Posted on September 22, 2009 - by Justin Hartman
Our experience of sending bulk emails to users
Let me start by saying that Mailchimp is an amazing company and their bulk email service is worth every penny. They deliver a punchy service and their UI is awesome however we no longer use them as our account has now been deleted.
I certainly can see the value in newsletters but from experience our newsletters were more often than not perceived as spam and I think, ultimately, this has hurt our brand. Added to the fact that many of our @afrigator.com email addresses now end up in people’s spam/junk folder and I think you’ll see why we’ve ultimately decided to drop our newsletter service all together.
Maybe our execution was poor, maybe we’re just not experts at doing this but I can tell you in future I’ll be hesitant to send out any emails to users. It’s a tough one for a small online business as email is, fundamentally, your only communication tool with your clients and this tool needs to be used very wisely…….. or else.
I can in all honesty tell you that we’ve learned more than we’d have liked to (mostly painful stuff) and if I had to do it all again I would have never started email newsletters in the first place. We had all these grandiose ideas about how we could leverage off email to our users but in the end I think we failed.
12 Comments
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September 22, 2009
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Hi Justin, tks for your post.
It is very important IMO to choose the right system. This is particularly important when doing mass mail, even to subscribers.
I only trust 1 system, and will never trust any other (any time soon), and thats aweber.com
Check them out, and check the reviews too. I have used them successfully for 3 years now to email SUBSCRIBERS and no probs.
Be warned though, they do not allow ANY dodgy behavior, so only use this if you plan to be 100% above board (I’m sure you are).
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September 22, 2009
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i find that the only time newsletters work is when the client specifically wants it, so they must subscribe. just because they are current clients does not mean that they want or need your emails.
i have 2 clients that got burned like that, they assume that since they are clients they would want the emails. big woopsy
i use campaign monitor myself and i find it awesome. mailchimp is nice too
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September 22, 2009
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This is a concern of mine. I feel its the only way to get any new products out there, but I am worried that I may p-off some customers. I try keeping newsletters very short, only highligting new products and interesting links.
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September 23, 2009
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@Nell-Louise as Jonathan said I think as long as people have actually signed up for your newsletter then they’re expecting you to contact them. Where we went wrong is that we “assumed” that because we have all these people as our clients that we could just email them but in hindsight this was the wrong approach. What we should have done is email them and asked them if they wanted to receive newsletters and then allow them to signup on a different list. Stupid mistake that cost us dearly.
@Jonathan, spot on the money mate. This is exactly where we went wrong!!!!
@John – Mailchimp is exactly the same, no dodgy behaviour so I think we’d have been alright with aweber!
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September 23, 2009
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Did Mailchimp delete your account because of spam complaints against you by your users?
I’ve recently discovered that South African spam law differs from US. In the States, email newsletters have got to be double opt-in. In SA, you can subscribe users to your newsletters without their permission.
This is crazy! It means that genuine spammers can go about there business, and genuine marketers can act within the law, and there’s no difference between the two from the end user perspective. What’s worse is that a genuine marketer feels like they’re acting within the law, but the people receiving their stuff feel spammed. Which isn’t great for a brand.
Jonathan is quite correct: a once-off email asking people permission to subscribe to your newsletter (by an action *they* must take) is the best solution.
I’m surprised that you’re canning the Afrigator newsletter all together. Why not put together a nice-worded apology mail – a once-off – and re-start your database?
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September 23, 2009
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[...] people can get burned by this, like Justin Hartman from Afrigator. Always ask the people you're emailing if they'd like to be added to your newsletter – don't [...]
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September 23, 2009
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@john we chose campaign monitor because they had the best api at the time, but they also have an awesome service
@justin yeah – people are very protective over their inboxes
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September 23, 2009
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Also, I think you need to look at the market you’re dealing with. Our users, for example, are more tech-savvy and as a result I don’t believe they read newsletters. In another context newsletters are a critical communication tool that people actually want and chose to receive.
I know that if I look at myself, I simply delete (or unsubscribe) from newsletters as soon as they hit my inbox and I suspect Afrigator users are similar in this reaction – doesn’t matter who it’s from.
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September 23, 2009
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@justin yeah, i am the same
– i never read newsletters either.
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September 23, 2009
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I agree with John – aweber is the way to go.
The problem isn’t with users who unsubscribe, but rather users who mark the emails as spam, with services like gmail and hotmail. Anything over 0.1% of your messages being marked as spam could get you into trouble.
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September 27, 2009
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@Roger – sorry your comment ended up, ironically, in my spam comments folder and only saw it now
I just want to be clear about this. Our account was not deleted but rather we closed the Mailchimp account. According to Mailchimp our email lists were actually very healthy (i.e. not many complaints) but we just decided it wasn’t worth it.
We may certainly explore this again in the future but we’ll approach it VERY differently. Next time we’ll ask users if they want to receive emails from us and then we’ll manage that process better.
For now though we don’t really have the resources to focus on this when it’s not really helping our business so until we can see a serious business case for this I doubt we’ll revisit it soon.
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September 28, 2009
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@Justin: *whew* glad to hear that you weren’t shut down because of spam complains (I’ve updated my blog entry at macgeek.co.za to reflect that, btw).
Ja, I guess the perception of spam is as bad as actual spam. Maybe people will just keep up with Afrigator news through the blog from now on…