Item: Mailchimp
Rating: 10
Author: Manan Vora

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our Marketing department uses Mailchimp to collect a comprehensive list of all the people who have subscribed to our mailing lists from multiple locations. We use Mailchimp for 2 specific use cases -

To send out automated onboarding emails for new subscribers.
To send bi-weekly newsletters about the industry.

This helps us extend our community base and keep people interested in our business or industry engaged with our brand.

Pros and Cons

Creating a comprehensive list - Mailchimp integrates with literally everything under the sun, so its easy to use it to collect subscribers.
Creating and sending emails - Their template creation and email sending process is very simple.

The way Mailchimp's Setting page is set up is a little confusing to use.
Ability to edit the look of the ready Subscribe Forms Mailchimp provides.

Return on Investment

We can keep users engaged with the brand, to retain interest, for future sales.
The amount of time it takes for us to set up and send emails reduces drastically.

We've tried a few other emailing systems but none of them are as simple as Mailchimp. For most, the pricing is very steep, for some it was the ease of set-up and regular sending of campaigns and for some, it was the integration with other tools that made us skip those and opt for Mailchimp.

Usability

Right from their onboarding to integrating it with other systems, and finally sending out emails - Mailchimp has simplified the entire process. Their UI/UX and more importantly, their understanding of non-technical people, has made it simple for anyone to create a mailing list and send out emails without giving it too much time. They even integrate with shopping carts for you to engage with shoppers based on their interactions with the website.

All-in-One Marketing Platform

We have used the Landing Page Builder and the Email Marketing tools and they have worked very well for us. For some campaigns where we need users to see different content and hopefully interact/subscribe with our business, the integration between the pages and the list manager + email sender is a perfect fit. The Landing Page Builder as with the email builder is easy to use for non-technical people and doesn't take too much time to create.

Lessons for Success

We've managed to grow our list from 0 to 350~ people in a very short span of time with the list builder integrations and email sending systems from Mailchimp. What we have learned is to spend time creating original and valuable content to provide value to our readers.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are a business starting out, Mailchimp has the best email sending systems for a couple of reasons -

Ease of creating lists.
Zero cost when you start off.
Simple to use for non-technical entrepreneurs.
You don't need any coders to develop emails in HTML. Mailchimp's email builder is easy to use with drag and drop features and you can create beautiful emails with it.

Great list builder for individual and small team entrepreneurs

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Mailchimp