- CPG MBA
- Posts
- The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
CPG MBA
July 11, 2023
Last week, we talked about why you should use email marketing for your CPG business and what to look out for when choosing a platform. This week, we’re taking a deep dive into some of the most popular email marketing platforms available, giving you a distinct breakdown of why they may or may not work for you.
Pros:
Easy to use, design-forward.
Because Mailchimp is so popular, it’s easy to integrate with a number of different platforms and apps such as Wordpress, Zendesk, and more.
A variety of easy-to-use templates (including some on the free plan) makes building out aesthetic emails simple and quick.
Cons:
Mailchimp and Shopify had a pretty public break-up a few years ago. They still integrate with each other, but the platform works better with other site management systems.
Pricing increases by a lot according to the number of audiences you have. If you have 1,500 subscribers and need to break them up to more than 5 audiences, your monthly pricing will increase from $60/month to $350/month. This is not ideal for businesses with multiple entry points to their email marketing. Mailchimp will also double count (and double charge) subscribers who are on more than one audience list.
Pros:
Easy to use interface on the back end. Very user-friendly for more advanced email marketing campaigns.
Works nicely with Shopify integration to help track monetary success of campaigns and flows.
Offers email marketing + SMS plans.
Cons:
Allows only one automation trigger per flow. This will be fine for many businesses since most won’t need multiple triggers per flow, plus an easy workaround is to duplicate the automation with a different starting trigger.
Pros:
Powerful platform with a lot of advanced automation features.
High email deliverability.
Cons:
Steep learning curve. People should NOT sign up for ActiveCampaign unless they or someone on their team is highly experienced with the platform. ActiveCampaign has its own weird rules and processes when it comes to activating certain features of the tech. For example, simple things like creating cold subscriber pruning campaigns is difficult to set up on your own, and requires learning Activecampaign’s unique systems for each.
Pros:
Multi-channel marketing approach—combines email marketing with social media and SMS functionality (on the Pro plan).
24/7 email and live chat support.
Easy to integrate with apps like Shopify and WooCommerce.
Cons:
Free plan lets you send only up to 500 emails a month for up to 250 contacts, and paid plans start at $16/mo and go up to $59/mo or more for the pro plan. On the standard plan, you get enough email credits to send emails to 12x the number of contacts you have on your lists, which may or may not be enough, depending on your email list size and sending frequency.
A/B testing is limited to subject lines and sender names.