Hello again,
Now that I’ve been experimenting with Mail Chimp further, I have another valuable lesson. If you have an old list, don’t be surprised if your account is temporarily suspended. I just had it happen to me with the last newsletter I sent out. I imported my list into Mail Chimp to test my list. I purposely didn’t filter out the returned names I’ve received in the past, thinking that maybe Mail Chimp could get through where I couldn’t. Ooops. I ended up getting 40% of my list bouncing, and instantly my account got put on hold until I could explain what happened. I explained that it was an old list that I hadn’t really been emailing in a while. They were ok with that. Also, note that you get 2 warnings and then your account is shut down. So, play by the rules. it’s for everyone’s benefit.
The other thing I learned is that you can NOT include any names that you did not gather personally. I recently did a marketing campaign with SAP EcoHub that resulted in some names (I’ll tell you more about that later). Because there was a third party involved, I had to remove those names from my Mail Chimp list. Another valuable lesson learned for me.
On the bright side, for the time ever in my newsletter I can see how many people opened it, someone else takes care of any returned mails and unsubscribes, and I can even see if they’ve clicked into my link for the rest of the article. I love Mail Chimp, but I’m still learning.
I recommend checking them out. Now that I’ve cleaned my list pretty well, I’m going to look at doing a pay as you go auto responder. I need to get more details on if I still get 12,000 newsletter, and pay for the auto-responder, or if you lose that benefit when you start paying (I certainly hope not).
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike