Creating an effective email marketing campaign can be time consuming and takes a bit of skill on the part of the business owner or marketing professional but it’s essential to any successful online business. Keeping track of all the different components of your marketing efforts is a job in and of itself but utilizing an email marketing service such as MailChimp can take some of the burden off you.
I use MailChimp myself and so far I’ve had a pretty positive experience. So today I thought I’d share some of the features as well as some of the pros and cons I’ve come up against.
MailChimp is an email marketing service which was founded in 2001 and now has just over five million users. With MailChimp you can create, track and send email as well as analyze statistics of your email marketing campaign all in one place and for accounts with a 500 subscriber limit (your email recipients) and a limit of 3000 sends … it’s completely free. This is perfect for a small business; anyway … let’s start with some features.
Features I Like
- Advanced Reporting – MailChimp uses interactive graphs and charts to track your opens, click rates, bounces, unsubscribes … all activity associated with your emails. They also integrate Google Analytics providing you additional insight, further influencing your ability to create an effective marketing campaign.
- Mobile App – MailChimp has a mobile app that is easy to use. It’s optimized for both iPhone and Android use. Great for those who are constantly on the go, a must for online marketing.
- UI –The user interface is quite simplistic making it easy for even a novice user to get started. MailChimp makes it easy to add your own custom designs and test them out.
- A/B Testing – MailChimp allows you to create A/B versions of your email campaign and test them to see which is more effective.
- Integration Options – MailChimp has a host of integration options like Google Docs and is a cloud based service.
- Forever Free Plan – With this plan you are able to send up to 12,000 emails per month if you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers. This plan requires no contract and no credit card. This is wonderful for small business owners and others with a limited marketing budget.
Not too bad for a mostly free service; now for some pros and cons …
Pros
- The biggest pros are those stated in the features so I won’t go back over them.
- Learning Resources – MailChimp provides some great resources in the form of helpful videos to aid you in getting started and figuring out how much of the service you need to utilize.
- Free pricing for small email lists.
- Ease of use.
- Convenient and feature packed email marketing system.
- RSS to Email – Emails are sent automatically to RSS feeds when blogs are updated.
Cons
- Transition from free to paying account – The Forever Free plan allows you 2,000 subscribers or less for free. Once you exceed that amount you enter into a paying service.
- Total number of email blasts – send more than 12,000 emails a month and you are automatically moved to the next level which is also a paying service. If you need more email sending capacity and price is an issue for you, MailChimp may not be for you.
Bottom Line
MailChimp is a feature packed email service which can help you take control of your email campaign in a plethora of ways and if you can stick to the send and subscriber limits, it’s economical as well. If you’re worried about costs adding up because you send a lot of material … you may want to shop around for a higher volume email marketing service.
5/5 Stars
5/5 Stars