How MailChimp Goes Beyond Email Marketing | Why is MailChimp so Popular?

Brand exec talks about showing up in unexpected places and what the 'Serial' podcast has done for the brand.

 

mailchimp

MailChimp is known for its email marketing, but the 21-year-old brand has been popping up in a lot of unexpected places lately as it works to build awareness of its offerings. The company, which was acquired by Intuit last year for $12 billion, invested in a Super Bowl ad earlier this year and unveiled a new campaign last month that included participation in New York Fashion Week.

Mailchimp's Fashion Week push included a partnership with the Black in Fashion Council that created a showroom to showcase an exclusive capsule collection for five emerging black designers. That line is sold out, De Cristina said, adding that Mailchimp plans to return to the event next year.

The fashion week appearance is part of a larger global brand campaign that Mailchimp launched in early September. Called "Guess Less, Sell More," the push was the first major campaign created by the brand's in-house creative studio, Wink.

In the podcast, De Cristina also discusses Mailchimp's sponsorship of the "Serial" podcast in 2014. The series covered the true crime of Adnan Syed, who was released from prison earlier this week, where he was serving a life sentence. Following Syed's release, MailChimp contacted The New York Times, which now owns "Serial," and replaced it with an update to the client with the "Serial" episode from 2014, replacing it with an update for the client from 2014. Agreed.

"Mailchimp doesn't get into the true crime genre very often, but he just did a great job for us," DiCristina said of the 2014 sponsorship.

Why is MailChimp so Popular?

If you ask the average person to name an email marketing platform, I bet almost everyone will say one of two things: "What's an email marketing platform?" or "Mailchimp".

In all the years I've used MailChimp, I've never had to explain what it was, it's pretty much a household name. So why is this email marketing brand so famously named after a chimpanzee? Here is my opinion.

• It has a generous free plan.
• Your brand is recognizable.
• It's easy to get started with.
• Its automation features are simple.
• It is an all-in-one tool.

1. Mailchimp has a Generous Free Plan, which Appeals to Small Businesses at the Beginning of their Journey

I have yet to see another marketing platform that offers so much for so little, even other free email marketing tools. What you get with the free plan:

• Ability to send emails to groups of up to 2,000 contacts. This is fine for a small business or even a one-person brand that wants to interact with its audience regularly. In fact, I worked at a midsize company that used the free plan only for their weekly internal newsletter.
• Access to six starter email templates. There are different aesthetics, such as bold, natural, or minimal, and you can edit them with Mailchimp's easy-to-use email editor.
• Full reports. When it comes time to see how well your emails have performed, Mailchimp provides the number of opens, the number of links clicked, revenue earned from a specific email, and many other data points. . The report also includes an assessment of various elements, including the readability of your emails and the use of your links and CTAs.
• Analysis for individual subscribers. Based on these metrics, you assign each member of your audience a star rating.
• All kinds of non-email features. I'll talk about that later, but things like Mailchimp's Landing Page Builder and Social Post Builder are also part of the free plan.

At the end of the day, this generous free plan is as much a win for users as it is for Mailchimp. It gives small businesses the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of email marketing, bringing them in the door. As those brands grow and fall in love with Mailchimp, they'll want to stick with it and upgrade to a paid plan.

 

2. MailChimp Branding is Fun and Easy to Identify

Remember the MailChimp serial ads? Best Do you remember any other ads for any other software on any other platform? maybe not.

Bottom line: Mailchimp is really good at building a brand.

Mailchimp's quirky branding can be found in every aspect of its business: its marketing website, its social media accounts, and even its products. Their mascot, Freddy the chimpanzee, who appears in their logo, even manages to wink at you without being intimidating. It's kind of amazing.

The sleek, forward-thinking, almost futuristic vibe that many tech brands give off with their branding may look good, but it doesn't always feel relevant or human enough. Mailchimp, on the other hand, has always stuck to its original sentiment that we don't take ourselves too seriously regardless of any rebranding. Example: Funny-looking animated character sketches on your marketing pages and within the product.

