Staying Sane with Mad Mimi

Who would have thought that Mad Mimi – with a name like that – could be such a a jewel of a find to help me preserve my sanity! :)

Our Starlink newsletter celebrates its sixteenth birthday this month – which is quite an achievement I suppose. :)

It began as a paper-based newsletter back in November 1995 and has seen several changes over the years – to the point where all our subscribers receive it electronically.

For the last few years, it has been in the form of an html newsletter – with a downloadable pdf file every second month, containing additional resources. As anyone who produces a newsletter would understand, producing both formats has been time-consuming!  And recently we’ve realised Starlink needs to be improved again so it’s ‘mobile-friendly’. More and more folk are reading their emails on mobile devices, after all.

So … as the ‘techie’ in our partnership, I went  back to the drawing board to work out how to produce mobile-friendly email and web versions as well as the pdf file.

Wrestling with all the html, css and php coding, as well as other desktop publishing tasks needed for the pdf file  …  well, I was starting to go pretty crazy!  :)

It was obviously time to rethink our approach. And also time to transfer our newsletter distribution to an email/newsletter service provider, so we’d have the capacity to track distribution more effectively as well.

Here’s what I did and why Mad Mimi was the best solution I found …

I went back to some research I’d done for a client a while ago, in relation to email marketing and newsletter service providers or programs. There are so many of these programs with so many variations that it’s hard to compare apples with apples! Many have ad-supported free services – but we didn’t want the ads.  And the fee-based versions all vary widely in their features, cost per mailing and other factors.

I revisited my ‘short’ list of 20 to review them again and update their pricing and features etc:

Email and Newsletter Service Providers Research (Excel)

Email and Newsletter Service Providers Research Explanation (Word)

At the end of this rather complex and time-consuming journey and after testing a handful of the services myself, I found that Mad Mimi  stood head and shoulders above the rest!

Why?

Not only is it very reasonably priced, but it is definitely one of the easiest to use. It has a simple drag and drop interface that requires none of the complicated coding I’d been doing previously. Mad Mimi also has a huge collection of online help articles, tips and ideas explained in clear and simple terms.

And as for the customer service I received – it could not have been faster, clearer or more friendly! The questions I emailed to their support team were answered very quickly – often within minutes. It seems that, no matter what time it is here in Australia, there’s someone from Mad Mimi waiting patiently to check and respond to emails. :)

Our first Starlink newsletter using Mad Mimi has now been created – and is shortly to be distributed to our readers.

I’m delighted there’ll  be no more desktop publishing work or complex html or css coding needed for each issue!  We can concentrate on the most important thing – researching content that will be useful, thought-provoking, inspirational or fun for our readers.

And I know that, whatever issues may arise or questions I may have, the fantastic support team at Mad Mimi will be there to help.

So thank you Mad Mimi … you have saved my sanity! :)

 

Please note: We’ve been so impressed with Mad Mimi that we’ve signed up for their affiliate program and the links in this post are affiliate links. If you happen to decide that Mad Mimi is a service you’d also like to use, and you’re happy to give us a little support as well, that would be great. :) However if for any reason you are opposed to affiliate programs, you can use this direct link to the Mad Mimi site instead.