This is just to say that we just started using a really neat social media tool called Ping — it’s FREE, and definitely worth checking out.

• There’s a convenient built-in URL shortener (this is one of my favorite TweetDeck features, too).
• You can create different “Groups” to lump together specific social media sites for simultaneous pinging — I combined Twitter and Facebook and was able to explicitly exclude my personal Facebook account.
• Handy update dashboard includes message services such as Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, GTalk, Windows Live Messenger and AOL IM — and you can also ping to email and SMS/text message!
• I can’t take advantage of this, but there’s an iPhone app and it probably works really well, if the super user-friendly and easy-to-navigate website is any indicator.

Thanks for Amy, y’all can get a better feel for what it is MailChimp is all about. If it sounds good, you’re in luck! High Impact eMail for MailChimp is available for FREE download on MailChimp’s Email Marketing Resources page.

With High Impact eMail for MailChimp, create great-looking HTML emails and upload them into MailChimp with just one click. Then use MailChimp’s advanced features to monitor your campaigns and deliver the best possible message to your lists.

Visit MailChimp’s blog, and follow them on Facebook and Twitter for funny, friendly email marketing tips, tricks & techniques.

AMY: It’s so hard to pick just one feature. I am really excited about the Geolocation Tools we released in v5. They give our users the power to target their subscribers by location without collecting any city or zip code information.

I also really love the Delivery Doctor because not only does it help you create a campaign that will reach the inbox, but it also helps you learn why your campaign might get caught as spam. So, next time you go to create a campaign, you have that much more information guiding you.

AMY: Sometimes, designing an email campaign that looks good can be one of the hardest parts of email marketing. So, we try to give people all the tools and info they need to create effective email campaigns. That’s where HIE5 templates come in. We want our users to feel like their template options are endless and endlessly useful. Our integration with HIE5 gives them access to over 101 HTML email templates that can be pulled into their MailChimp account easily and seamlessly.

AMY: When it comes to social media we try to do two things: 1) provide useful information and 2) be authentic. An Ad slogan sent via Twitter is not authentic. Getting a real response when you’re having a problem is authentic and useful. Sharing something cool that we’ve stumbled across is authentic and fun (useful)!

AMY: I hope that our appeal comes from a combination of working really hard to create a powerful and easy-to-use email application, and being an authentic and down-to-earth group of people who love design, technology and email.

AMY: We are always trying to put powerful email marketing tools in the hands of users while making them easy to use. So many of our features really fit well with small businesses.

Our pricing model makes it easy to get started and our videos, online training and step-by-step guides make it easy to learn the ins-and-outs of email marketing as they build their list of subscribers. Once they’ve got the hang of it, they’ve got access to powerful testing and sending tools like A/B Testing, RSS-to-email, Segmentation, API integration and now Geo-location, Email Translation and more.

AMY: Well, we’ve got a monkey as a mascot… Okay just kidding. We differentiate ourselves among other email service providers by taking powerful email marketing tools and processes and automating them, making them easy and accessible for the average user. We want them to be the expert email marketers, not us.

From the America’s Best Companies website:

“America’s Best Companies (ABC) is a small business organization dedicated to providing the tools, resources, guidance and information to help small business owners stay in business, grow their businesses, and make more money in their businesses.”

TemplateZone would like to thank Ivan Widjaya at Noobpreneur.com for his stellar review of High Impact eMail. Ivan covers a particularly wide range of small business topics on his blog, including small business marketing.

“Other than a Webpreneur, I am also a Web and Graphic Designer. I understand that in order to succeed, small businesses need to brand themselves properly. One of the most overlooked things in business branding is email communication… newsletters, corporate communications, invitations, announcements, invoices- creating a design/layout template for each purpose is resource-intensive. Outsourcing could be too much for a tight-budget small business, and doing-it-yourself without the help of the right tool can backfire your branding campaign.”

Ivan goes on to talk about the user-friendliness of High Impact eMail:

“In my opinion, the best feature of High Impact eMail is the (ultra-)user-friendliness. High Impact eMail features easy and fast, 3-step email communication:

1. Choose a template from over [300] in High Impact eMail 5 Professional and more than [600] in High Impact eMail 5 Platinum

2. Edit your chosen template: the texts, the images, the colors — if you are a regular user of Microsoft Word, editing High Impact eMail templates is a breeze

3. Send the email to your contacts or mailing lists. That’s it!”

Read the Noobpreneur’s complete review of High Impact email here, or watch a short video on cheap and user-friendly small business email marketing with High Impact eMail.