Popular email service provider, MailChimp has just joined the ‘Ban Gang’. Lately, the crypto community has been experiencing lots of resistance and antagonism from governments and corporations alike.
The social media banning spree started in January when Facebook announced an absolute ban of all crypto related ads. Anything remotely related to bitcoin or initial coin offerings (ICO), was no longer welcome on its site. Next to follow was Google which updated their Financial Services Policy, effectively banning all crypto related ads beginning from June, when all currently running ads campaign would’ve ended. Just last month, Twitter also announced it was banning crypto related ads due to the huge number of impersonation scams perpetrated on its platform.
Latest to join the party is MailChimp whose services include email list management, auto response emails and an email marketing funnels platform. It made this known in an update to its Acceptable Use Policy. The ban is expected to go into effect as from April 30.
Of all the social media bans, this will likely have the most impact on the crypto industry as most use MailChimp for their email marketing, especially those involved in ICOs. Evan Van Ness, curator and writer of the Week in Ethereum newsletter, tweeted about this to his followers after receiving an email from MailChimp saying it was closing the WIE account.
According to MailChimp in the updated Acceptable Use Policy:
“does not allow businesses involved in any aspect of the sale, transaction, exchange, storage, marketing, or production of cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, and any digital assets related to an Initial Coin Offering, to use MailChimp to facilitate or support any of those activities.”
Possible reason for the ban as stated by MailChimp is that cryptos are “too frequently associated with scams, fraud, phishing and potentially misleading business practices.” Informing its “decision to update our Acceptable Use Policy in order to protect the millions of businesses that use MailChimp for their marketing.”
An initial understanding of the updated Acceptable Use Policy was taken to be an absolute ban of anything crypto related. However, MailChimp has clarified that “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.” It is however still not clear how MailChimp intends to distinguish between pure news content and marketing content.
As always, the crypto community has a way of surviving these kind of events. We look forward to seeing the solutions crypto PRs and marketers come up with. Moreover, there are several other email management service providers out there some of which raised funds in ICOs themselves.
