MailChimp Review: Online HTML Email Marketing
In need of an online email marketing platform, we found at least three that fitted our criteria of a good feature set, ease of use and cost effective pricing. We opted for our monkey cousins over at MailChimp!
Having searched on Twitter for an alternative to Aweber and iContact, then having read the Outlawdesign blog review of MailChimp we hooked up and swung into action.
The pricing structure was the most competitive we could find, especially if you're like us and only sending out an email every quarter. Buying credits that match the number of emails sent instead of a fixed monthly fee, suits us just fine.
In Short
- Competitively Priced
- Good Feature Set
- Good Site Design and Usability
- Quick Set up and Testing
- HTML or Templates Provided
Features
Once signed up the layout of the site is great and made the process of testing our first campaign very easy. The great option of carrying out an A/B split test on your campaign is also available:
You can create contact lists by importing delimited email addresses and names and then add as much detail as you wish, town, jobs etc to give you extra data to analyse in the reports section.
Templates are provided but naturally our own html designed version was easy to incorporate:
Then once the code is copied and pasted in place a neat feature of 'inline CSS' is available to help beat the spam filters. From here you can send a test to see how it appears in your inbox. To ward off spammers you must include a snippet of code to allow opt out of the email.
Once you've done all this you're ready to send the simian postman on his way. Reports are available straight away so you can track your campaign as it happens. The neat and easy to view graphics give you an instant overview of opens, clicks, opt outs, spam referrals and much more.
Extras
For an additional fee of $69 you get the AIM (Actionable Intelligence and Metrics) which tells you exactly who opened and what they clicked. MailChimp's integration with Google Analytics, a free service, lets you see which campaigns are converting to your website.
If you run an ecommerce site using ZenCart, Magento or osCommerce you can download the plugin and get your sales stats automatically added to your email reports.
Royal MailChimp, King of Email Marketing 
All-in-all the monkey that mails is a fine piece of work containing most of the features you could want in this price bracket.
MailChimp delivers in more ways than one!
Comments
Great website
I've been looking at MailChimp recently. In fact I used a couple of their templates for some work I was asked to do. I haven't used their paid service yet but they appear to offer a massive array of helpful features.
The ease of use of their website and clear pricing structure is what attracted me most. I look forward to using them properly soon. Glad somebody else appreciates them!
Great Email Marketing Tips
Yep they sure are good Xavier and like you say there's lots of tips and helpful chimps around to give you advice. There's also a downloadable guide :)
Great Email Marketing Tool
We have been playing around with everything from constant contact / vertical response, to mad mimi, to phpList for the past couple of years. Some were to much investment in time with poor usability, some were too expensive given our marketing budget and amount of email sent, and some, well you know, some just stink. MaillChimp gives the best of all worlds, competitive pricing, awesome and intuitive user interface, ROI tracking, etc. Great review of a great piece of software.
Love the MailChimp
I have been using MailChimp for awhile now. They have worked very well for us. The feature that drew me to their service in the first place was the ability to buy credits. I did not want to pay a monthly fee. The templates and all of the helpful campaign building tools are just getting better and better. And of course I love the Chimp.
Sharing the MailChimp Love
Thanks guys for the comments, it appears there's real love for the monkey that mails especially when it comes to their pricing :)
In the land of the blind...
I love MailChimp, it's excellent for sending HTML emails. The problem is that so many HTML emails are so bloated with extra tags and mark-up that they just don't need that many people just either ignore them or mark them as spam.
Thanks
I have been searching for such service. Thanks for this blogger. I am sure MailChimp could help us in many ways.
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Stellathomas
{edited by admin: removed promotional links}
Has anyone found issues
Has anyone found issues using mailchimp in the UK? I imagine the data protection laws governing it are US which differ to ours materially?
Data Protection Laws
I've not myself but if you're in doubt do take a look at this site for UK guidelines: http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/topic_specific_guides/marketing.aspx
Monkey Business
Okay, so we have used either one of the three most popular email services, at one time or the other...but I have to say that Mail Chimp is so much simpler!! And you gotta love their marketing tactics...
Facilitating a successful email advertising campaign takes more than content, its so important to have dependable deliverability, which MailChimp offers. And the reporting systems are great.
Richard, thanks so much for this review. We otherwise would have never heard of MailChimp!!
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Very Convenient
With email marketing being the norm as a way to market a service or website, MailChimp may just be useful for me since I've been looking for cheaper alternatives for my email marketing campaign. Thanks for the review I will definitely check out the website.
MailChimp Looks Good But Service Is BAAAAAD
MY MAILCHIMP REVIEW:
I was a Mail Chimp client for about 3 months. I was lured in by their pretty design and good pricing for monthly emails.
Then I had a client who gave me a list that wasn’t properly cleaned and it got sent through the Mail Chimp system. It was an honest mistake and we made every effort to make up for it (apologized, cleaned the email list, removed the old one, etc.). MailChimp, however, immediately assumed that we were malicious spammers and started treating us with arrogance and contempt. We complied with everything they asked of us and at each step they gave us more flak. When we finally requested that we actually get on the phone with someone, they replied that they do not do phone calls, called us “careless” and “suspicious” and asserted that we needed to get on their “good side”.
I’ve been in this business for 10 years. I’ve worked with numerous vendors. I’ve run email campaigns off my own servers. BELIEVE ME when I say I understand the importance of adhering to white hat practices for email delivery (I know MailChimp wouldn’t have a business if they didn’t). That said, I’ve worked with numerous other A-list providers (Constant Contact and Campaign Monitor to name two) who are every bit as professional, much more flexible, and much less condescending.
Customer Service
@Eric Oliver Sorry to hear you had problems with Mail Chimp Eric, I can understand MailChimp erring on the side of caution as there are strict guidelines for email marketing. Saying that the service you received doesn't sound as good as it could have been but not knowing your individual case it's difficult to say.
I know MailChimp read this blog so hopefully they'll take your review and opinions on board. I have to say so far so good for this chimp :o)
affiliates
Hi, I'm about to start offering email marketing to clients and have settled on MailChimp, but I was wondering if anyone knew whether they had any sort of affiliate scheme in operation?
Thanks, Kim
Monkey Rewards
Hi Kim, MailChimp certainly does offer an affiliate scheme called Monkey Rewards. If you click on 'Spread some monkey love' logo at the bottom of the post and join up we will both get $30 credit!
Agree with Eric
I agree with Eric, the same happened to us and it seems they value their clients on a very subjective basis, almost like "I Don't like you because..."
Email Marketing is not an easy task and these days, people click the Spam button way too often instead of unsubscribing.
They accused us of possessing a list without permission and we would have to start from zero and introduce a permission based process, by emailing all of our clients to manually subscribe to the service.
Quite frustrating and we will be happy to spend that amount of money somewhere else, a simple look on our website could have shown we are a serious business.
Max
MailChimp is a wate of time
Mailchimp is a waste of time, claimed our client t-mobiles data was not up to their content standards, when I recommended to get all of us on the phone to correct this mistake they informed me they don't have a phone number to call. As a customer and one that was willing to spending 10K+ a month in order to run email campaigns for my client I found it quite odd that no one at mailchimp would bother with getting on the phone with us. Thanks to Vertical Response they were happy to take our money and take the time to talk with us over the telephone to get us setup.
Stay away from mailchimp it's just a waste of time.