I would like to preface this entry by saying I love Mailchimp. Mailchimp is far and away my favorite email platform out there and it’s for two reasons. First, it allows for other apps and software to integrate seamlessly with them. Second, it’s email automations and contact segmentation features are second to none on the market. But now, let me put aside my bias and see if the Mailchimp Zapier integration is worth the time for your business.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an email marketing service with a focus on free. There are one of the only leaders in the concentrated email marketing industry and the only one that has a legitimate free plan (under 500 contacts). They have built out yet another all in one marketing tool but their flagship and best product, of course their email marketing capabilities, has only improved.

Many of these all in one marketing solutions tried to diversify their product offerings and added website builders, sms marketing, branding tools and other “value add” additions. However, Mailchimp did something unlike a lot of their competitors. Rather than move away from their bread and butter, they just grabbed the whole stick and made a killer grilled cheese.

Mailchimp is by far the most effective, free email marketing tool out there but is a Zapier integration worth it?

Mailchimp and Zapier Integration

Potentially no. The way Mailchimp is built, it already has a large amount of apps that can integrate directly into it. Zapier may just be a middleman.

Despite that, there are a few automations you can set up that will save your business a little time.

Post Mailchimp campaigns on WordPress — Do you have a Wordpress site? Many businesses do currently because of how versatile they can be. With the power of content overtaking the SEO market, more content means more traffic and repurposing content you create in different ways results in more content. One gripe I have with newsletters is, despite being very powerful, they’re a one and done. With this automation, you can take the newsletter you just sent out and post it to your Wordpress site as a piece of content. This has an SEO benefit and also has the benefit of giving your newsletter more views.

This will be best for companies that have newsletters that have its own unique content. Grow your content 2x as fast.

Gmail labels to Mailchimp subscribers — If you have a business Gmail account, you have access to a major time saver that will help if you spend a good amount of time on your business Gmail account (or Google Workspace). This automation will allow you to add potential customers to Mailchimp lists (and potentially kick off a welcome email automation) just from labeling them in your inbox. One button click and you can nurture a lead to a sale.

This will be best for office managers or executive assistances, sales professionals, and customer service reps. Quickly kick off the necessary process people need to see to stay loyal to your company!

Highlight Automation:

Consolidation Automations — The best automation(s) from Zapier that will fit into your Mailchimp procedures is what I like to call a consolidation automation. This will be a pretty recurring idea in the Trail Map series. A consolidation automation is an automation that takes leads from elsewhere and consolidates them in a system like a CRM or contact management platform. Zapier offers thousands of lead gen apps like Eventbrite for events, Typeform, and Google Forms. With Mailchimp being a popular list management tool, you can automate new leads to be sent to Mailchimp. This means if your business listing or sign up forms are on different platforms, you can use Zapier to consolidate them into your Mailchimp account.

This automation has a lot of versatility which means you can use it for basically any business. If you have a lead gen software, this automation can save you a lot of time. But, check if there is a direct integration first.

Mailchimp Takeaways

Mailchimp as a marketing tool is fantastic for businesses that are just starting out. It has a large amount of uses and can serve as a multi-tool for early start up phases. Building solid infrastructure in Mailchimp can help your business scale at a more controlled rate. Although I would consider Mailchimp a must use for early businesses, the automations from Zapier may not even be necessary.

Mailchimp offers many integrated automations that can support most of the popular automations people typically think of. I will say, Zapier does a fantastic job of filling in the gaps. The consolidation automations alone allow for the hundreds of lead generation applications to lead somewhere that those leads will be nurtured based on their needs. This alone will save small businesses hundreds of hours of emailing and data input. That’s worth a Scarlet Strength.