Millionleaves

17/11/2025

I used to open ChatGPT, type a prompt, and hope for the best.

Sometimes I’d get gold.
Sometimes nonsense.
Sometimes an answer to a question I asked last week.

It felt like talking into a void.

If that sounds familiar, you might enjoy something I published today. It explains why AI feels unreliable — and the simple shift that finally makes it work consistently.

No tricks. No “magic prompts.”
Just structure that makes the system behave.

👉 Prompting Into the Void
https://millionleaves.substack.com/p/prompting-into-the-void

This is the first step in a new journey I’m sharing publicly. Come along.

02/04/2025

Are you using MailChimp for your email marketing?

If you’re on their free plan, you might have noticed that the free automation tool is being phased out—meaning you’ll need to upgrade if you want to keep your workflow features. While many local businesses are happy with MailChimp, there’s an affordable alternative you might not know about.

If your website is built on WordPress, consider FluentCRM—a robust plugin that handles both email marketing and automation.

In fact, our clients sent over 100k emails last year using FluentCRM. Some set it up themselves, while others relied on our services for a seamless transition.

Plus, if you bring your hosting over to us, we’ll help you migrate your email list for free, ensuring you can make the switch with minimal hassle.

Curious about your options? Send us a message, and we’ll show you how FluentCRM can work for your business!

19/09/2022

Need help with a quick WordPress or WooCommerce job? We solve WordPress maintenance problems! Get in touch today for a fixed-price, money-back guaranteed quote. https://millionleaves.co.nz/wordpress-odd-jobs-and-maintenance-service/

05/05/2020

Here's a top tip if you're using Mailchimp for your email marketing.

Did you know that Mailchimp counts unsubscribed contacts to towards your account plan limits, even though you're not allowed to send those contacts marketing emails?

That means that you could either end up exceeding your Free plan sooner than you need to, or find yourself in a higher plan level and paying more in monthly fees.

Fortunately, Mailchimp allows you to archive contacts. Archived contacts aren't counted towards your plan limit. So the trick is to archive your unsubscribed contacts rather than deleting them.

Why?

Because if someone you deleted wants to come back as a subscriber, they have to start all over again. If you've archived them, you can just unarchive them and welcome them back, with all the history that goes with their account.

And if you want to get really clever about this, you can create a custom segment that only contains Unsubscribed contacts that have not yet been archived. When someone unsubscribes, they automatically go into this segment. You can then check the Unsubscribed segment periodically and archive everyone in it - which reduces the number of contacts that count towards your plan limit.

15/04/2020

Here’s a good deal - get 100 digital images from Depositphoto.com for just US$39 via AppSumo. They do deals like this regularly but this is the best price we’ve seen from them in a while.

Not only that, but you can stack the deal to get even more images - *and the credits never expire*. What’s not to love?

https://appsumo.com/depositphotos

Your favorite stock image deal is back and more affordable than ever

24/06/2019

I run a digital marketing agency in Tauranga. Business is growing, and I need help from someone with digital marketing experience to help us deliver results to our growing client base around New Zealand.

Our "what" is building websites (mainly Wordpress) and using those websites as a base for providing ongoing digital marketing services (e.g. MailChimp, Google Ads, Social) to our clients.

Our "why" is that we love using marketing technology to deliver measurable business results for our clients - with the emphasis on the results we can deliver.

The "how" is where you could come in.

This is a contract position. The work will be project-based and ongoing. Your hours will vary week to week depending on project requirements.

You will work from home most of the time, although we will collaborate in person from time to time. You can set your own hours, although we expect you to be available between 9am and 5pm at least some of the time.

The world of digital marketing is wide and varied, so for me it's about finding a person who fits. Skills can be taught or improved, but we need someone who will fit into the team and help strengthen it. We will provide training and development for the right person, although we also expect you to upskill in your own time.

If you are interested in finding out more, please send an email to [email protected], and answer the following questions:
* Why does this opportunity appeal to you?
* What are your three best digital marketing skills?
* What are your three favourite digital marketing skills?
* What are two examples of work you have done that you are proud of?
* Are you currently doing this type of work for another agency or company?
* What time zone are you in?

01/04/2019

MailChimp has changed the name of "Lists" to "Audiences".

Confused? Don't be.

It's mostly a cosmetic change so far. But the advice we give around Audience management hasn't changed. Check out our article on best practices for managing and segmenting your subscribers.

Do you use MailChimp? If so ... there's a good chance you're using it wrong. Check out our latest blog post where we talk about three things that we regularly see our customers and prospects doing wrong with MailChimp.

27/03/2019

If you're using MailChimp, you might have noticed that Lists have been replaced by Audiences. What's the difference? Not a lot!

Although there are some new audience analysis tools available (mostly reports that highlight data from across your list/s), the main thing that has changed is the name. All the recommendations and best practices are the same - chiefly, don't make multiple audiences, instead make one audience and segment it with Groups and Tags.

So what's the point? MailChimp have been actively positioning their platform as a CRM since late 2018. Expect this to continue. MailChimp is not really a CRM, yet, but I have no doubt they will get there.

See how this new dashboard for audience data will help you quickly turn insights about your contacts into targeted marketing campaigns.

22/03/2019

There's a big announcement this morning from Shopify and MailChimp about the the MailChimp app being removed from the Shopify app store. Apparently they couldn't agree on the terms under which the MailChimp store could access/use customer data from Shopify.

If/when you're looking for an alternative, I recommend Klaviyo. It's a bit more expensive, but is also WAY better than what you get from MailChimp's ecommerce integration. Get in touch if you want to know more - we are a Klaviyo partner..

We’ve decided to end our partnership with Shopify because we can’t agree to their new terms that compromise our customers’ privacy.

05/02/2019

I just helped a client set up an automation workflow in MailChimp that takes her subscribers through a sales funnel of up to 7 emails in order to convert them to customers.

Email two knocked my socks off when it arrived.

The title simply said "I want to talk to you". The psychology behind an email title that is so powerful - how can you not open an email with a title like that?

The only suggestion I could make to improve it was to add the customer's first name to the title, so it felt like she was talking directly to me, like this:

David, I want to talk to you.

Bam. I'm hooked.

Automation workflows in Mailchimp can be tricky to set up. I cover it in my Mastering MailChimp course one-day live class which, if you're interested, is running on March 13.

So, if you're interested in coming along and learning how to be awesome with MailChimp - simply message me if you're interested.... first one to reply gets a special price....!

31/01/2019

If you have an ecommerce store, then this is the sort of feature you'd really like in your WooCommerce or Shopify store, right?

We are a Klaviyo partner, so message us if you want to learn more about Klaviyo (hint - it's awesome, and way better than MailChimp for ecommerce).

Find out how to use Klaviyo to predict the date of a customer's next order — and see how you can use it to improve the timing of your marketing outreach. Learn how the predictions work and get inspired by examples of customers with different order behaviors.

31/01/2019

We highly recommend this short course on creating video ads. If you're not doing video ads in 2019, you're doing it wrong!

Only US$7 if you get in before the deal closes today, or US$27 after that (but still well worth the investment).

The 5-Step Roadmap For Creating a 1-Minute Video That Turns Ice-Cold Prospects Into Buyers & Promoters of Your Business