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I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown

guzey.com

21–30 of 44 posts

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

#21

substack sends too many emails. i had to unsub from a blog for that reason.

It does, but there are settings to turn some email notifications off (such as for comments). You can also use the RSS feed instead.

wait, is Substack sending notifications for comments by default now? That's wild....

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

#22
post #20

I switched the other way - Buttondown to Substack. I did this in theory for growth, because I thought Substack may provide some better discoverability. It did not and I regret the move!

You didn't move to substack you mean? And how do you know if it was regretful?

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

#23
Mail from Mailchimp is typically indistinguishable from a phishing attempt.

A company so clueless about internet security as to send out in bulk what are indistinguishable from phishing attempts clearly cannot be trusted to help manage your login/signup process.

And, any company seen to trust an outsourcer as clueless as Mailchimp cannot be trusted with your personal information, never mind your banking or stock transactions.

For particular example, Carta, a stock certificate management site, uses such an e-mail outsourcer.

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

#24
post #22
post #20

I switched the other way - Buttondown to Substack. I did this in theory for growth, because I thought Substack may provide some better discoverability. It did not and I regret the move!

You didn't move to substack you mean? And how do you know if it was regretful?

I think they moved to substack but did not receive the promised growth/discoverability, thus they regret the move.

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

#25
> 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)

I wonder if these results can be replicated. Is there a detailed description of the process? I'm now especially interested in seeing the emails that were delivered to the users.

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

#27
post #23

Mail from Mailchimp is typically indistinguishable from a phishing attempt. A company so clueless about internet security as to send out in bulk what are indistinguishable from phishing attempts clearly cannot be trusted to help manage your login/signup process. And, any company seen to trust an outsourcer as clueless as Mailchimp cannot be trusted with your personal information, never mind your banking or stock tran…

It figures.

The Surprising Science of Alpha Male Chimps, TED Talk by Frans de Waal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPsSKKL8N0s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

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

#28
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/

Thanks I'll check it out! What doesn't sit well with me is that someone can send weekly emails to 2k subscribers for free, but if I want to be respectful of people and not spam them all the time, I end up paying much more to send way fewer emails.

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

#29
Is this the tech influencers' version of "I switched my frontend from React to Vue"?

Also, the author has even written an article titled "Don't Believe Self-Reported Data"[0]. In light of some of the other comments about the data not quite stacking up, perhaps he should take his own advice.

[0]: https://guzey.com/statistics/dont-believe-self-reported-data...

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

#30
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…

> sending low-open-rate

This is a great theory. I'm subscribed to a bunch of Substacks, and most send fewer but longer posts which I always open and read. While others treat their Substack like a Twitter feed and send out lots of short posts a day which I hardly ever open.

Alex Berenson has already sent me 3 mails today, and the day isn't over yet...but there are other lesser known people who send far more. And some of those others are crypto/forex/finance writers who by the nature of their content, spam filters may view more suspiciously.

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