Email marketing and spamming are not the same thing. The difference is, if I signed up for it, it's not spam. If I didn't sign up for it, it is spam.
Unless you're trying to claim that the very concept of sending solicited marketing messages via email is inherently bad (which seems a ludicrous position to take), then calling MailChimp a spamming service seems like libel.
The problem is that 99.9% of people DIDN'T sign up even remotely voluntarily.
Most people provide an email address only because they get extorted if they don't, and the company they are providing it to makes it egregiously hard to find the "No, don't spam me you assholes" choice.
I know since I run my own email server. I can give out a unique address to every single company that demands it, and I am actively aggressive about the "No don't bug me" button.
I have 432 pieces of junk scattered across 22 unique email addresses that have been sold. THAT'S JUST TODAY
If Mailchimp wants to convince people that it's not just enabling a bunch of spammers, it's really easy--simply put an X-Mailchimp: line in every email. If that doesn't turn into an anti-spam keyword, they're not spammers.
Oh, whoops, we already did this experiment. They actually had to remove MailChimp identification from email blasts for exactly that reason.
You seem to be deliberately blaming MailChimp for something that is completely not their fault. I can't imagine how any marketing email vendor would possibly be able to distinguish between a legitimate email list (of people who signed up for it) and a list of people who didn't, given that the list is (presumably) provided by the company that wants to send the marketing email.
If you get spam that's sent via MailChimp, that's not MailChimp's fault, that's the spammer's fault. If a spammer sent you unsolicited email using their computer's built-in mail client, would you blame that mail client for the spam? No, you'd blame the spammer. So I don't get why you're trying to pin the blame here on MailChimp.
As for the X-Mailchimp suggestion, your assertion here is laughable. Of course they don't want to identify messages sent by them! Even though spamming is not their fault, they still recognize that a certain percentage of emails they sent are actually spam (they just have no way to identify that percentage ahead of time). And if they are sending enough spam, then any common identification for their emails is going to end up getting flagged as a spam indicator, which will cause all of their email to get filtered as spam (even though a lot of it isn't spam). And since their business is sending email, having all their email filtered as spam is obviously not compatible with their business.
Given all that, not identifying their emails as being sent by them is not some sign that they're doing something nefarious, it's simply common sense.
> And if they are sending enough spam, then any common identification for their emails is going to end up getting flagged as a spam indicator, which will cause all of their email to get filtered as spam (even though a lot of it isn't spam).
Postfix clearly identifies itself in email headers. Thunderbird clearly identifies itself in email headers. The ratio of non-spam to spam is high enough that the Bayesian filters don't train to recognize those as a spam keyword.
If MailChimp were a legitimate tool, it would fare the same. The fact that MailChimp doesn't meet that ratio means that too many people mark what is sent using it as spam.
Postfix isn't a marketing email tool. It's a general-purpose MTA. Thunderbird isn't a marketing email tool. It's a desktop email client. These are not at all analogous.
And you're continuing to ignore the distinction between a tool that is commonly used to send spam even though that's not its purpose, and a tool whose purpose is to send spam. MailChimp is the former, but you're treating it like the latter.
> As for the X-Mailchimp suggestion, your assertion here is laughable. Of course they don't want to identify messages sent by them! ... obviously not compatible with their business.
MailChimp does identify every message sent by them, and they do it with X-MailChimp type headers. http://i.imgur.com/a9bzEtG.png
Try to be more civil when disagreeing with someone. What's worse than being wrong? Being super arrogant and insulting while wrong. That was unnecessary.
When I went to look for MailChimp emails, I found that I didn't have any. Apparently, MailChimp's servers are actually blacklisted on my server. And apparently it was done by hand by me about 4 years ago (yay for revision control on config files--boo for terse log comments).
Something major happened about 4 years ago with MailChimp for me to actually construct a permanent blacklist entry by hand rather than let the keywords filter, but I guess I don't remember properly what the issue was anymore.
I trusted bsder's claim that they aren't identifying themselves, and made assumptions that it was because it was too high of a spam indicator. If they are identifying themselves, then apparently it's not high enough of a spam indicator, which just means that MailChimp doesn't send as much spam as people are assuming.
> What's worse than being wrong? Being super arrogant and insulting while wrong. That was unnecessary
No, what's unnecessary was that. You're being deliberately offensive here. I took bsder's claim in good faith, and you're calling me "super arrogant and insulting" for doing that. That was completely uncalled-for.
The issue with your comment isn't the subject matter of the discussion, or the correctness of your statements, it's the way you spoke to bsder. I respectfully disagree that my comment was uncalled for.
> your assertion here is laughable
This is an insult. That's what laughable means: his claim is so ludicrous that you could laugh about it. If you don't intend to insult someone who's not on stage delivering a comedy routine, then you shouldn't call their ideas laughable.
> Of course they don't
You purposely emphasized words in a way that, if emphasized by tone in speech, would come across as very condescending.
> obviously not compatible
Telling someone that it's "obvious" what they claimed is incorrect is arrogant. If it was obvious to them, they wouldn't have said it.
I really don't get what you're trying to accomplish here, besides being repeatedly insulting. This is not productive, this is not appropriate, and nobody asked you to do it. You know what's arrogant and condescending? You, right now, with your comments. Please stop.
You can black-list their IP's! Just make sure you do it via your smtp so that false-positive's at least know that their e-mails are not getting trhough.
Oh, I already did some of that. I've already killed about a dozen email addresses permanently, and anything sent to those triggers a black-list of the IP for an exponentially increasing amount of time.
I worked on a large UK domain sellers mail platform for a couple of years and I'd definitely consider pretty much all marketing mail as spam. The landscape has been so destroyed by tricks that it's near impossible to tell if anyone actually wanted your mail.
Examples:-
a) Opt-in unchecked. These guys are "doing it right" except they usually have this box right next to a probably completely unnecessary TOS box that's also unchecked. Anyone who isn't paying attention will just check all the boxes to get to the next stage.
b) Opt-in checked by default. Fuckers.
c) Opt-out checked by default. Praying on folks that uncheck anything with "opt" into it.
d) Opt-out unchecked by default. Praying on folks not paying attention.
Basically the only way you're not a spammer is probably if signing up for mail is seperate from the sign up process. The problem is, I think this is a proven way to generate more revenue so companies are not going to stop fiddling with it.
Here are the CAN SPAM rules...
. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:
Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information – including the originating domain name and email address – must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.
Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.
Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.
Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law. Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.
They can't. By definition they are email marketing aka spamming.