Mailchimp Mailing Platform - Run By Idiots

Recently mailchimp updated their TOS with a nice little line that prohibits Affiliate Marketing links in emails using their service. From their page:

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

That is interesting, considering they have their own affiliate program and also you can elect to auto include their "Badge" in your emails automatically which has your affiliate link built in (by the way this was default last I checked). This would essentially ban any Mailchimp user. That makes sense.... I emailed Mailchimp support for comment (btw it annoys the SHIT out of me you can't get ahold of a human at Mailchimp. EVERY other legit email service gives you a phone number where you can get a live person.) I have heard nothing back. I reached out to Aweber, the big player in the game, to see what their stance on it was. Instantly I received a response:

At AWeber, we are happy to serve affiliate marketers who follow email marketing best practices when building and managing their email lists. As is well-known both among our customers and within the email marketing industry, AWeber places the utmost importance on permission and relevance as foundations of responsible and effective email marketing. If your business sends only relevant, valuable, wanted emails, and sends those emails only to subscribers who come directly to you and sign up to your email list, you are welcome to use AWeber to create and deliver your email marketing campaigns. We count a number of affiliate marketers among the 100,000+ businesses who use our service, and are happy to serve more of them. As is the case with anyone using AWeber, affiliate marketers must adhere to our service agreement. So if you are at all unsure whether AWeber is right for you, please refer to that agreement or contact us with questions.

Sidenote: I started with Aweber a long time ago but have moved on to lots of other services over the years... I have always come back to Aweber. There is no better service.