Before I left for SXSWi I created and sent Skribit‘s first email campaign to a subset of our users. There are quite a few email marketing solutions on the market but I went with MailChimp. I didn’t really research any competitors or look elsewhere; MailChimp has a cool logo (great logos go a long way for marketing) and they’re also a local Atlanta startup, so I figured why not.
Needs
First off – what did I need MailChimp for? Skribit has been ticking around for over a year and we haven’t really contacted our users with the exception of running a survey (facilitated by Google Forms) by a batch of users. I figured it was time to let everyone in on what we’ve been working on and other such recent developments.
That being said, I used MailChimp solely for getting the word out. I did not need any of the much more advanced reporting features that MailChimp offers. That’s why this is more of a “first impressions” post instead of a full review.
Lists
The next thing I needed to do was create our email list. When it comes to email marketing, it’s of utmost importance not to spam people that have already said they didn’t want to be emailed. Fortunately we’ve already had some contact preferences in Skribit’s account settings so I just had to make a query to grab those specific email addresses. I ran a simple MySQL select and made use of “into outfile” to dump the results to a text file.
Creating the email list with MailChimp was a trivial event as they support various formats including Excel, Salesforce and Highrise imports as well as a regular file upload. I used the latter with the text file I got from MySQL.
Email list settings
In hindsight, it would probably be better to build out something on our end to also return full names so those can be used to personalize emails. Also, there is an issue with having essentially two lists; that in Skribit’s database, and the one created in MailChimp that intelligently removes emails that bounce as well as unsubscribes. Currently, I will have to go back into the Skribit database and manually remove the users that unsubscribed via MailChimp. In the future, we could just link to a special Skribit unsubscribe link instead of the default MailChimp one. (Although I did link to the Skribit profile page where email preferences are found but that requires a login) Fortunately, their upcoming API list synchronization update will solve this issue for those interested.
Campaigning
There are several type of email compaigns MailChimp lets you make, including ones designed for A/B testing, but I just ended up with a normal HTML email campaign. Upon starting a new HTML campaign I was delighted to see that MailChimp somehow visited Skribit and discovered some of the dominant colors and automatically used them. After a bit of tweaking, copy writing and creating my own header image in Photoshop I came up with this email (180KB PDF of full email). Annoyingly enough, after reading it countless times and bouncing a few drafts off of others, I still managed to make a grammatical error.
Creating the HTML email
Email Preview
I ended up emailing a few drafts to myself before wrapping up the email and sending it to the list I created beforehand. MailChimp also let me customize a plain text email that it sends to clients that don’t like HTML email.
Before Sending
Before you can send off your new campaign, your account has to be approved and MailChimp staff would like to see your campaign. Unfortunately this is a human process on their end so it’s not instantaneous, but it wasn’t much of an issue. In particular, these are some of the requirements you must meet before buying any credits or sending any campaigns:
* Where’d you get your list?
Normally, when people sign up for an email marketing tool, they have a website
with an email collection form, or an e-commerce site, or some way for
customers to sign up for a list. But we don’t see any obvious signs of that on
your website. Or we do see a sign up form, but your current list(s) content
doesn’t appear to have been collected through the process we can see. Could
you please reply, and give us some insight into how you’ve collected your
email list? If your account area only contains testing content, make sure you
update this area “Lists ==> Change list settings ==> Abuse Info & Permission
Reminder” to best reflect how you collected your recipient data. Pretend one
of your subscribers forgot who you are, and is about to report you for
spamming. How would you remind him about how he got on your list?* No test/draft campaign containing final content was sent or saved yet.
We like to review actual final content before allowing users to send full
campaigns. That way, we can check for unacceptable content, or any violations
of our terms of use and/or the Federal Can-Spam Act. Also, we’ve found that
people who send full campaigns without testing first tend to make embarrassing
mistakes. Then they actually get angry with us. So could you please send
yourself or save a test/draft campaign containing final content before
attempting to purchase credits?We’re sorry if this is an inconvenience for you. We know
that sometimes, you just gotta get a campaign out ASAP, so
approval processes like this can be a pain. But we have to
do it to keep our servers clean.
Pricing
MailChimp has monthly plans as well as pay as you go options. Calvin and I weren’t too sure we would be sending out more than one Skribit email every couple of months so we decided to go the pay as you go route. We were only looking to sent out emails to around 6,000 users so we paid $150 for 7,500 credits, which comes out to 2 cents per email.
