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MailChimp Tips? - Spank that monkey!

John V.

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Jan 15, 2015
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Now that I have your attention..LOL

I have been using MailChimp for all of my email blast campaigns over the past 6+ years. I like them because they are easy to use and once you get a template built that you like it is simple to swap out offers, event, etc. to stay efficient.
However; they just announced a price increase for my plan which is going to be $1,150 per month to over my 4 stores ( $287.50 per store, yes we are that cheap).

Is anyone out there in DR land using them and more importantly, are you using any of the other features they offer that come with your plan? Interested to see if anyone is using their automated campaigns and how you set them up.
 
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We use MailChimp for DealerRefresh. We have two lists that we treat very differently:

1) DealerRefresh Community and people who sign up for our emails
2) Sponsorship requests

On #1 we utilize Mandrill to move new forum signups into the MailChimp list that is mostly used for RefreshFriday announcements. The DealerRefresh weekly works out of a different system than MailChimp.

On #2 we actually communicate with new sponsorship requests through MailChimp. It has become our "CRM" in that area. But we have not set up any automation here. We don't get the same lead volume you do ;-) In the past, we had webinar signup landing pages through MailChimp. That system worked quite well.

At FRIKINtech, we do a lot of automation within the HubSpot CRM and use Constant Contact for email blasts. As I am getting more and more familiar with Constant Contact, I'm not seeing the value in the premium MailChimp charges.
 
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Thanks Alex. That makes sense.
Given that I do everything manually - as in manual .csv uploads into mailchimp and I am a one man show - do you see any advantages in Constant Contact over MailChimp? Remember, my Neanderthal self is building everything from scratch - no 3rd party creative team uploading a custom HTML template. I tried them back in 2014 and it was more cumbersome than Mailchimp at the time but haven't looked at them since.

I have crossed the 185,000 email threshold which is why the price is so high. I am essentially paying for database management and using maybe 20% of what the tool can actually do.
 
I have crossed the 185,000 email threshold which is why the price is so high. I am essentially paying for database management and using maybe 20% of what the tool can actually do.
The way MC changed their pricing is quite annoying, especially if you try to maintain multiple lists.
Our account is now limited to 5 lists, which means we can't use it for multiple clients like we used to (I used it quite a bit for small businesses I worked with).
The cost has become quite lopsided (as Alex said) if you're not using the automation, other channels or advanced features.

Constant Contact is a good alternative if you're willing to keep doing the work manually, but if you're doing a significant number of campaigns and can find an affordable vendor with a data integration it might make more sense to use something better suited to what you're doing.
 
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$287.50 a month per store.

You may find a cheaper price with another service provider BUT you're gonna have to lean an all new UI, recreate all your templates, and migrate your current subscriber list over to the new service. Migration can be a real pain if they make it mandatory (and many do) for all your subscribers to opt-in again. IMO - I would want a decent savings before taking on the hassle.
 
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Thanks Alex. That makes sense.
Given that I do everything manually - as in manual .csv uploads into mailchimp and I am a one man show - do you see any advantages in Constant Contact over MailChimp? Remember, my Neanderthal self is building everything from scratch - no 3rd party creative team uploading a custom HTML template. I tried them back in 2014 and it was more cumbersome than Mailchimp at the time but haven't looked at them since.

I have crossed the 185,000 email threshold which is why the price is so high. I am essentially paying for database management and using maybe 20% of what the tool can actually do.
They are basing your pricing on the 185,000 emails you have stored. Unless you need to send emails out to 185, 000 people on a regular basis, only store the emails in mailchimp that you are using, then delete them. You can always upload more emails at any time.
 
They are basing your pricing on the 185,000 emails you have stored. Unless you need to send emails out to 185, 000 people on a regular basis, only store the emails in mailchimp that you are using, then delete them. You can always upload more emails at any time.

Assuming that you are syncing your unsubscribes to your CRM, otherwise they remove all subscriber data when you remove the subscribers.