The ULTIMATE MailChimp Review: a Free & Powerful Email Marketing Service
Updated: May 18
"The Money is on the list.”
You can not talk about generating income from your website without making emphasis on the role of email marketing.
In today's blog guide, I would walk you through, MailChimp, a third-party email service provider with a great user interface, sterling functionalities, and tracking that would greatly boost your sales.
If you want to integrate effective email marketing into your business, you should consider MailChimp.
What is MailChimp ESP?
Mailchimp is simply an email marketing service provider that allows its users to send email marketing campaigns to promote their brands, businesses, products, or services to email subscribers.
Just like most email marketing software, MailChimp also allows users to create simple landing pages. These are also called lead pages that businesses use to build their email database and hopefully increase customers and sales.
You may be considering MailChimp maybe because it's great and free for up to 1000 email subscribers.
MailChimp's old version had way more free features than users enjoy today. For example, years back both free and paid MailChimp users could create as many automation campaigns as possible.
Today, users can only create a few automation in MailChimp. Only the premium users get to enjoy most of the benefits but either way, it's still one of the best free email marketing tools for beginners, intermediaries and even experts.
What is email marketing software?
Email marketing software is service-based software that allows users (marketers) to run email marketing campaigns.
There are loads of email marketing software out today with various features, services, and functions. Some of which are:
Moosend.
Constant Contact.
Sendinblue.
HubSpot.
Mailerlite.
GetResponse.
ConvertKit.
ActiveCampaign.
AWeber.
Mailjet.
And many many more!
Email marketing is the most effective tool for marketing, in fact, ahead of SEO, affiliate marketing, and social media.
What better way to reach your audience than using emails? Now let's talk about how MailChimp can help you send great emails and manage your email newsletter.
The Ultimate MailChimp Review: Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons!
Why Should You Use MailChimp?
Email marketing is not just about sending out emails and expecting their response; several ingredients are for a successful email marketing campaign.
Here are some great reasons that I would talk about:
1. MailChimp's Email Automation User Experience is Great!:
The intuitive automation features of MailChimp are well-designed for a better user experience, and it is a reason you should consider this app for a successful email marketing business.
This feature is not just for marketing emails but also transactional emails, Google, Instagram, and Facebook ads, and coupons, so you map out the entire customer journey.
The ideology behind automation is to customize the user experience and meet your targeted marketing needs without an entire marketing representative.
The app could send reminders to users about their abandoned carts, offer clients discounts on different occasions, and send emails to the relevant groups. Hence, you don’t need to write and send emails to individuals at all times.
MailChimp’s automation would be very efficient if you have a large organization with a robust database and contact to attend to a limited workforce. This service provider would just be handy for such purposes.
2. Mailchimp's Forever Free Plan
If you are just starting on your email marketing, MailChimp’s “Forever Free” is a go-to.
Come to think of it, you get a subscriber list of 2,000, and you could send 12,000 emails monthly. For free! What a good way to start with a superb email service provider such as MailChimp. On the other end, you could set it up easily with a low-risk introduction to the email marketing industry.
However, when your email list grows beyond this number, you would have to subscribe for a paid version. Personally, the free account would meet all your needs as you start.
3. Custom-Designed Forms
Sign-up forms are invaluable in reaching out to your customers. MailChimp would provide these forms and create room for you to customize these forms to suit your need and then add your company’s logo.
In addition to your company’s logo, you could also include your social media handles on the form.
These features ensure you and your customers have a seamless experience. What of the lists on your mobile contact? MailChimp allows you to integrate the lists on your device’s contact, and you leave no stone unturned.
4. Detailed Reports and Analytics
Marketing is not a hit-and-run thing; it is n ongoing process. You use the insights you got from previously executed marketing plans and use them to make data-driven decisions for future campaigns.
The reports you get from MailChimp are very robust and let you know the success and failure more categorically. The service provider avails the information through interactive charts and graphics.
