Mailchimp Tool Review | Scripted

Published by Ciara Antolini on Wednesday, February 21, 2024 in Marketing Agencies, Tool Review, Tools, Tools Reviews.

Mailchimp has evolved and changed quite a bit over the years. It's an email marketing service and (now) marketing automation platform. As with most tools, there are elements of Mailchimp that you’ll probably wish were different, but it’s still got that familiar feel. You can use it whenever you need it, and it’s sure to deliver the results.

Mailchimp has continued to roll out improvements over the years. If you compare their earliest versions with the power of what we can use today, it’s awe-inspiring. They've created a turnkey eCommerce platform that now offers customer relationship management (CRM) features along with options for automation, design, and web hosting.

What to Consider When Looking for an Email Solution

Whenever you're looking into email marketing, it's important that you keep targeting capabilities and other functions in mind. Mailchimp delivers on the most necessary features, although it may lack some of the more specialized solutions of a more expensive option. So, here's what you should consider when looking at Mailchimp and similar tools.

Opt-In: With a WordPress plugin, embeddable forms, and links to help you sign up new subscribers, Mailchimp offers versatility.
Branding: It's a bad idea to confuse your audience with the branding of your email service provider (i.e., Mailchimp) when you're trying to build your reputation and market your own products. Mailchimp's free version may not give you the ability to completely hide their branding, particularly on opt-in forms.
Double Opt-in Confirmation: Simply allowing a person to enter an email address and then automatically add them to your list can lead to a lot of bad emails on your list, and even instances of someone's email being signed up without their consent. In many cases, regulations require you to use "double opt-in," and Mailchimp is one of them. This means, after a user adds their email, they have to go to their inbox and click on a confirmation link within an auto-generated email sent to them by Mailchimp.
Segmentation: You should divide any list into at least two parts. "Segmenting" your list, whether by a subscriber's attribute or how they were attained, helps you send more targeted emails to your subscribers, reducing the number of "unsubscribes" and messages getting marked as spam.
Design Tools: No one wants to get a plain text email these days. Subscribers expect clean, on-brand graphics, and Mailchimp's drag-and-drop designer helps you send attractive emails that are reliably viewable in every subscriber's inbox.
Advanced Scheduling: You're not always ready to send an email right when you've designed it. Simple scheduling tools are a big help in that instance, allowing you to set your email campaign to send at just the right time. Beyond that, advanced tools, like "drip" campaigns, allow you to create a series of emails that you'll send to individual subscribers when they perform a certain action or after a certain amount of time.

As you consider these features, go ahead and take a look at how Mailchimp stacks up.

What is MailChimp?

Mailchimp is an email marketing service that was founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut, Mark Armstrong, and Dan Kurzius. Over the last 20 years, they’ve grown to a revenue of $700 million (2019). As it continues to expand its tools and offerings, innovation remains their constant focus as they move ever-more aggressively into international markets.

With Mailchimp’s purchase of the magazine and media company, Courier, they have more reach, with 100,000 readers around the world in 26 countries. With so much focus on how to engage with international subscribers, this might be the perfect time to expand and explore opportunities and audiences farther afield.

What Are Mailchimp's Features?

Mailchimp is designed to be flexible and easy-to-use, with a myriad of options that should meet your needs. Here are just a few of the basic features that come standard with Mailchimp.

Mailing Lists: You can build lists via import or manual entry, but you can also edit and optimize your lists to target specific segments and audiences as needed.
Image/File Hosting: You can easily import graphics and files for distribution to your mailing lists, but you can also access a range of image options to create the most compelling and high-converting messaging possible.
Client Management: You can connect all your clients in one place, which makes account management easier.
Mailchimp Academy: If there’s ever a question about how to do something, you can immediately access training resources. Not only do you learn the skills you need to accomplish your goals, but you can earn certificates along the way to prove your knowledge.
Cross-Platform Integration: You probably know about how easy it is to integrate Mailchimp with your website, but did you know that there are 250+ possible integrations?

There’s true power in MailChimp’s features and functionality, even at the most basic levels. The reason Mailchimp is a leader in the email marketing space is that users are able to accomplish so much more, even on a tight budget.

So, Why Should You Consider Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an expansive, well-known brand for email marketing and list management. Here's a closer look at the pros and cons so you can get a better idea of what to expect if you decide to use Mailchimp for your brand.

The Pros of Mailchimp

Reporting is a major upside to the Mailchimp platform, with extremely thorough reports that show you just about everything you could possibly want to know or learn about your audience — from geolocation to integrations with social media and Google Analytics.
The free plan on Mailchimp is extremely generous and has a good feature set, too. You can send up to 10,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers a month (so about 5 campaigns per month if you're sending to your whole list) before you have to pay.
Designing emails with Mailchimp is extremely quick and intuitive. With an advanced templates editor, drag-and-drop tools allow you to change fonts, colors, graphics, and even insert videos and logos with ease.
Mailchimp does more than just emails these days! If you're a small business looking to get a suite of tools in one place, Mailchimp has expanded to offer websites, domains, online stores, and appointment scheduling.

