Item: Mailchimp
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Mailchimp is being used by specific departments. We use it for our marketing and communications department to send notices to customers for various sub-divisions of companies. These notices could include things like price increases, temporary closures, employees leaving the company, or employees joining the company or being reassigned to a new role.

Pros and Cons

I like that it is a plug-and-play model.
It provides great deliverability to inboxes.
The free version is great for small, local businesses.

In my opinion, cleaning contacts is not super intuitive.
I find that campaigns, templates, etc. can be confusing sometimes.
I also think that tagging and segregating contacts can be confusing.

Return on Investment

It has allowed us to save over $100/month that we were paying another email platform, whereas we could just use the free version of Mailchimp.
It has improved communication with representatives and, therefore, less time and money spent on distractions and unnecessary communications.

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact and HubSpot Marketing Hub

Mailchimp has all the features you'll need for the most part in its free version. The advantage HubSpot has is just its connectivity with its CRM and other tools. Constant Contact is outdated and antiquated, in my opinion. Even if you have to get more space in Mailchimp for emails or contacts, it's still cheaper than the others.

Usability

Overall, it's plug-and-play to create emails, but if there were a few things that would cause it to not get a 10 out of 10, those things would be the tagging or segregating of contacts, the template creations vs campaigns, and the cleaning of contacts. If they made those things a bit better, I'd give them 10.

All-in-One Marketing Platform

We've only used Mailchimp as an email service, not as an all-in-one marketing platform, so I can't really speak to it in those terms. I don't know if Mailchimp does a great job of explaining the value of it. Plus, with other options available, it's hard to consider it as a marketing platform first, as opposed to an email platform first.

Lessons for Success

When we were using a different paid email platform, our emails were not getting to our contacts' inboxes. It was super frustrating and caused a lot of problems. However, once we switched to Mailchimp, our emails got into everyone's inbox and it relieved us from a lot of stress. One of the lessons I've learned is that don't rely just solely on the history of some platforms, as they may be outdated.

Key Insights

Do you think Mailchimp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Mailchimp's feature set?

Yes

Did Mailchimp live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Mailchimp go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Mailchimp again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Even with the free version, Mailchimp has better inbox deliverability compared to other programs, even the paid versions of them. It is a great viable option for small, local businesses with a limited budget, as it provides enough free emails and a number of contacts to support a growing start-up. Even after reaching those limits, the paid version is considerably cheaper than some of the alternatives.

Mailchimp is a Great Option to Ensure Deliverability for Small Local Businesses

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Mailchimp