MailChimp Review

Intuit, Inc.
Product:
Vendor:
Founded:
Headquarters:
MailChimp
Intuit, Inc.
2001
Atlanta, GA
Ownership:
Customers:
Deployment Model:
Free Trial:
Private
13 million
Cloud
Yes
Download Comparison Guide

MailChimp At A Glance

Good: Built-in drag-and-drop editor, several third-party integrations, ample learning resources, free plan for new businesses.
Bad: Reporting could be more intuitive, price can be steep for businesses with a large number of subscribers.
Bottom Line: Leading marketing automation platform that helps businesses excel at creating, sending and analyzing email campaigns.

Product Overview

MailChimp is a robust marketing automation and email marketing tool that helps companies of all sizes effectively use email to market their products, get in touch with their prospects and turn leads into sales. More specifically, MailChimp users get complete control over campaigns, subscriber profiles, email tracking and social sharing features. In addition, MailChimp has built-in analytics and reporting functionality that is suitable for marketers who want to generate ad hoc reports, and offers an intuitive drag-and-drop builder that makes it easy to design and share attractive email newsletters.

In terms of marketing automation, MailChimp allows users to re-engage inactive subscribers or lapsed customers by creating a win-back email series using custom triggers that meet the unique needs of their business. Most of the features, including access to setting up marketing automation workflows, are available on the freemium plan. The software integrates with a variety of third-party ecommerce and business apps, including Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Salesforce and Improvely.

Features

MailChimp has several key features. We’ve listed the main ones below:

  • Marketing Automation – Users can personalize their marketing with powerful automations that talk to their customers just like the business owner would. MailChimp makes it possible to set up an onboarding series to welcome new customers and create a win-back email campaign to re-engage lapsed customers. Additionally, users can connect an ecommerce store with MailChimp to recover abandoned carts, follow up on purchases and send personalized product recommendations. Mailchimp has recently introduced a Customer Journeys feature that lets marketers plot out a personalized customer journey. It includes 20 starting points, and marketers can also set up actions and rules that correspond to each part of the journey. They can tag customer interests as well as measure the customer’s engagement throughout the journey.
  • Advanced Segmentation – MailChimp users can experiment with a variety of combinations to learn what’s best for their business. Once they’ve zeroed in on a target audience, they can save a segment for present or future campaigns. The solution also offers the opportunity to dig deeper by inserting a set of nested conditions that attach combinatorial logic to consumer data users have gathered like age range, gender, purchase activity and more.
  • Performance Tracking – MailChimp lets users review individual campaign reports after every sent email, or monitor campaign engagement, ecommerce performance and audience growth directly from an account dashboard. Interactive graphs highlight how many emails were delivered, what percentage of people opened the emails and more. With MailChimp’s email click map overlay, which shows where people are clicking on emails, users can gain insights like which email contacts bounced and why, or what attracts recipients.
  • A/B Testing – MailChimp makes it possible to test which subject lines or delivery times work best with a few clicks. Users can decide what type of test to run and determine the sample group size. MailChimp allows for 3 variations on each test, using different send times, content, subject lines, images, etc. It then performs the test and lets users know which option worked best. 
  • Creative Assistant – This new feature is the first AI-powered design tool to help marketers create multichannel designs.  The Creative Assistant takes the colors, font, images and other elements from the marketer’s website or landing page and use those elements to create custom designs. Marketers can simply edit the content within the design or their brand with the brand personality settings.

Target Market

MailChimp is intended for small to large-sized businesses and Fortune 500s in a variety of industries. Here is a list of prominent companies MailChimp serves:

  • Yale University
  • Amrita Singh Jewelry
  • Buffer
  • SeaVees
  • DoSomething
  • Droga5
  • Creative Group
  • Ace Hotel
  • Billy Reid
  • Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Download Now: Marketing Automation Software Buyer's Guide

Choosing a Marketing Automation Solution is all about finding the right fit. Our report will walk you through the process and help you make a smart purchasing decision. Download Now

Implementation/Integration

As a cloud-based solution, MailChimp is simple to implement. New users can refer to a comprehensive Knowledge Base with resources and guides to get started, which includes documentation on connecting your store, importing contacts, growing your list and creating your first email campaign.

The Knowledge Base also includes documentation on:

  • Marketing automation
  • Email and campaign delivery
  • Campaign personalization
  • Prebuilt and custom templates
  • Reporting and analytics
  • Mobile implementation
  • Mandrill for transactional and one-on-one emails

MailChimp easily integrates with your website and hundreds of apps and web services. The Cloud Elements Marketing Hub API allows users to connect to leading cloud marketing services like Infusionsoft, Marketo, HubSpot, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Kissmetrics.

Integrations with ecommerce and social media platforms include Shopify, BigCommerce, X-Cart, Salesforce, Facebook, Instagram and Eventbrite. The platform also offers a WordPress plugin called Chimpy. Users can refer to the Integrations Directory for a full list of integrations, and the Knowledge Base for comprehensive documentation to implement and customize their integrations.

Customer Service & Support

MailChimp has a simple yet thorough customer support process. To begin, users can visit the Contact page to select the topic of their inquiry or issue, including technical support, account access, billing, legal and privacy questions and more. Users are then led to the Knowledge Base, which contains robust documentation that answers common questions. If more help is needed, support prompts easily direct the user to the appropriate contact form.

Users can also log into their customer portal to file a support inquiry.

Pricing

MailChimp has four pricing plans.

The Free plan includes one audience, 500 contacts, 2,500 monthly emails, seven marketing channels, basic templates and email support for the first 30 days.

The Essentials plan offers three audiences, 5,000 monthly emails, email templates, A/B testing, custom branding and 24/7 support. Prices start at $13 per month (500 contacts).

The Standard plan provides five audiences, 6,000 monthly emails, advanced customer journeys, predictive segmentation, send time optimization, custom-coded templates and dynamic content. Prices start at $20 per month (500 contacts).

The Premium plan includes unlimited audiences, 150,000 monthly emails, advanced segmentation, multivariate testing and phone support. The price starts at $350 per month (500 contacts).

 

Shortcomings

Some users have stated that MailChimp’s reporting features could be improved. For instance, better time-series graphs to see opens and clicks for all emails over a period of time would be a nice addition. Also, MailChimp can get pricey for a small business with a growing subscriber count.

Screenshots

Intuit, Inc. Screenshot 1
Intuit, Inc. Screenshot 2
Intuit, Inc. Screenshot 3

About

MailChimp is an email marketing and marketing automation platform that is operated by The Rocket Science Group, LLC. The company began as a side project funded by several web-development jobs. Now it’s the world’s leading marketing automation platform, managing more than a billion emails per day. Over 13 million individuals and businesses – from Fortune 500s to neighborhood firms – trust MailChimp to send email campaigns and automate messages. Founded in 2001, MailChimp has over 1,200 employees in five locations and is headquartered in Atlanta, GA.

MailChimp has been acquired by Intuit.

Download Comparison Guide
Send feedback or corrections to feedback@betterbuys.com.

Related Solutions

  • User Rating
  • No Rating Yet!
  • (0) No reviews yet!

No Rating Yet!

  • Features
    User: 0%
  • Ease of Use
    User: 0%
  • Ease of Implementation
    User: 0%
  • Support
    User: 0%


No one has rated this yet, be the first! No one has rated this yet, be the first!