MailChimp has Shot Itself in the Foot
Let me explain. MailChimp has been the entry level newsletter service for hundreds, if not thousands of authors over the years. I have helped many set up their first account and connect it to their website. In fact, I am connected in some fashion to about 75 different MailChimp accounts.
[image error]
For years I’ve fashioned newsletters in addition to the initial set up of the account. I spend quite a bit of time each week in and out of various MailChimp accounts, setting up newsletters, adding subscribers, etc. I even use MailChimp for my volunteer activities.
Several years ago, in response to so many concerns, I put together a book on newsletters and mailing lists and one whole section was devoted to MailChimp. The material in the book covered all aspects of the subject – meant to be a “soup to nuts” kind of book addressing not just how to use MailChimp, but all the pieces of the puzzle called “newsletters.”
[image error]
In the first 8 months the book was for sale on Amazon and other retailers, MailChimp put through significant changes to their platform 7 times – resulting in me re-writing the section on MailChimp 7 times and re-editing and re-uploading to the retailers.
When they changed the platform for the 8th time, I threw in the towel and created a video course and directed people to that – thinking the videos would be easier to change than the text in the book. And it was – it has been changed quite a few times since it was put live to match the incessant changes on MailChimp.
When the last run of changes started at MailChimp, my eyes started crossing – even I struggled to make sense of what they were doing! I mean, why would someone want to be constantly reminded of how many people have unsubscribed – but that was part of what they seemed to be doing with this “audience” crap.
At my most recent local author workshop, I found my self talking with an author about how complicated MailChimp had become. I assured her that I would be updating my video soon and have been trying to carve out time to do that in my overly busy work week.
Last week we all received a note from MailChimp announcing significant changes – effective immediately! What I took from the note was that we would be charged for everyone in our “audience” total. No worries, I thought – just delete the unsubscribes and they won’t be charged for.
Then I read David Gaughran’s post .
If you haven’t, I strongly encourage you to do so. One of the key takeaways from this post is that I hadn’t figured GDPR rules into my potential actions on behalf of all my authors. It had never occurred to me that GDPR rules would potentially require information from folks who unsubscribe to stay with the account.
Crap.
Back to the drawing board.
There are other choices in the Newsletter world than MailChimp. Many just dipping their toes into the newsletter/mailing list world appreciate starting with a service which is free to start. MailChimp seemed to fill this service perfectly with a service that would grow as needed.
I no longer recommend MailChimp to my authors and I’m actively working to move them all away to a different service. I’m sure it will consume my work week for some time to come.
As David has pointed out in his article, even if we make some changes to fit in with the new rules on MailChimp, they can’t be trusted to not change the rules again.
So…where am I sending folks? I have quite a few authors on Mailerlite. They have a relatively straight forward platform and I created a course to help navigating it earlier this year. They seem to be interested in working with small fish! They also don’t seem to be changing their platform – resulting in the constant confusion we saw at MailChimp.
I also actively use CampaignMonitor and ConvertKit. Both are reasonable alternatives for those of you interested in moving.
I’m heading back to the drawing board with my newsletter book – re-writing that chapter once again to remove all traces of MailChimp. I’ll also be pulling them off my resources page.
Thanks for listening to my mini-rant! Reach out if you have questions or concerns about MailChimp or any other newsletter service.
Please feel free to use the little share buttons below to share this information with anyone who might be interested – the same with David’s blog post. Knowledge is power and all that…
The post MailChimp has Shot Itself in the Foot appeared first on Bakerview Consulting.
