When you think of email marketing, MailChimp is most likely the first brand that pops up in your mind. Thanks to their aggressive marketing, this tool has become a household name in the industry. If you have never heard of it, don’t worry. We have got you covered!
In this comprehensive review, we will not only introduce you to its features and functionalities but also cover the pros and cons, pricing, and more – giving you a fairly good idea of whether MailChimp is worth a shot.
So, shall we begin?
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp is a popular feature-rich marketing automation tool. Introduced to the world in 2001, it started as an email marketing solution. However, since its acquisition by Intuit in 2021, MailChimp has been making strides toward becoming a full-fledged marketing automation suite.
In its last update, MailChimp incorporated 150+ new features including E-commerce automation, AI-powered email content, custom analytics and reporting, and more. Impressive, right?
Let’s take a quick look at the things you can do with MailChimp.
1. Email Scheduling
Being one of the first email marketing tools, MailChimp knows what it is doing when it comes to scheduling emails and campaigns. This tool makes it look so easy. Well, here is how you do it –
Once you have designed your campaign and picked the settings for it, all you have to do is set the delivery date and time and it is ready to go. Simple as that. However, you do get access to some interesting choices such as sending a campaign in batches, sending with Timewarp (sending campaigns every hour by the subscriber’s time zone), or sending emails automatically at optimized times with Send Time Optimization.
Also, if you want to pause or reschedule a campaign, it could not get any simpler.
2. Automated Customer Journeys
Customer journeys are a big part of MailChimp’s automation feature. They help you visually lay out all the possible routes a customer might take based on different triggers - and well, in a sense, guide the customer through your sales funnel.
MailChimp’s automated customer journeys rely heavily on customer behavioral data – meaning that they can make the customer interactions personalized and also more likely to drive revenue.
What is even more interesting is that you can take this powerful automation feature outside of MailChimp via integration. For example, you can integrate it with Shopify and use customer behavioral data to trigger actions, like shooting a product-specific email based on their searches on the website. And oh, so you don’t get overwhelmed as a beginner, there are over 60 pre-built customer journey builder templates ready to be used.
3. Campaign Manager
MailChimp’s Campaign Manager is where the magic happens. It is a handy dashboard where you can create campaigns, manage them, track their performance, and more. When setting up your campaign from within the Campaign Manager, you can add scheduled activities like emails, events, webhooks, etc. - thus connecting a bunch of different channels to a common objective.
When measuring the performance of your campaigns, you also have the flexibility to access advanced analytics and reporting from the Campaign Manager itself.
4. Dynamic Content
You can leverage the power of MailChimp’s Dynamic Content feature to send the same email yet rather different information to different contacts. As you can imagine, it can not only save you tons of hassle but also a lot of your valuable time. All you have to do is set some conditions for the algorithm to follow.
Say, for example, you have to send an email with a promo code exclusively for your prime customers. Well, with Dynamic Consent, you can draft a single email for all your subscribers and still send the version with the promo code only to the intended customers.
In the last update, MailChimp also added support for AI-generated content. Just prompt AI to draft your headlines, subject lines, or even entire paragraphs. Easy-peasy, right?
5. Forms and E-commerce
Nothing connects a brand to its customers like honest, valuable customer feedback. With MailChimp, you can create surveys and see if you are meeting the needs of your customers. For new customers, you can create unlimited sign-up forms and even add them to your website.
What is more, the Square by MailChimp integration helps you foster stronger customer relationships and drive sales. This integration gives you access to a set of flexible optimization tools to manage payments, subscriptions, and much more.
6. Automated Analytics and Reporting
If you want your business to thrive, you gotta pay attention to data and metrics – it’s that simple. And MailChimp offers you some fine analytics and reporting tools – and it is automated.
These automated reports can be created for campaign performance and much more. They can be printed out or saved to the cloud, which is convenient. Thanks to automation, MailChimp tracks performance in real-time, giving you precise and up-to-date info. Automated reports are not only consistent and cost-effective but they can also be shared across various departments of your business on the go.
7. Pricing
MailChimp has four pricing plans – Free, Essentials, Standard, and Premium. The Free plan only supports 500 contacts. Interestingly, the prices of the paid plans vary based on the number of contacts. Therefore, say, for 500 contacts, the Essentials, Standard, and Premium cost $13, $20, and $350 a month.
MailChimp also has an attractive offer on the Standard and Essentials plans - $1 for the first month.
8. Pros and Cons
Here are the pros:
Simple and intuitive
A full-fledged marketing automation suite
A decent free plan
Optional web-hosting plans
A decent library of usable templates
Easy-to-follow tutorials on the website.
Free CRM software
Now, let's look at the cons:
Lacks advanced automation
Their Premium plan is relatively expensive
Difficult Mailing list management
No support for affiliate marketing
Final Verdict
So, the question is– Is MailChimp for you? Well, the answer boils down to one thing – what you intend to do with it. If you are looking for just an email marketing solution, MailChimp is an ideal choice for you hands down. But if you are looking to improve your overall marketing automation workflow, then you are better off with advanced tools like HubSpot.
Now, the best way to know if a tool is for you is to just try it. And thankfully, you can do that with MailChimp essentially for free – by buying your first month's subscription for just $1.