MailChimp would provide a comprehensive dissection of your email campaigns and how they are faring. It would also provide detailed information on how your campaigns are doing across different social media platforms compared to competitors.
This invaluable feedback from the software would eliminate the need for an email marketing expert. From the report, you can make professional decisions by yourself and grow your business exponentially.
5. MailChimp is Very Easy to Use
What more would you need than a super user-friendly and flexible platform for your email marketing? From my experience, it is designed for anyone, even when they are not techies. MailChimp would allow non-techie persons to send professional-looking emails.
This service provider was launched in 2001, but I just keep seeing new updates, designs, and better features to make the user interface more friendly and clearer. You choose from templates and set your layout and text using the simple drag-and-drop design feature.
You just need to take a sneak peek into the MailChimp app and experience the ease and leverage it provides.
Overview of MailChimp Features in 2023:
Marketing automation: Automation is at the hub of email marketing. Marketing without automation would be draggy with lower engagement and conversion rates.
These are some things that you can do with email automation:
Autoresponders: This feature would send a sequence of emails automatically, based on the options they make. This feature helps reach new contacts as soon as they sign up and set emails to be sent, such as sending an email the day after they join your list.
Also, you could set up auto-responses for events such as contacts’ birthdays and a message for festive seasons.
Recover Abandoned Carts: Personally, this is one of the most impressive features of MailChimp automation. It could send out email reminders to customers who have left their cart, so they could complete their purchase.
Feedback: This automation also allows some basic feedback, particularly when your contacts have made a purchase. You could get the feedback by sending a quick survey, asking for a review, or proffering helpful advice that would help you serve them better. Again, you can set the time for the feedback, for instance, 10 days after purchase.
Google Remarketing ads: This software would create Google remarketing ads automatically so your campaigns can reach users as they continue to surf the web.
The idea here is that some visitors would not buy your product on the first visit, but as you retarget and provide extra incentives, there is a higher chance of making purchases.
Landing pages: Again, with MailChimp, you can create as many landing pages as you want. The built-in landing page builder can be used on every plan. There are two types of landing page builders: you use one to build your email list and the other for product promotions.
E-commerce integration: The integration of E-commerce to MailChimp is one of the premium features of the software. You can efficiently integrate the WooCommerce store with MailChimp.
One of the things it can do is allow you to synchronize all of your available WooCommerce products, orders, and customers. And any alteration you make in the future would surely be reflected in MailChimp also.
The next thing is to keep track of your campaign performance by evaluating your campaign's exact revenue. To move a step further, the tracking feature would indicate the exact campaign your visitor was coming from before making a purchase.
There are limits to the paid accounts, but you can have up to a maximum of 2,000 subscribers, and they could be on different lists, but they cannot exceed this figure in total. The lists are just segments of your contacts, and this software allows an unlimited number of lists. Every month you can send up to 12,000 emails also.
However, when it comes to autoresponders and automatic marketing, the free account would limit you from using the automatic marketing features.
Building web pages with Mailchimp: The evolution of MailChimp has been so dramatic over the years, and it has grown into a full-blown marketing automation platform.
It is a website builder and allows you to create your website without writing or learning a single line of code.
Yes, that’s correct.
There are several templates similar to email layouts and templates. You could easily develop several pages and use the colour palettes and themes to customize them to meet your needs.
This website builder does not in any way limit what you could do with it, as relates to adjustments. You could use the web editor to make several adjustments, alter texts, colours or any content block on a webpage that you built with the MailChimp website builder.
Responsive Editor: As you know, sending marketing emails has progressed beyond just typing texts or email copy and hitting the “send” button.
MailChimp has two types of editors; the standard editor, which allows you to use only their predefined content blocks. The other is the custom code editor, and for this, you can build your HTML template.
The drag-and-drop feature is useful as you could easily add content blocks, remove them and replicate them seamlessly. Also, you could hide other content within a content block.