The Cons of Mailchimp

While Mailchimp offers an excellent freemium option, once you need to increase your email send or subscriber count beyond the free plan's generous limits, the pricing gets quite steep.
Although Mailchimp's free plan has plenty of features, it lacks something you may need: Support. If you want access to live chat or a support team of any kind, you'll have to pay for at least the Essentials tier.
Drip campaigns and other advanced email marketing tools are available under certain plans, but automation can get clunky. Furthermore, Mailchimp's limitations on the number of lists you can have to make segmentation difficult for highly targeted email marketing.
Mailchimp's added tools are convenient but don't offer the same features or freedom that comes with getting a website or online store set up elsewhere.

Mailchimp Plans & Pricing

Mailchimp offers different plans for its email service as it does for its other services, like website and store hosting. Let's compare Mailchimp's email plans and pricing.

Free

Mailchimp's generous free plan allows you to have up to 2,000 contacts (i.e., subscribers) and you can send up to 10,000 emails throughout the month. You'll get access to many of Mailchimp's tools, but you won't have any support from the Mailchimp team. Tools include the drag-and-drop email builder, the marketing CRM, opt-in forms, opt-in landing pages, and the opportunity to get a Mailchimp domain and build a website.

Essentials

If you want more opportunities to customize your email marketing and the experience of your subscribers, along with 24/7 support, opt for the Essentials plan. This plan starts at $9.99 a month, with that price including 500 contacts. This is where many Mailchimp users get hung up, since the paid plan costs them about $40/month if they're coming in with 2,000 contacts (the limit for the free plan).

With this plan, you'll get all email templates, the ability to custom brand every aspect of your users' experience, A/B split testing, multi-step customer journeys, and — of course — 24/7 support via chat and email, all of which justifies the price increase.

Standard

If you want to use automation and data more in your email marketing, you'll likely opt for the Standard plan. It starts at $14.99/month, which includes 500 contacts. This means you'll be getting all the Essentials plan's features, in addition to a customer journey builder (with branching points), optimization tools for sending your emails, behavioral targeting, custom email templates, and dynamic content that changes based on when or who is looking at your email.

Premium

If you have a very large email list and/or you send out emails all the time, you'll likely be the "high-volume" sender Mailchimp has in mind with its Premium plan. This plan starts at an astonishing $299/mo, which includes 10,000 contacts. In addition, you'll unlock phone support, unlimited user seats, role-based access, comparative reports, multivariate testing, and advanced segmentation.

Customer Reviews

"Mailchimp makes both managing large email audiences as well as crafting good-looking email campaigns super easy. I've used Mailchimp at two organizations now as well as for two personal activities. My current audience is about 4000 and it's easy to find individual contacts as well as segment the audience for targeted communications through tags. Mailchimp codes its own email templates, but it's easy to personalize the design with your own images, graphics, layout, and colors." - J.F. (Communications Assistant at a small business)

"I love that the Chimp lets you endlessly customize each of their templates and that the platform is free to use. As an agency though I have to say the MailChimp and Co feature that allows us to easily manage client accounts is a top feature for us. With MailChimp and CO we can easily switch between managing our own email marketing as well as our client's email campaigns all with a single login. It has allowed us to be more aggressive in our sales of email marketing packages and has increased our review." - Connie S. (Content Fulfillment Agent)

Jason Whaling posted a YouTube video a few years ago highlighting the reasons why he left Mailchimp.

No affiliate marketing.
Automation limitations.
High pricing.
No black-listed domains.
Designed for beginners and SMBs.

Of course, he also offers a video on the top reasons why Mailchimp is an awesome solution. Mailchimp is one of those solutions that may inspire very strong feelings in its users. You’ll probably either love it or hate it. While you’re at it, you’ll also see the benefits. Mailchimp has worked hard to be and become a product that will deliver the services and solutions you need.

What Are the Benefits of Mailchimp?

By now, you probably have a sense of which of Mailchimp’s features will best serve your needs, but it’s still important to understand how those features will benefit you and your company.

Interface

Mailchimp’s interface is streamlined and easy to use, but you’re also able to customize your experience. Why is the interface so important? The workflow is easy and intuitive, so you can quickly get your work done and move on to your next project.

It’s free!

Did you catch the part about a FREE plan? Yep, we’ll mention it again. You’re able to get in to kick the tires, try it out, and even gauge the response to the promotions you send. Do you love it? How are your readers/clients responding to your messaging via Mailchimp? Really test it out to see if this is the solution that will help you grow while supporting your needs.

Reporting

We’ve touched on the reporting features before, but It’s one of those things that bears repeating. With Mailchimp, you can see the click rate at a glance, as well as the open rate, the number of people who have unsubscribed, and how your numbers compare to the industry response on average.

Power To Your Content Marketing

It takes time to compare multiple solutions to determine whether Mailchimp is the best email marketing tool for your business, but what about the rest of your content marketing strategy? If you don't already have a content plan and a team of reliable, talented writers standing by to help you execute it, it's time to consider Scripted's service.

Scripted helps you bring your content marketing to life by matching you with a content writer who is perfect for your business content needs. Interested in learning more?