The email marketing strategy of Alan's Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business and drive new customers. MailChimp and Constant Contact were compared based on their features, capabilities, and price to determine the best fit. MailChimp would cost $875 per month and has more powerful automation and reporting tools. Its interface allows emails to best showcase Alan's products and branding. While Constant Contact offers reliable support, MailChimp's customizable workflows and segmentation abilities align best with Alan's objectives.

1. Café & Bakery
Email Marketing Strategy
“Email marketing has consistently been cited as the single most
effective marketing tactic for awareness, acquisition, conversion,
and retention.”
Alan’s Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business by
staying in touch with guests, and drive new business using
targeted campaigns to connect with new guests.
Service Provider Recommendation
Hannah Davison

2. Alan’s Café & Bakery
Alan’s of Atlanta, a Deli, Bakery and Confectionary, aims to provide a quality and reliable
experience to every customer we serve. Serving a wide range of people every day from
retail breakfast & lunch clients, a variety of catering options, and specialty confectionar-
ies for important events. The passion behind Alan’s comes from providing each guest
with a unique experience suited to them. In order to accomplish all of this and keep con-
nected with our growing customer base, its imperative to choose an appropriate email
marketing service that can keep up.
Objectives & Needs
Maintain Alan’s quality, reliable, and
friendly brand while using the growing sec-
tors of the business to expand and develop
new customer relationships.
With Alan’s split into so many special-
ties it is imperative the business connect
with individual customer segments about
their Alan’s.
Target Audience
Alan’s target audience includes:
 Loyal customers
 Lunch crowd
 Specialty Item customers
 Catering customers (specifically office ori-
ented)
 Local brides to be
Email Marketing Strategy
The email marketing strategy of Alan’s Café & Bakery aims to encourage repeat business by staying
in touch with guests, and drive new business using targeted campaigns to connect with new guests.
To encourage repeat business, we need to connect with our customer base we currently have,
providing email content that drives them to do business with Alan’s:
 Loyal customers will receive email notices about “best customer events”, Menu Specials of the
day and the ability to place their orders online. These emails will be sent out twice weekly, spe-
cifically to our fishbowl database of 200,000
 Our repeat catering customers will receive offers about catering holiday events, their business
picnics, etc. & also reminders about catering options for 10 + people
 A special email will also be sent out each month, to customers who have purchased a specialty
item, in order to remind them of the anniversary coming up for their purchase
To drive new business, Alan’s has purchased a bridal mailing list for brides in Atlanta from our con-
tinued participation in the Great Bridal Expo. We will send these brides special emails advertising
wine and cake tasting parties to continue growth with our wedding and event cake section.
 Brides will be segmented by wedding month and sent 12 emails per campaign.

3. Features Comparison:
Segmentation:
Price:
Send Better Email. Sell More Stuff. Powerful Email Marketing, Made Simple.
Looking at two email service providers, MailChimp and Constant Contact, an in-depth analysis and
comparison will prove which provider is best for carrying out our strategy based on its features, ca-
pabilities and price.
Constant Contact will cost $895 per month
for 200,000 subscribers with an unlimited
number of emails per month.
Package: Plus Mode
MailChimp has a scalable pricing plan & will
cost $875 per month for 200,000 subscribers
with a 2,400,000 cap on emails per month.
Package: Growing Business
Alan’s current customer email list includes, the 200,000 email addresses collected in store
(separated by location), the purchased mailing list of local brides, and the emails of those customers
who ordered specialty items.
The cost of the two providers is relatively similar, with MailChimp costing $20 less, but Constant Con-
tact allows for unlimited emails per month while MailChimp caps the emails at 2.4 million.
Emails will be segmented by the type of customer and their trends. For our lunch crowd, an email will
be sent out twice weekly to generate repeat business. Brides will be segmented out based on their
Wedding month and sent 12 emails throughout the course of our Bridal campaign. For customers who
have purchased specialty goods with Alan’s before, an email will be sent out each month reminding
them the anniversary of their day is fast approaching and Alan’s is here to help celebrate!
Preset Automation Workflows
Including Retail specific workflows, cus-
tomizable workflows and date-based auto-
mation workflows.
Each individual email in a series is gov-
erned by its own unique trigger event, seg-
mentation conditions, and post-sending list
action.
AutoResponder tool
Allows email series setup for similar custom-
ers and scheduled send outs, can include
existing and added customers.
An unlimited number of series with unlim-
ited emails within the series can be set.
Set up birthday and anniversary emails to
send automatically.
Both Automation tools work to better connect with the customer through setting up series of auto-
mated emails based on different customer sets. Constant Contact’s version is simpler and more
straightforward, while MailChimp’s tool is much more powerful, customizable, and intuitive with pre-
sets that would work extremely well based on Alan’s segmentation objectives.

