mailchimp

概述

If you were a grown adult in the early 90s, you likely had your mind blown when you learned about e-mail. It seemed the pinnacle of human communication, instant transmission of a written message to anywhere around the world for the price of a local phone call (and, if you were not an adult in the 90s, you probably have only heard stories about the price difference between local and long distance calling—email seemed like a miracle, I assure you). Of course, by the end of the first decade of the 21st century, text messaging and social media overtook email as the preferred forms of communication.

尽管如此，电子邮件从未对一个特定的群体：营销人员失去青睐。他们为什么仍然喜欢它？因为它有效。它的工作事实告诉我们，还有另外一群仍然喜欢电子邮件的人：其他所有人。仅仅因为这不是新事物，并不意味着它没有用。正确完成后，电子邮件营销可以产生巨大的投资回报$36 for every $1 spent。

自2001年以来，MailChimp一直在帮助营销人员正确地做事，这是技术年份的名副其实。该服务最初是一家网页设计公司的小分支，该公司针对Ben Chestnut和Dan Kurzius创立的名为Rocket Science的大公司客户。网页设计的进展已经足够好，但是电子邮件营销产品对他们来说要容易得多：至少，这不是火箭科学。该电子邮件产品专注于小型企业，而栗子和库尔齐乌斯就像与这些客户合作的比大公司的毛绒衬衫更重要。他们也可能与MailChimp赚更多的钱，因为好的业务决策很少仅受主人在所有者中的“激发欢乐”的驱动。

在其业务二十年中，MailChimp已成长为拥有62% of its marketwith more than 12 million active users—its closest five competitors have a combined market share of 17%, so it’s safe to say that Chestnut and Kurzius bet on the right horse. Or chimp. Whatever proverbial animal they bet on, it paid off in the form of a $12 billion sale to Intuit in September of 2021. This sale came within a few years of Mailchimp announcing its intention to branch out from a strict email solution to becoming a full featured marketing platform. With this new direction and new ownership, it’s tough to say what the future holds for the company. It’s fair to guess that they’re not going to expand at the expense of their strength. And, as we said, if you’re doing email marketing correctly, it’s very effective.

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价钱

One of the keys to Mailchimp’s success has been its fairly progressive freemium model of pricing. Offering an entry-level free plan is nothing new, but offering one that’s actually useful in the long term is pretty rare. Freemium pricing plans usually exist to dangle all the useful stuff in front of you, just out of reach, to entice an upgrade. That only takes you so far, though, as if a prospect can’t fully use a product to see if it works for them, it’s a 50/50 shot as to whether they get frustrated and leave or enticed to stay. No such issue with that using Mailchimp. Their idea seems to be: you’ll be so successful on the free plan, you’ll have to upgrade to handle your growth.

请注意，对于任何付费计划，根据联系人的数量，列出的每月价格最低。当您向观众添加更多人时，您将付出更多的钱来存储他们的联系信息。

• 免费，$ 0/mo -1 user can store up to 2,000 contacts and send up to 10,000 emails per month (the daily limit is 2,000). You get 1 audience, though targeting is made possible through tags and segmentation. Additional features include: audience dashboard; surveys; behavioral targeting; content studio with basic templates; access to the Creative Assistant; multichannel publishing to emails, landing pages, Facebook ads, social posts, snail-mail postcards, pop-up forms, and a marketing calendar; basic reporting and insights. Email support is available for the first 30 days, then you’re on your own with online guides and tutorials.
  

• Essentials, $11/mo —3 users can store up to 500 contacts and send up to 10x the contact limit per month (so, 5,000 emails a month for 500 contacts). Additional contacts may be added in gradually increasing increments, maxing out at$ 299/mo最多50,000个联系人。最多创建3个受众，每个受众可分割。所有免费计划的功能都包括在内，此外：删除了MailChimp品牌，电子邮件调度，基本自动化和A/B测试。包括电子邮件和实时聊天支持。
  
• 标准，$ 17/mo -5 users, up to 500 contacts, up to 12x the contact limit for sending emails. Additional contacts available, up to 100,000 for$ 605/mo。最多创建5个受众，获得Essentials的所有功能，此外：高级受众见解，自定义编码设计模板，从创意助理的可下载设计，社交帖子安排，重新定位广告，高级自动化，高级广告系列Insights
• 高级，$ 299/mo -无限的用户，最多10,000个联系人，最多15倍发送电子邮件的联系人限制。可用于自定义定价的其他联系人。无限的受众，高级细分，标准中的所有内容，加上：比较报告，多元测试和电话支持。

All of the plans include a CMS for creating and hosting a website, and e-commerce features for hosting a store. There’s no limit on bandwidth, or pages, or products, and advanced features like abandoned cart emails and appointment scheduling.

此外，他们的定价页面列出了可以购买的三个附加服务。一种是用于自定义域，并且定价与任何其他域名注册一样工作。其他两个（交易电子邮件和高级计划）将成为其中包括的网站和电子商务功能的一部分，因此尚不清楚他们是否还没有更新该网站以反映这一点。值得询问，因为这不是唯一需要更新的页面。MailChimp网站上的“我们的故事”页面仍然吹嘘该公司是100％创始人拥有的，这可能是您可能拥有的intuitED - 不再是这种情况。

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The Details

刚开始时，MailChimp起初似乎是一种艰巨的经历。创建一个帐户并登录后，向您提供了一个简短的清单，介绍了如何继续进行，尽管它并没有真正覆盖所有内容，或者为此而进行。You’re invited to create a campaign with an email before you’ve even entered your first contact, so when you get to the end of the process and it asks you to select an audience, you’ll find you don’t have one.

