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Mail Chimp – Using an Old List

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).

 

Mail Chimp – Newsletters made easy

I just had my first experience with Mail Chimp, and what I can, I’m hooked. I signed up for the free version, uploaded a list of contacts from an excel sheet, put together a slick post card, and have been tracking my results. Previously, I’ve been using a hokey macro that I found online (and of course tweaked) to send emails to my contact list. Using Outlook, there was no tracking, I could only send txt or html (both of which I had to completely design).
I can’t begin to express how much easier Mail Chimp made my life. It handles the subscriptions, I can upload a list, or build a list using a form I added on the website. this was another really cool piece. Mail Chimp lets you design a subscribe form, and then gives you the HTML to put onto your website, or gives you a link to use their form. I haven’t scratched the surface yet, but now I can do newsletters/emails to my list. i didn’t even mention the many templates they have out there to make professional looking emails, newsletters, or whatever you need to send to a group.
I’ll be posting again in the new future when I start to figure out how to do the auto-responder piece. This part you have to pay for, but I do like the idea that you can do a pay as you go format, and then switch over to a monthly fee. When I figure out how it works, I’ll share it with you.
Thanks for reading… I’ll keep learning the hard way, so you don’t have to…
Mike