Email Marketing
Mailchimp Email Marketing
Campaigns That Reach the Inbox
Mailchimp is the most widely used email marketing platform globally, with a free tier that has introduced millions of businesses to email automation. While specialist platforms like Klaviyo and ConvertKit have surpassed it for ecommerce and creator use cases, Mailchimp remains a strong choice for small businesses, local businesses, and nonprofits that need reliable email delivery, simple automation, and an accessible price point for moderate list sizes.
Expert Strategies
10 Strategies for Mailchimp That Actually Move the Needle
Not beginner tips. These are the strategies that separate accounts generating average results from those generating exceptional ones.
01
Use Mailchimp’s audience segmentation to send relevant emails to each contact group
Mailchimp’s audience segments allow you to filter your list by demographics, purchase history, email engagement, and custom tags. Sending a campaign to a specific segment rather than your entire list consistently improves open rates, reduces unsubscribes, and protects sender reputation. Never blast your full list with every campaign.
02
Set up a welcome automation as your first flow, not your first broadcast
New subscribers are most engaged in the first 48 hours after joining your list. Mailchimp’s Customer Journeys builder allows a welcome automation to fire immediately on subscription, delivering your lead magnet, introducing your brand, and making a first offer while attention is at its peak. This automation generates more revenue than any broadcast campaign.
03
Use Mailchimp’s subject line helper before every send
Mailchimp includes a subject line helper that analyses your proposed subject line and provides a predicted open rate based on historical data from similar subject lines. Running every subject line through this tool before sending takes two minutes and consistently improves open rates compared to writing subject lines by intuition alone.
04
Clean your list quarterly by removing unengaged subscribers
Mailchimp’s pricing scales with list size. Subscribers who have not opened any email in 90 days cost money and damage deliverability without contributing revenue. Run a quarterly re-engagement campaign for inactive subscribers. Those who do not re-engage should be archived, reducing your bill and improving your sender reputation score simultaneously.
05
Use Mailchimp’s A/B testing for subject lines on every campaign
Mailchimp allows A/B testing of subject lines, from names, and send times. For each campaign, test two subject line variants on 20 percent of your list each, then automatically send the winner to the remaining 60 percent. This systematic testing compounds into significantly higher open rates over months without any additional creative effort.
06
Set up abandoned cart automation if you have an ecommerce store connected
Mailchimp connects to Shopify, WooCommerce, and other ecommerce platforms and triggers abandoned cart emails automatically when a customer leaves items in their cart without purchasing. A three-email abandoned cart sequence sent at 1 hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours after abandonment recovers 5 to 15 percent of abandoned carts on average.
07
Use click maps to understand which links in your emails get engagement
Mailchimp’s click map overlay shows which links in each campaign received the most clicks, visualised as a heat distribution across the email design. This data reveals which content topics, offers, and CTAs your audience responds to, informing both future email content and the hierarchy of elements in your email design.
08
Monitor your domain reputation in Mailchimp’s deliverability tools
Mailchimp’s deliverability tools show your sender domain’s reputation, spam complaint rate, and bounce rate. Keep spam complaints below 0.1 percent and hard bounce rate below 2 percent. Exceeding these thresholds triggers Mailchimp’s compliance system and can result in account suspension. Address deliverability issues immediately when signals appear.
09
Use Mailchimp’s landing page builder to capture leads without a website
Mailchimp includes a landing page builder that creates standalone pages for lead capture, connected directly to your audience. For businesses without a website or without access to their website’s CMS, Mailchimp landing pages provide a professional lead capture solution that integrates directly with email automation without additional tools.
10
Use Mailchimp’s multivariate testing for faster optimisation learning
Beyond standard A/B testing of one variable, Mailchimp’s multivariate testing tests multiple variables simultaneously, such as subject line, sender name, and send time combined. This produces results faster than sequential single-variable tests for accounts with sufficient list size to reach statistical significance across multiple variants.
How We Use It
How EmergingAds Uses Mailchimp for Clients
We use Mailchimp for clients with smaller lists, local businesses, and nonprofit organisations where its free tier and simple interface are appropriate for their email marketing needs and volume. For ecommerce clients and creator businesses, we typically recommend Klaviyo or ConvertKit respectively, as their specialised features produce better results for those use cases.
Related Tools
Tools That Work With Mailchimp
FAQ
Mailchimp Questions Answered
Klaviyo is better for ecommerce brands with Shopify or WooCommerce stores needing advanced segmentation, predictive analytics, and ecommerce-specific flows. Mailchimp is better for small businesses, local businesses, and nonprofits with simpler needs and smaller budgets. If you are selling physical products online at meaningful volume, Klaviyo.
Mailchimp’s free plan supports up to 500 contacts and 1,000 emails per month. For most small businesses starting with email marketing, this is sufficient to validate the channel before investing in a paid plan. As list size and send volume grow, paid plans start from $13 per month.
Yes. Mailchimp’s Customer Journeys builder creates automated email sequences triggered by actions such as form submissions, purchases, link clicks, and date-based events. The automation capability is more limited than Klaviyo or ActiveCampaign but sufficient for standard welcome, abandoned cart, and post-purchase sequences.
Mailchimp integrates natively with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho CRM. For other CRMs, Zapier and Make.com provide the integration layer. The integration typically syncs contact data between the CRM and Mailchimp audience, allowing CRM segment data to inform email targeting.
A basic Mailchimp setup including audience import, template customisation, and first automation takes 1 to 2 days. A complete setup including all core automations, audience segmentation, and ecommerce integration takes 1 to 2 weeks.
Ready to Get Mailchimp Working Properly?
Book a free strategy call. We audit your current setup, identify what is broken or missing, and show you exactly what a properly configured Mailchimp implementation would generate for your business.