Is MailChimp a better email marketing tool? I don’t think so!!

By Anoop Nair on February 1, 2015 24 Comments / 3476 views

Have you ever noticed where all your email marketing campaigns land up? I did this research on quite a few of my customers and to my surprise; about 90% of them were unaware of any emails that I used to send them on a weekly basis. That’s holy ****. I spent almost 2-3 months sending out emails every week to my customers and they were not getting those emails at all??

I found that all those who didn’t receive my emails were Gmail users and they never bothered to see their Promotions tab. And all emails sent through MailChimp landed inside their promotions tab.

So, sending email campaigns through tools like MailChimp is worth? It’s really a question I want to ask my fellow Rodinhooders and I would also like to know who else faced similar issue and what you’ve tried to rectify the problem. Please share if you are aware of any other tool/ platform that can be used for effective email marketing. Currently I am getting an open rate and click rate that is way below the industry standards for all my email campaigns through Mailchimp.

P.S – Asha, I have seen that all Rodinhood weekly newsletters also get filtered into my Promotions tab. Are you also facing similar issue? Is it possible for you to share the Open rate and click rate you get for your weekly newsletter? Also, I am planning to build a tool on my own (Yes, I can code:-P) that can deliver the emails to recipient’s Primary inbox without getting filtered as a promotional email. I would like to know if others are also interested in such a tool.

Thanks!

Anoop Nair (Co-Founder | The South Indian Store, Selling South Indian Snacks online )

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Comments

Anoop Nair

24 Comments

asha chaudhry February 2, 2015, 4:59 am

anoop,

everyone faces the same issue of newsletters going to the promotions tab. gmail killed it for everyone 🙁

initially, when the promotions tab was introduced, we reminded rodinhooders to change their tab and ensure it came to their primary/social tab – whichever they preferred. (we did this via fb/twitter and on the newsletters i re-post on the site).

now for us, it isn’t such a big issue because

a) all of our old rodinhooders know – come rain, come shine there will be a newsletter out on friday. newbies don’t but get to know very fast!

b) we re-post it on the site and share over social twice a week – on friday and sunday.

c) alok shares it over his social media on friday or saturday.

d) we have a separate section on the site for NEWSLETTERS

i asked rahul varshneya this same question (as one day his newsletter landed in my promotions tab) and he had an interesting take on it:

“In my opinion, if people never check their Promotions tab and your mailer goes there, it’s effortless.

But if people do visit Promotions to check their emails regularly and see your mailer there, now 2 scenarios can happen: if they’re really interested in hearing from you, they’ll move you to their inbox. But if they quite ok about it, want to keep receiving and not unsubscribe, then you remain there even if you tell them to move to inbox.”

i think the idea of such a tool is interesting. i know how much effort i take to create the newsletter every single week and would love for more people to read it regularly (and give some feedback as well!) let’s see what others have to say 🙂
asha chaudhry February 2, 2015, 6:37 am

anoop,

once your users realise you put out a newsletter every week, you need to make them so good that they start looking for it and expecting it. i don’t subscribe to many newsletters. but the ones i read, make me read them!
Akshara Kumar February 2, 2015, 6:45 am

What perfect timing for this post to come up. My startup is a year old and since we have a good customer database now, we have started publishing news letters. Looking forward to see suggestions and comments 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal February 2, 2015, 8:36 am

I’m confused.

Mail chimp is a SUPER tool to send mails and manage lists etc etc

Mails getting filtered in Gmail is a problem that faces all ‘promotion’ senders irrespective of whether they are sent via mail chimp or not

If you don’t use plan to use Mailchimp, how do you plan to send mailers?

I think MC has probably the best UX of a SAAS tool I have ever seen!
Sweta Samota February 2, 2015, 10:00 am

We also use MailChimp for newsletters at schoolcircuit.in . Its a great tool! As Asha said, make your newsletters so good, that your subscribers should look for them on a regular basis!
Rahul Varshneya February 2, 2015, 10:27 am

The problem isn’t with MailChimp. As Alok mentioned, it’s one of the best tool for email marketing. We’ve been using it for years and haven’t found a better alternative.

We loved it so much that we built a product on top of it: https://mailcaddy.co.

The problem lies elsewhere. The quality of the newsletter/content is one. But most importantly, have these subscribers actively opted in or did you just put them in a list and start shooting off? Because if they’ve opted in, they would have searched for your newsletter across mailboxes.

And if you’re newsletters are not for engagement, rather for intimation of offers, promotions, new items added, etc, consider SMS. SMS is the best marketing tool with even better open rates.

Hope this helps.
Amit Shroff February 2, 2015, 1:30 pm

Anoop,

Have you used any other service provided. I have taken a demo of Netcore, India’s leading email marketing company, but If I have rate it with mailchimp, I would rate it 1:100.

Why 1:100, reason mailchimp’s platform is superb and very user friendly, the features are incredible and awesome. Take about their UX, Template Creator, Reports, etc. I simply love them and some of my client too love them.

