Mailchimp

Pros

MailChimp is an email marketing software. I so much love this software for so many reasons. These reasons include:

1. Easy to learn: MailChimp was the very first email marketing software I used. Even though I was only a newbie in email marketing when I started using it, it was so easy for me to learn.

2. Easy to use: Using MailChimp for email marketing is very easy. It has templates that only need to be edited to give beautiful email outlook. There's no need to do html coding of the email - this could have needed some technical know-how.

3. Landing Page Builder: With MailChimp I'm able to build landing pages for products. I didn't need a website to build a landing page. I used MailChimp for that.

4. Facebook Integration: It's possible to Integrate Facebook to MailChimp. This is very easy. No programming knowledge is required. By integrating Facebook to MailChimp, it was very easy to run Facebook adverts for custom and lookalike audiences using my email subscribers list. It's also easy to run Facebook adverts with lead generation objective right from MailChimp.

5. Free to start: Something very beautiful about MailChimp is that it can allow a user to have up to 2,000 subscribers, and be able to send up to 12,000 emails per month on the free mode. This was very helpful as I never had to spend any money on email marketing for my startup. MailChimp helped me save cost.

6. Analytics: MailChimp have provision for email analytics. This helped me measure some metrics.

Cons

Not withstanding all those benefits, I have some things I don't like about MailChimp.

1. Affiliate marketing: I'm also an affiliate marketer. I've read that MailChimp is not very kind to affiliate marketers. They imposed a very strict measure on the type of product to be marketed. This has made me not to consider it in my affiliate marketing venture.

2. Cost on the long run: Another thing is that after a business has exceeded the 2,000 subscribers, or 12,000 emails per month benchmark on the free mode, one will have to purchase a package to keep using the software.

Apart from those two cons, MailChimp is generally an awesome email marketing software.

Pros

I love that it's free for the first 2000 names - makes it easy to try the product over time. I switched from Constant Contact and was looking for something more affordable for our needs as a new, volunteer-based non-profit. I also love the ease of use. It's pretty simple to figure out and whatever questions I've had have been answered by the help documents.

Cons

I wish that Mailchimp more easily integrated with my ticketing software (OvationTix.) I tried to merge data but it's not intuitive so I have ended up not using that feature. I'm not sure if that's an issue on the side of Mailchimp or OvationTix, so it doesn't affect my overall enjoyment and opinion of the software.

I also deal with a lot of email going into spam, even though I've followed all of the rules and avoid filter triggering phrases in my subject lines. I guess I wish there were more support in that area.

Pros

Mailchimp has easy and intuitive drag-and-drop campaign building blocks that make it easy to create professional emails and campaign landing pages. It's easy to connect Mailchimp to your online store to embed products, customize campaigns to folks who've opted in to lists or purchased particular products at your online store, and you can automate complete email/landing page chains. What you're able to accomplish with Mailchimp is only limited by your imagination, and the longer you work with it and explore it, the more value it yields. Somehow Mailchimp is able to deliver all this on a chassis that's simple and intuitive. For more sophisticated setups, they have a robust library you can access that's very useful. Perhaps the most important thing that I've appreciated about Mailchimp over the 10+ years I have used them is their unwavering dedication to ensuring the health of your list -- and therefore the health of the entire platform. They do a great job of educating marketers about how to ensure your campaigns are successful not just in the short run, but also overall, over many, many mailings and contacts. They keep marketers abiding by good email marketing principles, which means the platform is trusted by inboxes everywhere. Deliverability is very important to me and to my clients. I have more than once schooled my clients, armed with data and principles that Mailchimp taught me (both the easy way and the hard way).

Cons

Any gripe I might have with Mailchimp is the same gripe I would have with any email platform. I would like their email and landing page-building software (or web-building software) to be as intuitive as Squarespace, which is honestly a whole other level of drag-and-drop, so perhaps a pipe dream. Over the years, I also haven't felt like I had a good support option. Their help page goes to the Mailchimp "knowledgebase" of articles, so everything I've ever learned about Mailchimp came from sussing it out myself through trial and error, through searching their Knowledgebase, or with a quick Google search. I do see they have a chat feature, which is great. But honestly in 10+ years I've pretty much had to wing it on this platform and it's still my fave, which says a lot. The only other thing I hope they improve is the automated email chain engine. Honestly, it feels a little glitchy.

Pros

First-time users of MailChimp will enjoy the editor which is fast and simple to use, as it also supports the use of drag & drop interface to prepare your message. The support for auto-responders, A/B testing, recurring emails and RSS to newsletter has made my job easier. MailChimp analytics can tell you exactly what you need to know about the emails you sent. The analytics also helps me know what and what not to adjust in my email campaign and because I use MailChimp for the creation of Facebook, Instagram and google ads is another useful reason I have stuck to it. I regularly use Mailchimp to integrate with applications like WordPress to create subscription form and create ordering pages for e-commerce software like Shopify and woo commerce. It has been flawless so far. I will say they have a lot of features in the paid plan that makes email marketing enjoyable and subscribers spoilt for choice

Cons

Mail chimp does not encourage using their service for affiliate marketing even after you pay for their product. I learnt this the hard way when my defaulting account was blacklisted. I also observed that emails sent to Gmail landed in the promotion tab while some company internal servers blacklisted emails sent from my Mailchimp account. You should do well to beware of the forever free plan because they don’t provide customer service for it after 30 days and it does not support autoresponders. The pricing plan is not very straightforward to understand. Over the years, they have included some changes which are not great from a customer perspective (like the need to verify that your contact was gotten from a subscription page) and the reduction of contact allowed on the free forever plan to just 2000.

Pros

1) Template Compatibility: The templates that you choose in MailChimp are optimized to fit on all screen sizes. Whether the recipient has a smartphone, a desktop, a laptop or even a tablet, your content will be delivered to him/her the way you want it to be.
2) Scope for better future campaigns: What I mean by this is - MailChimp gives you an edge or an insight into how your campaigns are doing. Based on the statistic report, you can refine and optimize your campaigns and make them more effective.
3) Engendering Interaction: Creating a Survey or a User Form has never been easier.
4) No HTML knowledge required: As I mentioned earlier, MailChimp has a myriad of optimized templates to choose from which helps you become much more creative with your campaigns. There is no need for a separate Design Team unless you don't already like the templates that are available.

Cons

1) User Interface: MailChimp does have a user-friendly interface(s). However, the problem is that they change the User Interface every time they roll in a new update. Yes, this will be easy to master in a short while, but that still requires a NewsLetter team to get accustomed to the new interface. This wastes a lot of time.
2) Zero Tolerance to Affiliate Marketers: If you're an affiliate marketer and you've just stumbled upon MailChimp, turn the other way. I'm not sure what the penalties are but I know they're quite severe.
3) Expensive: Though the Freemium version of MailChimp is rather generous, the paid subscriptions can surely burn a hole in your pocket when you find yourself wanting to send more emails and build your subscription list.