Mailchimp: Email marketing and automation to easily manage your campaigns

What is MailChimp?

.Mailchimp is a perfect option with a free version (allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per month or 10,000 contacts per month) for specialists in email marketing, whether they are experienced or novice, startups, freelancers or large companies.

This “market-leading email marketing” offers a blend of advanced features and an intuitive, well-organized user interface that allows you to create and get started quickly.

Additionally, this tool offers a ton of useful tips for you to get the most out of the system and improve your general email skills marketing (or transactional emails).

Advanced analytics make it easy to track the success of campaigns and get the information you need to constantly improve.

Features

The most remarkable features of a Mailchimp account are its reporting, marketing, and contact management features.

MailChimp also has a powerful email editor and useful built-in automation templates that allow you to create and facilitate the creation of any autoresponders.

1. Email creation

MailChimp is an email marketing tool with over 100 email templates available to design marketing campaigns, newsletters, and promotional emails.

• Mailchimp templates are basic guides that help you create personalized marketing campaigns.
• The templates are organized by categories such as “Holiday” and “Newsletters,” or you can opt for a simpler structure and fill in your content elements yourself.
• You can drag and drop design elements into the email and even insert blocks of HTML code for advanced customization.
• You can choose to work from a pre-established model or a less rigid “Layout” structure that offers greater design freedom.
• A Mailchimp account doesn't provide a defined coded template, but you can hire a designer to do that.
• Mailchimp templates allow you to include everything from forms to GIFs in your emails, and you can choose from 20 different fonts and countless colors to include in your emails.
• You can customize the shape of your CTA buttons and apply it to the entire template.

However, Mailchimp templates aren't the best compared to other providers, like GetResponse, which offers a free image library, or Mailerlite, which has better HTML capability.

• A Mailchimp account gives you great feedback when designing your marketing campaigns.
• You get suggestions on what type of content would be best for a certain section.
• You are also notified if an image is large enough to be cut in an email - Mailchimp allows you to create to resize it!
• You can edit images in a pop-up window, without having to leave the template editor.

The design is important not only for you as the business owner, but also for your customers, who will be engaging with the end result.

• A Mailchimp account is great for e-commerce businesses because the design process is full of tips and suggestions for you, and the end result is stylish and professional for your readers.

2. Create an emailing campaign

Creating an emailing campaign

• Mailchimp makes it easy to create an email campaign and shows you all the steps you need to take, which is suitable for novice users.
• The workflow won't necessarily be for everyone, as you need to fill in all the details of your campaign — such as subscribers, subject, and starting address — before you can design your email.

Email design features

• In terms of email design functionality, a Mailchimp account gives you tons of options and flexibility.
• When creating your email, you can choose: Basic layouts, Layouts that are targeted at certain types of marketing campaigns, such as ads or product sales. Template topics, Code your own code from scratch
• A Mailchimp account allows you to create by offering several different models to diversify the aesthetics of your emails to customers.
• It's also easy to adapt your template by adding elements like text blocks, social sharing buttons, videos, and images.
• Everything from fonts to indents, colors and shades, and even spell checking can be fully customized to your brand.
• Mailchimp's options for customizing your emails are easy to use and easy to reposition.

Comments section

• For me, the comments section in your Mailchimp account is one of its most remarkable features.
• It allows you to create and send test emails to others and then gather all of their feedback in one place.
• This allows for better collaboration and helps ensure that your emails are error-free.

Advanced A/B testing functionality

• Mailchimp also includes advanced A/B testing functionality, which allows you to test up to three different variations not only in the content but also in the subject line, sender name, and time sent.
• You can send these changes to a percentage of your email list or segment.
• As each campaign has different goals, a Mailchimp account allows you to create and also specify the criteria on which you choose the winning email.

3. Audience

A Mailchimp account has advanced contact management features, which means it can be used as an alternative to a CRM system. Under the “audience” section, its contact management dashboard and its functionalities are super analytical (e.g. click rate).

Here you'll find all the usual features, such as manually adding contacts and importing lists, but you'll also be able to analyze the specific behavior of your contacts in depth.

Other email marketing software can provide you with information, such as:

• the opening rate of emails,
• the clicks or
• demographics,

But you have to create the segments yourself. Mailchimp allows segments to be created automatically, based on a machine learning model that predicts how likely a customer is to buy from you again and how much they are likely to spend.

