A couple days ago I mentioned the interesting use of flickr in Steve’s App Sketchbook email campaign. This morning I got this Halloween-ish email from ChoppingBlock that also used flickr in an interesting way: they invite you to post a high-res image from flickr to your blog, to see if you can name all the spooky characters in their latest tshirt:

Twitter and Facebook seem to be getting all the attention from email marketers now (see: Sharing with Twitter v. Facebook), but don’t forget flickr, because it can be a great way to get your subscribers to contribute to your conversation with photos!

Next Tuesday and Wednesday (September 22 & 23) MailChimp will be at the Twitter Conference in Los Angeles.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, and Tony Robbins will both be keynote speakers at the event. Other presenters will be covering a range of topics, from branding to social gaming, tweeting celebrities and beyond. We definitely look forward to stuffing our brains full of new and interesting information and are also excited about meeting some of our users on the west coast. If you’re in the area and want to say hi, just give us a shout.

As MailChimp’s list of social media features continues growing, it seems only natural for us to attend the Twitter Conference. Especially with our new Twitter Template and our recent research showing that Twitter is being used more frequently than Facebook in email marketing. Oh, and you also know that you can track tweets and re-tweets about your email campaigns in your MailChimp dashboard, right? Hey, and don’t forget about our built-in integration with Twitter and other social sites, mmkay?

We analyzed all emails sent in the last year (roughly one billion), and found that more and more people are including links in their emails to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It’s quite interesting how Twitter sharing is growing at a faster rate than Facebook, and it seems that small businesses are really discovering the value in both platforms.

MailChimp provides a one-click feature for subscribers to share their completed email campaigns via the primary social networks. Currently 9% of campaigns (roughly 90 million emails) are shared via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, or Delicious.

Here’s a nice example of a MailChimp customer (T in the Park) using the new social sharing links in their email newsletter footer:

This is a relatively new feature at MailChimp that lets your subscribers share your campaign via twitter, facebook, digg, reddit, linked in, and other social sites. If you’d like to add this to your MailChimp campaigns too, just insert this little tag: *|MC:SHARE|* in your footer (or wherever you want) and we’ll do the rest.

Another cool merge tag to try: *|TRANSLATE:EMAIL_LANG|*

It all started innocently enough this past Friday, October 3.  MailChimp Co Founder Ben Chestnut was to give a presentation on the basics of email marketing at this year’s Webmaster Jam Session.  In an effort to showcase the newly acquired life-size MailChimp (and pull off some subliminal marketing at the same time), Ben brought Frederick Von Chimpenheimer IV plus two cases of bananas with him to the Loudermilk Center in Atlanta.  Had we known then what we know now, Freddie might  have stayed safe from the hands of his ruthless abductors!  Allow me to recount for you the harrowing saga surrounding our dearly beloved missing MailChimp.

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