A paper comparing two popular email marketing automation systems and recommending the winner to a fictional Alon's Bakery.

1. Alan’s: Emailer Tool Selection
By: Sarah Pond

2. Background
Alan’s is a chain deli/bakery/confectionary in
the metro Atlanta and northern suburban areas.
They have a consistent breakfast and lunch crowd
due to their beautiful fresh food items and their
laid back yet elegant atmosphere. Due to their
metro Atlanta location, Alan’s catering is in high
demand for local offices. Their catering options are
as followed: fresh bagels, coffee, boxed lunches,
and hot food on site (chef included). Not only do
they have amazing day time food and catering but
they are one of the best bakery’s in Atlanta. Alan’s
specializes in customizable wedding cakes. In
addition to wedding cakes, they make cakes for
holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, and special
occasions! Alan’s has decided that the best way to
keep their customers informed and coming back
for more, they will institute an emailer program!

3. Business Objectives
Increase awareness Engage Customers
Top of Mind
Awareness for
Repeat Customers
Catering
Online
Ordering
Specialty
Cakes
VIP customer
events
Wine/Cake
tastings
Dining
ExperienceDaily specials
Target Audiences
Future Brides Breakfast/Lunch Regulars Corporate Offices Specialty Cake Purchasers

4. Problem Overview
Alan’s is looking for the most optimal emailer program to fit the needs of
their marketing department. The marketing department has narrowed
down their emailer options to two companies: Constant Contact and
MailChimp. They are most specifically looking for the company that offers:
◦ The best price for 200,000 subscribers
◦ User friendly segmenting capabilities
◦ Brides by wedding month
◦ Dine-in customers by location
◦ Email reminders to past purchasers about individual upcoming special
occasions
◦ An easy to use interface with templates
◦ A robust analytics package
Overall, they are looking for the most suitable email-marketing company.

5. Features Subject to Comparison
When deciding between MailChimp and Constant
contact, these are the general factors of comparison:
Formatting
Pricing
Segmentation
Integration
Reporting
Technical Support
Additional Features

6. Formatting
• MailChimp has easy to use templates:
• product blocks in email linked to ecommerce
website
• product recommendations to customers based on
analytics
• easy to use photo editing
• Unlimited photo storage
• template coder
• Email Beamer: create campaigns without logging into
MailChimp by sending information and allowing
MailChimp to create template
• This is more preferable to Alan’s because of the photo
editing capabilites, template coding, and email beamer.
• Constant Contact has easy to use templates
• Templates organized by business
• Stock photos
• Email template design help
• Unlimited free storage
• Can connect Instagram accounts

7. Pricing
Price per 200,000 subscribers
$895/month
• prices become unpredictable after 10k subscribers
• requires a call to customer service
$875/month
• Extra $5 a month for every additional 500 subscribers
• Price calculator on website

8. Segmentation
◦ Prebuilt segment conditions (up to five
selected at a time):
◦ Location *
◦ Demographics
◦ Level of engagement
◦ Purchase history *
◦ Auto-updating Segments: create
segments with specific criteria and it will
automatically update the list of contacts
◦ This is the more preferable option for
Alan’s due to the geolocation, purchase
history, and auto-updating segments.
◦ Manually create tags (segments)
for a group of contacts
◦ Unlimited information storage for
each contact
◦ Segments based on information
that is in the customer profile

9. Integration
CRM Social E-commerce WordPress
784 integration
options
Salesforce,
Pipedrive,
SugarChimp,
OnePageCRM,
Prosperworks
Facebook,
Facebook Lead
Ads, Facebook
Custom Audience,
Twitter, Twitter
tailored,
Mailchimp Snap
Shopify, Magento,
Big Commerce,
Woo Commerce
MailChimp for
WordPress, Goal
WP, WP e-
commerce,
MailChimp for
Woo Commerce
277 integration
options
Salesforce,
Highrise, Sugar,
MailMunch, Net
Suite, etc.
Facebook,
hootsuite,
springbot,
fotozap, etc.
QWIQQ, Acuity,
3DCart,
Quickbooks
online, Privy,
Many Contacts
WordPress for
Constant Contact,
etc.
Constant Contact offers more platform options, but most of them you have to pay extra for.
MailChimp offers the right platforms, with a mixture of their own personal technologies.

10. Reporting
• Offers A/B testing
• up to three different variations of emailer campaigns can be sent
• Track your overall performance
• Track engagement and opens by location
• See when subscribers open emails
• Social reports
• Track revenue from click in campaigns
• See bounced emails and why
• And more
• Track overall performance
• Compare up to 5 campaigns (not A/B testing exactly- very manual process)
• Click tracking heat map to track how many clicks are received
• Compare mobile email opens to desktop

11. Technical Support
Constant Contact has great customer service that is available through phone, chat, and email
anytime Monday-Friday during regular business hours. Email support is provided over the weekend.
Constant contact provides many instructional tutorials, a user community, and marketing advice. They also
provide training through webinars and seminars listed on their help page.
MailChimp’s customer service is not as user friendly as Constant Contact. They provide instructional
guides for each type of business, but most of them are in PDFs. They do have an online chat feature offered
Monday-Friday and email support at anytime. Although there is not a large difference in technical support,
Constant Contact is more user friendly.

12. Additional Features
◦ Abandoned Cart Autoresponders
◦ A/B testing
◦ MailChimp Snap
◦ Send simple photo-based emails from app
◦ MailChimp Mobile
◦ MailChimp Subscribe
http://blog.capterra.com/mailchimp-vs-constant-contact/
◦ Create Coupon Codes
◦ Mobile app
◦ only allows to create, send, and track

13. Comparison Summary
1. Formatting
2. Pricing
3. Segmentation
4. Integration
5. Reporting
6. Technical
Support
7. Additional
Features

14. While Constant Contact has many great capabilities, Alan’s will be better off
using MailChimp. Mailchimp is superior in every important aspect besides
customer support. While customer support is extremely important to marketers,
MailChimp’s customer support is available on chat Monday-Friday 24 hours and
available by email during the weekends. With MailChimp, Alan’s will be able
increase awareness, stay top of mind to regular customers, and engage their
customers in a more efficient and affective manner.