You can then send marketing campaigns to this segment from the audience dashboard.

4. Automation

A Mailchimp account allows you to set up automated workflows based on behavioral triggers, such as the abandonment of a cart by a customer or signing up for your newsletter:

Drip marketing campaigns:

• Drip marketing campaigns allow you to send emails modeled by Mailchimp for customer loyalty and transactional notifications.

Automation models:

• Automation models include rewarding loyal customers, order notifications, cart or browsing abandonment, tracking purchases, and customer win/re-engagement.

Managing subscribers with Mailchimp:

• MailChimp is still heavily based on email address lists for managing subscribers.
• Tag-based systems are better than list-based ones.
• The MailChimp account refuses to make the leap to tag-based systems.

Mailchimp Subscriber Management Issues:

• Subscribers are counted multiple times if they are on different lists.
• Segmentation options are complicated to use.
• Groups, segments, and hidden fields can be used to emulate tags, but this is more confusing than useful for sending emails.

Limits of Mailchimp segmentation:

• MailChimp does not allow tags to be added based on the behavior of subscribers.
• Identifying and targeting subscribers who clicked on a specific link in an email is very difficult to achieve with MailChimp.

Limits of Mailchimp technology:

• MailChimp is limited to a single segmentation in an automation sequence to send emails.
• It's hard to track subscribers' behavior based on page visits or interactions with MailChimp.
• MailChimp is stuck in an era based on lists, and it's not clear when, or in fact, if it will ever make the transition to a better subscriber management system for sending emails.

5. Reports

Email marketing is an effective method to reach your potential customers and retain existing customers. However, it is important to monitor your email campaigns to understand their impact and return on investment.

In this context, Mailchimp is a marketing software that provides detailed information about your email campaigns.

Here are some of the important things you need to know about Mailchimp:

• Mailchimp provides comprehensive email statistics, such as the number of orders, average order revenue, and total revenue, to understand the ROI of each email campaign.
• Mailchimp reports differ based on which metrics are most important for each of your campaigns. So, if your campaign is designed to drive ebook downloads, that's the metric Mailchimp will show in the first place.
• Mailchimp's comparative reports allow you to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns over time. You can identify the most successful emails, performance spikes, and any potential issues such as a gradual decline in your click-through rate.
• Mailchimp also allows you to track the performance of each of your automated email series. You can identify steps that don't help develop downstream customers and take steps to correct the situation.

Mailchimp is a powerful tool for monitoring your email campaigns and understanding their impact. The detailed information provided by Mailchimp allows you to adjust your strategy to improve the effectiveness of your campaigns, boost sales, and retain existing customers.

6. Customer journey creator

Mailchimp recently introduced a feature called “Customer Journey Builder” into their tool, which allows you to design a customer journey to increase your conversion rates.

Mailchimp makes it possible to create personalized customer journeys based on how they interact with your business and the associated emails sent.

For example, if a customer buys a product on your website, you can choose what happens next, such as a personalized offer for a related product.

Mailchimp has unveiled “dynamic content,” which allows users to save time creating personalized emails.

This feature makes it possible to adapt a single email to offer unique content to different recipients.

7. Creating forms

From the outset, the MailChimp platform allows you to create forms hosted on the MailChimp website or online and contextual forms that can be embedded on your own website.

Anyway, it's in the form builder that the magic really happens.

While it's not the most beautiful generator you've ever seen, it gives you everything you need to create a clean and efficient form.

And it's important to note that the configuration and design options of this tool will change depending on the type of form you choose for your marketing campaigns.

For example, embeddable forms come with additional styles that you don't get with hosted forms...

And for the design of your forms using this tool?

As with drag-drop layout options, the level of customization control varies depending on the type of form you are creating.

MailChimp is not great on this point, it would have been nice to see some consistency in this area.

8. A/B testing

This is where I can finally give some credit to the MailChimp platform, because if there is one thing that they have absolutely succeeded in doing, it is the functionality of to do a-b testing.

Not only does this tool give you a lot of options for these a-b tests that you can play with, whether it's the subject line, the time of sending, or the content of the email, but this tool manages to do so without ever feeling complicated or overwhelming.

