So you are thinking Mad Mimi sounds like your great aunt with the pink hair?  Well not this one.  Mad Mimi is an email marketing service that deserves a good look.  The claim is that it is so easy Grandma can use it.

Email marketing can be a great resource for small businesses as well as for keeping up with blog contacts or family. All those business newsletters that you get are probably sent through a similar marketing service.

Here are some of the features I specifically took note of:

• variety of plans including a free plan (don’t have to give credit card information for the free plan)
• easy to read stats
• buttons to share your promotion on facebook and twitter
• add social networking buttons to your promotions
• code snippets to copy and paste in your promotions to forward to a friend, subscribe,unsubscribe (custom HTML code)
• creates webform to add to your website so customers can join your list
• compose promos with the drag and drop designer, your own HTML, or plain text
• premade promo themes
• import audience list from CSV or add a few at a time
• can create multiple lists and manage contacts
• paid monthly so easy to upgrade or cancel
• integrates with Google Analytics
• good customer service

They also have some good addons such as drip campaign, RSS to email, custom domain, and mailer API that have an extra charge.  One drawback that I have noticed is that you cannot create surveys in your promotions.

I signed up for the free account to try it out.  The free account can send to 100 contacts or less.  I created a fairly simple newsletter with their drag and drop promotion composer.

Mad Mimi's drag and drop newletter creator (WYSIWYG)

There are a few color themes that you can choose from or create your own.  Then you can add text or photos.  Images that you upload are found in the sidebar and are saved so you can used them in multiple promotions.

This is the newsletter I created in about 5 minutes.  I included a screen shot of what it looked like as an e-mail and when viewed as a web page.

Example of promotional e-mail

Example of promotion as web page

When you use the drag and drop feature to create your promotion, it automatically adds information at the bottom for the user to view it as a web page, unsubscribe, or forward to a friend.

Once the promotion is sent, you can easily add it to Facebook and Twitter and track the statistics.

Promotion statistics

Overall I think it is a good service and completely free to try.  So if you have been hesitant about starting some email marketing, give it a try and tell us what you think.  If you are already using Mad Mimi or have used it in the past, let us know about your experiences.