to the campaign that you want to track. A Goooal could be something like: “If a visitor from my campaign goes to the www.mailchimp.com/party page, then add them to the Party RSVP segment.”

Once a subscriber to your list lands on a page associated with a Goooal, the tracking code sees it and records the hit in our super-duper database. We’ve made a cool results page where you can view the hits to each of your Goooals in real time, so that you can witness the action play by play. Just as a note, the actual process that adds the users to a segment takes a bit longer, since we don’t want to melt down the API each time there’s a new match. Once you’re subscribers have surfed your site a bit and you’ve got some good segments built, you can send targeted content that’s more relevant to their interests.

The thought behind the app is to take something that’s traditionally pretty complicated (Think of Google Analytics funnels and goals) and simplify it enough so that it’s still useful, but within the reach of most mortal humans to operate. We built this app so that you can get some better insight as to what people are looking at on your site, and hopefully figure out what they are interested in. People like hearing about stuff they are interested in.

Goooal works with your existing MailChimp account login, so you won’t have to create yet another account and remember yet another password. It’s free to use, so go give it a try and learn something new about your crowd! If you want to learn more about it, check out the FAQs.

We’re releasing this app as Beta. It should not eat your small pets or your MailChimp data, but please make sure you test your campaigns thoroughly if you plan on using Goooal. As always, get in touch if you see anything funky.

PS: The only thing missing from this is some audio each time you score a Goooal. Don’t worry, we’re on it!

Check out Goooal

Looks like we’re doing pretty well at the moment (whew!) but if your number is below your target rate, there are a couple of things you can try. You’ll want to be sure that your signup forms are visible in all of your different “homes” online. If you have a Facebook fan page, be sure to add a signup form to your Facebook page using our Signup App.There’s also a plugin available for your WordPress blog.
You could also create a fun giveaway to create some buzz around the list and give people incentive to sign up. Here’s an example of the giveaway we did with DesignLab to help grow their list. (ProTip: People love plushies almost as much as they love t-shirts!)

If your unsubscribe rate is starting to dip too far below your target, you may want to take a look at some things:

How often are you sending? It could be that your list is losing momentum if you’re emailing too infrequently, or they’re feeling overwhelmed by emails if you’re sending too often. If you started out as a weekly newsletter, but want to bump it up to daily sends, you want to be careful about how you do it.

Is your content relevant? Are you sending the type of content that your subscribers were expecting when they originally signed up, or have you changed drastically from that initial subject? Straying too far from the original topic without warning can cause attrition. If folks signed up initially to get advice about modifying classic cars, they might not appreciate diary entries from your dog, no matter how cute he is.

Finally, you may also take a look at your unsubscribe survey results to get an idea of why people are leaving the list. And remember, our smarter bounce management methods keep you from losing too many valid subscribers at a time.

Happy list growing!

For example, we’re running a t-shirt promotion to celebrate our v5.3 release. We’ve set up a list for the promotion, and it’s fun to watch it grow.

But the fun doesn’t have to end there. If you open the list, then select “top locations,” you can view where your subscribers are from:

Or, select “user agents” to see which email programs they are using:

(While we were building out http://shirts.mailchimp.com, some of us were wondering if we needed to make that t-shirt giveaway page mobile friendly. These stats gave us a big yes!)

With Social Pro activated on the list, we can get even more interesting stats. Aside from all the cool social insights, we’re able to see that we might need more women’s shirts soon, or possibly shirts in different sizes:

Since this is a giveaway, there’s always concern that the list will be full of freeloaders who aren’t really all that interested in our company.  You know the type — Punk-ass teenagers.

SocialPro shows us age, breakdowns, too:

So if we want to, we can segment the list by age and remove anyone who is probably not a professional email marketer. Then again, depending on the promotion, those fashion-conscious, trend setting, picky teenagers might just be the ones to send a bunch of t-shirts to… But we still want ‘em off our lawn.

You might also want to check out:

SocialPro Connects Your Email Lists to the Social Web
Pruning Your Email List – Stats
User Agent Stats In MailChimp

By creating a segment under lists, you can see everyone who fits a certain segment’s criteria without having to create or send a campaign.

Here’s how you do it:

From the lists tab, select your list and view all members.  Then, select “segment”.

Choose which criteria you’d like to segment by.  For example, the subscribers on your list who also use Twitter.

Now you can download the segment to your computer.

From there, you’ve got some pretty nifty options.

For example, you could decide to create a new list from your segment to send exclusive regular content to a targeted group.  Reward people who follow you on social networks with an extra coupon, or offer free shipping to customers in your zip code.

Or, segment based on activity level and remove inactive members from your list, so you can keep your list as current and engaged as possible.

Creating segments from the list tab provides you with even more insight into your subscribers and allows even more opportunities to reach them.

You might also want to check out:

3 Quick Email List Segmentation Examples

In general, the more stars, the better your deliverability will be. So what’s your score?

But there’s a right way to do this, and a very, very very wrong way to do this…

If you just export your entire Address Book and then send those recipients an email newsletter, you will get reported for spam, and you could get your entire company blacklisted.

That’s because your Address Book has:

• People who never opted-in for email marketing
• Contacts at places you bought stuff from (Amazon, eBay, etc)
• People you corresponded with 5 years ago, who have nothing to do with your business (like your ISP tech support)
• Here’s a real life example of this happening to a MailChimp customer.

So what you need to do is categorize your contacts before you export them from your Outlook Address Book. Suggestions:

• People that have opted-in to email marketing from me
• Customers that need emails from me (updates, receipts, etc)
• Customers that might like to hear from me (so they need an introductory campaign)
• Prospects or “targets” that I think would find my company relevant (send these people personal, one-to-one messages inviting them to join your list).

But have you ever actually tried to do that? It’s a huge pain. I’m not an Outlook user, but I know Outlook’s Address Book was not made for segmented exports. Then again, neither is Apple’s Address Book.

Luckily, the folks at ClearContext have a pretty nifty plugin for Outlook. Basically, it scans the messages in your email inbox folders (not your Address Book), and lets you export from there. They’ve even got a patent-pending algorithm that helps determine contacts “who are most important to me” by looking at your conversation history and frequency. In theory, this could lead to smarter list exports, and fewer “address book dumps.” Smart.