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I can no longer recommend MailChimp

grahamcluley.com

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Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#101

Post by patio11 »

derefr wrote: post #44
synicalx wrote: post #34

Honest question here, does anyone actually want to receive newsletters? I don't think I've ever set foot in the 'Promotions' tab in my Gmail account, other than to delete everything in it.

Some of my favourite "blogs" are only available in the form of e-mail newsletters. patio11's post-BingoCardCreator blog, for example, only existed as a newsletter (with non-indexed webpage alternates) for the longest time—though I see that there's now an index ( http://www.kalzumeus.com/archive/ ), complete with RSS meta-tag. In other cases, newsletters can serve as a sort of low-volume link aggregator. I'm subscribe…

My blog and newsletter are ~separate, FWIW. As far as I am aware I do not have an RSS or single page listing the newsletter archive.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#102

Post by mook »

civilian wrote: post #18
dharmon wrote: post #2

They haven't "gone bananas". Removing double opt-in means more subscribers, which means higher revenue for them. Their revenue is based on subscriber counts, no matter how they were obtained. I hope everyone else does what I do: any bulk emails I did not subscribe to get marked as spam in gmail. Even a company the size of mailchimp can't cycle and "warm" email servers fast enough if a critical mass of people are tagg…

Yup, the "Spam" button is a true signal. A company I worked for had problems with the number of times people hit 'spam' on the emails (not even a newsletter, but transactional emails), and AWS SimpleEmailService put us on probation. I got to write a worker task that would consume the queue of "someone marked you as spam" from SES and remove them from our email list.

Apologies, I'm a little confused. How would a transactional email put somebody into a mailing list so that they could be removed? Shouldn't they not be in the list in the first place?

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#103

Post by brians »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #72
caf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, though. As a user, if I start getting your mailing list emails because someone else decided to sign me up and there was no confirmation, I'm going to mark it as spam.

That should be a minimal number of cases, reduced further by having a big clear one click unsubscribe option. It always amazes me the business that make unsubscribing difficult. That is the real way to get placed in spam.

Why would that be minimal? If I’m your competitor, I’m going to sign up my colleague, and have him report you for spam. And I’m going to loop this until you lose your mailing privileges.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#104

Post by revelation »

chomp wrote: post #3
dharmon wrote: post #2

They haven't "gone bananas". Removing double opt-in means more subscribers, which means higher revenue for them. Their revenue is based on subscriber counts, no matter how they were obtained. I hope everyone else does what I do: any bulk emails I did not subscribe to get marked as spam in gmail. Even a company the size of mailchimp can't cycle and "warm" email servers fast enough if a critical mass of people are tagg…

It doesn't matter if they believe that it's higher revenue, GDPR requires consent from the data subject [1] to process personal data. An email address is personal data under GDPR. You can't guarantee consent with single opt-in. [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/

Even without GPDR single opt-in is already insufficient in e.g. Germany. If you send a newsletter to some lawyer and can't prove consent you might just get a C&D with statutory damages back.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#105

Post by inetknght »

wlesieutre wrote: post #86
Gustomaximus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be a minimal number of cases, reduced further by having a big clear one click unsubscribe option. It always amazes me the business that make unsubscribing difficult. That is the real way to get placed in spam.

I'm not clicking an unsubscribe button on something I didn't subscribe to. I have no way of knowing if it will unsubscribe me or if it will tell the sender "Hey guys! This is a real email address! Send him more spam!"

...or worse: send you to an infected URL and pwn you

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#106

Post by rconti »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #79
Nition wrote: post #32

From MailChimp's second post[1]: > More and more business owners are bringing up double opt-in. What they’ve been saying is that double opt-in is not an easy journey for their customers. Some go so far as to say that double opt-in is “broken.” I would go so far as to say if customers cannot be bothered clicking one confirmation link in an email, they didn't really care about your newsletters. [1] https://blog.mailchi…

If it isn't confirmed opt-in, it's also possible your subscribers didn't even sign themselves up. Side note: Anyone who calls it double opt-in has a whiff of 'spammer' to them even if they're not. Confirmed opt-in is a more accurate term as without that confirmation click in the initial email, there's a chance the subscriber didn't sign themself up. There are quite a few 'email bomb' services that will sign a target…

I even use the term "double opt-in" when ranting at companies that don't use it. I guess I'll switch terms to confirmed opt in, but I'd never heard of it until today, so I'd be careful with that brush.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#107

Post by alloyed »

notahacker wrote: post #62
pavlov wrote: post #12

This only affects signup forms hosted by MailChimp. If you build your own form and use their API for signups, there has never been a requirement for double opt-in. So I don't know if this is such a dramatic change -- depends on how many people use the default forms instead of an integrated signup experience.

Yeah, don't understand some of the responses which seem to assume this change will make MailChimp any more spammer-friendly. If you want to spam with MailChimp (or for that matter most other list providers) you import the long list of people you want to spam in csv form and disregard warnings about only importing emails from people if they've previously expressed interest in receiving notifications from you. Double o…

The concern here is revenge-spam: someone takes your email and submits it to every mailchimp default form they can find automatically, and then your inbox is flooded with ostensibly legitimate email that you have to manually unsubscribe from, for each individual list.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#108

Post by akcreek »

wlesieutre wrote: post #86
Gustomaximus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be a minimal number of cases, reduced further by having a big clear one click unsubscribe option. It always amazes me the business that make unsubscribing difficult. That is the real way to get placed in spam.

I'm not clicking an unsubscribe button on something I didn't subscribe to. I have no way of knowing if it will unsubscribe me or if it will tell the sender "Hey guys! This is a real email address! Send him more spam!"

Clicking unsubscribe isn't the only way to know if the email is good. If your email client loads images then it will be known if you opened the email which will also give your IP, geolocation, device type, client name, user agent, etc.

Depending on your email provider if you mark it as spam that could also be known by the sender if your provider supports the complaint feedback loop.

Here are the docs to see what info is available when sending through mailgun.

https://documentation.mailgun.com/en/latest/api-events.html#...

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#109

Post by rconti »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #72
caf wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing, though. As a user, if I start getting your mailing list emails because someone else decided to sign me up and there was no confirmation, I'm going to mark it as spam.

That should be a minimal number of cases, reduced further by having a big clear one click unsubscribe option. It always amazes me the business that make unsubscribing difficult. That is the real way to get placed in spam.

Should, but isn't. I have idiots who think they have my email address sign me up for shit constantly. Don't put the onus on me to unsubscribe from some scammy crap. I've never forgotten to opt in to something I actually wanted, so the "minimal number of cases" actually applies to double-opt-in being hard. The frequent use case is stupid or malicious people spamming me with a list owned by an irresponsible owner. Which is now turning into "every MailChimp list owner except those who actively opt out of this crappy system." Ironic.

Re: I can no longer recommend MailChimp

#110

Post by rconti »

hashmal wrote: post #91
caf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone trust the unsubscribe link in apparent spam, though?

I'm pretty sure clicking the unsubscribe button says "hey, this email address you obtained is real and active!"

That feels very "20 years ago" to me. They've got plenty of other ways. Don't get me wrong, I'm a bit careful with them but because I'm used to being signed up to lists by a handful of stupid people who don't know their email address, I can basically anticipate what regions of the world my spamlists will come from, and I generally have a good feel for what's legit or what's not. I use the unsubscribe link often for these things.
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