Item: Mailchimp
Rating: 10
Author: Cara Siera

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Mailchimp to keep a list of contacts, acquire new contacts, and automate emails.

Pros and Cons

Automates emails - weekly blog updates, new user welcome emails
Wordpress-enabled plugins for acquiring contacts

It is often difficult to locate and edit automations and landing pages that I have created in the past.
I would like to see the free version offer the ability to categorize contacts.
I would like RSS feed to pull in featured images

Return on Investment

Very little impact. Most of my interactions take place on Instagram. If there were a way to derive email addresses from Instagram, that would be amazing.

Alternatives Considered

Constant Contact

Mailchimp definitely beats Constant Contact in terms of price. But Constant Contact's usability (intuitive layout, more and simpler design elements) far surpasses Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is hard to use compared to similar systems. The layout is not intuitive. It requires two-part authentication nearly every time I sign in. It's hard to find elements you've previously created. The email editing tools can be hard to use and there aren't many outstanding design elements.

All-in-One Marketing Platform

I have not benefited from these features. If the blog portion of the website tool was better, I might switch from Wordpress. But at present, Wordpress with a Mailchimp plugin better suits my needs.

Lessons for Success

I have acquired some email contacts. These are important, as they are more stable than social media alone.

Key Insights

Do you think Mailchimp delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Mailchimp's feature set?

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

Mailchimp is great for acquiring and storing email addresses. Some of the features are difficult to use. For example, I would like to create different welcome emails originating from different links. I was not able to do this in a streamlined way. I ended up making a landing page, and then it was hard to get back to it on the Mailchimp site to edit it later.

It's good, but could be even better

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Mailchimp