Here are some of the distinct characteristics of MailChimp Editor:
Speedy load time
The drag-and-drop functionality
CSS Inliner support by default
Text version creation along with HTML template
Geolocation Section in Mailchimp:
MailChimp allows you to segment your contact list based on their locations and enables localizing the market requirements. The method used by this platform is not to get the exact physical location of the recipient but to use their IP addresses.
However, when the recipients use VPN, it can affect the accuracy of geotargeting.
How to Create MailChimp Signup Forms
You create signup forms in MailChimp, and a form builder is a handy tool for building, sharing, and translating your goals into a comprehensible form.
You would benefit from knowing how to create a signup form in MailChimp as the new contacts that can be used in the future.
These are the steps in creating a signup form in MailChimp:
Build from Scratch
There are three different tabs on MailChimp’s form builder – Design It, Translate It and Build It.
The Build It tab allows you to add the content of your form and structure it to meet your requirement. Besides, you could also select audiences and customize settings.
In the Design It tab, you could choose the fonts, colours, and graphics that suit your form and response emails.
For this place, any alterations you make would be adapted by subsequent pages to ensure consistency.
Then for the Translate It tab, you could translate your form into different languages, so you can attend to all your users.
Creating and Sending Effective Emails in MailChimp
Sending emails to subscribers is the heart of email marketing, and this software allows you to create and send attractive emails swiftly.
All emails in MailChimp are handled under “Campaigns”.
As soon as you initiate a new campaign, you have some options, which are:
The four options are explained below:
Regular: This is the standard one-off email blast. To use it, you have to create the email by selecting an appropriate template and customizing it.
To initiate your Regular email in MailChimp, you kickstart by assigning a campaign name, then you select the segment of your list you wish to send to.
Under this campaign, you would fill in all missing information like the email subject line and who the email should be from, and the recipient sees this information.
One point you should note always is that you are not to start with a blank slate.
Therefore, you should select from the over 50 templates available, and all of them are responsive to modern design.
After choosing your template, you can edit it as much as you wish or make little adjustments.
After selecting the template comes the process of employing the visual editor to customize the email to suit your needs.
Another advantage of this is the ability to preview the email, and you can edit any element by clicking on it and making the adjustment.
I am sure you got it to this point, right?
Finally, you have to select when the email would be sent.
Plain text: This is similar to the Regular email that I talked about, and there are no images or formatting. This is also a one-off action. Again, you send text only and no images.
A/B test: You can create the same emails but with different versions. One major difference between the A/B test campaign and the regular campaign is that you would be asked to select the element you would like to split the test from the start. Some of the elements you could split-test are subject lines and email content, among others.
You have some options when you want to split-test: the subject line, form name, content, and send time.
Any option you pick would allow you to test two or three variations of it. Again, you can also get to set a winning combination.
The variations would be sent to a segment of your email list, and the more your email list, the better.
What MailChimp does is segregate the versions of emails you created, then select the best, and send the best version to the rest of your list.
Again, what differentiates this campaign from the regular one is that you need to create two or three versions of the aspects of the email you would be testing.
Mailchimp Automation: Years ago, all of Mailchimp's automation features used to be available for free users.
This feature by MailChimp allows you to create emails that would be sent in response to specific events. Again, in this aspect, you can also create autoresponders.
Autoresponders is one functionality that every business looks forward to and welcomes.
MailChimp Pricing: How Much Does it Cost to Use Mailchimp Email Marketing Service Provider?
MailChimp provides a Free plan; hence, they do not provide a free trial.
Several things that distinguish MailChimp from several other email service providers are that they offer a free plan. I mean completely and permanently free.
You can add up to 500 subscribers for the free plan and send up to 1,000 emails every month. That is good enough for starters looking to try a top-notch email marketing service provider like MailChimp.
Another distinct feature available on the free plan is A/B testing and reporting.
This feature is one that positioned MailChimp as a front liner in email marketing parlance.
You cannot access all features in the free plan, but you can be sure you would do just well using the free plan.
