Comments on: What makes a good permission reminder?

By: kahlil almustafa

kahlil almustafa — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:18:09 +0000

As a future email marketing genius, I greatly appreciated this email.

By: Juliana

Juliana — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:39:30 +0000

Hey @Sona,

We don’t allow any 3rd party, purchased, or rented lists into our system at all. In our opinion, whoever originally collected the email lists should be doing the sending on your behalf, since that’s the domain/website that the recipients would recognize.

Sending to a purchased or rented lists is really difficult to do correctly, and is a pretty touchy issue. Typically, purchased lists just generate waaaaay too many spam complaints, so we can’t allow them in MailChimp.

Ben’s comment above about the permission reminder would only apply if you were sending through a system that allows purchased lists, or sending through your own server.

If you’re a brand new company and new to MailChimp,
you may want to check out some great tips on growing your list over here: http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/growing_your_permission_email_list/

By: Sona

Sona — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:48:35 +0000

Hiya. I was just reading what you’d said to Karen about marketing lists, when you said it’s “forbidden” on MailChimp, do you mean that I can’t use emails I’ve bought from a list or not?. I’m really new to this and was a bit confused because you then went on to say that you can write another permission reminder..”

We’re a new company and so don’t have any of our own subscribers, so are totally reliant on buying lists at the moment. Thanks!

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:58:01 +0000

and one more: if I don’t have one will I automatically be blocked/reported? Thanks!

By: Karen

Karen — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:52:51 +0000

For now – I just want to compose a monthly “postcard” email press releases to send out to our clients and prospects (people we have contact with and have received the email address from them). Do I need a permission reminder? I plan on creating it and sending it to myself and then on to the company executives so that they can distribute to their contacts, as appropriate. Perhaps in the future we will organize a larger email blast system but for now that is my goal.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:40:10 +0000

@Sally – When you buy a list, the source that sold it to you should do the mailings (since that’s where the recipients signed up). And they’re the only ones who’d know the appropriate permission reminder for their recipients. Otherwise, you really have no way to know how those people got signed up. Just one (of oh so many) reasons purchased lists are forbidden on MailChimp.

If the seller of the list won’t send the emails on your behalf, and you need to come up with a permission reminder for yourself, you should be honest. “We received your email address through our partnership with XYZ company.”

By: Sally

Sally — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:24:37 +0000

What is a good permission statement when I have bought in the mailing list, we are talking about the B2B marketplace rather than B2C here.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:58:19 +0000

Hi Mahalie,

Thanks for commenting. If you track usernames and last-login-times in your system, you can pass them over to MailChimp via the API, and incorporate them into your emails. It’s not a standard merge tag in our system, because those are not standard fields most people would use or even record.

If you do this, just make sure to *not* include the *|UPDATE_PROFILE|* tag in your email, because then your recipients will be able to go to their profile page, and modify those usernames and last login times.

This is something we’ll be addressing in MailChimp v4 this January/February. You’ll have “hidden fields” in your MailChimp database.

By: mahalie

mahalie — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:58:31 +0000

Thanks for the thorough overview! It would be helpful if you offered MailChimp’s template tags to include the username and time as you mentioned in your ideal example though

By: What you say…what you communicate | The Marketr

What you say…what you communicate | The Marketr — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 13:25:19 +0000

[...] If you are getting reported as spam even though you send permission-based email, then a permission reminder is one option. (See also MailChimp’s recent post.) [...]