Mail Chimp and Email Marketing

Has anyone used Mail Chimp? Who is familiar with email marketing rules.

If I bought a list from a reputable source say like Experian (the credit reference agency) and people had opted in for something, then as far as I know I could send a mailer out to them. Does anyone know different?

Secondly, using something like Mail Chimp, is there any chance that your email address or domain could appear as spammer. I have noticed when you send an email out from Mail Chimp the from address comes as something like:
info=scootek.co.uk@mail18.uk1.mcsv.co.uk on behalf of; Scootek Test <info@scootek.co.uk> so when you reply to the email address it goes to you.

I am testing out Mail Chimp for the first time. So any feedback is welcome.

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Trialled Mail Chimp, seemed pretty good for low volume stuff, but main thing that put me off was exactly what you flagged regarding the "mail from".

So after different trials we ended up with Interspire Email Marketer, it's an off the shelf mailer which bolts onto your server so you have full control. Very easy to use like Mail Chimp, lots of functionality, built in spam checkers, email client formatters etc, absolutely love it.

Decent Opt in lists we have bought in the past, the supplier controlled the send, and you got x number of sends, so you never actually got the mail addresses. Be surprised if Experian gave you the email addresses as an opt in list, what's to stop you sending 10 times? But we haven't bought any professional lists in a long time.

A good tip made to us was make sure you have a nice and obvious unsubscribe link at the top of the mail. This should cut down on the number spam accusations! We do this on all of our newsletter sends.

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cheers Steve
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If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

So let me get this right...with Interspire Email Marketer it you are using your mail server to send or theirs? Also, from what I understand from your reply, you can put a different from address, right, so your domain or email account does not need to be associated at all.

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Yup use our own mail server, and the "send from" and reply to can be anything you want.

That said Mail Chimp looks ok, all down to personal preference and budget.

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cheers Steve
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If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

Both the interspire package and mailchimp both have their positives.

I personally use Aweber, however to some these really the Antichrist. Certainly gets expensive once you start to grow the list, the only moans I have heard are those that are not making money from their marketing.

With the level of stats and monitering it works, importantly it works remotely so you can update from anywhere, the same as most of the others.

For big lists there are some cheaper options.

The real issue is purpose and the way forward.

As you know most of the 'online mail' services, have spam filters built in, and it only takes one of your subsribers to mark you email as spam, and all of your customers using that online mail service will have you email sent to the 'bad box'.

If you are sending spam then you deserve all you get, really.

It is possible to opt into the API to have your mail recovered from the Gmail/Yahoo Spam box but for most online marketers this is getting to the 'bloody hell I will need staff for that' world.

Not using Double Optin is also frowned upon, once some little toad subscribes 'bill.gates@microsft.com'and you start sending email, it will not be long before you find your emails getting nowhere fast.

Further, if you are using Interspire or other server based product, you need to be aware of the limits placed on you by the hosting firms, often lists of 3000 or more are frowned upon, and certainly list of more than 5000 will not get past scrutiny on shared hosting, therefore you need dedicated hosting which the same price/similar as Aweber and company.

There is always a sending limit, of 500 per hour, relistically this means you might get 300 out and then if you do that every hour your hosts will be more than a little upset if you do this every hour for a day in order to get a lot of emails out.

You then need to make sure you have the right stats, split testing, etc etc.

Not looking so easy now is it.

There are other issues - if you don't do all of this, you are being the same as every other spammer out there, and the actual success rates for spam are pretty poor and I would suggest that unless you are going to do this properly you will not have the results you want.

We are in our 10th year of online business now, and email is becoming harder to comply with mainly because it is the killer app for the net, however getting it right it's a powerful tool, likely to get harder as we move into web 2.x or wherever it moves to from here.


Richard Smith

Welcome aboard Richard, why not do an intro and give us some background, looks like you could be a valuable addition

Heard of weber but not used it, looks pretty comparable to mailchimp.

I think if you are using a server based product, then common sense would dictate you are a volume user and make to make sure you have the right hosting and bandwidth allocation, but it's a fair point if someone's overlooked it.

We now send our monthly newsletter at a rate of 5000 per hour, after we realised it was taking over 2 days to send As long as you have at least a multi cored CPU and plenty of RAM, you will be fine.

Cant remember for mailchimp, but the Interspire stats are superb.

Whats that saying, if it was easy then every mug would be doing it

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cheers Steve
Forum Admin - teaboy and general gofer...

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If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

I came across the forum looking for something else, saw the post and thought I know about that, will put my halfpenny in.

There are a lot of that miss this 'server based stuff' in that if you have big list it's darn near impossible if you are using shared hosting, and quite right too.

There is another which is imnicamail, I have an affiliate link but dare not post that here. This is cheap and effective, I have met the guy that runs it and he is cool, really nice chap.

Mail Chimp works, well though, mind you Aweber does it for us, further our outsourced staff can use us it whereas the others.....

Interspire is about the best for a self hosted solution, bit of an issue for me with self hosting is the bad guys always trying to find a way into your information, so security would cause me some concern. Provided you can lock it down it's a bargain. Noting of course you can use the spare on your server to host videos or other useful stuff.

I think the big thing is spam and double optin - we have all moved on from a few years ago, and this whole issue of regulation is going to become more and more of an issue, which is good.

Just play the game, and if your business model is about buying in harvested lists and then sending spam it's not really a model.

I would rather have a list of 50 known people than a list of a million un targeted, guess I have been around too long.

Will introduce myself over the coming couple of days, off for a glass of red and a benson and hedges now .

Richard

A good and interesting thread.

I've been using MailChimp as I have a low volume (but high quality ) list. Though would be interested to consider others as I agree about the "mail from" issue. I'll go and check out Interspire - any other recommendations?

A glass of red - now yes there's a good idea.

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Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance

You can buy lists but these people will have been sold over and over again and the response you are likely to get will be low even from a company like Experian. Don't forget these people haven't opted in to receive emails "specifically" from you and your company. You may also find that the list reduces in volume very quickly as the recipients have no idea who you are.

The best type of email list is one that has been grown for your particular company, products and services. Look at lead generation to do this so you get people who are interested in YOU and your offerings. If may take longer but the rewards will be greater.

Also look at doing rental of email addresses rather than purchase while you grow your own database. Yes it's a one time use only but each time you rent the list there will be new and fresh recipients on that list to target.

On the sending front, I would never advise anyone to send email campaigns from their own server and website IP address other than site automated emails for an action done on the website. ( eg: orders, registration, changing details etc etc). You want to keep your website IP as clean as a whistle!

I know plenty of companies that use MailChimp from small to the major corporates and everyone loves it. After much research for the right platform for the company I am now working for I have also chosen to use MailChimp for our newsletter broadcasts.

If you have good email designers, they will probably load the email creative into the MailChimp system for you, make it easy for you to adapt and change so you then have the full control for future sends.

Hope that helps

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I have been told that Mail chimp will give you a few chances with spam, but to often and your account gets closed, blacklisted.