4. Reporting:
Easy to Use Interface:
Email Tracking Tools include:
Engagement Report
Revenue Report
Contact Growth Report
Mobile email open rate
-Integrate data from range of apps & services
-Complex, flexible API documentation
-A/B Testing (test email campaigns in a sample group)
-Extensive engagement reporting capabilities:
Subscriber Activity Reports:
Revenue Reports
Opens by location
Bounce Rates and Why
Unsubscribes
Industry Comparison
In order to make certain the email marketing strategy is being effective in the right ways, smart and
powerful reporting is necessary. A full strong, powerful analytics package should show what is work-
ing, what is not, and the opportunities to make things better.
In terms of reporting, MailChimp offers superior services. With more in depth engagement reports
and the ability to easily integrate data from other services and providers MailChimp is able to provide
a more holistic view of email impact. While Constant Contact definitely provides engagement infor-
mation, its is much more a tracking tool than a reporting tool, versus MailChimp which provides track-
ing, reporting and ultimately better data.
Alan’s is recognized throughout Atlanta and beyond as being a quality, reliable and friendly place to do
business. With such a strong brand, the email service provider chosen must be able to showcase Alan’s in
a professional, visually appealing, yet simple manner, provided by an easy to use and navigate Interface.
Email Designer tool allows for drag &
drop, ability to replicate and reorder
blocks, and adjust layout.
Built in photo editing
Collaboration with team members.
Intuitive file manager
Automatic link checker (shows screenshot
on hover).
Predesigned templates
Code your own templates with HTML and
inline CSS template
Screen Size adjustability (mobile)
Email Editor tool allows for drag & drop
Access to library of stock images
Social integration
Large variety of pre-designed templates
HTML email templates (intuitive & easy to
use)
Screen Size adjustability (mobile)
Both providers have easy to use designer/editor tools with drag/drop capabilities. While Constant
Contact has a library of stock images, MailChimp has built in photo editing and an intuitive file man-
ager. Each provider would be able to develop a professional email campaign but MailChimp has spe-
cific features that would allow Alan's beautiful, quality products to be best showcased.

5. Customer Service & Support:
Other Tools:
Phone, chat, and email support offered Mon-
day through Friday for business hours & email
support on weekends
Helpful resources:
-Recorded video tutorials
-Community Forum
-Local Seminars and Training available
Self Support Knowledge Base: Searchable
knowledge base with articles and infor-
mation about services.
Support Chat: Monday through Friday
Support Email: 24/7
In order to make certain the email marketing strategy is being effective in the right ways, smart and
powerful reporting is necessary. A full strong, powerful analytics package should show what is work-
ing, what is not, and the opportunities to make things better.
The clear winner for customer service and support is Constant Contact. With resources online, over
the phone and in person, Constant Contact ensures they are there to help if its needed. MailChimp
offers email and chat support along with online articles to help.
Two secondary areas to analyze for both MailChimp and Constant Contact are their
deliverability, getting the emails to the right place at the right time, and also their
mobile applications.
Deliverability:
In terms of deliverability both providers have a high rate of success, with constant contact at 98% and
MailChimp at 99%. Constant Contact provides a built in spam check tool to ensure messages aren't di-
recting there versus the customer’s inbox. MailChimp boasts bounce management to detect potential
delivery issues.
Mobile App:
Both service provider offer mobile apps. While Constant Contact has an all in one app that allows you to
do pretty much everything you would need to, MailChimp further splits their capabilities into three apps.
For Alan’s, MailChimp Subscribe would serve us very well at our locations in store to streamline the fish-
bowl email collection process.
Constant Contact’s mobile app allows you to create, preview and send emails from your phone. It
also allows you to track results and add people to your emailing list.
MailChimp has multiple apps. MailChimp Mobile allows you to manage email lists, add subscribers,
send campaigns, and view reports. MailChimp Snap allows you to send simple, photo based emails
from your phone. MailChimp Subscribe is specifically for collecting email addresses, even offline.

