Over the past two weeks, we have looked at two different email marketing services for therapists – AWeber and Constant Contact. This week, we continue our email marketing series by covering the next service on our list – MailChimp. While talking with therapists, MailChimp has seemed to be a fairly popular email marketing service, among the other popular services below.

• AWeber
• Constant Contact 
• MailChimp
• iContact
• Mailpoet

What makes MailChimp such a popular choice among therapists? I will cover some of the pros and cons of MailChimp for therapists.

PROS OF MAILCHIMP:

• Integrate sign up forms with WordPress & Facebook: MailChimp allows you to easily integrate a sign up form with WordPress and Facebook, allowing you to grow your list with ease.
• Pay as you go option: Unlike other services, MailChimp allows you to buy email “credits” rather than a monthly membership. If you prefer to pay as you go, you can buy credits and use them like stamps for an email. Emails end up costing between $0.20 and $0.30, depending on how many credits you purchase.
• Email templates: As with the other services we have covered, MailChimp also has email templates available, allowing you to easily create professional looking emails.
• Multi-user capabilities: If more than one person wants to access and create emails for your private practice, MailChimp allows you to do so. Unlike the other services, MailChimp allows you to create accounts for multiple people within your account. You can create admins, managers, authors and viewers, depending on the level of access you want them to have.
• Analytics: As with the other services, MailChimp allows you to track the number of people who opened your emails and what they clicked. You can view the analytics on integrative graphs, you can monitor trends, see email domain preferences and much more.
• List segmentation: MailChimp allows you to segment your lists (similar to AWeber), sending emails only to the people who are interested in a specific topics (for example – send a newsletter with blog posts about anxiety to only people who signed up for your Free Report on anxiety).With this capabilities, you can also email a special email to your most engaged subscribers with a stronger call to action than you would with a normal subscriber.
• Social media integration: As with AWeber and Constant Contact, MailChimp allows you to integrate your social media accounts – allowing you to easily share your emails with your various social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter.
• Create emails without logging in: A unique feature MailChimp offers is creating an email campaign without even logging into your account. Simply put together an email in Gmail, or any other email service, and send it to MailChimp using your private email address that MailChimp provides for your list, and wa-la!

CONS OF MAILCHIMP: 

• Complicated if little design experience: MailChimps abundance of features is great, however it can be tricky if you have little experience with design. Although they offer several templates for you to use, the multiple features may be overwhelming.
• Limited free version: While there is a free version of MailChimp (see pricing information below), the free version does not include all the bells and whistles that the paid versions do.

PRICE OF MAILCHIMP: 

MailChimp’s pricing is far lower than AWeber or Constant Contact, if you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers AND only want to send a limited number of emails per month. For those of you with less than 2,000 people on your list, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month free of charge. The ability to send unlimited emails is where the cost comes in. For unlimited monthly emails to 0-500 subscribers, its $10 per month. For 501-1000 subscribers (with unlimited emails), the price increases to $15 per month; 1001 – 1050 subscribers, unlimited emails, is $20 per month. To learn more about the pricing information, click here.

MailChimp’s unique features cause it to be very appealing for many therapists. Next week, we will look at iContact – the next email marketing service on our list.