mail chimp

[drlapo]

Is anyo6here familiar with mail chimp?
A club I belong to is considering using them to distribute emails to the members.
Is this a data mining scheme?

[rocker59]

Why not just email members the old fashioned way?  With all current members listed in the CC line, or BCC line?  You can set up a group, if you use Microsoft Outlook.  Easy stuff...

As I understand it, MailChimp is a marketing service.  If you're not marketing to, or recruiting non-members with MailChimp, why do you need them to distribute your emails to a known list of members ?

[donn]

I've acquainted with people who've used it.  Now that I think of it, the lady of the house uses it and to the best of my recollection, yesterday evening she was muttering about some issue with it that she was going to ask me about - something about choice of sender's email address domain as a spam classification problem, if I understood correctly.

Anyway, it does seem to be the usual choice for distributing emails, and some of the people using it seem to know what they're doing.  I don't know a whole lot about it, but wouldn't be too worried about it be being anything worse than an occasional technical nuisance.  But (I think) it isn't a "listserv" in the generic sense of an email address that club member could send to.  It's for one-way communication.  There are listserv type solutions, too - if you have a web site, your hosting service might offer one - and that's obviously a more versatile upgrade from a Bcc list.

[cruzziguzzi]

Chimps?... Really?

This takes Guzzitude iconoclasti to all new levels.

Why, just the other day I saw a package delivered by a drone and here we have a member trying to regress to chimps!


Probably one of those guys who thinks that things like fuel injection and ABS are fads.


Todd.

[mentalfloss]

Rocker is right... Mail chimp is a e mail marketing autoresponder designed for marketing. I would suggest a free constant contact account. WWW.constantcontact .com

[rob-mg]

Is anyo6here familiar with mail chimp?
A club I belong to is considering using them to distribute emails to the members.
Is this a data mining scheme?

Mail Chimp and similar services are really good for distributing e-mails to groups. Compared to using your e-mail client, it really simplifies list management and distribution. And it sounds like your group will be small enough, and mailing irregular enough, that it will be free.

Personally, I use Campaign Monitor, an Australian company with an international reputation, but both are excellent services.

The one thing to realise is that both of these services require e-mail recipients to opt in to receiving your organisation's e-mails. You can't send people e-mails unilaterally. In other words, these companies are not in the business of facilitating spamming. They take spam really seriously, in part because if they become vehicles for spam, ISPs will cut them off and their businesses will be destroyed.

I have accounts with, and have used, both Mail Chimp and Campaign Monitor. While I have settled on Campaign Monitor, that is the result of a personal preference for its interface and templates. They are both excellent ways to manage an e-mail list and to distribute content.

[drlapo]

Good to know.
We'll be sending out emails to 400 members 2 or 3 times a month.
I'm going to carefully read the contract/agreement

[rob-mg]

Good to know.
We'll be sending out emails to 400 members 2 or 3 times a month.
I'm going to carefully read the contract/agreement

If you have that many members, to me it's a no-brainer to use one of these services. It will make your life a lot easier than trying to manage it from your personal e-mail account. I'd suggest that you check out both Mail Chimp and Campaign Monitor to see which you prefer and find easiest to use. Last I checked, for my volume Mail Chimp was going to be free for me and Campaign Monitor was going to involve a fairly small monthly fee. I ultimately went with the latter, because I preferred the interface enough that I was prepared to pay. But Mail Chimp is definitely more popular, probably the largest in this field.

Honestly, I wouldn't worry much about them mining your data, but yes, check out their FAQs on this issue.

The one thing that I want to assure you of is that these are both legitimate companies, with major clients, who provide a service that is genuinely helpful to people who are trying to do what you are trying to do. There's a bit of a learning curve to the interfaces, but it's well worth it.

[pyoungbl]

If you are sending mail out to 200-300 recipients you will run into problems with various spam filters.  That's where Mail Chimp comes in handy.  The service basically breaks the mail down into smaller packets so it does not look so much like spam.  Our Civic League uses Mail Chimp and we have not had any problems.

[rob-mg]

If you are sending mail out to 200-300 recipients you will run into problems with various spam filters.  That's where Mail Chimp comes in handy.  The service basically breaks the mail down into smaller packets so it does not look so much like spam.  Our Civic League uses Mail Chimp and we have not had any problems.

This is really important. But it isn't a matter of Mail Chimp or Campaign Monitor using techniques to circumvent ISP spam filters. It's a matter of them maintaining standards, including positive buy-in from list members, that are seen by internet gatekeepers as legitimate. You don't have the clients that Mail Chimp and Campaign Monitor have by trying to circumvent spam filters.