As impressive as it may be, there is a downside: a-b tests only work with transactional emails (not a-b tests in sequences or series)

There is currently no support for autoresponders, and certainly nothing to fractionally test automation flows with this a-b testing.

But if they manage to evolve this feature with their e-b testing, they are on the right track.

While it doesn't allow you to do A-B testing for automations, the MailChimp platform offers one of the easiest to use A/B testing environments I've ever encountered.

9. Tracking and reporting

This was another aspect of the MailChimp platform that immediately appealed to me.

The combination of useful, comprehensive data and a simple design works perfectly.

Very easy to access for beginners, this tool offers enough possibilities for those who really want to dive into analytics.

You also have access to automation reports, which include a few additional stats as well as a monthly performance overview:

Not to mention the “comparative report”, which allows you to dig deeper into the numbers and make side-by-side comparisons between your marketing campaigns. (Video here.)

Unfortunately, comparative reports are only available on higher-level plans, so I wasn't able to test them myself.

MailChimp is very efficient with its reporting functions.

It's just a shame that the comparative reports are limited to the most expensive plans.

Ease of use

Getting started with the Mailchimp platform is similar to training provided by a real person. Its user-friendly writing in the app makes creating email campaigns both easy and fun.

The step-by-step approach and checklist-like user interface help you understand not only what you're doing, but why you're doing it.

Mailchimp's detailed campaign fields are well-organized and easy to select.

To get started

The Mailchimp platform tailors your email marketing experience to the needs of your business (see below), for example if you... :

• Encourage online bookings or appointments
• Selling products online
• Measure success by the number of products sold online or the number of people who interact with your software.

This provides easy access to the features that are most useful for your business, as well as personalized advice and support.

Mailchimp is designed with the user in mind, making it easy to start designing and launching email campaigns that will best support your type of business.

The Mailchimp platform provides useful tips, like creating a popup or sharing your signup form on social platforms. They help you get the most out of the software and understand how you can use its features to benefit your business.

Mailchimp's campaign analytics are useful in determining which of your emails are performing well and which are not.

When you start using the software, it takes you to the “create a campaign” option so you know what to do to get up and running right away.

Dashboard

• The Mailchimp platform dashboard offers a large number of tools, but that gives it an overloaded look that users found overwhelming.
• Mailchimp can be confusing because this tool provides you with a lot of organization tools. For example, you can target your contacts based on their location and activity, and you can also use tags to keep track of what information you know about different contacts.
• Tags are just one of the organizational tools you can use to keep track of your followers.
• The bright side of this is that, if you're willing to spend a bit of time getting familiar with the Mailchimp platform, you'll be able to organize a lot of contacts and campaigns just fine.

Template editor

• When it comes to actually editing your emails, Mailchimp's learning curve is easier.
• Mailchimp uses a drag-and-drop email editor, which means you can move the various elements of the template, like text boxes and images, to wherever you want on the page.
• The Mailchimp platform's template editor shows you how your design choices are going to look as you make them.
• We didn't find the Mailchimp platform's drag-and-drop editor to be as seamless as other editors, like that of Sendinblue.
• However, there are useful section blocks to help you determine the best order for your various design elements. Plus, Mailchimp automatically saves your work every 20 seconds, which is a great help.
• In short, if you're ready to put in the time, you can create great emails.

Integrations

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that allows you to send newsletters, promotional emails, and other types of communication to your subscribers.

There are a lot of different integrations available with the Mailchimp account that allow you to connect it to other tools and platforms that you can use.

Here are some examples of integrations available with your Mailchimp account:

• E-commerce integrations: You can connect a Mailchimp account to your online store and automatically add customers to your email list, send abandoned cart emails, and sync your product data with its e-commerce functions
• CRM integrations: You can connect a Mailchimp account to your customer relationship management (CRM) system to sync your subscriber data and send targeted email campaigns.
• Network integrations: You can connect Mailchimp to your social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram, to create and schedule social media posts and track the performance of your campaigns.
• Marketing automation integrations: You can use the automation features of a Mailchimp account to send targeted, personalized emails to your subscribers based on their actions or inactivity.
• Website integrations: You can add a Mailchimp signup form to your website to capture new subscribers and sync data to your Mailchimp account.

These are just a few examples of the many integrations available with a Mailchimp account.

You can find more information about these 300+ integrations on the Mailchimp website.