No service provider can promise that your email would be delivered to users primary mail box, it is only possible when user add your marketing email address to their address book, or create a filter on gmail.

But if you are using pop3 then all these emails gets downloaded to your mailbox. I personally feel email newsletter are highly ignored by user since we get 1000 of promotions email which we are not interested, hence even a relevant promotional email might get missed.

You are using the best newsletter client and nothing could be better then this. If you plan to build a similar platform you would need time and money.

Regards,
Amit
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 2:56 am

Yes Asha, the try is always to maintain a good quality of newsletter and promotional content. But, even if the customers are willing to read such content, it is almost impossible to make everyone check their promotions tab to search and find the newsletter I sent them. I have also noticed that it becomes worse when we talk about Gmail on Android. It just displays an aggregated number of emails for the Promotions tab and most people including me just swipe it off to archive the content.

It would really help if there was a tool that could be used in addition to MailChimp. My idea is to curate the content using MailChimp’s state of the art UI and UX and use the content into the tool and send out email to the list of customers that would land up in to their Primary inbox.
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 2:58 am

Hi Akshara

Keep following the answers here. You would definitely find something valuable. That’s the nature of a post on TRHS.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 3:09 am

Hi Alok

First of all thank you for taking time and reading my post here. Now regarding MailChimp, I agree it is the best tool available for sending promotional emails. The only thing that made me feel it is not that efficient is that all the mails sent through MailChimp is filtered as Promotional email by Gmail. What I feel is, Gmail already has a list of tools / websites including MailChimp that sends out promotional emails. So, whenever it receives something from that list, it filters those mails and sends them to the Promotions tab.

It would really help if there was a tool that could be used in addition to MailChimp. My idea is to curate the content using MailChimp’s state of the art UI and UX and use the content into the new tool and send out email to the list of customers that would land up in to their Primary inbox. The tool will be able to by-pass Gmail’s filter (I have the prototype ready and it works!).

Would like to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 3:13 am

Thanks Sweta

As I mentioned above, I completely agree to the point that MC’s email and UI are the best. No doubt at all!! The issue is with their ability to bypass the Gmail filter. I have already mentioned my idea in the above replies. You can refer my response and add your’s if you want to add to it.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 3:18 am

Hi Rahul

Nice to hear from you after so long. Yes, I agree MC has the best UI and in terms of content creation and reporting, we do not have any competitor for MC. But, my idea is not to replace it with a new tool. I want to create the content using MC and send the email using another tool so that the emails can bypass the filter applied by Gmail. I know reporting will be a matter of concern in that case. But the same can also be figured out.

And thanks for the SMS idea. I will try that !
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 3:26 am

Hi Amit

I am not trying to build something similar to MailChimp. But, I want to create something that can use the content created by MailChimp and send out email to all the subscribers without getting filtered by Gmail.

Thanks!
Amit Shroff February 3, 2015, 3:32 am

Anoop, that’s little difficult since search gmail works with different logic. But you can still try and see if you can provide any solution..!!
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 4:15 am

Its not that difficult Amit. I have a prototype ready with me and I have also tested the same and it works!! I will share the live tool soon.

Thanks!
Anoop Nair February 3, 2015, 4:52 am

Also, I would like to know how Vakilsearch is doing their email marketing. I have seen that all their promotional emails are received into my primary inbox. Maybe Niraj Patadia from vakilsearch can help us out.

Thanks!
Ravi Kumar February 3, 2015, 10:14 am

Anoop,

If you can build a tool that ensures delivery to the primary inbox, you will be a very popular man! But I believe that gmail has strict filters that keep evolving and even if you have a prototype that works for now, there is no guarantee that a change in gmail’s filter algo will not affect it. In any case, like so many others have mentioned, content is king and if your newsletters are useful to the users, the open rates will surely improve over time.

cheers

Ravi
Amit Shroff February 3, 2015, 4:44 pm

Anoop, have you looked at Send Grid, its one of the premium email delivery system used by leading brands like Pinterest, Foursquare, uber etc…!!!

https://sendgrid.com/
Anoop Nair February 4, 2015, 2:32 am

Signed up at sendgrid. Account verification is pending. I will test this and will let you know if it works!
Anoop Nair February 6, 2015, 3:06 am

So, I went through the emails I received from Vakilsearch.com and found that they are using the service from Sendy. Anyone having prior experience of using Sendy? Looks like they promise to deliver all emails to the Inbox of your subscriber.
Anoop Nair February 6, 2015, 3:07 am

I built something similar to the PHP based Sendy. Now I came to know that such service already exists 🙂

Thanks!
Amit Shroff February 6, 2015, 10:53 am

Did you use it.. how is it…!!!
asha chaudhry May 7, 2015, 8:29 am

anoop – pls check this out!! might be an answer to your problemo!

https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/ever-had-a-problem-with-your-…
Anoop Nair May 8, 2015, 3:32 am

Thanks Asha

checked and looks good. 🙂