MailChimp

MailChimp Abuse Desk

MailChimp is an email marketing service (created by The Rocket Science Group) that's been around since 2001. With thousands of users sending campaigns to tens of millions of recipients, we're bound to get abuse reports every now and then. It happens to the best of us. They're rare, but we take every abuse report we receive drop-dead seriously.

Here are the measures we take to prevent or combat abuse of MailChimp:

1. Most importantly, human reviewers at MailChimp must approve all new accounts before they're allowed to purchase credits from MailChimp and send campaigns. Our staff uses 26 different criteria to evaluate trial accounts, ranging from the obvious WHOIS and IP information, to some not-so-obvious behavioral patterns.
2. No anonymity. We do not allow users to sign up for MailChimp using anonymous or personal email addresses from free email services (such as @Yahoo, @hotmail, etc).
3. We require all users to agree to our Terms of Use before they can setup an account at MailChimp, and again before they can import any existing customer lists into their accounts.
4. For customers who are "starting from scratch" with MailChimp (and have no lists of customers to import), we give them free signup forms to place on their website. The signup forms only use the double opt-in (aka "confirmed opt-in") method. This method keeps prank signups out, and also stores opt-in proof for every subscriber (IP Address, Date/timestamps, etc)
5. For each and every list customers setup in MailChimp, they must submit their physical mailing address, plus a Permission Reminder ("you are receiving this email because you subscribed at..."). That information is inserted into their campaigns for them.
6. We automatically insert a one-click unsubscribe link in every campaign sent from our system.
7. All lists managed on MailChimp are automatically cleaned of soft bounces (on the 5th campaign attempt) and hard/undeliverable bounces are cleaned instantly.

Customer Education:

1. We keep our users updated with the latest email marketing best practices, tips, etiquette, and do's and don'ts with our MailChimp Blog and customer newsletters.
2. We post easy-to-understand articles & guides for all our users to read.
3. Throughout the MailChimp user interface (when sending campaigns, setting up lists, and designing templates), we provide customers with constant, helpful links and background information that help them understand etiquette and spam laws.

Dealing With Issues:

1. We embed every single email campaign sent from our servers with a Campaign ID so that recipients can easily report abuse to MailChimp. When we receive complaints via our abuse form, they are immediately investigated. If the campaign or user account appears suspicious in any way, the account is suspended during the investigation.
2. We're registered with major ISPs and anti-spam authorities to receive automated feedback loop alerts when any of our users' recipients report abuse. When we're able to parse those alerts, we remove the recipient from our user's list. If the reports exceed a certain threshold, we send a warning to our user. If the warnings exceed a reasonable threshold, we suspend the user's account and investigate. Most ESPs and ISPs will tell you a reasonable threshold for abuse complaints is 0.1% (1 out of a thousand people reported your campaign as junk). Because of the sheer volume of emails sent from our IPs, and because most of our IPs are shared across multiple users, our threshold is actually much more strict.