mailchimp. funny name. awesome logo. incredibly well done mailing list management software. i’ve been toying with mailchimp for a few months now to use it for chicago soydairy to manage our marketing email list. they have a great free version that’s fully functional but with a few limitations so it’s nice for a small business with a small list. even nicer is that the upgrade price once you’ve outgrown the free version is very manageable for a small business like ours.
i spent some time earlier this year in my work at mrskin evaluating some of the big players out there. i saw some amazing tools but i also saw huge price tags, fancy sales teams and huge corporate machines. as i started evaluating mailchimp i saw many of the same features with a more intuitive interface at a price that’s one that the small (and even medium sized) business can hang with. all from a company that seems in-tune with their market and readily communicates with them.
i’m still waiting to make my first send via mailchimp but so far creating a new campaign has been incredibly easy. i’m migrating away from phplist and the import from that into mailchimp has been flawless. i can’t say bad things about phplist though. it’s a great free (and open-source) utility but it lacked some of the tracking, ease-of-use and consistency i was looking for. the time investment on my part to manage a marketing email list is well worth the small monthly fee we’re spending. i can’t wait to see the roi after rolling with this after the first few months!