Getting Started with Mailchimp | Mailchimp

创建受众不一定很困难，添加一些有关它的信息，然后继续使用联系人填充列表。这可以通过批量导入或一次进行，作为过程的一部分，您还将向您展示创建可以嵌入网站上的注册表单的工具。设置受众后，您可以完成标记每个人并创建不同细分市场的任务，为您提供几种切片和切割观众列表的方法，并将电子邮件定位于最相关的人。一旦有人添加到您的听众中，他们就会获得一个单独的个人资料，就像在CRM中一样。该个人资料显示基本信息 - 地址，电话号码，生日 - 指示您已获得客户以提供该信息，并且还赋予了他们与电子邮件的参与历史。

如果您是从另一个服务迁移的，则可能会有一个比对个人进行标记和细分个人更大的联系人列表。另外，您怎么可能足够了解所有客户以开始对其进行分类？调查功能为您提供了一种自动化的方法，因为您能够根据人们给出的答案即时创建标签。这是该平台可以自动化任务并引起许多营销的几种方式之一。

With Behavioral Targeting, Mailchimp can automate the sending of emails—or a series of emails—based on actions that your recipients actually take. These can be actions taken with your emails and surveys, like opening them or clicking a link. If you connect to another app via API, you can create your own events that trigger an email, like a purchase from your website or whether they registered an account with you. Automations don’t need to be based solely on customer actions, though—they can be triggered by inaction, as well. If someone hasn’t purchased in awhile or isn’t opening your marketing emails, these can trigger an automation. Mailchimp calls these automation “Journeys,” but we won’t hold that against them. There are a number of prebuilt Journeys you can employ, and you can also build your own.

Another cool feature, and certainly unique to an email marketing platform, is “Postcards,” which sends actual IRL postcards to people’s mailboxes. You design what the card will look like, identify which audience or audience segment will receive them, and then Mailchimp handles the printing, stamping, and sending.

但是，如果您的设计技能无法满足鼻烟怎么办？MailChimp的内置“ Creative Assistant”（描述为AI引擎）可以根据您的品牌外观创建自定义设计，可以为此提供帮助。它还可以帮助设计您发送的电子邮件以及您创建的任何社交帖子。目前尚不清楚AI是否真的参与其中，结果设计看起来只是由模板制成，并填充与您品牌美学相匹配的颜色。但是它们的外观还不错，而且绝对比没有设计技能或经验的人可以召集的要好。

Whether or not it’s true AI designing your emails and promotional materials, there’s no doubt as to the intelligence that powers a lot of what Mailchimp does. You’ll get recommendations on when the best time to send something is and tips on optimizing your subject line. Emails can have dynamic content, too, meaning that the messaging can be tweaked based on who’s receiving it. If you’re opening a brick and mortar outpost, for example, your announcement can switch from something generic to a more personalized “We’re coming to your town” for anyone who lives in the same zone. The AI can even add personalized product recommendations for each recipient based on their past purchases. And with A/B testing features, you’ll be able to see what’s performing best to make better decisions about future campaigns.

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Integrations

与尽可能多的进入Mailch的创建imp, it should be no surprise that the platform integrates with over 200 other apps. It can be used with e-commerce solutions like Shopify and Stripe and Squarespace (among others). If you’re running an IRL business, it also connects with a number of Point of Sale solutions: Square, Shopkeep, and Lightspeed (again: among others). Integrations with LiveDesk, Zendesk, and Livechat can enhance the customer service you give, with automated follow-up emails. The list goes on and on, covering a number of different categories: Forms & Surveys, Accounting, Marketing, Payments, and Loyalty (say it with me: among others!). If there’s an integration you’re looking for, chances are they have it.

Unless it’s a CRM integration you’re looking for. Those do not exist. This is likely because Mailchimp fancies itself a CRM on its own, and that’s technically true. It does provide mechanisms for contact management as well as some basic information/insights into each person. But larger companies are going to want more functionality than that. And, yes, Mailchimp was created to be a small business solution, but that’s obviously not their sole focus at this point. As a rule, small businesses don’t need to send emails to 200,000 people all at once. There are exceptions to that rule, but companies that have that many people they need to market to directly are likely going to want more CRM features than what’s available natively in Mailchimp.

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结论

histor 20年y in its rearview, and 12 million plus users taking them into the future, Mailchimp doesn't need any more good reviews to recommend it and spread the word. But here we are doing it anyway, because—well, would you take the E-commerce Tools section seriously if we didn’t review the most popular email marketing solution available?

The bottom line is there’s a reason for Mailchimp’s longevity. It handles all the email marketing tasks you’d want smoothly and efficiently. And it does so much more than that, too; the platform’s intelligence functions as a marketing expert, guiding you through and helping your marketing to be as effective as possible. Small businesses with little marketing experience or expertise will love this. And large businesses that don’t need the guidance will certainly benefit from the time saving nature of the automation processes. We don’t see Mailchimp being knocked down from its perch any time soon.