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During a recent update, we added the ability to include RSS feeds inside of both regular and A/B split campaign types. This is great if you want to add a feed of your most recent blog posts to the side column of your newsletter, for example.

In order to create the campaign shown above, I started out by selecting Create Campaign ==> Regular Ol’ Campaign in my MailChimp dashboard. In step 3 I chose the 3:1 Start From Scratch template because I knew I’d be showcasing meaty, longer form content in the body of my email before pulling in my RSS feeds below.

There are a plethora of options for formatting the RSS content you want to include in your campaign, but for this example I simply wanted to include the 5 most recent posts from three different feeds. In order to do that, I used the following syntax:

|FEEDBLOCK:URL| and |END:FEEDBLOCK|

We developed the |FEEDBLOCK| merge tag to give you explicit, fine grained control over which elements of your feed you want to include in your campaign.

First you’ll need to create the beginning and ending flags for each RSS feed. The stuff between gets replicated for each post in the feed. So if you want to use individual FEED:ITEM merge tags, use

*|FEEDBLOCK:URL| * *|FEEDITEMS:| * and *|END:FEEDITEMS| * *|END:FEEDBLOCK| *
as your open and close tags surrounding the following items you want to include.

For a full list of available tags and how to use ‘em, check out this handy article from our Knowledge Base!

The Like button has two functions: 1) it enables users to make connections to your page, and, as we’ve implemented it here, 2) to share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click.

Once you add it to your campaign, the button looks like this:

When a recipient clicks the button, they’ll be taken to your email archive, and will get this message:

For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends (within their network) who have also liked the email:

In your campaign stats, you’ll see who pressed the Like button, and how many subsequent (re)Likes they generated.

Note that we only show you who Liked the campaign if they’re on your MailChimp list. If a subscriber Liked your campaign, then 5 of his friends saw it on his wall and liked it too, we do not show you who those 5 friends are. That’d be evil. We just show you the total number (5) of his friends who also liked.

Even cooler, you can send targeted emails to “those who have liked a campaign.” Just click on the little Excel icon on the Facebook Activity screen, save the file, then upload it as a new list. I expect that we’ll create a more streamlined process for this in one of the next application upgrades, but for now you’ll have to do it manually.

You’ll add the quick poll merge tag when you get to the third step of the campaign builder and are populating your template with content.

The syntax for the merge tag is as follows:

*|POLL:RATING:H| *
How likely are you to recommend our service to a friend or coworker?
*|END:POLL| *

H is for horizontal
V is for vertical (if you want to place in your template's side column)


As you’ll notice, you can use this merge tag more than once. Just be sure to close each * |POLL:RATING:H| * tag with a corresponding *|END:POLL| *

Once you’ve sent your email and are ready to take a look at your poll results, you’ll find them on the Reports page.

As you can see below, you’ll get a grid of answers for each of the poll questions you ask, including the number of votes, the overall percentage of answers, and a time stamp for the last time someone selected that option.

A couple caveats to be aware of:

• you must be a subscriber to vote, and you can only vote once
• you’ll only be able to vote by clicking 1-10 in the actual email; this merge tag will not work on the campaign archive page
• polls will still work regardless of whether or not you’ve enabled click tracking

The * | MC:TOC | *  dynamic merge tag works by pulling anything from your email that is formatted as Title text, and displaying it as an ordered list complete with bullet points. Each item in your table of contents is then anchor linked to the corresponding blurb in your email.

To add a table of contents to your email, simply insert * | MC:TOC | * where you’d like the contents listing to appear. In the example screen shots you can see that I added some Title text (“In this edition of The MonkeyWrench”), and then added the merge tag below it.

You can also insert a Table of Contents in either the right or left column of a two-column template and the merge tag will work exactly the same way.

(I’ve used extra spaces between the elements of the merge tag so that it will render correctly for those who subscribe to the RSS-to-Email version of the blog.)

also see: Personalizing your welcome emails w/merge tags

Advanced Merge Tags

In the latest MailChimp system update, we’ve added support for advanced merge tags.  These enable you to to do some very cool things, including the ability to create dynamic content.  In the Campaign Builder, when you click to edit any area of your content, you’ll see a link for the “advanced merge tag reference”.  Clicking this will bring up an information window with all the details I’m about to share.  We’ve divided this reference into categories to make it easier to use: Formatting, Dynamic Content, List Information, Sharing, and Campaign Information.

