Email marketing can be a one way conversation sometimes. It doesn’t have to be that way.

For example, whenever I send our MailChimp newsletters, I usually get a couple dozen replies and I reply back to every single one of them. Sometimes, the conversation gets really interesting and it’s a shame that all our subscribers can’t join in.

So in our upcoming v5.3 upgrade, we’re adding Facebook Comments functionality to MailChimp campaigns. This way, you can keep the conversation going with your subscribers after you’ve hit the send button.

Here’s how it works…

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MailChimp Dashboard with subscriber avatars

When we launched Social Pro, it gave our customers fascinating insight into their subscriber lists. Suddenly, their databases were no longer full of “prospects” or “records.” We could drill down into member profiles to learn more about them and actually see what they look like (“gasp! these are humans!”).

Seeing those social avatars and gravatars is so profoundly fun, we decided to make that aspect of Social Pro a lot more front and center. In a few days, we’ll be launching MailChimp Faces. When Social Pro is activated, a random sample of your subscribers will be there to greet you whenever you log in to the MailChimp Dashboard. It’s a not-so-subtle reminder that these are real live people you’re sending to, and they deserve useful, relevant emails…
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I sent the MailChimp Summer newsletter out the other day, and it contained our new Facebook Like button functionality at the top:

the opens and clicks are still trickling in, but so far it’s received a total of 65 likes on Facebook:

63 of my subscribers clicked “Like” and shared my campaign on Facebook, and 2 of their friends subsequently liked it.

Now what?

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I’ve always recommended that companies send their email newsletters using a role account for their reply-to. For example, instead of using my personal “ben@” email address, I’ve always used “newsletter@.” Mostly because I might get hit by a bus or something, and somebody here might have to replace my role (hence “role address”).

But today I changed all that, because of an email newsletter I got from Jon Swanson. I subscribed to his blog updates a long time ago, because he was one of the first people to try our RSS-to-email tool.

All I wanted to know is whether or not our tool was working properly for people. But I ended up staying on his list, because I like his writing and his content. Heck, I’ve ended up purchasing books he’s recommended (that’s what’s so interesting about influence, and the social web).

Anyway, in Gmail, since I have Rapportive installed, I saw Jon’s face right next to his newsletter (that’s him over to the right). I can also see some of his recent tweets, which  include links to more photos.

This makes his email newsletter really personal, and really human. So if you have Rapportive installed in your Gmail, and you got my most recent newsletter, there’s me:

When I first wrote about MailChimp’s integration with Rapportive, I was only thinking about how you could use it to learn more about your customers. Never even thought about using it so that customers could learn more about you(r brand).

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Chris Sietsema, from Teach To Fish Digital, discusses the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what content to suggest to users:

Deconstructing Facebook’s EdgeRank

Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm, from Teach to Fish Digital

It’s an extremely interesting look behind the scenes of how Facebook “ranks” content for the purposes of sharing. Hint: the Facebook “Like” button is kind of important in this equation…

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