Despite the goofy drawings, the branding doesn't look too boyish. It actually makes Mailchimp feel more realistic and approachable. And their brand voice matches: it's relaxed, friendly, and easy to understand. And Mailchimp's style guide is highly regarded in the marketing world (in fact, Zapier used it as an example to copy in the early days).

 

3. MailChimp Makes Email Marketing Easy

So Mailchimp's brand is approachable and the product lives up to the hype. Mailchimp is a product that can be used by anyone from marketing veterans to newbies.

Mailchimp makes it super easy to get started with email design, especially if you're brand new to the platform. Once you hit Create, Mailchimp will start with its minimal template (see image below), and customizing it is a breeze.

Many email editors I've used using a drag-and-drop method. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a bit dated. Mailchimp has been updated to a much more modern version. To add a new section to your template, click the blue + button above or below the section and select the element you need. Deleting is also quick: select the section and click the red trash can that appears. You can easily change the color of the text and even the colors of your links after selecting a section of text.

Mailchimp offers five templates on the free plan. Those on a paid plan looking for a little more incentive can also check out the MailChimp Marketplace for access to dozens of other unique premium templates (just keep in mind that you'll have to pay extra for them, on top of its paid plan, with the most expensive templates priced at $14.99 each). And if none of the templates do it for you, you can also copy/paste or upload HTML into the tool's built-in code editor.

Sure - there are plenty of email apps out there that offer easy-to-use email editors. But Mailchimp is one of them, and because it's so good at getting people to use its branded product and its free plan, sticking with the product means people stick around.

 

4. Mailchimp Offers Simple Marketing Automation Features

Marketing automation can be intimidating to anyone who doesn't have experience using it. And while it can certainly get complicated depending on the complexity of your campaigns, MailChimp keeps it simple, while still offering essential features.

With Mailchimp's client Journey Builder, you'll be able to manage however your audience experiences your campaigns. You can segment your audience with if/else rules, send different emails to different audiences, use time delays, tag and group your audience members, or even repeat trips to subscribers. Authority is available.

It may sound complicated, but the process is incredibly intuitive. I didn't need to look up a tutorial or google what a particular button did, I just started building. While other email automation platforms, for example, ActiveCampaign, may have more advanced features, Mailchimp offers more than enough for standard automation. And unlike these other platforms, you don't need an advanced degree in SaaS or marketing automation to use them.

MailChimp gives you a few different campaign options for postcards: You can send one time, which can be great for something like a holiday message. A recurring campaign that sends postcards, for example, every month; Or an abandoned cart campaign, which sends a postcard to any customer who doesn't complete a purchase.

If you've ever received a 10% off a postcard from a brand you've been looking for, now you know how it happened.

 

5. Mailchimp is an Associate in Nursing All-in-One Selling Tool, while not Losing its Simplicity

MailChimp may be a leader in the email marketing world, but as you can already see, it's not all there is to it. In addition to email marketing, Mailchimp offers all sorts of other marketing tools for social media, e-commerce, lead forms, landing pages, and websites. Let me show you a couple, just to give you an idea.

• Social Network. Mailchimp gives you ready-to-use templates to choose from, stock images, and the ability to post directly to multiple social media platforms when you're done. You can also use the tool to create social media ads. Mailchimp automatically adjusts each chart to fit each relevant social platform, which is great for what is known as an email marketing tool. It strikes a chord in my memory of Canva however with fewer customization choices.
• Landing pages. Whether you're hosting a one-time event or a small business that wants to give people a quick way to get in touch, it's easy to create a professional-looking landing page in MailChimp. You can choose from a variety of templates, like the email builder tool, and use the drag-and-drop editor to customize. When you're done, you'll get your own link, which can be customized with a paid plan.
• Websites You can also create complete websites for free, using templates for an about page or contact page, or by building your own page from scratch. (Hot dog food truck color theme included). When you're done, you'll get a MailChimp-branded link, but if you have a domain name, you can use it to make your website more official.

There are plenty of viable alternatives to MailChimp, but none of them have the magic combination of affordability, feature breadth, and affordability that make MailChimp a must for everyone, sellers and non-sellers alike. It Goes and likes.