Started in 2001, Mailchimp was designed for email marketing to small businesses. While going through the years by increasing prices and features, digital marketing platforms have become quite user-friendly for beginners who started with digital marketing and Mailchimp is on top of the list.
Below is a detailed description of all the Mailchimp features and some popular alternatives to MailChimp.
Things Mailchimp is used for:
Mailchimp: Software that supports the user to build a digital marketing campaign and manage conversations through email.
Provides lots of marketing tools to be used for very many tasks, a few of which are defined below.
Building email campaigns
The Mailchimp software allows for the creation, sending, and tracking of business email marketing. With the help of an email builder, it’s possible to create emails, but a user can also use ready-made templates, which saves a lot of time. It also permits us to change the design of the mail with images, changing colours, and many more according to our choice.
It personalizes the user experience and contacts users in case of email newsletters, important communication, promotional offers, and product update alerts. Also, Mailchimp allows you to build signup forms; and pop-ups and embed them on your website.
Creating landing pages
Landing pages help us to evaluate the website and to advertise marketing goods or campaigns that target customers on the offers given by the business. Users can design landing pages through the email builder feature of the Mailchimp platform.
Mailchimp’s creative assistant
The creative assistant of Mailchimp helps in importing colors and logos into the template builder. However, this assistant is limited in free and essential plans. To get full access, upgrading to a higher plan is necessary.
Driving sales with ecommerce integrations
Basically, e-commerce integrations are collaborations with online e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify and WooCommerce, which users can integrate by using their Mailchimp account. Mailchimp will help in making profit with email marketing based on store info and activity in campaigns.
So, for a user who doesn’t have an account in any store, e-commerce provides the option of creating one from Mailchimp. Website Builder is a new feature, so its availability is much less. Users need to pay if they are willing to use the custom domain, as with every website host.
Running A/B testing (paid plan only)
With every email campaign that the users run, they think of which subject line the audiences like and end up in a confusion. A/B testing can help in analyzing it by sending two versions of the same campaign to 50% of audiences, which helps in finding the best.
A/B testing of email marketing campaigns is part of the essential plan, whereas in the premium plan, Multivariate testing is part of it.
Nurturing customers with marketing automation (paid plan only)
Paid users access various features, including marketing automation; with this automation, we can schedule messages so users can multitask in other activities.
Email Automation is the sending of one message (for example: welcome mail) or automated series of messages, also called drip messages, which guides the customer to a purchase
Mailchimp’s customer journey feature
One of the many features of Mailchimp is that it has some pre-designed automation workflows or customer journeys. It is an advanced journey that starts from the point of entry, like signing up for a newsletter, and continues until the exit point, such as purchasing
Using customer segmentation (paid plan only)
One of its top features includes customer segmentation; users apply filters in categorizing customers. It can create groups of engaged subscribers or frequent buyers through conditions created on the dashboard. Once the segment groups are done, tailored marketing campaigns will be a lot more spontaneous. This is an advanced feature available on the Standard plan and higher.
Overview of Mailchimp pricing plans
When you need a CRM?
Mailchimp is a good platform for brands whose marketing strategy is primarily emailing. But if you need to set up deal pipelines or leverage campaigns omnichannel beyond SMS, for instance using push notifications, WhatsApp, business phones, and VoIP, you can’t do it with Mailchimp.
You can get by with a very elementary deal pipeline, but it’s not something designed for long or more complex sales cycles. Mailchimp is much more something to be used in step within a deal pipeline, not a sales platform in and of itself.
When you need a free plan?
Yes, Mailchimp offers a free plan, but it is very limited. The last time Mailchimp downsized its free plan was in 2023. Companies that require sending more than 1,000 emails per month (or 500 a day), the use of automation, or selecting from over seven email templates may have to upgrade or look for another provider.
Are there Mailchimp alternatives?
There are plenty of options in the market for alternatives to Mailchimp, but each has its own advantages and specialities. The best way to find out what works for you is to try the free plans.
Wondering how to migrate away from Mailchimp if you’re already a user? We’ve got you covered. That is where ActiveCampaign comes into the picture: it’s a great email marketing automation tool for advanced users. On the other hand, MailerLite is an email marketing platform that is on the lighter side, and Brevo is a complete marketing and sales platform with multichannel campaigns.