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Worldview is here, and it’s awesome

March 30, 2011

Moments ago we took the wrapping paper off an amazing new Campaign Monitor feature called Worldview. It's an entirely new way to see the results of your email campaigns, it's totally addictive, and I think you're going to love it. If you're busy and don't have time to read the details, here's a demo so you can see it in action.

What is Worldview?

Do something enough times, no matter how amazing, and you become complacent (watch this if you don't believe me). I think the same holds true when we send email campaigns.

You click the "Send" button, your reports start filling up with numbers and you move on to something else. But remember, those weren't ten thousand email addresses you just sent to. They were ten thousand real people. Real people that were nice enough to give you permission to enter their home, their office or their phone and start a conversation.

Worldview reminds you these are real people you're sending to, not email addresses.

Every time you send a campaign, we'll show you who is opening it, clicking links, forwarding it to their friends, liking it on Facebook or mentioning it on Twitter. Here's the cool part—we'll show you this on a map, in real-time, all wrapped in a gorgeous UI.

Go full-screen

Full-screen is the best way to experience Worldview. With a single-click we remove all distractions so you can watch the pins drop as your subscribers interact with your email. I've had the fortune of testing Worldview live for a few days now, and it's amazing how long you can sit there and stare at this thing.

Built to share

Once we built an early prototype of Worldview and saw it in action, we knew it was something people would want to share. So, we decided to build a public version that you can share with anyone.

While the private version in your account includes your subscribers' details like name, email address and an avatar, the public version just shows what happened (such as an open, or a tweet) and where, without actually showing who was behind it.

The shared version also supports custom domains, so you can keep it branded if that's what you'd prefer.

Free for every campaign you send

Worldview is live and available now for every campaign you send. In fact, if you've sent a campaign in the last week or so you'll find a new Worldview link in the sidebar ready to roll. I'm not going to lie, I'm really excited about this feature, and can't wait to hear what you think about this new way to meet your subscribers.

Posted in: New Features & Updates

66 Comments

Jason
March 30, 2011 2:40am

Yes, awesome would describe this. Super cool!
Gavin Botica
March 30, 2011 2:52am

OMG, that’s amazing. Kudos once again to CM.
Tom
March 30, 2011 3:16am

Fabulous!!
Lee Reichardt
March 30, 2011 3:29am

Awesome indeed!
Sol
March 30, 2011 3:50am

OH WOW ! I just sent a campaign and saw this - hugely impressed :-)

Well done team!
Graeme
March 30, 2011 4:04am

Cute, but not sure I see commercial value. Did you establish one? Am staring at a 40K send campaign now. Glad you don’t show all activity!
Nick Gascoigne
March 30, 2011 4:41am

Fantastic stuff Dave, great way to visualise your campaigns connecting with the world at large.
Ross
March 30, 2011 6:44am

Very cool, going to send a 8,000+ campaign soo and see how it works
Pyro
March 30, 2011 8:50am

This looks awesome!

Got an 80K campaign to send out Friday, very keen to check this out (and waste… er.., spend an hour watching what happens).
Ms Thang
March 30, 2011 9:36am

Slightly arousing! Can’t wait to send out the next campaign ...
Pete Chalk
March 30, 2011 9:48am

Great bit of kit, made me realise that I need more exposure in the middle east and Australia. http://www.aviatoraircraftsales.com
Snooker
March 30, 2011 9:58am

Amazing amazing thing ;)

I wonder how you got the Google logo out of the map ... would you mind sharing the details of that?
Nark Walker
March 30, 2011 10:11am

Very very cool. Can you explain how the thumbnail photos get there in your demo?
Shaun
March 30, 2011 10:40am

Yeah very cool! Would be good to know a little more about how it works? Like Nark Walker says how do the thumbnails get there?
David Greiner
March 30, 2011 11:21am

Great to hear you’re loving it everyone, thanks for the great feedback so far.

@Snooker, not sure about the logo side of things, but will ask around in the morning and get an answer for you.

