MailChimp's Ban on Cryptocurrency Marketing Is Causing Collateral Damage

[vit05]

https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/mailchimp-icos.html

Last week MailChimp, an email newsletter platform, decided to shut down accounts that promote cryptocurrencies and ICOs. But not completely. In response to complaints from the cryptocurrency community, MailChimp tweeted, "Cryptocurrency-related information isn't necessarily prohibited. It can be sent as long as the sender isn't involved in the production, sale, exchange, storage, or marketing of cryptocurrencies."

Technology analyst Ben Thompson suggested that the decision was motivated by deliverability concerns: MailChimp's success depends on its emails not being kept out of people's inboxes by spam filters. It sounds like he was right. MailChimp wrote in an email to Inc. that "the promotion and exchange of cryptocurrencies is too frequently associated with scams, fraud, phishing, and potentially misleading business practices at this time."

"We made this decision to update our Acceptable Use Policy in order to protect the millions of businesses that use MailChimp for their marketing," the company said. The policy also prohibits other types of businesses that are considered spam-prone and high-risk, from pharmaceuticals to gambling to affiliate marketing.

However, when it comes to cryptocurrencies, there appear to be gaps between policy and implementation. MailChimp indicated that sharing information about cryptocurrencies, as a journalist or news outlet might do, was still allowed. In practice, several newsletters have been hit by the policy change.

Andreas M. Antonopoulos
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@aantonop
Following Following @aantonop
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This is the second instance I hear of @mailchimp shutting down accounts related to crypto-currencies. Not ones advertising ICOs, or even exchanges. Just news, books, event announcements.

Ryan Selkis
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@twobitidiot
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.@MailChimp I've spent thousands of dollars with you and sent hundreds of subscriber emails on crypto over the past five years.

I'm restarting my Daily Bit Monday. I don't shill ICOs. Don't fuck with me.

[Saisher]

That's too bad, mailchimp is one of the industry leaders when it comes to an autoresponder, I hope Trafficwave will not ban cryptocurrency related stuff just like Mailchimp does, they will lose clients fast if they do that, there should be regulation on this bad and scam ICO's it's doing damage to us.

[pooya87]

this is the same saying that "one person ruined it for everyone".
last year that ICOs gained undeserved popularity and then because majority of them were scams and all of them were useless tokens with false advertising, that made everything take a turn for the worse. now these bans will come out from every service provider out there and of course it  will burn everyone alike.

[Xavofat]

That's horrendously vague language.  I'm involved in the "exchange" and "storage" of cryptocurrencies, because I have bought Bitcoin, sold Bitcoin and stored Bitcoin.  That doesn't mean that I would have vested interests if I created a cryptocurrency-related newsletter.

I'm not against banning cryptocurrency-related advertisements on major platforms like Facebook and I definitely understand how dealing with cryptocurrency could be a liability to their business, but I don't see this as a very constructive way of dealing with the problem.
The writer of this article uses this move from MailChimp as a way of criticising cryptocurrencies' core principle of decentralisation:

The promise of cryptocurrencies, and blockchain technology in general, is decentralization. Proponents say that if power is spread out to many different people and groups, then no single entity can impose its agenda on the whole network. In practice, however, cryptocurrency communities rely on many centralized tools.

Her use of the word "however" is a bit off-putting because cryptocurrency proponents almost never claim that they have little reliance on centralised services.  The centralised services have no effect on the technology itself (which is decentralised) - only on its users.

[davis196]

That's too bad, mailchimp is one of the industry leaders when it comes to an autoresponder, I hope Trafficwave will not ban cryptocurrency related stuff just like Mailchimp does, they will lose clients fast if they do that, there should be regulation on this bad and scam ICO's it's doing damage to us.

Mailchimp might be one of the email marketing industry leaders,but it`s far behind the real email marketing giants like Aweber and Getresponse.I`ve never heard any news about Aweber and Getresponse going to ban any cryptocurrency related email marketing campaigns.I understand that all those businesses want to keep their reputation,but they will lose a lot of paying customers with this ban.
All the crypto and ICO developers can`t use Adwords,FB ads and Twitter Ads for promotion anymore.I guess that bitcointalk will be the only place for them to advertise their projects.

[Dudeperfect]

I am a great fan and loyal user of Mailchimp but never used it for my crypto related stuff. It is very disappointing to see that the giant companies are restricting communication for crypto-based projects. I believe that there is a lack of maturity everywhere and nothing wrong with it as crypto is still comparatively new and we should give some time for everyone including ourselves to understand more about it. It's the matter of time and I am optimistic about next 5-10 years from now.

[European Central Bank]

i can't believe that in this day and age anything relevant and crypto related is delivered by email. i would never open or click on any email with that subject, even if i signed up for the freaking thing.

email is a dead medium for any type of marketing as far as i'm concerned, triply so with crypto.

[b3llsf1l3s]

This is really one of the bad news. Although for those that happy to use this platform as support to gain access various news about crypto or some bounty that we participated in.

[taylorsara]

You know, events like this happen during bad times. Anyway, Mailchimp is a major service provider but I don’t think their ban on Crypto will have greater effect on the market. When the price will rise, they will rethink about it surely.