What a day!

I was having a good day. Really, my new toy arrived and the installation has gone very smooth. I had a good day at work and got a lot done.

Then I got totally flattered by a post over on the MailChimp blog. (MailChimp is the third party email handler we use for the YMX newsletter)

Not that they don’t use technology. Youth Ministry Exchange is taking full advantage of a bunch of MailChimp features to spread the word. Here are some things that impressed me:

* They built an archive of all their past newsletters here. It’s a page they host on their website, then they use MailChimp’s Archive Generator to embed that list. It gets automatically updated whenever they send out a new issue. Learn more about MailChimp Archive Generators
* They’ve created their own signup form, then pass the data over to MailChimp (insteading of using our default, hosted signup form). Our signup box designer is pretty nice, but it’s always nicer when you host your own.
* On their signup form, they’re using MailChimp’s Interest Groups feature, which allow subscribers to sign up to receive only specific types of content. Learn more about MailChimp Interest Groups…
* They’re using MailChimp’s HTML email designer, and they’ve really customized their newsletter design to fit their brand. The content in their newsletters is actually useful! Tips, free downloads, and commentary. Nice.
* In their newsletters, they link to their blog, and to an RSS feed. More ways to keep your members updated.

Wow. A Christian ministry getting mentioned as using a lot of technology. I love that.