First thoughts – wow, this can get expensive. Imagine what it’s going to cost when we start emailing five and six digits of people. Oh well, just testing it out to see what happens.
Results
So I sent the email. I left my personal email as the reply-to so I could read through everyones replies. I wouldn’t recommend that if you have a larger list. It filled up my inbox pretty quickly with replies.
As I mentioned above, MailChimp has quite a few different analytics add ons for those interested in finding specific information about their email campaign. I didn’t opt for any of those so these are just the basic reports you get.
First thoughts – only 20-something percent of the people on the list even opened the email!? Wow. I will have to think long and hard about sending out another campaign compared to some, likely more effective and definitely cheaper, social media push.
Campaign Report Details
Email Opens by Location
Email Domain Performance
Overall
I didn’t mention it earlier, but MailChimp has an amazing interface. I love the way they tackle various forms and such. If not for anything else, give MailChimp a shot because it’s a breeze to work with. As for the pricing point – after looking around, most competitors seem to be around the same area so I can’t really complain about that. But from a startup perspective – email marketing isn’t cheap. I’ll be watching from the sidelines from now on.
Thoughts? Have you ever run a large email campaign? What service did you use? How did you like it and how much did it cost?
I use MailChimp and absolutely love it. I’ve used Campaign Monitor, Aweber, and others…and MailChimp trumps them all in my opinion.
Also, they’re adding (weekend of March 28, 2009) the ability to do “drip campaigns” that are really popular with many marketers. So if someone signs up to your list, you can have emails setup to “drip” to them at specified times/days. For example, let’s say you have a 7 day course that people can signup for. When they signup they immediately receive the 1st email…then on day 2 they receive the 2nd, then the 3rd on day 3, etc. It’s a great way to “set it and forget it” so to speak. Definitely a great feature when used properly.
Another great feature of MailChimp is their APIs. There’s quite a bit you can do with what they make available.
I’d definitely suggest MailChimp….it’s easy, clean, and it just works.
Drip?
It’s called an autoresponder sequence.
Good luck working that one out with most real estate agents. They have a habit of calling e-mail campaigns “drip” campaigns.
Nobody wants to explain “autoresponder sequence” to a 50-year old average-aged crowd.
I’ve been using Campaign Monitor for years and love the reporting features it has. I think you’ll find the reporting features of any email marketing app to be a lot more useful than you’d think.
Also, in regards to your “Only 20% opened it” comment, you have to remember that doesn’t include ANY of the people who are reading the text version of your email…so the number is likely a bit higher.
I’d suggest experimenting with the subject line of your emails to encourage people to open them more.
A few ideas:
[Skribit] Your Subject Line
SKRIBIT: Your Subject Line
Skribit Newsletter — Your Subject Line
Basically something that catches people’s eyes when they’re sifting through dozens of emails. But do it without looking spammy (ie. ///////// SKRIBIT ///////)
Good point Josh and thanks for stopping by. Yeah I didn’t really do much testing. An A/B campaign with some alternate titles would have proved nice.
I’ve used both Emma and Interspire for HTML email blasts. MailChimp looks like it has great UI, but paying a recurring fee for sending emails is just stupid. That’s why I’d go with Interspire – it’s a one-time $495 fee and has pretty much the same features as other online mailing apps.
For sending plain text emails, I use Intellimerge. It’s $100 and my response rates have been twice that of HTML emails. Plus, you can spam the hell out of people without having someone look over your shoulder.
Interspire runs on your own server. If your going to do that might as well cut the cost of it and just download a template from somewhere.
The major point of these services is that they have paid the big bucks for all the spam access lists.
Although their hosted version http://www.bigresponse.com seems a little cheaper than MailChimp.
Not sure what you mean by “downloading a template.” Interspire still provides all the analytics of MailChip, Emma, etc.
I think it really depends on how much email volume you send out each month. I find it hard to believe these companies will be around in 10 years. Paying people a recurring fee for sending email? C’mon…
Yes, I have used similar products and as you note they can be very very very expensive. The 2 reasons why I could use them from time to time :
- they have a better delivery rate than if I do something “internal” since their IPs are somehow white-listed by most email services… and it is sometimes a nightmare to pass thru the SPAM detection systems of Hotmail… etc
- the statistics on % of open, click-thru rates… etc are sometimes pretty useful to understand how people react to your ML!
