

DIY Email Referrals with MailChimp, Zapier, and Mailgun - sgdesign
http://sachagreif.com/diy-email-referrals/

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mikeknoop
This is one of those really cool use cases we (Zapier) couldn't have
predicted. In fact, given the final behavior of Sacha's setup I still have a
hard time reversing out the Zaps he used to make it! One of my favorite thing
is seeing the new unique use cases folks come up with.

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sgdesign
Let me know if there are some parts of my write-up that aren't clear. And
thanks for putting together such a great service!

By the way, speaking of incentives Zapier's own referral program is very well
done. It's quite fun trying to earn all the extra tasks, and I'm almost there!

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sgdesign
Note: I posted this once previously but it seems like it got flagged, because
it very suddenly dropped off the front page.

I'm reposting under the assumption that the flagging was a false positive,
because I can't see anything wrong with the link itself.

Of course if I _did_ do something wrong, I would love to know what it is so I
can avoid doing it again.

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orangethirty
A 2.3 conversion rate is very good. You shouldn't be disappointed. This is a
very nice DIY system that anyone can replicate. Note that this type of
marketing is very effective because it motivates both parties to green light
whatever proposition they are facing.

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morganb180
You definitely want to watch the spam rate complaints of these emails vs. your
normal sends. Companies like SailThru won't let you (or strongly discourage)
using their mail server and IPs to send friend referral emails because they
get dunned by ISPs from spam complaints on referral emails all the time.

You can always run this through a separate account or service on a different
IP so that your marketing comms don't take any hits over complaints on your
referral emails.

I'm not saying you will get them, but just a heads up that it's a common
problem as you scale it.

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sgdesign
Good point. I didn't get any complaints and my unsubscribe rate wasn't any
higher than usual, but that might be because I sent the referral link as part
of the regular Sidebar newsletter.

On the other hand, if I had sent out those links on their own, I can see how
people would perceive it as spam and complain a lot more. Then again, I might
also have had a higher conversion rate, who knows… (but I'm not taking the
risk of potentially alienating my subscribers to find out!)

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juriga
I've been a happy Sidebar subscriber from day one and I always browse through
the weekly links. Thanks Sacha!

A quick anecdote: While reading this article I noticed that I don't remember
getting my referral link from Sidebar. I searched my Gmail for "in:spam
sidebar" and there it was - the only Sidebar email which Gmail has ever
flagged as spam.

I know MailChimp has tools for testing the spamminess of a campaign and this
message probably passed all of them since there's nothing particularly spammy
about it. Maybe it was random or maybe the referral link was just enough to
trigger the spam filter in (my) Gmail.

If the open rate for the MailChimp campaign wasn't particularly low spam
filtering wasn't probably a significant factor in the overall conversion rate.

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sgdesign
Glad to hear you like Sidebar!

And you're right, the open rate is much lower than usual (19% vs 63% for the
one before). I didn't noticed it before because the daily edition containing
the same referral link that I sent on the same day went through fine.

This happens from time to time and I'm not sure what I can do about it.

I honestly don't understand how Gmail's spam filter can be so "dumb" (at least
from a human point of view). You'd think that if someone open, reads, and
clicks emails from a particular address regularly, the filter would be smart
enough to know that there's a very high probability it's not spam.

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juriga
Gmail's spam filter definitely seems to be erring on the aggressive side
nowadays. I honestly can't remember when any real spam last reached my inbox.
On the other hand, I did find many other false positives while going through
the spam folder, mainly from newsletters and social notifications I really
have subscribed to.

I guess the least we can do is help Google tune their filters and periodically
mark all false positives as "not spam".

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wamatt
Agreed.

Additionally one might go as far to suggest false positives are more
problematic than the occasional spam mail.

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anonfunction
I really want to try this now. Also, I don't think your results were that bad,
especially if the referees are more targeted and provide higher value than
normal users.

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sgdesign
Thanks! I don't know if the referees are more targeted, but now that I think
of it the referr _ers_ are certainly a high-quality segment.

For example, one Sidebar subscriber ended up referring 8 new people! So it can
be a good way to identify your biggest fans.

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lenazegher
As a quick aside, does anyone know the best/easiest way to implement
"subscribe by email" for a blog/WP site?

Feedburner has very simple implementation but it seems like there's a good
chance it will be retired soon so I was hoping for another option.

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FajitaNachos
You could have a look at MailChimp. They have a free plan and there's a few
WordPress plugins floating around for it. I'm using one called MailChimp
widget. Simple and it works.

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lenazegher
Thanks!

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MichaelApproved
Mail Chimp had a transactional email service <http://mandrill.com/>

They offer free blocks of messages if you're a Mail Chimp customer.

