I think what changed their mind was that the market changed. Mailchimp was run like a company that wanted to prevail in the market and not just grow and sell. That affected their strategy in a good way since it allowed them to spend time improving their services long term, but most importantly it prevented them from trying to grow aggressively for the sake of growing, which is a very very bad idea when it comes to sending bulk email.

In the end what changed is that e-mail based marketing was on the decline, with other mediums taking over. There's a point where an industry that stops growing fast eventually consolidates and it tends to get absorbed by groups that has other revenue streams.

> In the end what changed is that e-mail based marketing was on the decline, with other mediums taking over.

FWIW this is completely incorrect. Over the past 2 years other marketing channels have skyrocketed in cost (eg FB ads) and most brands/companies are now investing heavily into email marketing. It's a significant growth industry right now, more so than at any time since I've been involved with email marketing (since ~2010).

Interesting. I as a content consumer feel exactly the same way. I don't use FB/Instagram anymore and rely solely on email updates from bands, brands, museums, theatres and so on. I actually get some MC emails and always liked those since they are so easy to unsubscribe.

Same experience for us. While we moved away from Mailchimp recently for Pardot, email marketing is huge growth area for us since the start of the pandemic. I think it's a combination of people seeking new solutions to this new world we live in, and understanding that if each email we send has a genuine value for who we send it to, they are very receptive. It's the opposite of spam, as we're asked more and more to please keep our customers up to date with the latest trends.

Heh, I kinda noticed that. For a while there spam on my older mail accounts suddenly looked a lot more "quality" and was advertising well known brands.

At first I thought it was just phishers trying something new, but when I looked where the mails lead it turned out to be those actual brands.

> I think what changed their mind was that the market changed.

Yeah, the market valuation went from 10x revenue for a early stage company to 30x revenue for a mature company.

I think this is wrong, what changed was the offer price.