I’ll give MailChimp a try one day!
Does that ’20% of people opened the email’ number include people who, like me, use mail.app’s preview option to read emails?
Just a thought.
I would think the high number of “unopened” email is because gmail by default does not show images and load stuff inside the mail – which those services use to track “opening” a mail. Just my 2c.
Cheers
Stephan
http://twitter.com/codemonkeyism
Thanks for stopping by Stephan – while that surely is a portion of it, it’s not big. MailChimp has a chart with acceptable %-age email open rates depending on industry and ~20% is shockingly average for computers & internet related items. :-/
Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I came into this article through Google Reader, but still got the “Welcome Googler! If you find this page useful, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.” thing on the top.
Yeah it’s a WP plugin I’m using.. thinks any google referral is the same.
Good writeup. Our web design firm mainly uses two different email marketing programs: MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. We use MC for clients that blast frequently with pretty simple templates. It’s an absolutely wonderful and affordable solution for that.
For one-off campaigns with design-intense templates, we us CM. It’s more expensive ($5/blast and $.01/contact), but gives us total design independence and is friendly for agencies to manage clients and billing through.
Hey Paul, I work in DC on public affairs online, and 20% is great! It is a pricey way to deal with people, and your reach is limited, you should consider doing some of the suggestions above with random A/B samples next time, and anything that personalizes it more always helps.
From my research iContact is one solution that consistently receives great reviews.
http://www.icontact.com
I’d recommend checking out WhatCounts.com. I’ve used them for years and I find their tools a 1000% more powerful than MailChimps (which I use for a low volume list). I’ve used WC for campaigns that sent 500k+ per day and it was amazingly performant and the staff there is top notch.
The open rate is all relative based on your industry.
Hi, I have signed to mail chimp as pricing actually cheaper than the industry leader Aweber. Was using Aweber with previous compnay and got ultd emails to a list of 5000 for $19 dollars when went to set up for new company was $19 for 500. nice price hike. so did not return out of principle.
Here is a suggestions which will increase open rates etc and effectivesness of campaign. Make Emails tres short . Headline coouple of lines then link to a blog post with the majority of content in. YOu can then use videos etc also you traffic rate for site sores and more chance of article or info you were sharing being social book marked.
I have also noticed that if you encourage your readers to use google reader they will be able to veiw your content whilst at work because google is nearly 100% allowed by company networks . hope this ideas help.
Http://www.twitter.com/johncusick
hope having my twitter addy does not offend anyone
Lucky Paul. Got a recommendation from Tim Ferris of 4hww-fame.
That should drive pstam traffic.
Excellent review, too.
I signed up for Mailchimp and run a email list of giveaways straight from our RSS feed. I LOVE mailchimp! Iget a 40% open rate and a 13% clcik rate not too shabby! But then again, everyone loves giveawasy :) Great review! Thanks!
Find great giveaways @ http://www.biglistofgiveaways.com
I much prefer Email Marketer by Interspire over MailChimp. MailChimp is OK but Email Marketer has the HARDCORE advanced features – plus it runs on your web server so there’s no monthly fees.
Looks cool. I’ve played around with Campaign Monitor and would love to see a detailed comparison between the two services.
I’ve used PHPlist for a few years and it has treated me pretty well. It’s a free download that you install on your own servers so the price was right. Sure, it doesn’t have the pretty interface or sweet stats but it’s fairly easy to use, some tracking features, and it’s free. The only maintenance is updating the software a couple times a year when an update comes out. Give it a try:
http://www.phplist.com
I’m using mail chimp for my own site and for work as well and i’m pretty satisfied with it.
I tried a couple others and went back to Mailchimp everytime.
The only think i dislike is the lack of options to upload your own templates and really code everything on your own. Their already-made templates are cool but not that nice and their coding is really complex and could be simplified
I forgot to mention that their templates DONT work at all with Lotus Notes (i know lotus suck big time but heaps of companies use it). The templates are all screwed up when opened with lotus Notes. The Mailchimp people were unable to give me some help or even try to note this problem down and solve it. The answer from them was pretty much “uh sorry”. I was waiting f for a better answer!
Other then that Mailchimp is good.
Hi,
For my email marketing I use Omnistar Mailer http://www.omnistarmailer.com. I tried Interspire and Omnistar Mailer and Omnistar Mailer was much better and had a lot more features. Also, you do not have to pay a monthly fee with Omnistar Mailer.