Let’s start with Formatting.  This class allows you to modify the way the content inside you various merge tags is displayed.  You can make the value displayed appear as all lower case characters using *|LOWER:YOUR_MERGE|* (where *|YOUR_MERGE|* might be something like FNAME for first name or LNAME for last name, etc).  *|TITLE:YOUR_MERGE|* will change the value of *|YOUR_MERGE|* to title-case, which means that the first letter in each word is capitalized.  This one is especially handy if you want to standardize the way names, for example, are displayed, regardless of whether someone signed up for your list using ALL CAPS or all lower-case characters.  Check out the image below for some additional advanced formatting tags.

Next, let’s take a look at the new tags for Dynamic Content.  In our opinion, this is one of the most exciting and powerful of our new advanced merge tags.  Essentially, we’ve enabled you the capability to set up an *|ELSEIF:CONDITION|*, using the protocol of basic logic statements.  Let me give you a scenario to make this a little more clear.  Let’s say you run an online store for Major League Baseball fans.  You might want to tailor your content to fans of certain teams based on the region they are from. For example:

*|IF:STATE=FL|*

Save 20% on all Marlins Window Stickers!

*|ELSEIF:STATE=GA|*

Save 15% on all Braves apparel!

*|ELSEIF:STATE=MD|*

Save 10% on all Orioles Window Stickers!

*|ELSE:|*

Save 15% on all MLB apparel this weekend only!

*|END:IF|*

In the coming weeks we will be going in to greater detail and giving you more examples, tricks and tips for using these advanced merge tags. There are a few more that I want to mention right now though. *|MC:SHARE|* will add all the social network icons that you see displayed at the bottom of this blog post. (Shameless plug: we know you are reading, now you’ve got to Digg us!)  In addition, *|DATE|* will insert the current date, and *|RSS:RECENT|* will insert the titles of your five (by default) most recent blog posts.  If you want to display a different number, all you have to do is use *|RSS:RECENTx|* where x = whatever number of posts you want to display.  Happy merging!

Quick Update: Here’s a cheatsheet of all MailChimp Merge Tags

If you’re a MailChimp customer, you’re familiar with sticking the merge tag *|FNAME|* wherever you want the recipient’s first name to appear. Simple stuff.

But we’ve got a new set of merge tags that let you do some really smart stuff with logic and conditions and A/B test content…

Here’s a list of some of the new Smart Merge Tags in MailChimp, and what you can do with them.

Simple Stuff

*|TITLE:MERGE|* will upper-case the first letter of each word of the field, so that *|TITLE:FNAME|* *|TITLE:LNAME|* will convert “roGEr WATERS” into “Roger Waters”

*|UPPER:MERGE|* will upper-case all the letters in the field

*|LOWER:MERGE|* lower-cases all the letters

*|HTML:MERGE|* will print the field without escaping. So if you merge in HTML code like, <b>Bananas!</b> it’ll actually render like: Bananas! in your email.

Interest Groups

*|INTERESTED:Pizza,Pie|*
This will only show up if they’re interested in pizza or pie
*|END:INTERESTED|*

Note: the interested block right now can only do OR, not AND conditions.

A/B Splits

For A/B splits, there’s

*|GROUP:A|*
This will only show for group A
*|END:GROUP|*

(this lays the foundation for upcoming A/B tests on content)

Advanced Stuff: Conditions

Ever wanted to dynamically change content in your campaigns, based on the recipient?

In general,

*|IF:MERGE|*
something
*|ELSE:|*
something else
*|END:IF|*

For example, a sporting goods store could send a holiday promotion to its entire list, but swap out the offer by the recipient’s state:

*|IF:STATE|*
*|IF:STATE=CA|*
Save 20% on surf boards!
*|END:IF|*
*|IF:STATE=GA|*
Save 20% on Mountain Bikes!
*|END:IF|*
*|IF:STATE=FL|*
Save 40% on water skis!
*|END:IF|*
*|IF:STATE=CO|*
Save 50% on ski gear
*|END:IF|*
*|ELSE:|* Save 10% on everything in the store!
*|END:IF|*

More advanced conditions can be done like:

*|IF:MERGE != Bob|*
Your name’s not Bob!
*|END:IF|*
There’s also:
*|IFNOT:MERGE|* to do negative conditions.

And what if you want to start with “Dear *|FNAME|*” but not all your recipients have FNAME data (someone called about this yesterday)? You don’t want it to be blank. You can replace it with something generic:

*|IF:FNAME|*
Dear *|FNAME|*,
*|ELSE:|*
Dear Braves Fan,
*|END:IF|*