MailChimp is an entry-level email marketing solution that is targeted at startups, individual marketers, and online entrepreneurs. A free plan is available, as well as a premium plan that offers thousands of contacts and unlimited emails. Complete customization is allowed within this platform and subscribers are given plenty of tools to maximize the impact they can make with every email.
Vertical Response is a customizable email marketing solution that focuses on your total contact count to provide you with a full service marketing plan. Like MailChimp, you’re allowed a free account, which offers you 300 contacts and up to 4,000 emails per month without the need to provide a credit card number. Programs up to 40,000 contacts are offered at set rates across three premium tiers.
In the MailChimp vs Vertical Response debate, which option offers the best value? Here are the key points to consider.
1. Ease of Use
MailChimp offers a scalable approach to your email marketing solution. Whether you have 2,000 contacts or 200,000, you’ll be able to punch in your current subscriber base and be provided with a monthly flat fee at a number of different levels. The issue that comes up is that to access the most advanced features of the platform, you must purchase an additional Pro subscription in addition to the monthly plan you need.
At 40,000 subscribers, MailChimp users receive unlimited emails per month for $240, then pay an additional $199 per month for the pro subscription, for a final cost of $439 monthly.
Vertical Response has a similar pricing plan method, but offers three tiers of service based on your subscriber count. You’ll be able to automate your follow-up emails, receive advanced reporting, and some tiers allow for professionally designed templates, delivery rate reviews, engagement emails, and social posts.
At 40,000 subscribers, Vertical Response users receive unlimited emails per month for $250. For a full marketing service, including a dedicated campaign manager, the final cost comes to a total of $543 per month.
2. Connections
With MailChimp, you are able to integrate your account with CRM services you may be using, such as Sugar or Salesforce. This allows you to combine your data, giving your emails a greater overall impact. You can also connect your shopping cart with MailChimp to receive revenue reports or target your emails based on this data.
Vertical Response offers a similar service, allowing you to integrate your SQL server, an Oracle database, or even Gravity Forms submissions. The level of integration is much higher than what MailChimp offers, but the procedures are much more complex. It also integrates with Sugar or Salesforce.
3. Tracking
MailChimp offers engagement reports that offer daily revenue tracking from your campaigns. This includes activity stats, such as an open rate, campaign engagement, and audience growth. It is accessible straight from the account dashboard. Each data graph is interactive, allowing you to monitor specific trends within your data so you can focus on a single point of data or multiple points to achieve your goals.
Subscriber activity reports through MailChimp will provide you with a list of email addresses that didn’t open a message, allowing you to send them a modified campaign to improve your contact efforts. Reports are offered in real-time and location-based data is available as well.
Vertical Response offers a system that tracks your basic stats for you. This includes your opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. You’ll also get a total figure for your non-responders, see how many forwards have occurred, what conversions happened, and what your total revenue happens to be from your total emails sent straight from the dashboard.
Some of your data gets broken down further. Let’s use bounces as an example, since they can be either hard bounces or soft bounces. A hard bounce is an undeliverable email, whereas a soft bounce is a temporary error.
MailChimp vs Vertical Response: Which Is Better?
If you’re looking for an affordable and data-orientated email marketing platform that can scale up to your specific size, no matter what it may be, then MailChimp may be the best solution. It offers a complicated pricing system and its learning curve may be steep, but the data collection and generated reports can provide users with unique insights.
If you’re looking for a straight-forward system that provides you with similar data points and a potentially wider range of database integration, then Vertical Response may be the better option. Both offer a free tier to get to know the platform, so it may be worth trying both out to see which one fits your personal needs in the best possible way.
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