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I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

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Re: I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

#13
post #9

I don't know. If the experiments were perfectly random, the Buttondown-Substack difference is a 3-sigma effect, so the difference is unlikely to be random chance. But why? What's so special about one vs the other?

so my instinct for a while has been that Substack have been damaging their sender reputation by offering unlimited free sending to unlimited recipients, with the upshot that they attract a lot of people sending low-open-rate, marked-as-spam or marked-as-promotional emails. (They also, to my knowledge, won't let senders use their own email addresses, all emails are sent from Substack). I realise it's much more complic…

Good theory. Even my Substack subscriptions land in Promotions on GMail.

Re: I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

#14
post #3

This is a very strange comment from the article: >37% of openers clicked a link (I think this is because Mailchimp’s links are black rather than blue and it’s easy to miss them) IMO, if they aren't doing anything to customize the appearance of their emails then this experiment isn't worth much. It also makes it sound like the emails weren't completely identical, which makes click rate comparisons invalid. Some of the…

It's reasonable to go about an experiment that includes within its experimental parameters the mailers' default appearances, since part of the reason folks use these services is to have that all done up without too much manual intervention.

Re: I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

#15
post #14
post #3

This is a very strange comment from the article: >37% of openers clicked a link (I think this is because Mailchimp’s links are black rather than blue and it’s easy to miss them) IMO, if they aren't doing anything to customize the appearance of their emails then this experiment isn't worth much. It also makes it sound like the emails weren't completely identical, which makes click rate comparisons invalid. Some of the…

It's reasonable to go about an experiment that includes within its experimental parameters the mailers' default appearances, since part of the reason folks use these services is to have that all done up without too much manual intervention.

I guess, but at least with Mailchimp, there are a large number of "default appearances," which one did they choose? I would have appreciated screenshots of each email to see what was being compared to what.

Re: I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

#16
post #10

I’ve never thought of using substack as a way to manage my startup’s email list, but seeing this comparison made me consider it. I don’t like mailchimp and find the pricing to be atrocious for my purposes (emailing 5k people once or twice a year). How odd would it be to get an update from a company via a substack email? Does anyone else do this?

> I don’t like mailchimp and find the pricing to be atrocious for my purposes (emailing 5k people once or twice a year). Have you looked at MailerLite[1]? [1] https://www.mailerlite.com/

This looks like it's slightly cheaper than MailChimp for transactional emails, at least for the 'starter' level subscription.

Re: I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

#19
post #10

I’ve never thought of using substack as a way to manage my startup’s email list, but seeing this comparison made me consider it. I don’t like mailchimp and find the pricing to be atrocious for my purposes (emailing 5k people once or twice a year). How odd would it be to get an update from a company via a substack email? Does anyone else do this?

> I don’t like mailchimp and find the pricing to be atrocious for my purposes (emailing 5k people once or twice a year). Have you looked at MailerLite[1]? [1] https://www.mailerlite.com/

Email Octopus[1] are great, and 50% cheaper again than MailerLite

for 5k-10k people, on monthly plan:

Mailchimp: $80

MailerLite: $50

EmailOctopus: $24

[1] https://emailoctopus.com

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