@Nark and @Shaun, the thumbnails are actually called gravatars, which is a free avatar service anyone can add their own photo to. Loads of popular sites on the web support it, it’s kind of becoming a standard for avatar hosting. Gravatars are tied to an email address, so we do a look up for each of your subscribers and show them if one is available.
Richard
March 30, 2011 12:57pm

Sent out a big campaign for a client today - loving this report.

How are people located?
David Whittingham
March 30, 2011 1:06pm

Hi, Love this feature, but would be good to know how they are located as i opened a clients email from a campaign we just sent out in the UK and so did the client and its saying we are about 200-300 miles from where we actually are…......we do like the feature though.
Nick Lindwall
March 30, 2011 1:17pm

Absolutely amazing. I’m looking at my worldview for a campaign I sent this morning right now. just incredible. great great job.
David Greiner
March 30, 2011 1:17pm

@Richard and @David, location is based on the IP address of your subscriber when they opened, clicked, etc. We then do a lookup to get the most accurate location possible based on that IP. Sometimes it’s super accurate, other times it can be the other side of the city, or even much bigger distances.

It all really depends on the ISP that subscriber uses and what details are publicly available. The country summary below will be super accurate, and the pin drops will be as accurate as can be based on the data we get back.
Anthony Hook
March 30, 2011 3:07pm

Awesome!

Geolocation via email opening, shweeeet!

Well done to all.

Anthony
Tom Martin
March 30, 2011 3:12pm

How accurate are the Geo data and how to you gather it?
Tom Martin
March 30, 2011 3:12pm

How accurate is the Geo data and how are you gathering it?
Nick Satkovich
March 30, 2011 4:09pm

Awesome feature, love it!
Yongho Kim
March 30, 2011 4:33pm

Based on my limited experience in LA I’d say the geolocation is accurate down to the county level, and possibly bigger for lower density states.. so for a U.S. map it should be pretty accurate. Might not be as accurate for localized lists such as ours. (80% of our contacts are in LA) But this seems like a ADD-friendly way of getting a sense of subscriber reaction to email campaigns - after watching a couple of sessions you may see a pattern (!!?!??!)
Eddie
March 30, 2011 4:58pm

This is amazing, but I shared a client’s campaign via Twitter and Facebook and I’m not on the map. Does it exclude me?
Oli Yeates
March 30, 2011 5:08pm

coool!
Jeff Miller
March 30, 2011 5:09pm

Awesome feature. Thanks CM.

I looked at a campaign we sent last Thursday that lists about 5k opens in the United States, but there seems to be only around 50 green pins on the map. Seeing the same issue with clicks. I’m curious about the discrepancy.

I think this feature will be very helpful for our clients that have stores in many different locations.
JBoyz
March 30, 2011 5:47pm

Sincerely awesome!
Nickolas Simard
March 30, 2011 9:47pm

I dropped my jaw on the floor upon seeing this… Awesome, Amazing, Incredible… That’s you guys at CM! :D

Thanks for the thoughts you put on this!
Mike H.
March 30, 2011 11:44pm

It’s indeed a very cool graphical representation of the data collected from an email campaign, but how have you made this data actionable? If you want to interact with just those people in New York or those that shared it on Facebook, is that possible within this feature?
David Greiner
March 31, 2011 12:50am

@Mike H, good call. There are loads of cool ideas we have on making the best use of this new geo data for your subscribers. Right now Worldview is the first step, but there will be plenty more to follow.
Ben Randolph
March 31, 2011 2:18am

This will be great. I’ve been trying to find a map overlay like this for Twitter.
Jason
March 31, 2011 2:28am

Just curious, what is the logic behind the pin drops that remain on the map?
Joe B
March 31, 2011 8:22am

Very cool. BUT - this is a massive give-away feature. White label clients will now instantly know that this is campaign monitor :(
David Greiner
March 31, 2011 10:52am

@Joe, I know what you’re getting at there (although I certainly don’t think it’s something any client would “instantly” learn). What are your thoughts on the option of making this a feature you can easily turn off for a client?
David Greiner
March 31, 2011 10:54am

@Jason, we plan on sharing a little more about the workings behind Worldview soon. We had to make lots of interesting decisions based on providing a good experience for those with 50 subscribers or 5 million subscribers.
Ara Garabedian
March 31, 2011 11:51am

