Mail Chimp, Please Keep Your Head In The Sand!

As evolved as the people at popular email service provider Mail Chimp are in certain areas of email knowledge (especially email deliverability), they still fundamentally have their heads stuck in the sand about the fundamentals of commercial email.

I came across an article on Mail Chimp’s blog by one of their weasely Dwight Shrute-ish corporate-type bloggers named Ben entitled “Can I Use A Purchased Email List?“.  It’s worth quoting the full article:

A lot of people who are checking out MailChimp will call or email us and ask, “Can I use a purchased email list with MailChimp?”

So we created this: http://caniuseapurchasedemaillist.com/

If you run an abuse desk somewhere, and you’re tired of answering that stupid question over and over, feel free to link people to it. If you’re not sure why importing a purchased email list into a 3rd party ESP is a bad thing, then promptly turn off your computer and unplug it from the wall. Thanks.

Now honestly, I’m really *not* out to evangelize anyone about the gospel of targeted mass email.  Why?  It’s far better for me to keep quiet, smile knowingly, and let people like Ben sound off about what they don’t have any actual experience in and keep policing everyone about why anything but an opt-in list is bad.

That’s just fine with me.  The more Bens there are around, the fewer competitors I’ll have.

By the way, when people ask me if I they can use a purchased list, I promptly send them to the following page: http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs28/f/2008/156/4/b/HELL_YEAH_by_Hemi_427.jpg

The “silly” question is the first intimation of some totally new development – Alfred North Whitehead

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