Pricing

Mailchimp is a popular marketing automation tool that offers several pricing plans, including a free plan.

Here's what you need to know about Mailchimp account pricing:

• The free plan allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per month and is suitable for small businesses with a limited contact base. (or 10,000 contacts per month)
• Mailchimp offers three paid plans: Essentials, Standard, and Premium. Paid plans offer more features and email sending capabilities.
• The pricing plans are designed according to your needs and your number of contacts.
• Mailchimp prices vary depending on the number of contacts you have, and may be higher than some other email marketing tools for large contact bases.
• Mailchimp's pricing structure operates on a sliding scale where the price increases based on the number of contacts and monthly shipments.

In summary, if you have a small contact base and basic marketing automation needs, Mailchimp's free plan might be enough.

If you need more features and email sending capabilities, you'll need to consider paid plans, which are designed based on your needs and number of contacts.

Alternatives to Mailchimp

When it comes to choosing a marketing automation platform, Mailchimp isn't the only option out there. Here is a comparison of three common alternatives:

• Mailchimp vs ActiveCampaign: ActiveCampaign is a Mailchimp alternative that offers very affordable paid plans that are slightly cheaper than similar Mailchimp plans. They are also the best email automation software and easily beat Mailchimp in terms of features.

• Mailchimp vs Mailerlite: Mailerlite is a good option for marketing automation newbies and is much more affordable than Mailchimp. You can start your email marketing campaigns for free or opt for their paid plan starting at $19 per month. Their customer service is available free of charge for free and paid users, unlike Mailchimp which only offers good support for paid users. Mailchimp's paid plan allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per month (or 10,000 contacts per month)

• Mailchimp vs Sendinblue: Sendinblue is considered to be an affordable all-in-one marketing automation solution compared to Mailchimp. The tool is best known for its automation software and list management capabilities. A key difference is that Mailchimp offers a free landing page builder, while you have to pay $49.66 to create landing pages in Sendinblue; even then, you can only create 5 landing pages unless you pay extra. However, Sendinblue also offers advanced automation and integrated CRM features.

Feel free to compare these alternatives to Mailchimp to find the one that best suits your email marketing needs and your various marketing campaigns.

For more, read my detailed comparison of Mailchimp vs Sendinblue.

Customer Support

Mailchimp is a marketing automation tool with limited support for users on its free plan.

However, the software offers useful suggestions for improving your marketing and a useful knowledge base to help you solve your problems.

• Phone support is only available with the highest price plan, but livechat and email support is available for all plans.
• Mailchimp offers helpful tips and suggestions for improving your campaigns every step of the way.
• Mailchimp uses in-app messaging to show you how to use each feature when you first complete a task.
• Your Mailchimp account knowledge base is very detailed, with lots of screenshots, videos, and links to other relevant information.

If you're ready to seek help yourself, the knowledge base in your Mailchimp account is a valuable resource for resolving your issues.

Mailchimp also offers helpful suggestions for improving your campaigns and uses in-app messaging to guide you through each step of the process. However, if you need more personalized support, phone support is only available with the highest rate plan.

FAQs

How much does Mailchimp cost?

Mailchimp offers a free version, which allows you to send emails up to 10,000 contacts per month.

Paid pricing plans start at $9.99.

Can I use Mailchimp without a website?

Yes, although you need to enter a website domain when registering, it could be a blog post or even your Twitter page.

You can also use a Mailchimp account to create or grow your list without having a website. Use your email address and get started.

Instead of hosting signup forms on your website, you can use a Mailchimp account's own landing pages and generate custom URLs within the solution. You can then share them by email, on social networks or send them directly to customers.

Final Verdict

MailChimp is a well-established marketing automation solution that will allow you to run marketing campaigns even without paying. MailChimp has grown rapidly and has a free version to launch safely and allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per month (or 10,000 contacts per month)

MailChimp is aimed at any type of user or any sector of activity (SMEs, SMIs, Autoentrepreneur, start-ups, large companies, etc...)

While the tool has encountered some challenges in some areas, such as labeling and automation, it remains a popular choice due to its accessibility, usability, and affordable pricing.

MailChimp has also made improvements (improving and detecting click rates) to meet the needs of its users, such as updates to its automation features.

If you're looking for a simple, cost-effective tool for your email marketing needs, MailChimp is a solid option, especially if you're new to the field.