Madmimi was a problem because we already had another love, MailChimp. Like all girls at least once in their life, we had to experience the emotional tug-a-war of two fab desires. Which way did we go? The good looking established solution with the slick and easy UI or the new chick on the block that looks like she reads books all day and gets nowhere near an email.

Okay granted, one of them was a girl and one was a chimp but still, this was heavy stuff (this post includes some insight from the ‘Mimi’ team themselves so dig deep).

Who: MadMimi
What: Marketing and transactional email platform
Role within Spudaroo: Marketing and transactional email

Madmimi won out because it solved an issue which was bugging the heck out of us (we posted about it a while back). The issue being the ability to facilitate marketing and transactional email via one solution. Mimi takes care of all of Spud’s email from the Welcome email to the ‘Time for you to transfer copyright on that material Mr Winning Expert.’ MadMimi is a freemium gig with paid plans ranging from $8 to $699 monthly.

Here is how it worked for us;

1. We set up an account in MadMimi – (very easy)

2. We created lots of transactional emails and ignored the fact that the promotional titles, double as the email subject lines (bad but we got by this)

3. Told our DB that when a certain event occurred, which email to go looking for via the Mimi API

4. Told our DB to insert a specific email subject because we messed up #2

It works, perfectly. Our email looks great and we get to edit and add info without going back to dev which is brilliant. Spud’s 1.7 release or so will see us adding RSS to our emails to display our latest projects… and its email gone wild from there.

Finding out how successful apps think and function is alot of fun so we touched base with Dean @Madmimi and asked them to share;

How did MadMimi come to be and who is behind it?

Once upon a time there was a little music company (that’s us!). We needed some simple yet lovely emails to promote our business, stay in touch with the myriad ad agencies we worked with and share our latest news and music. So we set out on a quest to find a nice email marketing company that suited us.

Alas, we only found outdated templates, clunky interfaces and emails that looked and felt like spam. Plus, they were no fun to use or to read. Bummer!

Not one to settle for the status quo, Gary Levitt (our very own CEO) designed our email campaigns. And soon people were asking us to help design their emails too. We enjoyed sharing and so Mimi was born – a way for us and others to create well designed, elegant, easy and, above all, fun emails.

Our quest ended successfully right at home! And we live happily ever after.

What’s the deal with the name =)

Mad Mimi is the brainchild of Gary Levitt (the CEO you met earlier) and he came up with the name too. Mad Mimi was originally an acronym – the meaning of which is all but forgotten. I do remember that the M.I.M.I stood for Musician’s Intuitive Marketing Interface. It was only a matter of weeks before we realized that everyone (not only musicians) could do with an alternative to soulless email marketing.

Where are you guys based. City/basement, office, my co-founders mums house?

We’re based in Brooklyn and after originally working out of local coffee shops we realized remote working is fun! The team is spread out across the world — New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Oregon, Washington state, South Africa and Europe. We still like coffee shops though!

Your pitch please.. elevator style with a max of 7 floors =)

Hey there, nice to run into you in this elevator (it’s a little crowded but we’ll fit). Did I hear you say you need an email newsletter service that looks great? Well good thing I’m standing right here. Mad Mimi is a delightful app that helps you build gorgeous, readable HTML emails and newsletters in no time! We developed a simple template-free system that gently guides you through the composition process so the email you send is fun to build and easy to read. We offer fantastic features like Drip Campaigns (Autoresponders), Sign Up Forms, Google Analytics Integration, Multi-User, RSS to Email and handle all the icky things like bounces and unsubscribes for you. Our tracking is deeper than an angst-ridden lyricist and list management is a breeze. Oh, this is your floor? Cheers and see you around soon.

Are you funded?

We’re sorta bootstrapped, sorta funded. Back in 2006, we received 100k in Angel capital. Over the course of 2007 we received another 100k. That funding only paid for a particular aspect of the technology of Mad Mimi while the rest of the product was self funded by the team.

What’s been your biggest WAY HAY to date?

I’d say the day that Seth Godin signed up for a paid account for Squidoo – without us even knowing he knew about us!

What’s been your biggest “Oh crapola” to date?

Actually this is something we experience daily! We’re very happy-go-lucky folks by nature but when anything goes even slightly wrong, it’s to your battle stations, pirates swinging by on ropes, swashbucklers on chandeliers and marauding hordes of glitches. At least that’s how it feels to us. The customer probably notices a slight delay in loading his promotion.

We have had some growth issues – we grew so fast we struggled to keep up but that is the inspiring kind of trouble that feels good to experience. We’ve super quadrupled our speed recently and look forward to a few months free of crapola. And yes “super quadrupled” is a technical term (in Mimiland).

From here, where is MadMimi headed?

We feel that keeping with the organic growth track, doing some moderate service scaling (adding phone support in January) and taking things as they come is the way to go. We’re already profitable and growing at around 1.2% a day, and because of an aggressive-yet manageable upward movement, we’re able to learn and keep control of our brand and our vibe without us getting lost and entangled in layers of protocol that would take our core team further away from the pulse of the users.

I found setting up our transactional email, absolute cake. Why do you think your service has been so slow coming to the web from other solutions such as MailChimp for example?

Not sure – could be they’re thinking about it. For us it seemed natural because I think Rails has ushered in the concept of the “simple API” while other platforms that were popular in the past never quite produced as simple an infrastructure for really building easy, formative APIs.

Do you make more money from marketing or transactional email today?

Marketing. Our transactional aspect has only been live for about 3 months. We’re still experimenting with its business model.

Do you think that trend will continue?

Yea – Mimi’s primary market are end users, not geeks. Although our core dev team are notable coders, authors and uber-geeks, we feel that the transactional part of our business will never be as utilized as the vast diversity and sheer volume of our marketing peeps.

Where do you see the future of email marketing?

I see it growing and changing (as things like Google Wave enter the public consciousness), but definitely sticking around for the next 10 years.

Can RSS feeds be integrated into your emails?

You bet. Mad Mimi does provide an RSS addon where you can set Mimi to grab your feed and send it our to your people on a timed regular basis.

How do templates work with MadMimi from an integration standpoint for new and existing customers?

Hmm… Mimi’s sorta threw the concept of templates off a deep cliff back in 2007 when Gary Levitt (that CEO from chapter one) and Tobie Langel (who’s now leading the Core Team of the Prototype Javascript Framework) when they developed the alternative to them. Templates feel like you’re filling in a form and always reminded us of doctor’s offices or exams. That’s why we use a dual system of Themes and Modules.

Themes give you your look, your vibe, your j’est ne se quoi. It’s your fonts, sizes colors etc. Then Modules are where you enter your content and it’s a little like basic building blocks. Add a module for more content, drag ‘em around and you never fill in any areas you don’t want or need. Templates are so two thousand and late.

Customers can always import their own custom HTML if they want to and our very own little modules can stand up to some pretty heavy HTML customization if the composer is so inclined.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Kate and the Spudaroo crew. Mimi loves potatoes! Yum!

Cheers

Dean (and Gary)

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