Mailchimp is supposed to be an easy-to-use cloud-based email marketing system. The reality is, once you’re up and running for a few weeks and have a few thousand customers, if a very small percentage of customers click on their “unsubscribe” link (sent out on the bottom of every email you send out with them), MailChimp will “restrict” your account and ask for detailed information about your business, which, to be honest, is none of their business.
How many “unsubscribe” clicks are we talking here?
A new online business I created for one of my premium domain names a few weeks ago had 1068 new “subscribed” contacts. One hundred percent of these subscribers for my product has “opted-in” and ticked a box to say they’d like to hear from my business again.
In the past week, only 4 people unsubscribed.
As you can see, that’s a very very small percentage of people who unsubscribed.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere and with no pre-warning, MailChimp sent me two emails within a few minutes of each other.
The first email read;
Your campaign sent from the account with the username XXXXXXX generated a high unsubscribe rate. If you’d like to consult with a Deliverability Advisor for tailored advice about how to improve your audience collection or sending practices, reply to this email and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
The second email read;
Mailchimp is not able to serve as the email provider for your account with the username XXXXXXX, because the content associated with your industry conflicts with our Acceptable Use Policy or presents a significant risk to our deliverability.
As you can imagine, this is not only annoying, but a complete waste of your time.
On reaching out to MailChimp Support, it took many hours for them to get back to me.
I explained I only had FOUR customers who had “unsubscribed” for that whole week.
Dominic (MailChimp) said their was another formula MailChimp use that brought my unsubscribe rate higher than it looked on my MailChimp console panel and my “unsubscribe rate” was now “higher than the industry standard for the allowable unsubscribe rate”…
Come again?!
Dominic then demanded I explain my entire business model and marketing process so he could personally decide if he would reactivate my account.
I asked him first, to reply documentation or more information from a Government body that explains this mysterious “industry threshold standard for unsubscribe rate”.
His response was;
our Acceptable Use Policy as well as our industry standard thresholds are based on the U.S. thresholds and regulations.
Which didn’t answer my question. And on top of that, is useless for Australian businesses.
Dominic (MailChimp) still gave no proof there is any “industry threshold standard for unsubscribe rate” that they follow at all.
It’s also clear that MailChimp couldn’t care less about Australian businesses or regulations in this regard.
Secondly, I briefly explained my business, but also let him know that the way I conducted my business wasn’t really any of his business, however, assured him that every single customer I acquired had ticked a box that “opted-them-in”, which follows every email spam law in the world.
Rather than have to do any more work or reply any further details to me, Dominic’s (MailChimp Support) next email to me told me to basically bugger off and he couldn’t be bothered dealing with me anymore.
I quote;
Having said that, after a further review of your content and domain, we have to ask that you seek another vendor that better suits your marketing needs. Unfortunately the risk associated with your account is too great for us to continue to support.
Crazy.
It’s very clear MailChimp have lost their way and no longer care about legitimate customers using their service.
For the record, I was a paying customer.
Luckily for me, I’ve already found a better, more reliable email marketing company to move forward with.
I just feel sorry for anyone who wastes their time signing up to this horrible company and then finds this blog too late đ
Here’s some other links that give you better email marketing options than MailChimp; (MailChimp versus vs);
- MailChimp Bad Reviews
- Mail Chimp Lack Of Support – “MailChimp doesnât offer any support other than their endless user documentation. You can email their support if you donât find what youâre looking for, but it may take a few days or longer before youâre able to resolve your problem.”
- MailChimp Sux (Bad Sucks) – As “Yosh Yi” mentions on this website, “Yeah MailChimp sucks. Like Billy says, their criteria for abuse is prohibitively ridiculous. If you have a list of 1,000 people and 10 people mark your message as spam they will suspend your account. Also their prices are laughable — $50 a month will get you 2,500 – 5,000 emails on your list. For $50 a month I can put my own rack server, which is sitting in my closet, in a local data center and send out as many emails as I want.”
Seems unusually strict. Was it a very new account and never sent to the list before? I’ve had issues with brand new lists before, as in, people never contacted for years by a business but have avoided a repeat of a couple of such experience by cleaning the list first with mailgun.
Hi Jez,
Wasn’t a new account, was a few weeks old and, as mentioned, ALL the customers were ticking a box to OPT-IN over a few weeks.
We’re having a great experience with an alternative to MailChimp… I’ll report back after testing for a few weeks…
Mailchimp has been at this game for a very long time and they are taking on risk to their own deliverability if they have accounts with high unsubscribe rates. A tightest programs with have the best deliverability.
In my view you’d be better off working out why the unsubscribe rate is high rather than complaining about them. People are likely unsubscribing and entering the reason why as being because they never signed up. Are these email addresses you collected along time ago?
As mentioned, 4 people unsubscribed in a week when a few hundred opted-in. Trust me, MailChimp are not worth wasting your time. Many people across the internet say they “used to be good” but aren’t anymore. I can agree.