Comments on: Sloppy List Management Practices That Can Get Your Emails Blocked

By: Joanne

Joanne — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:11:25 +0000

Hi Ben,
Im new to marketing, and have been asked to sent out emails to our clients, the base has been cleansed, but i have it in an excel format, also some of the address do start with …info@… or admin@ These are our customers, should i include these email addresses? how should i upload them and is it in keeping with good marketing practice?

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 13:47:08 +0000

Potentially both. The best way to invite past commenters of your blog is to just blog about your new list and ask people to sign up. If there are some commenters that you think would be particularly useful to have on your list, write them individual, personal emails inviting them to subscribe (and down the road, you may want to tag those VIPs as GoldenMonkeys inside MailChimp).

By: KimC

KimC — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 02:09:45 +0000

I don’t have an email list yet, but would like to invite past commentors from my blog to opt into a new list.
Would the invitation itself be considered spam, or is it only spam if I add them without their permission?

By: Lesson Fifteen: Legal Issues

Lesson Fifteen: Legal Issues — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 06:12:24 +0000

[...] Sloppy List Management Practices that Can Get Your Emails Blocked [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:06:15 +0000

Hi Maria, you can get a lot more detailed answers from our support team, but here goes:

1) You just import over. If you’ve been in fairly frequent contact with the list as you say, and the list is permission-based, there’ll be no issues. If you think for any reason that you’d get a large number of bounces or unsubs, that will set off our anti-abuse algorithms, and might suspend or shut down your account. In that case, better to use your current ESP to tell subscribers about the upcoming switch, so that they’re all prepared. See the advice we gave here: http://blog.mailchimp.com/should-you-switch-to-an-esp/

2) Yes. We have a few people on our support team who are multilingual, so if you come into live chat or email, and request Spanish support, they’ll probably re-route your tickets to the appropriate people.

By: Maria Pinero

Maria Pinero — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:03:02 +0000

Hi! I own a real estate business in Caracas, Venezuela. I already built a database of potential and current customers, that has taken me 4 years to enlarge through past sales, events, memberships to chambers of commerce, newspaper ads, and so on. I invited each one of them to join my mailing list, using a email marketing local company called Imolko (www.imolko.com), since I like to be recognized by my customers as a provider of good service, good content and as an enforcer of best practices in internet marketing. Imolko sends an invitation asking for permission to receive my emails, that’s how is done.

I would like to try another email marketing company, more flexible with templates, more interconnected with social media, better priced and with the potential to interface with salesforce.com, since I would like to start using in in the near future.

I have two questions: 1) How can i transfer my database from Imolko to Mailchimp, keeping all the segments already created there, and without asking for permission again (around 2100 emails)? I send emails at least once a week, so the database is fairly updated, with very few bounces or unsubscribers.
2) Do you have a Spanish speaking customer support?
Thank you very much. I appreciate your time reading my post.
Ma Isabel Pinero

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:54:24 +0000

It’s spam, and she’s risking her reputation if she does that. I think she should compose an email, FWD it to the boards and committees on which she sits, and then ask *them* (because they’re the list owners) to FWD on the invite and/or ask recipients to signup for newsletters.

By: Adreana Langston

Adreana Langston — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:08:59 +0000

A friend of mine is the director of a non-profit that is has a big event coming up. This director sits on many boards and committees around the city. She wants to go through her old emails related to the boards and committees on which she sits. She wants to scrape email addresses from the cc field of these emails and then send those addresses an Evite invitation to the big event. In my opinion the only proper way to do this would be to first send these email addresses a message saying “XYZ organization thinks you might have an interest in their mission because you sit on ABC board or committee. If you are interested in receiving updates from XYZ organization, please click this link to get on their Mailchimp mailing list.” I think the way she is doing it is akin to spam. I think she doesn’t think it is spam because the senders of these emails placed all the address to CC instead of BCC. So in some people’s view that gives all the receivers the right to reuse those emails for business not directly related to the board or committee. What are your thoughts?

By: New Guide: How To Manage Your List | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog

New Guide: How To Manage Your List | MailChimp Email Marketing Blog — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 13:37:29 +0000

[...] newsletters, you need to know how to build a list, group subscribers and keep your list clean. Sloppy list management can get you in trouble, so it’s important to tidy up the place every once in a [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 10:15:10 +0000

Ah, it’s quite simple actually. You just need to add a link to point people to your signup form. Here’s how.

Every list comes with a signup form. Every signup form has a URL you can place in your signature.

Login –> click “Lists” –> Under the list you want, click “forms” –> Above the form designer, you’ll see 2 options to “Link to subscribe form”