The above comment is a fake, it is posted all around the web. They always mention.
1. omnistar is better
2. has more features
Beware of that comment
Hi,
Why not just try http://www.omnsitarmailer.com Omnistar Mailer. It is a lot better then the other ones.
Agreed, MailChimp is a great program with a really … well… fun interface. Phplist was the opposite of fun for me. Mailchimp has a lot of features and finding where to go for that one thing you used that one time isn’t always easy, but they have a good knowledge base too.
Paul
You have just saved me money and made email list management … well … fun. I love the interface and CSR’s.
One tip for ya, you should have posted an affiliate link somewhere. I could have earned you $30 credit and 3 Inbox functions as I signed up based on your article. I had getresponse.com before and hated every minute of it.
thanks again!
john
Our company has done a few large blasts. We’re moving more towards opt-in email blasts for our clients. It seems to be the most credible and preferred practice (people open them). Here’s a little write-up on a study that supports this: http://www.heilbrice.com/blog/uncategorized/dont-be-afraid-of-e-mail/
MailChimp is a total fraud. After several ‘unsubscribe’ attempts, and several postings on their ‘abuse’ webform, I’m still getting junk from a customer of thiers.
Fraud!
Sounds like that customer of theirs isn’t syncing their list with MailChimp, which updates lists on unsubscribes etc. Can you name the company/customer?
Thanks for this wonderful review, I just started a new project and I really wanted a quality service for free to try out just to start off, I had MailChimp in my mind but AWEBER was also bugging, didn’t know whether or not I should move to paid service straight away. 100 subscribers might sound a little, but got only a little over 100 in my list, I think I’m just gonna give it a shot.
I use mailchimp, great service and very easy to use.
Great review ! I used AWEBER and Mail Chimp ( graphics are great ) in the past but it was a little cumbersome for me to get around .
I just switched to http://www.benchmarkemail.com
So far this has worked out for me terrifically. Super easy and straight forward.
I agree with many of the comments above that Mailchimp is a nightmare to use. Lousy, cumbersome interface and nigh on impossible to get hold of anybody at customer support.
Lots of hype, but as all the people above who have used and ditched Mailchimp have commented, the reality is quite different.
No email marketing professional I know here in Canada would even consider using Mailchimp as they know the reality and don’t get sucked by the PR hype like newbies.
Pretty interesting how they used Mechanical Turk to pick out a ton of templates:
http://www.mailchimp.com/blog/want-700000-html-email-templates/
Does anyone know a free engine campaigns in RoR?
I have been using Benchmark Email (http://www.benchmarkemail.com) for a while now, and I find it much impressive than MailChimp.
Hi,
we have just release version 2.0 of our marketing solution called beezilla-marketing.com. Come take a look and leave us your comments.
We have free accounts and give away free credits every day. Next 500 members will get 5000 free credits.
Lots of new features in release 2.0.
Mailchimp is just a waste of time. What type of service takes 3 days to respond to emails and doesn’t have a phone number that one can actually call? If that sounds like something you want then get on board with mailchimp if not then get a real email service provider there are a lot around.
Mailchimp is not for me. too expensive like aweber icontact etc.
As regards me I have been using Sendblaster since 2006 and i’m really satisfied. It costed 75 euros but no recurring fees and for me it’s the best ’cause i manage big lists :). In this moment they are also offering free licenses on twitter to bloggers and journalists.
I’m sorry… but MailChimp is a usability nightmare. The interface is horrid. It looks cute and pretty but every page has about a million options and there are what… half a dozen ways to create a template?! And the editor… wow. That editor is beyond craptastic. And you can’t even bypass the WYSIWYG… if for instance you want an editable field where the client can ONLY input text. Forgetting about price for a minute… just focusing on usability (which is critical when your clients barely know how to use Outlook)… Campaign Monitor wins hands down. MailChimp is an exercise in total frustration.
I am using Mailchimp for several newsletter lists in 1 big account, love it so far.
i do think its kinda hard to use and chaotic sometimes. but if you get the hang of it, it’s a hell of a application.
do like campaign monitor better what interface concerns but mailchimp rules if your looking at it’s capeabilities.
Review: MailChimp (Email Marketing) http://ff.im/-1IOP0
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Awesome article! I am looking forward to testing them.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Good article. Their offices are right around the corner from ours, probably about a mile away.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Do these types of apps have any built-in safeguards to avoid spammers using them for their campaigns? Or do they not make judgments about what they’re used for?