How about working on a killer feature like nested repeaters? Sorry, but I see a lot of comments here saying how cool this feature is but I can’t think of one practical use for this feature which would help my clients. This new feature just feels like fluff which doesn’t add any real value to CM. Yes, it looks cool, but that’s about it.
George
March 31, 2011 11:51am

But does it blend?
Jim G
March 31, 2011 1:50pm

I gotta say… great, fantastic, amazing, gob-smacking addition but…. so what? Sure, it will make it easier to sell, my clients will go ooo-aaa but I’d rather have SMS options integrated with the current excellent email tools.
Drew Harding
March 31, 2011 1:50pm

A nice feature… could be useful visually analysing where your subscribers are opening from, especially if their preferences show a different country.

As a white label company, i think one thing CM should consider would be to updated all white label users of the changes 24 hours before the update is rolled out. This would give us all a chance to get to grips with the new feature and fully understand it before a client calls and asks about it?
David Greiner
March 31, 2011 2:19pm

@Ara, you’ll be pleased to know we’re working hard on a big template language and editor update right now that I’m pretty sure you’re going to love.

@George, absolutely ;)

@Jim, great to hear your clients will dig it. I’m afraid we don’t have any plans to offer SMS integration though, it just doesn’t fit in with our vision for Campaign Monitor right now.

@Drew, I completely agree we need to get better at this. We’ve thrown around a few ideas on the best way to approach this. Would love to hear what you’d prefer. An email a few days before, a Twitter account for resellers to follow? What works best for you?
Carolyn
March 31, 2011 8:27pm

It’s really addicting sitting here and watching it!
Bill Hunter
March 31, 2011 8:28pm

One of the coolest things I have seen. We just sent out a campaign about 30 minutes ago and it’s hard to stop watching it.

Nice new feature.

Bill Hunter
Michael
April 1, 2011 1:20am

FYI For people wondering about WHERE the Google logo is:

If you’re building a g-map via flash in real-time (or ajax) and you’re using the Google API, it doesn’t add the logo, unless you query it.
Tam Nguyen Minh
April 1, 2011 9:51am

I’m eager to see this new report in the next campaign :)
Jonny
April 1, 2011 2:43pm

Great looking feature. Any idea though of how it selects which pins to display? We’ve just sent out a small campaign and some of the ‘openers’ it was displaying this morning’ aren’t showing up.
R. Savera
April 1, 2011 7:09pm

Brilliant. Been getting all my clients to move to you and now even more the reason.
Drew Harding
April 1, 2011 10:30pm

Hi David thanks for your response.

Personally, i think the best way to recieve this information is by email. That way it’s only going to the people that need to see it. Twitter could also work but if you do consider this option may i suggest you have this reseller’s account set to private - only allowing people to follow is by ‘requesting’ to do so. This allows you to keep tabs on exactly who is becomming a follower to stop information being ‘leaked’ early etc.

Cheers, Drew
Adam Gerthel
April 1, 2011 10:35pm

I just got an email newsletter sent out from you regarding this, and was both disappointed and astonished by the fact that you don’t use your own system in your emails. I thought the email looked great, but I couldn’t figure out how you we’re able to make it look so good with the limitations that <repeater> tags have. After looking at the HTML it’s pretty clear that you’ve hand-coded all of it, and probably haven’t touched the editor or used your own template tags at all.

That sort of shows how hard it is to make an interesting and different looking email when using the editor (which is supposedly one of the two or three biggest things in favor of CM).

Any comment from CM regarding this?
David Greiner
April 1, 2011 10:42pm

@Adam, thanks for the comments (and for viewing source). Only last night we were saying how this new design is a perfect candidate for the new template language upgrade we’re working on right now. You’ll be pleased to know that this design, along with pretty much any other, will be possible very soon. We’ll announce more details here in the coming months when it’s ready to roll.

@Drew, thanks for the follow up. Good call, I was leaning towards email as the best option too.

@Jonny, we need to be fairly selective on how many pins we show and when to make sure your browsers doesn’t get overloaded. There’s a post on that coming soon too, to share some of the technical details of how this works.

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