For a long time I have wondered how Mail Chimp grew so big so quickly, despite some formidable competitors like Constant Contact, Vertical Response or emailforce.io. The more I looked at it the more it seemed to me they did nothing different, except perhaps a more intense focus on direct mail campaigns rather than also doing list management.
But that wasn’t enough – so I concluded it was their catchy name that had caught so many people’s attention. Certainly it cut through the noise of the boring descriptive names and brought a smile to the faces of all who bothered to think about the name.
Ironically Mail Chimp themselves have been trying to change their image, without actually changing their name (except now it is one word). So the chimp icon has a different expression on his face which only employees can tell you about, and the rest of the graphics shows hand drawn birds in flight or opening mail or … Pity they didn’t use flying chimps instead, or are they working their way towards being MailBird? Sorry no. Mailbird.com already has over 100K users.
Well I still think Mail Chimp is a 3 star name, even if it is starting to box them in a corner. But I bet most of their loyal customers don’t even bother to think that they are so much more than the mail part of their name. And why shouldn’t we have names that bring a smile to our faces, even at work?
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