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
yes. there are a few hoops you have to jump through before they let you send campaigns.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Why does it cost so much to send out just a few thousand emails? It seems that MailChimp’s marginal costs ought to be quite low. Are there any less expensive competitors, even if the process is more DIY w.r.t. campaign composition?
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
I’ve been starting to use MailChimp myself and they seem to be very active about policing their users. In the article he said that he was contacted by a human who reviewed his campaign before he sent it out.Here is their anti-spam policy: http://www.mailchimp.com/page/terms/
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
The marginal costs may be low, but overall the value is in their ease-of-use, reports and analytics, and time saved in not worrying about email deliverability.I think it depends on what features you need and how much time you want to spend on it. I recently set up their RSS to email feature, which is really cool. When I write a blog post that I want to be sent in an email campaign, I just give it a certain tag ("newsletter") and then the next day it automatically goes out to my list.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Great article. Looking forward to giving them a try.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
It costs a lot when you aren’t sending out regular emails like Skribit. If you have a monthly subscription you can send out as many emails you want to 50,000 subscribers in a month for only like $240 dollars. It is a matter of economies of scale.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
If you’re using chimp in a rails app, watch out; their gems (mailchimp_fu and acts_as_mailchimp) are kind of crappy; they all update users synchronously in an ActiveRecord callback by default.I’m working on a gem at http://github.com/bradgessler/mailchimp/tree/master (this isn’t even alpha yet) that will make chimp integration easier. If anybody is integrating their ruby/rails app with chimp and are finding those plugins I mentioned inadequate let me know and maybe we can solve this annoying problem.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
If you’re using chimp in a rails app, watch out; their gems (mailchimp_fu and acts_as_mailchimp) are kind of crappy because: * They’re all untested. * None of them support the concept of environments. If you run your test suite, it tries to call mailchimp over the wire which is super slow and doesn’t work on offline. * Calls to chimp API are done synchronously an the AR after_save callback which kills performance. * There is no method of batch process synch between your app and chimp.I’m working on a gem that solves some of these problems at http://github.com/bradgessler/mailchimp/tree/master (this isn’t even alpha yet) which should make chimp integration easier. If anybody is integrating their ruby/rails app with chimp and are finding those plugins I mentioned inadequate let me know and maybe we can solve this annoying problem.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Review: MailChimp (Email Marketing) http://tinyurl.com/ddlvsc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Need an email marketing solution, use MailChimp. I use it weekly–easy to use & looks great. Read review by @Stammy http://bit.ly/ggIXc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
How did MailChimp confirm that only 20% of the users even opened his email? If I use a mail client that doesn’t load external images, is there an alternative way email ‘read time’ can be determined?
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Review: MailChimp (Email Marketing)… http://tinyurl.com/ddlvsc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
"known for his prowess with all things tech"seriously?
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
and now you remember me. worked.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
reading: Review: MailChimp (Email Marketing) – PaulStamatiou.com http://tr.im/hNKL
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Perhaps I will remember not to read any links with paulstamatiou.com in them …
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Nope. Email opening confirmation is not reliable, and is more useful for trends of certain demographics than for absolute numbers.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Review: MailChimp [feedly] http://ff.im/-1J4zT
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
@stammy u just got a bigtime plug from @tferriss (4hr workweek)! RT Great review of MailChimp & a test e-mail campaign: http://ping.fm/wm9qx
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
You can only confirm that at least 20% opened. If a user does not view the tracking image or click on any tracking links, there will be no way to know if they actually viewed.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
Humans are involved with approving emails to make sure the user is complying with terms, general application use support, and making sure the e-mail gets delivered. Often times customers that pay less demand more from support, creating less incentive to try to lower prices. There are less expensive competitors out there.
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
I’d also be interested in seeing some of the competition. Does anybody know of any relatively decent and comparable services?
This comment was originally posted on Hacker News
@jonbischke – something like this? RT @tferriss Great review of MailChimp and a test e-mail campaign – http://tinyurl.com/ddlvsc
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
@beparticular Great review of MailChimp and a test e-mail campaign: http://ping.fm/wm9qx (via @tferriss)
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Review of email marketing solution @mailchimp by @stammy http://paulstamatiou.com/2009/03/25/review-mailchimp-email-marketing
This comment was originally posted on Twitter