On Monday we announced that MailChimp users would get a 10% discount off their bill for enabling AlterEgo 2-factor authentication (it’s our way of incentivizing security).

Note: If you’re not sure what 2-factor authentication is, or how AlterEgo works with MailChimp, start here, then come back to this blog post. Ready?

Today I’m excited to announce that you can now use Google Authenticator and Yubi Key with MailChimp, by connecting them to AlterEgo. Basically, if you want to take advantage of our 10% discount, but you prefer those other security services, our attitude is, “great, just connect them to AlterEgo, and use them instead.” AlterEgo serves as a “pass through” for Google Authenticator and Yubi Key. For Duo Security fans, rest assured–that’s also in the works.

To connect the other security services, just sign in to your AlterEgo account (or create an account) and go to the “Integrations” link:

On that screen, you’ll get step-by-step instructions for connecting to the other security services.

There are other improvements we made to AlterEgo that are worth pointing out…

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We host, sponsor, speak at, and attend lots of events, and we’ve noticed that email’s a great communication tool before events for sending invitations, agendas, and directions. And email’s great after events for sending followup surveys, links to presentations, or incriminating photos from the happy hour. But during an event, email is practically useless. For example, if you’re hosting an event and you just learned that your speaker is stuck in traffic, or that the caterer is a no-show, you can’t send an urgent email to your attendees and expect that they’ll be checking their inboxes. Email’s fast, but it’s just not NOW. That’s why we created Gather. It’s “MailChimp for SMS.”

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We’ve never allowed people to sign up for MailChimp accounts using an email address with @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, etc.

Those webmail accounts are too anonymous, too “disposable”  and too easy for evil spammers to create (check out how they use cheap labor just to beat captchas). So we always required that you use your “company” domain name. To be honest, we’ve always hated that requirement, because no matter how logical our reasoning was, people complained.

So we’re experimenting with something.

We just added SMS verification to our free trial form. If you signup there with an email address from one of the most popular webmail clients, you’ll be asked to enter your cell phone number & carrier.

We’ll send a code to your mobile device, and if you can verify it, we’ll know you’re a human (plus, we’ll have a “paper trail” for your account).