It’s been a year of change for Mailchimp and entering the fourth quarter they show no signs of slowing down.
The changes that are coming into play this October will affect those who signed up to Mailchimp BEFORE 15 May 2019, these users are on what Mailchimp call ‘legacy plans’ (excluding Pay As You Go pricing and $9.99/month plans) and for all new users after this date, there is no change.
So what’s changing?
Here’s the low down from Mailchimp themselves:
Prices will increase for customers on most monthly legacy plans by an average of 14 percent, effective with their October billing cycles. Pay As You Go pricing and pricing for legacy customers on $9.99/month plans won’t change at this time. The price increases for all other paid legacy plans depend on the number of subscribers, but everyone will be able to view their new pricing using the calculator in their account immediately following their next billing date. These customers will still have access to all the same features and benefits that come with our legacy plans.
So what do you get for this extra money?
In May 2019 Mailchimp launched itself as an all-in-one marketing platform, a one-stop-shop for all your marketing needs. Gone are the days where Mailchimp was purely an email platform, it’s now evolved into something more. It’s a place where you can create a host of campaigns, such as organic social posts, social ads, Facebook and Google retargeting and even send postcards (as well as their tried-and-tested emails – of course).
So the reason why Mailchimp now charges for all contacts is because you can use the platform for other channels that do not require an opt-in. For example, Google retargeting will target visitors to your website, no opt-in required and these visitors are clearly engaged with you – they just don’t want your emails in their inbox which is their right, it doesn’t mean a well-placed ad in the Google Display Network won’t be the encouragement they need to convert.
In short, Mailchimp is now a fully-fledged marketing platform, where all of your contacts are synced between these different channels, connecting the dots, giving you a better insight on your audience behaviours. In fact, if you use all the features now available to you in Mailchimp then the value will soon outweigh the cost.
If you really don’t want to make use some of these new features and only want to use Mailchimp for email then you’ll need to do some audience maintenance (which you should be doing anyway). One thing you can do is to archive your unsubscribed/non-subscribed and delete your cleaned contacts to keep your audience volume to a minimum, however, our advice is to see email marketing as part of your wider marketing plan, not as a siloed channel, and Mailchimp can now be the go-to tool to make that happen.
