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Comment by gallerytungsten | Hacker News Reader

You know what word doesn't appear in that story?

Spam.

Mailchimp is a company that provides lots of unsolicited commercial emails. In other words, spam. You can dress it up and call it "marketing software for small businesses" but that doesn't change the essential fact: Mailchamp is a spammer. Is it any surprise that spamming is profitable?

I've received hundreds of Mailchimp emails. Not once did I sign up for any of those lists.

Does Mailchimp make it easy to unsubscribe? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that they are spammers, and that if you want to send spam with some semi-plausible deniability that you're a spammer, Mailchimp is probably a good choice.

Of course, this story, like nearly all "business news" stories, is very likely the work of a highly paid public relations agency. That is one more reason that the word "spam" does not appear in this story.

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I've got to disagree with you. I'd say MailChimp has elevated the perception of email marketing.

MailChimp has pretty strict standards when it comes to sending emails. If you send emails to a list that has a 20 percent or more bounce or unsubscribe rate, they'll freeze your account.

Other providers let you upload a CSV with emails and blast out campaign after campaign to purchased lists without repercussions.

I agree that MailChimp offers a legitimate service (sending subscriber newsletters and such) but also agree with GP that 90% of the email that I get via MailChimp I would call spam.

You know what? It's funny, because I have just realized that I do have a spam detection rule about MailChimp. Until now I have thought it was kind of software one runs to send out their spam, kid of like Perl or Python module for SMTP. I have just learned that it is a service and it allows me, spam victim, to unsubscribe. No fsckin' way I'll ever do that.

> If you send emails to a list that has a 20 percent or more bounce or unsubscribe rate, they'll freeze your account.

Without giving you a chance to do anything to correct that? What if it is a genuine case of non- spam? e.g. 100% signed up, soon after, 20% decide this list is not for them. Sometimes that might happen.

When you unsubscribe from a Mailchimp email, they ask the recipient why they are unsubscribing. If the recipient marks "I never subscribed" or "this email is spam," the threshold is probably much lower than 20 percent. The software tries to decide if your emails were malicious.

If your account is locked, then you have to call MailChimp and explain that your intentions weren't malicious and that you won't send anything else to those emails from your account.

I had a small email list that I had not sent anything in about a year and had my account locked after sending a campaign. People just forgot they were on the list, because it had been so long. Their support team unlocked it and suggested that I send an email at least every 6 months.

At least there's the possibility to get it unlocked. Clear now, thanks.

Anectdotal, but a non-profit volunteer org that I work with (http://cramba.org) had someone scrape all the contact emails from the site and sign them up for some mailings from a cycling tour company (http://kickassroadtrips.com/), sent via Mailchimp.

I directly reported this to Mailchimp itself, and based on both the response I got from Mailchimp and the angry response from the company owner I got a great feeling that Mailchimp took the abuse report quite seriously.

My experience is the exact opposite, I've received hundreds of MailChimp emails, and I HAVE signed up for every single one of them.

I have no doubt that some people do use MailChimp to send spam, but it seems to me that the majority of MC's customers are just sending to legit lists.

I don't think I've gotten any wholly unsolicited emails via Mailchimp or similar services. I still usually file them as spam because I hate that links they contain are obfuscated redirects -- for tracking purposes, but I'm much less agitated about that than the removal of link functionality -- I like seeing where I might click is likely to land me before clicking. If I happen to forget/not notice and mindlessly click on a link in an email, uBlock Origin helpfully blocks most such tracking links.

Providing tools for small-businesses ultimately means you're providing easy-access to people with few barriers

I think places like MailChimp are pretty easy to abuse for that reason. Compare that to an enterprise service provider where I need to commit to tons of upfront money in order to access the service and I need to manage my own reputation of my sending domain.

I always click "the emails are spam and should be reported" (is that Mailchimp? not sure) when given a choice. Not sure if it really does anything.

Even if you signed up for the mailing list in the first place? It's only spam if you never signed up for it in the first instance. If you sign up and then want to leave the list because the emails aren't relevant any more or too regular then that's just bad email marketing, not spam.

I have never signed up for a mailing list[1], e.g. gone to a "sign up for my newsletter" page and clicked "I would like to subscribe to your newsletter".

I've been signed up for them implicitly after making a purchase, etc., but I consider this spam and flag it as such.

[1] OSS mailing lists don't count.

Fair enough, that is spam in that case. Your initial comment didn't specify that you have never signed up for a mailing list (except for open source software, which is a mailing list) which I think puts you in the minority of people.

OSS mailing lists shouldn't be considered the same thing because I can send mail to them, and anyone else can as well. They are discussion forums carried out via email.

Mailing lists in the Mailchimp sense are just unwanted advertising in what I view as a communication medium - the equivalent of IRS scammer robocalls.

But if someone signs up for them how can they be spam?

As with OP, I generally mark as spam when someone signs me up for an email list post purchase, without asking.

Yeah, that is spam if you didn't sign up.

Interesting.

My "ive-done-nothing to-any-settings" email prevents me from spam in my IN box. So I suppose I never get any MC email.

Edit. Spam does not bother me any more. I only open email when I expect something. The only "interruptable" technology for me is a text. I have to look at it in my mind.

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