Anything beyond this limit would require you to upgrade to a paid plan.
Let’s discuss the Mailchimp paid plans.
The Paid Plans
Some features are not accessible on the free plan; therefore, these are the paid plans:
MailChimp Essentials Pricing Plan (Starts at 12.43 per month): This is the cheapest among MailChimp’s pricing plans.
Here are some of the features of the Essentials plan:
Everything included in the free plan
There are up to 3 audiences
Up to 3 users
You can have up to 50,000 contacts, but the price goes up based on the subscriber count
A/B testing
24/7 email support
This plan does not have an email autoresponder, which is supposed to be the base of email marketing automation.
MailChimp Standard Pricing Plan (Starts at $12.43 per month): This is the plan every business owner would want to subscribe to, and it is on par with several email marketing service providers’ pricing plans also.
Features:
Everything included in the Essential plan
Delivery by time zone
Email autoresponders
Maximum of 5 audiences
Up to 5 users
Custom templates
Custom audience generation
Send time optimization
This plan is very functional and contains several features that most business owners would require to increase conversion and boost sales.
MailChimp’s Premium Pricing Plan (Starts at 334.56 per month): This plan includes all the features that you could get from MailChimp, and large businesses or organizations can leverage this plan to reach out to unlimited audiences.
The benefits you get from this paid plan are immense and they include:
Unlimited Contacts
Unlimited Emails Monthly
Unlimited Live Chat Support
Custom branding
Multirative testing
Unlimited Live Email Support
Comparative Reports
Phone support
Advanced Segmentation Features
Some distinct features of the Mailchimp premium plan include:
Delivery by Time zone: There are times allotted by users to attend to emails, such as during lunch, or early hours of the office time. Therefore, this paid plan lets you set an email delivery time based on the different time zones. This action would lead to the generation of more conversions and interactions.
Multivariate Testing: This is a deep level of split testing, and it works better on large lists.
Analyzed Demographics: Some of the functionalities in MailChimp can estimate the age and gender of your subscribers. This segmentation allows you to send more specific and higher-performing emails to users.
Customer Support: How's MailChimp Customer Support?
You could be enjoying the software features, but what happens when you get a bug, or you are stuck in operation?
It could be so frustrating, and you don’t even want to get caught in the web of not reaching efficient and effective support.
I have used MailChimp for some years, and I could say the staff is super helpful, and when you contact them with any query, their responses are speedy, friendly, and exact.
Their exactitude shows the excellence and effort they invest in meeting your queries.
However, due to their exponential growth over the years, they cannot offer unlimited support for free accounts.
MailChimp incorporated the ‘freemium’ as an integral part of their business model. But when you set up a free account, you have up to 30 days of free email support, which is a great idea, I think.
This action is not in any way to compel you to go for the paid version, but just an indication of how excellent their services are and the exponential demand.
Unlimited support is for subscribers on the paid version.
However, their knowledge base is robust and contains several articles, user guides, and video tutorials to help you out.
You can always count on these guides from starting to the efficient use of your account, and detailed technical information definition of their terminologies.
PROS OF USING MAILCHIMP:
Easy to use, and has all the necessary features
Free to start with
A powerful slew of automation options
The free plan is amazing
Easy to import subscribers
A/B and multivariate testing are available
CONS OF USING MAILCHIMP:
MailChimp is a generic email marketing software
It can get expensive as your list grows
Signup forms are not too attractive
Final Note on MailChimp Email Marketing Service Provider
Email marketing is at the centre of any successful online business, and MailChimp is a good email marketing service provider that you should consider.
The drag-and-drop email builder is always an exciting software to work with.
Getting the best even with the Forever free version is something that you don’t enjoy on other providers without paying a fee. You can build your website without writing a single line of code using the website builder.
However, it does not have all the advanced automation features that you might need.
Although MailChimp can send out the occasional follow-up email, it does not integrate an intuitive marketing strategy into your wider sales process.