At White October we’re pretty fond of using MailChimp and recommending it where suitable to clients – it’s a user-friendly product that does one thing and does it really well. It’s also dead easy to integrate and use – whether it’s the custom forms, or an integration direct into your own site (eg via a footer “Sign up!” form). Plus, I snagged a free t-shirt last year in one of their Twitter-based giveaways, so I’m more than happy to recommend them ;-)
Yesterday I was privileged to be involved in a user testing and feedback session that they were running down in Brighton. Aarron Walter and Stephanie Troeth from MailChimp came down, and ran an hour’s session with me where we went through various aspects of the MailChimp interface, features that were available (including ones I wasn’t aware of), and various usability points were addressed. I felt it was incredibly beneficial to both sides – MailChimp, so that they can understand what works and what doesn’t for users, and from my perspective seeing different features and having the opportunity to raise problems I had with usability. Too many times I’ve used a product which feels unfriendly to use, that feels like it was designed for hardcore non-typical users of the product, or sometimes just “designed by developers”. And we know how that turns out… So it was great to be involved in contributing to any potential user interface changes; it definitely makes you feel more valued as a customer.
Aside from the obvious part of testing a user interface, it was good during the session to learn about different features that people maybe aren’t aware of – there’s a large number of different integrations available in the admin area – everything from Google Analytics (tracks MailChimp campaigns being sent out against page views, e-commerce goals etc, all inside your admin area) to Freshbooks (import contacts etc). I also discovered the MailChimp integrations directory – very cool. One very good point Aarron also raised was how I found out about new features – for example, just clicking around in the admin area through to email and Twitter updates from MailChimp etc. There’s no point having new features available if you don’t shout about them…!
Overall – more than happy to carry on recommending them where suitable – a company that listens to its users AND provides a great service too. And maybe the most interesting fact of the session? Learning Freddie the chimp’s full name…. not sure how common knowledge that is, so maybe I’ll keep that a secret for now ;-)