Mailchimp – Email Marketing Reviews

Mailchimp Review - 9/8/2010 10:10 AM

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MailChimp Review - 4th

Website: http://www.mailchimp.com
Year Founded: 2001
Location: Georgia

Phone Support : Yes
Email Support : Yes
Live Chat : Yes

Overall User rating -
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Summary:

MailChimp has a lot of great features, one or two of which you won’t find anywhere else. However, most of these great features come at an extra charge to the regular cost of service. Their general pricing structure can work for small businesses but can get pricey for larger organizations, or those sending out to larger lists.

Highlights:

MailChimp offers the user a prompt, encouraging them to include a line about where the contact signed up for the emails. This reminder helps keep unsubscribes at a minimum. MailChimp is the only service that offers this option.

Another feature that no other email marketing service provides is an API to integrate with shopping carts for e-commerce users. There are ready-made plug-ins for Magento, Foxycart!, Zen Cart, PrestaShop, OS Commerce, and several other common platforms like WordPress. Also, MailChimp offers an API that lets advanced users integrate the mail solution with their shopping cart, adding a "subscribe to our newsletter" link right in the checkout, etc.

MailChimp can also integrate with Google Analytics. MailChimp's Analytics 360 lets the user combine email campaign results with Google Analytics and generate data regarding return on investment, revenue generation, average value per email visitor, conversion rates, or the number of transactions your emails generate. Other email services also provide this feature but it is a great feature to have included.

Another great feature that not many other email services provide is an update for RSS feeds. MailChimp's RSS to email feature will automatically send subscribers an email when RSS feeds change.

MailChimp’s A/B Split campaigns are another great benefit to the service. Many top marketers use A/B testing to improve their success and conversion rates. For example, if an organization wants to know if offering free shipping will really improve conversion rates, by preparing two product newsletters that are identical in every way except that one offers a coupon for free shipping, by sending the newsletters out as an A/B test with MailChimp the user can compare the results. Users can also test subject line copy or find out what day of the week works best for their target customers.

MailChimp has a comprehensive help and support section that includes a searchable knowledgebase, PDF guide, email tickets/support and live chat. When contacted, the live chat support center has a great response rate. As part of their support services MailChimp offers a blog including articles and tips about email marketing as well as a weekly webinar.

Some of the more general services that MailChimp includes are free unlimited image hosting, although all images have to be less than 1mb to upload. The user can create up to 9 custom fields for their subscriber information. MailChimp also provides neat and easy to view graphics for the tracked opens, clicks, opt outs, spam referrals etc.

Criticism:

The major troubles that MailChimp imparts are that of a service that the user is being over charged for. The first major example is the free trial, which is meager at best: MailChimp offers a trial account and gives you 25 "credits" to send to up to 25 people.
They’re pricing is as follows: Its pay-as-you-go, no contracts, however their pricing goes considerably higher than their competitors: $15/500 credits $60/2,000 credits $200/10,000 credits $500/50,000 credits. This option only works for small businesses and those that send quarterly or barely once a month if compared with what other services offer.
Something that is inconvenient for users with a MailChimp account is that bounced emails are automatically deleted. Because there are several reasons why an email might bounce, this is a rather large and glaring problem that desperately needs to be fixed. Another large inconvenience that no other email marketing service imposes is a SPAM security setting that does not let a user sign up using a hotmail account.
Although it is great that MailChimp provides a Spam Checker, they charge for the service, where plenty of other email marketing services do not. Not only do they charge, but they OVER charge for it. For $39 the user can preview campaigns of 16 different email clients of the major domains: Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL etc. The price only allows the user to check their messages three times. MailChimp also has an additional AIM reporting add-on for $99.
The reports that are included in the cost of the service are raw numbers for opens, clickthroughs, bounces, etc. Similar to the SPAM checker, to access members’ detail reporting, MailChimp ‘offers’ an upgrade called the "AIM" report for a one-time $69.00 charge. The "AIM" report will show you which members opened your message or clicked through. This is a service that every reputable email marketing service provides at no extra charge.
Above the unreasonable pricing, the AIM service itself lacks functionality. Using the information that the user paid for forces them to jump through hoops in order to be able to use it for their next campaigns, for a more refined and targeted sending. When using MailChimp, there isn’t an option for internal list segmentation.
Also, there are constant problems with the template editor. Constant little glitches that make using MailChimp a bit of a headache.
When importing lists, it is important to note that the file must have a ".txt" extension or it will fail. This is also an unnecessary little headache. They could benefit from providing the user with an image gallery, otherwise there's nowhere to view/select from previously uploaded images. Lastly, MailChimp does not support Unicode or international languages.

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I like mail chimp but I would recommend Omnistar Mailer..
-- Sal , wadesign.com

Chimp for president!..
-- Gunther Margot , Hell's Kitchen

I love using this thing!..
-- Pamela Tish , Bronx

Great product..
-- tammy , New Hampshire

I think this product is great and the staff are helpful..
-- Peachy Keen , Long Beach

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