In late “breaking” news on this Friday night, it seems that MailChimp, a email service provider for newsletters has made changes that includes banning a great deal of marketers from using their service. According to insiders, this was done because MailChimp was facing significant problems with their deliverability caused by a few less-than-ethical marketers. Since it was late evening, no one picked up their phones to address our questions, but their website made it clear that they were banning a whole host of marketing programs, including all “Affiliate Marketers.”
I’m not sure exactly what they think “Affiliate Marketers” are specifically, because most of the email marketing industry is a type of “Affiliate” or “Performance Marketing” of sorts, where people are paid some type of bounty from an “Affiliate” relationship with an advertiser. Well, either way, even if you aren’t an affiliate marketer, pretty much every other type of product is now banned from MailChimp.
Here is their own new terms:
Also, there are some industries that send certain types of content that result in higher than normal bounce rates and abuse complaints, which in turn jeopardize the deliverability of our entire system. No offense intended, but because we must ensure the highest delivery rates possible for all our customers, we do not allow businesses that offer these types of services, products, or content:
- Illegal goods or services
- Escort and dating services
- Pharmaceutical products
- Work from home, Internet Lead-gen, Make money on online opportunities, etc.
- Online trading, day trading tips, or stock market related content
- Gambling services, products or gambling education
- Multi-level marketing
- Affiliate marketers
- Credit repair, get-out-of-debt content
- Mortgages and/or Loans
- Nutritional Supplements, Herbal Supplements or Vitamin Supplements
- Pornography or nudity in content
- Adult novelty items or references in content
- List brokers or List rental services
- Marketing or sending commercial email without proper permission
If you are using MailChimp, I would recommend anyway either iContact or aWeber. They both have excellent rates and little deliverability problems.
