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by darrenjsmith 4262 days ago
----- Draft Email I am Crafting in Reply -----

Hey MailChimper's!

Thanks for the clear communication in the MailChimp Compliance email I have received. The ability to send email from my account has been blocked. I regretfully understand as to why my account has been blocked thus far. Having said that, I have a few questions.

Pillow Talk provide a weekly collection of links from across the web to educate couples on how to have a better sex life. The majority of links I include are from legitimate blogs, Reddit, YouTube, IMDB and Amazon.

We’re not a scammers or spammers and every recipient has has to double opt in to receiving this email. I appreciate that your abuse prevention system Omnivore, has highlighted ‘content, keywords or activity’ that 'indicate the possibility of harmful information being sent through your service’ and I’d love to understand exactly what we’re doing that is inappropriate?

I was attempting to send issue 8 of Pillow Talk last Friday 17th October. I have used Mail Chimp for 7 weeks without any problems. Why now? What exactly has caused Omnivore to highlight us?

Our email is clearly about sex, but we’re not sending thousands of emails selling viagra pills or pornography! I understand why your ToS has been written the way it is, but I can’t imagine it's for small educational mailing lists like ours. I feel we have been bucketed with all the ‘bad guys’, but clearly we’re trying to educate, not spam!

In the last issue, I did include a link to a porn site— for an educational how-to video. I’m very happy not linking to porn sites if this is the issue? Please could you confirm?

It’s a really unfortunate kick in the teeth. I’m at the beginning of building a sexual education platform for the 21st century and already hitting institutional roadblocks and rules which are there to stop the scammers and spammers, not legitimate businesses trying to educate couples!

I please, please, kindly ask you to review your decision. I know you don’t have to at all! But, for everyone suffering from boring sex in the long term relationships, or for all the sexless marriages out there, this is a huge problem for millions. We need to get better at talking and learning about sex and at the moment the scammers, spammers and porn industry are winning because they’re making it difficult for anyone legitimate to make things better! Can you be part of helping stop that, please?

1 comments

My rewrite (focused more on emphasizing your legitimacy and less on emoting about MailChimp's policies):

----

Hiya MailChimpers,

Pillow Talk, a curated newsletter to assist couples with romantic and sexual aspects of their relationships, was recently blocked. I would like to request that you reconsider.

I'm aware that adult-oriented businesses are historically considered high-risk in email sending. Pillow Talk is not an adult-oriented business. We're an educational resource which happens to discuss human sexuality. Our content is not explicit and largely consists of links to reputable websites, such as IMDB, Amazon, and [a blog maintained by a Harvard PhD in human sexuality would be a really good thing to mention right now]. We do not include or link to obscene materials -- the raciest it gets would still pass muster at a Borders in Kansas. [Patrick notes: If not true, apologize and fix.]

Previously, we have from time-to-time included affiliate links to marital aids. On re-reading your TOS, I found that this was disallowed, so we will stop doing so immediately.

I understand that MailChimp cannot afford to have elevated complaint rates from flight-by-night operators in seedy sectors. We run a tight ship here, with all emails collected in a proper double opt-in fashion. As you can verify in our account, our complaint rate is [1 / 40,000 emails or whatever], which is well-within industry norms.

Given that we're an upstanding educational publication and that MailChimp is the best choice for permission-based email marketing, we're hoping to continue using your service. If possible, please reconsider the suspension of our account.

If you have any questions, I can be reached at 555 555-5555 or via email.

Regards,

$YOU

Patio, that reply is immense. Thank you for taking the time.

I will make a couple additions and send it off to them tomorrow! Will let you know how it goes :)

Cheers

They still haven't replied to me. Ah well. I'm using GetResponse for now :)