MailChimp's CEO on that famous 'Serial' intro and why email just won't die
Ben Chestnut remembers when he first heard the promo spot that would end up with MailChimp getting a shoutout on Saturday Night Live.
The CEO of MailChimp told Mashable's Biz Please that the company had first dibs on "Serial," the podcast that would become a cultural phenomenon, thanks to a pre-existing sponsorship that actually didn't go so well.
"Serial" more than made up for it.
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As for the famous "Mail Kimp" line, that was a bit of providence.
"When we got the recording, our head of marketing at the time came to me and said 'I'm a little nervous,'" Chestnut said.
The producers of the show had recorded the promo themselves but MailChimp had to approve it.
They did, and then things took off, peaking with a mention in an SNL skit about the podcast.
That may have put MailChimp into the public consciousness, but the company has been around for a while. The company began in 2000 and currently has more than 12 million users sending about a billion emails per day.
If it feels like all 1 billion of those emails end up in your inbox, you're not alone.
Despite its prevalence and even resurgence among media companies (newsletters are suddenly en vogue again), email isn't the most popular form of communication. Some people have abandoned it altogether. Companies are even banning it, finding their employees more productive without it.
Chestnut doesn't see it that way.
"I think [email] is in the prime of it's life," Chestnut said.
Email, he argued, is the premiere communication tool with the outside world. Maybe you're not ordering a pizza over email, but it is how you're going to find a job.
"Just try to remember that the 'e' in email stands for employed," he said.
Chestnut also talks about the importance of company culture and the difference from company values.
Culture, he noted, has to change as companies grow and add people. Values, however, should be consistent.
"It's really the company's values that you should probably etch in stone," he said. "But the culture is constantly changing."
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Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
