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Experiences Sending 14,000 Emails  (View post)

Nate Dame [PersonRank 1]

Monday, April 19, 2010
14 years ago12,288 views

Sorry you had so much trouble.

I manage the email marketing for several organizations ranging from 200,000k+ lists down to a couple hundred emails. For the larger lists, we've had good success with EmailLabs (now part of LyrisHQ.net--I prefer their "legacy" EmailLabs system still however). For smaller lists, iContact has been perfect. And for multiple smaller accounts, the iContact agency account has been easy to use and a lifesaver time and again.

One org uses CiviCRM on a Drupal installation. CiviCRM itself has some great email campaign management tools, but I never liked the idea of trying to manage the mail server myself. Enter CiviSMTP (http://civismtp.org/drupal/), which handles all that and apparently integrates very nicely right into CiviCRM. Haven't tried it yet but can't wait to get it set up and give it a go round. Plus all contact info is managed on your site, tied to user's login info, and you've got granular control over what data they can see, edit, subscribe to, etc.

I'd be glad to help more if I can, nate.dame[put at-character here]gmail.com

Nate Dame [PersonRank 1]

14 years ago #

Well, I guess I shouldn't say you had that much trouble :) Some frustrating points it seemed though. But several good insights in what you wrote, especially in the whole spam world. That part's tricky so any info is good to have (interesting that MailChimp said the usual is 1 in 1000).

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

14 years ago #

[put at-character here]Philipp would love to know what the (traffic) results of the mailing were.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Yv, I think that day saw a peak of something in the region of 1500+ people. I wonder if, because a too-high percentage of people marked the mail as spam, the mail had stopped being delivered to inboxes (by e.g. Yahoo Mail's filtering). This is roughly what Mailchimp suggested based on my spam-mark rate. I was able to see the email address of everyone marking the mail as spam in clients like Yahoo, which provide that feedback to Mailchimp... the overall spam-marks number was then displayed prominently in MailChimp in big scary letters :)

If I would've gone for an HTML mail, I'd be able to provide much more precise click-through numbers...

For that particular site, SallySellsYouStuff.com, the numbers unfortunately weren't big enough to allow us to continue, as every episode takes quite some time. In that sense, the mailing list was not the spark that turned things around. (But I really liked the overall experience of photo comics and who knows, maybe this approach can resurface in some other place in another direction.)

ianf [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

So, now you are in the spam business? ;-)) Emanating from China, of all places, too!

George R [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Philipp said: "I was able to see the email address of everyone marking the mail as spam in clients like Yahoo, which provide that feedback to Mailchimp".

Does Yahoo tell the spammer which of their e-mails were marked as spam? Doesn't this reveal that the address is valid and read. I thought that marking a message as spam would either blacklist the e-mail or the sender or use it for filtering analysis. What does gmail do when a message is marked as spam?

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

I was also surprised to see these emails in there. In the "abuse complaint reports" list I saw Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, AOL, Verizon addresses and more, but no Gmail addresses, which might mean Gmail does not send such feedback to the sender. I guess it helps against spam in so far as MailChimp could now identify spammers and block them from using their service. Furthermore, these people were now automatically unsubscribed from my list, something which I guess wasn't true at Gmail (though Gmail has this "unsuscribe form" sometimes popping up when you mark something as spam... which, by the way, always annoys me when it pops up).

Yv. [PersonRank 7]

14 years ago #

[put at-character here]philipp, @ george I assume the "spam report" came from a link in the actual email, attached by MailChimp and not from within the email system since I doubt any email system would "publish" its spam reports function back to the world. Right?

But good to know these email mailing don't really lead to any significant traffic.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Yv, actually no, the count of when people complained via MailChimp's link were yet another count listed elsewhere (when people unsubscribe via the Mailchimp link, they can list "spam" as one reason for the unsubscription; they can also select things in the spirit of "not interested anymore" or "didn't subscribe" etc.). The number and email list I referred to was indeed from when people click "junk" or "spam" in their email client, a number which MailChimp suggests will make those clients (after crossing the approximate 1 in 1000 limit way too much) sort that mail into the spam folder for the remaining receivers. Yes, MailChimp says these clicks of the spam buttons are reported back to MailChimp via Yahoo Mail and others.

From MailChimp's explanation bubble of that list of emails, named "abuse complaints":

<<An abuse complaint is when someone clicks their "this is junk" or "report spam" button in their email program. A complaint is sent to their ISP, who in turn sends MailChimp a warning. In general, you should only get about 1 complaint per 1,000 recipients. Anything more, and ISPs begin blocking your emails. We automatically clean complainers from your list to prevent future complaints.>>

George R [PersonRank 10]

14 years ago #

Philipp quoting MailChimp:
"We automatically clean complainers from your list to prevent future complaints."

Does MailChimp alert the sender that they are blocking that e-mail and address? Is there a way to reactivate such an address?

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