Mailchimp overhauls audience definition in fresh plans
Firm makes change as it introduces fresh features beyond email.
Popular email marketing platform Mailchimp is making a radical change to its pricing structure as it grows into a more-than-email marketing platform. The change goes into effect today for fresh clients. Existing clients are grandfathered into the existing structure unless they change their plan.
The big change is how Mailchimp defines an audience, which is how account tiers are priced. As an email marketing platform, Mailchimp charged a monthly fee based on how many current subscribers a client had. Now Mailchimp offers more than email marketing so it is redefining the audience.
The audience used to calculate fees now includes people who have unsubscribed from mailing lists as well as people captured in the system that never subscribed, such as someone who signed up to attend a client’s webinar.
That audience is part of what Mailchimp addresses with some of its fresh tools. For example, users can use Facebook retargeting based on audience email addresses. The targeting can include people who have unsubscribed from a list.
Clients can reduce the size of their audience by archiving contacts, which will no longer be addressed by the additional tools such as retargeting.
Mailchimp’s feature growth has been constrained somewhat by its name and reputation as an email provider. It ran a big marketing campaign a couple of years ago to show that it’s more than just an email firm.