6. Comparison Summary
MailChimp and Constant Contact match up consistently as two of the
best email marketing services available for small and growing businesses. Alan’s
started out small but it is continuing to grow. The purpose of this in depth analy-
sis was to pit these two providers against one another specifically concerning
features, tools, price and usability. MailChimp beats Constant Contact in terms
of price, though by a slim margin. As for segmentation capabilities, a very im-
portant aspect in email marketing success, MailChimp is the more powerful of
the two while Constant Contact remains a bit too simple for the segmentation
needs of Alan’s. Reporting wise, both service prepare engagement reports with
real tome data but MailChimp simply has the more robust analytics package
with a lot of added features that can provide a holistic view of how email cam-
paigns are performing and well, why they may not be, and what they could do
to perform better. Both provider’s interfaces are easy to navigate and relatively
intuitive for yielding such good results. Though for Alan’s use, MailChimp is
more focused on the use of personal pictures, versus constant contact’s vast
stock image library, which would not showcase Alan’s beautiful, custom crea-
tions in the same quality. Customer Service is really the only are where Constant
Contact is able to truly surpass MailChimp. Constant Contact really does stick
true to their name, keeping their support centers open, constantly ready for
contact. Though these email service providers are two of the best out their, the
other tools & features really set them apart from one another in terms of special-
ties and themes. Constant Contact remained simple and straightforward while
MailChimp demonstrated more powerful capabilities in several of the sets of
criteria analyzed.

7. Final Recommendation:
Send Better Email. Sell More Stuff.
After closely analyzing MailChimp and Constant Contact on their price, seg-
mentation capabilities, reporting power, interface usability, customer service, and
other features, while keeping in mind Alan’s specific email marketing strategy based
off its business objectives and needs, MailChimp will be the most appropriate and
effective choice for email service provider.
At $875 a month, Alan’s will be able to utilize MailChimp’s preset automation
workflows to properly segment out the lunch crowd of 200,000 emails, the brides
to be, and our specialty item customers into different workflows where every series
operates using different triggers events, segmentation conditions and post sending
list actions. Once these segments are set up, Alan’s can also take advantage of the
robust analytics package MailChimp provides, including their A/B testing, where we
can set up several marketing campaigns send them out to sample groups and test
how they do compared to one another and for what reason. The reporting tools also
allow connectivity to all relevant social media platforms and CRM databases for
better insight. MailChimp is the better service provider for Alan’s especially because
of its capabilities for storing images and on site editing. Alan’s creates beautiful, cus-
tom pieces, its imperative we can showcase this is a seamless, professional way.
Though the customer service does not include phone calls, any question can reach an
answer by first searching the database and then contacting the helpdesk via email or
chat. MailChimp Subscribers is another great feature that will upgrade Alan’s. By
providing an instore, professional way to collect email addresses we can increase cus-
tomer connection while ditching the old fishbowl method.
MailChimp and Constant Contact are similar providers in terms of quality and
reputation, but the aforementioned capabilities make MailChimp the preferred email
service for Alan’s café & Bakery to connect with our current customers and to reach
new customers.