The New Campaign Monitor

We’ve been keeping this one under our hats for quite some time now, but we can’t hold it in any longer!

Over the past three months, Newism have had the privilege of building not only the epic new Campaign Monitor website, but also a teaser site at http://www.thenewcampaignmonitor.com/.

Campaign Monitor (if you are one of the twelve people who haven’t heard of it) is a world-class email marketing product from Australian company, Freshview. In their words:

Campaign Monitor is built for designers who can create great looking emails for themselves and their clients, but need software to send each campaign, track the results and manage their subscribers.

The New Campaign Monitor Teaser Site

Their two flagship products, Campaign Monitor and MailBuild, are now being rolled into one, and so far the decision to do so has been widely applauded. No longer will MailBuild have to live up to it’s more attractive cousin, and no longer will their be any confusion as to which solution is best for you and your clients. This is particularly useful for email marketers who utilise MailBuild as a re-branded newsletter solution. Now all of the re-branding and MailBuild ease of use will be available in a single app.

A fresh view

The design for this teaser site was done by Jesse Bennet-Chamberlain at 31three. It’s derivative of the new campaignmonitor.com design of course, but in terms of the new Campaign Monitor branding it doesn’t give too much away. That just makes it all the more exciting to reveal the new site proper in just over a week! As is typical of Jesse, the design of both the teaser site and the new main site are exceptional. Working with Jesse and Dave Greiner from Freshview on both of these projects has been an absolute pleasure.

Behind the scenes

The site is running ExpressionEngine of course, and it contains our standard smattering of LG extensions. The only thing of note is that this teaser site and the new main site are all running on the same install and database, thanks to the ExpressionEngine Multiple Site Manager module.

Overall it’s a pretty standard install so not a great deal to mention in terms of build, but sadly that wasn’t the case for the original incarnation of the teaser site. Business and design decisions meant the late removal of a ‘countdown’ approach to presenting the content. Essentially, each new feature was going to be ‘unlocked’ and explained in detail in the ten days leading up to the launch. I really dig that kinda thing as it’s always so engaging (and I’m a sucker for hype), so it was a bummer to have to remove it.

One more thing…

This great little teaser site, while reasonably ground-breaking in it’s approach, will only have a brief shelf-life. Obviously once the new Campaign Monitor site launches it will be curtains for it. But that will mean of course that the uber-awesome main site will be live, and that’s the thing we’re really excited about.

So to drum up a little hype of our own, we thought we’d ask you, our loyal readers, to leave a comment for the chance to win some Campaign Monitor schwag! We’ve got three sweet Campaign Monitor t-shirts to give away, compliments of Freshview. To enter, visit The New Campaign Monitor, have a read about the great new features, then leave a comment explaining what feature you’re most excited about and why. We’ll pick the winners in a week or so, and will give bonus points for commenters who make us laugh.

You too can look as Fresh as this.

4/12/08 11:08pm — Thanks for entering folks, and for the great feedback. T-shirts going out to Brendan ‘Emo’ Falkowski (he’ll be getting the black tee of course), Christy Kilgore (because Dave from Campaign Monitor got all teary over her glowing praise), and Mat Packer (because he’s a local and appeals to my adoration of lolcats).

Comments

The following 17 people were compelled to have their say. We encourage you to do the same.

Justin said on Friday 21st November, 11:03am: 1

Hey, congrats guys!
I came across this the other day and loved it! I had no idea that Newism were responsible - mad props :)

While I can’t actually say that I have ever used CM, I have definitely had the “pleasure” of having to use “competing” products @ work… Maybe now I can convince the boss to make the switch (oh god please let it happen)….

PS: Gorgeous site ;)
Nathan Pitman said on Friday 21st November, 11:06am: 2

Well I’m really looking forward to the new analytics and interface, of course having Mail Build and Campaign Monitor combined will be a huge benefit too! Shame there will be no way to merge accounts though though I’m sure I’ll get over that. ;)
Andy said on Friday 21st November, 11:57am: 3

I too got a accidental sneak-peak at things a few weeks back and as a firm believer in the software anyway, was really impressed to see my favourite, perhaps best, Australian web company was behind it. It looked great even then.

You might wonder if certain members of the development team had not spent so much time aping trade secrets from drunk English geeks every fourth weekend for the best part of a year, that the results might not be quite as impressive/highly anticipated…

Genuinely, I’m looking forward to seeing the final thing, and of course, we really don’t believe you ever needed *all* the help you got from us.

(Was the shameless stuff in my first paragraph how you wanted? Do you have my paypal account details?)
Christy Kilgore said on Friday 21st November, 1:13pm: 4

I would not be able to do my job AT ALL without campaign monitor, so I am pretty stoked about a lot of stuff. But I am beyond excited about all the new data tracking features. Anything that helps me prove my use is alright by me.
Rob Morris said on Saturday 22nd November, 7:42pm: 5

Bah. I will have none of this competition business. I’m a med/large. Send to Rob in Japan.
Marc said on Saturday 22nd November, 8:44pm: 6

We got this notice in our inbox and are very excited about the new features. We probably more excited about December 1 than we are for January 1.

You guys have consistently evolved and improved the software since day one. Certainly one of the best e-mail platforms available. We can’t wait to get our hands on the new stuff!
Chris said on Sunday 23rd November, 7:32pm: 7

Lookin’ fresh there guys :P

Great work on the preview site guys - can’t wait to check out the full site soon too.
Joel Steidl said on Tuesday 25th November, 1:24am: 8

I am most excited about the combination or the two products! No more setting clients up in CM and MailBuild. No more creating a static MailBuild template for a customized campaign. No more exporting lists from one app to the other. That’s something to get excited about!
Matt said on Wednesday 26th November, 5:30pm: 9

I’m also the most excited about the combo. It’s always been hard to figure out which to use for a client, and more importantly, which to buy credits in!
Brendan Falkowski said on Tuesday 2nd December, 6:46am: 10

Subscriber Snapshot looks pretty sweet. Almost signed up for Campaign Monitor last year when a client wanted to do email marketing, but they went direct-mail with postcards instead…lame.

If that t-shirt contest is still up, I wear a small. I like my shirts tighter than emo-kid pants.

PS - not emo.
Adam Fitzgerald said on Tuesday 2nd December, 5:49pm: 11

I was going to say something funny, but all I will say is:

“From one web design company to another, you guys really hit the mark on this one.”

Size: M

Thanks.
Mat said on Thursday 4th December, 11:29pm: 12

I can haz geeky shirt?
Wayde Christie said on Thursday 4th December, 11:38pm: 13

Thanks folks. T-shirts won. Will email winners tomorrow.
Christy Kilgore said on Monday 15th December, 12:35pm: 14

Thanks for the shirt. I can’t wait to get it and geek it up at work.
Wayde Christie said on Monday 15th December, 12:38pm: 15

@Christy - you’ll be sure to send us some pics in your hawt new tee right? :)
Christy Kilgore said on Monday 15th December, 12:41pm: 16

Well of course. Everyone will be impressed I have a shirt from Australia. (It doesn’t take much to get us excited here in Illinois.)
Brendan Falkowski said on Tuesday 16th December, 10:40am: 17

Pretty pumped about the t-shirt (and in black FTW). I’m anxiously waiting to explain why a shirt from a fancifully designed email marketing company is cool to my analog friends. They won’t understand…