A couple of years ago, we wrote a blog titled: Will Social Media Replace Email? The post was meant to be controversial, and it got a ton of commentary on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. One of the most poignant critiques was, “If social media is going to replace email, then why do you need an email to sign up for a social media account!” That put things in perspective, and even today when social media is hotter than it was a couple of years ago, we wouldn’t dare publish another title like that. Not after comparing large scale analytics on social media versus email. Email wins every time. We can’t assign a value on engagement per se, since by nature social media is more engaging than email. But when we look at traffic back to site, sales / lead conversions, etc. email is nearly twice as effective.
But this post isn’t a bout between social media and email. What marketers have learned, much to the despair of those who were hoping for the Swiss Army Knife of marketing to carve out a single unifying platform, is that today’s marketing is more complex because every platform counts. In this post we want to look at how ecommerce marketers are using email marketing to get the word out. Because email marketing is still the dinosaur on the block, the platforms really haven’t changed by brand name, at least the grandaddies of email marketing: Constant Contact and MailChimp. So, which is better?
On the surface, (and this all is just opinion, so we want you to weigh in too!) Constant Contact seems to be more user friendly (intuitive navigation, helpful live phone support, etc.), but MailChimp has a rep. for being more modern. For example, last we checked, MailChimp syncs with Sales Force (though not as seamlessly as we’d like–a manual download is required to get new Salesforce contacts over to MailChimp), has better custom options, and comes with nice little social sync. features like spitting out newsletters using the blog’s RSS feeds, etc. MailChimp is what we use at FastPivot.com.
However look at the pricing, and we’ll see that at starter levels MC (MailChimp) costs twice as much as CC (Constant Contact), but then evens out in the higher ranges.
MC
300 $9.00 (3 cents/email) purchase
1,000 $30.00 (3 cents/email) purchase
2,000 $60.00 (3 cents/email) purchase
5,000 $100.00 (2 cents/email) purchase
7,500 $150.00 (2 cents/email) purchase
10,000 $200.00 (2 cents/email) purchase
25,000 $250.00 (1 penny/email) purchase
CC
(The prices from left to right are for one month, six months, and 1 year.)
0 – 500 emails $15.00 $81.00 $153.00
2 501 – 2,500 $30.00 $162.00 $306.00
3 2,501 – 5,000 $50.00 $270.00 $510.00
4 5,001 – 10,000 $75.00 $405.00 $765.00
5 10,001 – 25,000 $150.00 $810.00 $1,530.00
6 25,001 – 50,000 $250.00 $1,350.00 $2,550.00
However, we all know, especially for top e-retailers, that price isn’t the only factor. What email marketing platform do you use? What factors did you consider?
