Access Your Email Lists With MailChimp

For those of you running email newsletters and marketing campaigns, you’ll understand the amount of work required to do it right. There are a few great apps which can help you take care of this, but MailChimp stands out for its advanced web interface. Plus signup is free, and you can choose to upgrade your account at any point.

Existing MailChimp users will already understand the huge benefits from their service, and now it’s possible to move your account information onto your iPhone. The iOS app for MailChimp is perfect for checking your account while on the go. I’ll be demonstrating some key functions you’ll want to know after the break.

Signing In

The first step will require logging into your account. After you launch the app you’ll have the choice to enter a username/password for an existing profile, or optionally you can choose to create a new one. If you tap the bottom button this brings you into their signup web interface to get your email, username and password.

Afterwards, you should get a confirmation email. Note that you may wish to log into their web interface at some point just to update your account. You can do a lot of simple things (such as adding new subscribers/lists) from the app, but you cannot create an entire e-mail campaign and template design. Getting familiar with both their web and mobile app will give you a big advantage.

If everything is successful you’ll be redirected back to their main login page. The navigation menu is a bit unconventional compared to other iOS applications, but this is just half the fun! Each icon listed vertically leads to a bit of functionality, and you scroll through them by flicking up or down on the screen.

Functionality Overview

To begin,the first icon in our listing is labeled Add. This lets you add a new subscriber directly into any list from your account. Normally this process including just adding an email address, along with first and last name. Below it you’ll see the pie charts icon for Reports.

If you have sent out any email campaigns recently, you’ll be able to track all of the statistics. This includes the live numbers and percentages for opened/unopened emails, as well as the bounce rates and the number of people who have unsubscribed since your last newsletter. There is a lot of information to check out in the reports section, and it may very well be the most heavily trafficked section of the app.

Third from the top and right in the middle of our navigation you’ll find Lists. These are your official email lists which you can browse and re-organize. The large number to the left is how many current subscribers you have. Simply tap a row to bring up more details, or even view the entire list of subscribers’ email addresses.

The last two icons are more towards MailChimp stats. Chatter is a way for MailChimp to push live updates to a feed-style page. You can see when you gain new subscribers, who checks out your campaigns and get up-to-the-minute notifications on your lists. Below this, the large star icon for Rewards simply tracks your account rewards. If you refer a partner or colleague your account can rack up Monkey Reward Credits. These don’t translate into actual cash value, but you can gain some additional account features by accumulating them.

Checking in on Reports

There’s no doubt the MailChimp reports page is one of the most important. If you are always looking to be on top of your business marketing strategy, MailChimp can keep you there. Additionally, there are tons of options to manipulate and change around your mailing lists right from inside the app, so you can check reports and even edit small changes, if the need arises.

For each campaign report you’ll find 3 unique tabs at the bottom that read Overview, Location and EepURL. In the overview you’ll find the most basic information. A small pie chart is crafted to display the percentages of clicks from your campaign, and even the number of people who just opened your email. Scroll down a bit for a neat table counting a few more statistics.

The Location tab also displays exactly what you might think. Here you can see the total number of people who have opened your emails, all based on a worldwide grid. In the table beneath each country is listed assuming at least one person received your newsletter from that given country. This is a really fun part of the application, since you get to learn a bit more about your visitor demographics.

The last section is a bit cryptic, but I’m hoping to break it down in simpler terms. The EepURL is simply your link URL with the appended newsletter settings. This is how MailChimp can track who is clicking through your campaign links. In this tab you’ll see where this link is popping up from all over the world. It’s mostly a social networking tracker, so it does include support for websites like Twitter and Facebook.

This final tab also introduces another map for geographic tracking. As bloggers share your link or retweet over Twitter, you’ll get live updates in this tab for each campaign — and all of this is provided free through any MailChimp account.

Conclusion

This simple marketing and stats-tracking app has provided an amazing outlet for my projects. I know many folks who use MailChimp and just adore their services. With so much functionality built right into the app, you can practically go weeks without checking your account in a browser, and I’m anticipating plenty of new mobile features to be rolled out as the company grows.

Ultimately I think the app is very solid, and has some amazing interface panels and functionality. Their company is growing very quickly, and even recently released a dynamic alternative for iPad. If you have questions or thoughts on MailChimp do share in the comments area below.