You may already be familiar with Mailchimp, as it's used by companies around the world. It was originally an email marketing service provider but, earlier this year, it announced it had become an all-in-one marketing platform. So, what features does it have and how does it compare to its competitors, particularly HubSpot? Let's examine it more closely.
MailChimp – What Does It Have To Offer Businesses Looking To Expand?
MailChimp has been developing its offering over the course of the last few years. However, it has now brought everything together into a single platform and increased the number of services that it provides.
The platform's key features include:
- Email creation and delivery services – you can send transactional emails and product reminder emails (for website visitors who have viewed specific items in your online store), as well as automated welcome, birthday, abandoned cart and customer re-engagement emails.
- Postcard campaigns – you can send printed postcards to existing and potential customers in certain countries to promote products or events or send abandoned cart postcards to leads to encourage them to convert. You can choose from a range of templates or code your own.
- Social media advertising campaigns – you can create, edit, buy and publish adverts on Facebook and Instagram, and track your campaign results within Mailchimp.
- Google remarketing advertising campaigns – you can connect your website to Mailchimp, then use the platform's ad builder to create Google ads. These adverts will then be published on other sites that your website visitors use.
- Landing pages – you can create landing pages using a selection of customisable templates.
- Audience creation – you can import your existing contacts into Mailchimp and create sign-up forms in order to build your contact list.
- Personalisation options – you can add customer names, as well as links to your website and social media accounts, to MailChimp-generated communications.
- Reports – you can access an array of reports so you can analyse your results and improve your campaigns.
- Multivariate testing – you can test campaigns to see which approaches get the best results.
- Mobile accessibility – you can use MailChimp on Apple and Android devices.
However, the number of features that you can access will depend on the plan that you select. MailChimp currently offers four packages: Free, Essentials, Standard and Premium.
MailChimp vs HubSpot – How Do They Compare?
MailChimp certainly provides its customers with more functionality now than it previously did. However, before you rush off to sign up, it's important to compare its plans with those offered by other all-in-one marketing platform providers.
HubSpot, for example, provides businesses with a host of customer relationship management (CRM), sales, marketing, and customer service tools, many of which are free to use. Its offering is more extensive than that of MailChimp: for example, it boasts deal pipeline tracking features, meeting scheduling options, live chat and chatbot implementation tools, SEO and content strategy tools, video hosting, event management options and revenue tracking tools. There's a wide range of packages to choose from and you'll also have access to a vast amount of training material.
Our Verdict
HubSpot also has a partnership programme, making it easy for you to find marketing agencies with specialised knowledge of the platform, such as JDR. MailChimp is an attractive marketing option for users already familiar with its email marketing suite, and it will be interesting to see how it develops its offerings over the coming years. However, for depth of content, flexibility and effectiveness we still recommend using HubSpot or one of the other, more established premium services.
To find out how using HubSpot could help improve your company's bottom line, please contact us today. More information can also be found in our free Guide to Marketing Automation. Click here to claim your free copy!
Image source: Pixabay
