People often find one tools that accommodates to some of their needs and stick to it no matter what. This is exactly the case that we’re presenting here, is not a rant about MailChimp or its service. Think of this case like finding the right tool for the right job and the right reasons.
Sure, once you have a hammer in your hand everything might look like a nail. This basically means that once you find something that works, you’re much more inclined to try and see if it works for most, if not all, your issues.
MailChimp is a well respected and recommended service that can handle the delivery of your email campaigns. Ignoring the Omnivore problem, it’s a great platform to use. This is why you should use it for your newsletters and other email campaigns. But using it for email outreach campaigns such as sending cold mails, not so much. Here we will tell you exactly why.
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MailChimp describes itself as a “strict permission-based newsletter delivery service”. As we mentioned great for sending newsletters and other authorized emails. By using it to do email outreach you are against what they say they are, permission-based. In fact, this is so much so, that sending cold emails to potential leads, using their platform, is explicitly forbidden in their terms of service.
By looking a bit deeper into the way that MailChimp handles and delivers emails we can tell you that they do this from their own servers. Which means that they’re basically sticking out their necks for their customers. Hence the explicit prohibition of sending cold emails using their platform.
As you might be well aware of, outreach email campaigns have the highest complaint rate, and by far. This is due to the potential spam behavior of the emails sent in these campaigns. Remember that cold emails and outreach email campaigns basically behave like door to door sales. If someone is not interested, they might report your outreach emails as spam, not open the or send them to the trash bin. Regardless of the case, each will lead to a lower deliverability.
Now think of MailChimp, they make a living based on delivering emails. If their deliverability rate lowers from a certain point then is likely their business will be affected in a negative way.
The way they manage the high volume messaging, is by grouping a lot of their users on the same server. This is to say that a server will send emails from different customers, which is good and bad at the same time.
This is very good for their work flow, internal administration and operational costs. However, not very good for their customers is they can’t maintain a good delivery rate in each server.
Remember that your deliverability rate is the probability of your emails getting to the intended recipient’s inbox. This is greatly affected by your reputation as a crucial factor. Every email at every moment is inspected by the ISP and different spam filters in emailing platforms to make sure to accurately rate everyone’s reputation.
Now think of the process of MailChimp, if one person uses their service to do email outreach and about 20% of the emails are reported as spam. This will have a drastic impact on the server reputation and thus its deliverability. Affecting not only that person’s campaign but the campaigns of all others that share that server. This might lead perfectly good newsletters and emails to land in the spam folder instead of the main inbox.
This is basically the bad news. If someone screws up using MailChimp, the company and other customers will also suffer. This is the main reason as to why using MailChimp to handle your outreach campaigns is a bad idea. As such, MailChimp has a relentless fight to keep their reputation on good standards.
While cold email is a preferred way to do outreach by entrepreneurs and startup founders, it’s not something to apply here. Cold emails generate simple and cheap traction, leads and offer a way to create brand awareness, but it can also lead to problems if used in the wrong places.
The basics principles of cold mailing must be present in order to understand why using cold emails in MailChimp is a bad idea. First of all, it’s not about gathering a lot of emails addresses and then sending emails to generate leads. No, is about connecting with potential customers and offering your services in the best possible way. It is something to consider carefully and do your research about.
By hoarding lots of email addresses you’re just creating more work for yourself and your team. Sending outreach emails without a second though is the main reason some, if not most, of those emails will end up in the spam folder. Now imagine lots of people doing just that on a shared server, disastrous.
The main reason MailChimp has to forbid cold emails is to protect its business and other customers. Whenever you’re using MailChimp to send emails you should always make sure to follow their terms of service and to have a verified and valid email list. On this last point we can tell you that the best service to verify your email list is available here. VerifyBee offers a 99% accuracy for their email list verification, it checks the spelling of every address and guards you form spam traps and know spammers.
What most people do, in the email marketing sector, is to try and send emails to every recipient in their list all at once. This is known as email blast and is not such a good idea since it also lowers their email deliverability.
Something to keep ever-present in today’s email outreach world, is that patience is well rewarded. A much better idea than to do email blasting is to send emails one after another. This way you can protect your deliverability rate and the emails will be sent throughout few hours. This also lessens the stress placed on the server and makes it just a bit more efficient.
Without a doubt there are a lot of good services available to be used for email outreach. But the best way to do it is still to understand it yourself. This only builds experience for you in the end, not to mention knowledge.
The very first step to take when doing an email outreach campaign, is to create a list of email addresses. This list should be verified and valid of course, this will allow us to lower the risk of hard bounces and other issues. The second part is spreading out the sending of your emails.
Let’s say that as an example you’re sending a cold email to 200 people in the same time zone in the U.S. You would have to send the email and maybe even two follow-up emails, and you want your prospects to get them at the best time, let’s say their work hours.
What you shouldn’t do is try to send every email at the same time. Instead spread out the time between the sending of each email so that every recipient receives their email between, let’s say, 12 pm and 14 pm. This will do wonders for your deliverability and will be better for your campaign.
Remember that when implementing a cold email campaign, you are using your own server. This is why you should take every measure to preserve a good email deliverability rate.
Don’t forget that outreach is of major importance to your business. Cold emails and outreach campaigns should be conducted using the proper platform for them. Knowing why you shouldn’t use MailChimp’s platform to send cold emails is very important. But even better is to know how to handle your outreach campaigns and how to protect your server reputation.
Most people fail to understand why using the right tool and service for a job is important. Hopefully the lesson here is not lost in anyone. The internet is a community after all, as such MailChimp and other companies have every right and reason to protect their deliverability rate and server reputation.
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