2. Company Overview
and Background
• Alan’s is a popular
Deli/Bakery in the Metro
Atlanta Area
• There are 10 locations all
near large, Downtown office
buildings
• People come to Alan’s for a
fresh and tasty breakfast or
lunch
• Alan’s is also famous for
their beautiful and delicious
cakes for all special
occasions
3. Business Objectives
• Find an email program that allows Alan’s to
encourage repeat business and stay in touch with
customers
• This email program must at a minimum:
• Include segmentation capabilities
• Have easy-to-use interface with templates
• Include a robust analytics package
• Be affordable
• Be user friendly
4. Target Audience
• Locals interested in
eating fresh and local
food
• Professionals working in
the Metro Atlanta area
• Residents of the Metro
Atlanta Area and
surrounding suburbs
• Locals in need of cakes
or other bakery items for
special occasions
• Local businesses or
other people in need of
catering services
5. Business Strategies
• They would like to use this email service to send out
• Menu Specials of the day and a place to order online
• Reminders about catering options for 10+ people
• Special emails targeting brides with offers for wine/cake tasting parties
• Invitations to “best customer events”
• Offers to cater office Christmas parties, summer picnics etc.
• Biweekly emails to the lunch crowd
• Alan’s would also like to use it to
• Segment brides based on their wedding month and email them
accordingly
• Send special email to people who purchased things for special occasion
and remind them of the anniversary of these occasions
7. Segmentation
Mail Chimp
Constant Contact
• Upload email list from Excel, Gmail, Outlook, etc
• Allows us to use tags to categorize contacts and
make sure the right group receives the right
message
• Constant Contact allows us to store as much
contact information as needed (alternate email
addresses, company info, birthdays, etc.)
• The list building tools allow us to capture
contacts using social media, mobile, and through
interactions in the “Market Place”
• Easy to split test and segment lists
• Built in segmentation to create custom rules
• Subscribers can join groups when they sign up for newsletters so
they only receive information they care about
• Lots of options for segmenting
• Examples:
• Send a targeted event to subscribers in a particular
radius
• Send those who have purchased things before
announcements about new products
• Auto updating segmenting based on specific criteria
8. Price
Mail Chimp
• $875/month for 200k
addresses
• Free initial sign up
• No contract
• Two options:
• Monthly
• Pay as you go
Constant Contact
• $895/month for 200k
addresses
• Free 60 day trial
• No contract
• 100% 30-day money back
guarantee
9. Reporting
Mail Chimp
• Able to track how many people opened your
email campaigns
• Access to what people click on
• Given valuable information that will help improve
your future campaigns
• Revenue Reports track sales and revenue in
response to email campaigns
• Interactive graphs show your progress and
decline in email campaigns
• Subscriber Activity Reports show you a real time
report of all users and their activity
• Able to monitor trend in your campaign such as
which email addresses bounced
• Also able to compare success to other
companies in your industry
• A/B Testing capabilities
Constant Contact
• The Engagement Report
measures how your subscribers
are engaging with your email
campaigns
• The Revenue Report shows how
much revenue your business is
making based on your email
campaigns
• The Contact Growth Report uses
the list-building tools to show how
your contact list is growing and
who these new subscribers are
• The Mobile Open Rate tracks
how many people are opening
your message on a mobile device
and compares it to other ways of
viewing the message
11. Easy to use interface
Mail Chimp
• “Mailchimp is a breeze to
use and has got a much
better and modern design
interface.” -Prafull Sharma
• Simple and fun interface
• Mobile preview
• Predesigned templates that
are easy to use and edit
• High deliverability rate
Constant Contact
• Select a theme and easy
to edit
• Very customizable
templates
• High deliverability rate
• Mildly difficult interface
14. Customer Support
Mail Chimp
• Self Service Support
through “Knowledge Base”
• Chat and Email
capabilities 24/5
Constant Contact
• 24/7 call, email or chat
capabilities
• Seminars and Training
sessions online
• Up to date Blog
15. Other Features
Mail Chimp
• Templates are user friendly
and there are so many
different designs and
options
• Multiple mobile apps that
allow you to work and check
analytics from anywhere
• Overall easy to use and
navigate
• Unlimited image hosting
Constant Contact
• Easy to use and
customizable templates
• Templates are organized
my categories and other
specifications
• Constant Contact has an
App that lets you send
emails and track analytics
from you mobile device
• Great Customer Support
17. Comparison
• Capterra conducted a poll of 60
small businesses and asked
whether they use MailChimp or
Constant Contact. The results
are to the right
• Author Media wrote an article
entitled “7 Reasons Why
MailChimp is better than
Constant Contact”
• FitSmallBusiness.com also has
an article with a section entitled
“Why We Recommend
Mailchimp as the Best Email
Marketing Software”
18. Comparison Summary
Mail Chimp
• Customizable Segmentation
capabilities
• $375/per month
• Strong analytic reporting
• Most people prefer Mail
Chimp
• Unlimited image hosting
• Easy to use templates
Constant Contact
• Unlimited storage space
for contact info
• $395/per month
• Great Customer Service
• Extensive list of templates
• Upload email list from
Excel, Gmail, Outlook, etc
19. Comparison Summary
• Both:
• Mobile access through App
• Free templates with drag and drop feature
• Different levels of membership
• Fairly user friendly
• Report and Tracking capabilities
• High deliverability rate
20. Final Recommendation
• MailChimp and Constant Contact are both easy to use email services that could help
achieve our goal for Alan’s email campaign. Both services allow us to segment our
customers, pay an affordable price, view important analytics, and easily build our
campaign personally. Although both Mail Chimp and Constant Contact have features that
are appealing to a Small Business, I believe that MailChimp is the best overall choice for
Alan’s. MailChimp is more affordable than Constant Contact and allows you to use a
completely free trial option. Most users and other companies rate MailChimp as the best
email service therefore giving me confidence in its functionality and usefulness.
MailChimp allows us to easily input email addresses from our already existing lists.This
service also provides us with many different easy to use templates that are professional
looking and effective. Unlike Constant Contact, MailChimp allows unlimited image
storage and A/B testing capabilities. These A/B tests will allow Alan’s to see what they are
doing right and wrong and allow them to improve on their methods. Another feature that
will help Alan’s is the ability to compare their success to other companies in the same
industry. Since Alan’s is a new user of email campaigns this will help them to see how
they are doing compared to their competitors. Although Constant Contact has 24/7
Customer Support, MailChimp has help tabs and instructions as well as an easy to use
interface, therefore users do not need constant support. The segmentation features that
MailChimp provides will allow them to send emails directly to the lunch crowd, brides,
local businesses, etc. and get the right message to the right people. I can say, with great
confidence, that MailChimp is the best choice for Alan’s and will help to build their
customer base and improve effectiveness in the future.
