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They announced a lot of things, and this was just one change in a slew of new product expansions. Seemed reasonable to me.

jeremymcanally 7y ago
One paragraph of like six was about the new Marketing Platform they're offering (the rest were about this change), which for free users like myself, I'm pretty sure doesn't really warrant a lot of excitement. I realize I'm a free user, but I use it for a small list of people. I really have zero use for any of the new stuff they're offering. I'll probably just jump over to MadMimi or something else similar since it seems their focus is moving more towards multi-channel marketing and less on running a mailing list. Speaking of: I'm confused by their push into "Marketing Software™" to be honest. There are a lot of people doing that already, and all the MC users I know (which, granted, is only a sample of say 20 people) don't use it in the way they're trying to pivot towards. I'm guessing they'll shed a ton of current users in this change up, but maybe they'll gain an equal or greater number of folks looking for what they're offering? I guess we'll see.
- jvagner 7y ago
  It's a pretty significant cost-calculation change, and thought the charge may not land yet, it'll probably land later on. Also, a lot of people manage MC accounts for clients, so this will be a head's up discussion in those engagement discussions ("That tool we use for audience segmentation..? The price calculation may be changing because they're now counting unsubscribes.."). That said, to your second point: a lot of people just want simple, email list management. And for that, MailChimp has gotten a little unwieldy. But in a more sophisticated digital marketing strategy, some of their other components make more sense. They're competing with the base CRMs out there, and they'd rather not be one half of an equation where they'll eventually lose out because customers need to move up the offering chain. And in remarketing and attribution oriented campaigns, the new MC features make more sense, in theory. Lastly, many many many companies out there barely use their marketing tools. If you think in terms of analytics, tracking, audience targeting, remarketing, etc., a lot of people are just using the thinnest feature set to fake their marketing. If you tie a few tools together, it gets a bit harder, so those MC customers who are trying to level up a bit need to figure out an additional element of integration. It's detail oriented and prone to error. By bundling these together, they can help their customers level-up without confronting the integration burden.
- shostack 7y ago
  All of the major ESPs (email platforms) are moving to be marketing clouds. They realized they were well suited as they store much of the audience data and logic for that sort of automation. Then they just need to connect to other platforms which is relatively easy integration. This in turn gets them more lock in with features and data. Exporting all that data and logic is a major headache. I know because I've dealt with such a migration twice now. Since there's still valuable data about unsubscribed users if they are wired up to your DB, and since you could presumably still retarget them with audience lists in other channels that aren't impacted, I understand this move. Likewise, their pricing change from auto changing your pricing tier to having you forecast is fairly standard for large email platforms, but frankly a little customer hostile imho. It shifts the risk from them to you to know your volume. Sure if you want true pay as you go, you can use the underlying mailer tools (Amazon SES, Sparkpost, etc) but business users will struggle with that.

jeremymcanally 7y ago

One paragraph of like six was about the new Marketing Platform they're offering (the rest were about this change), which for free users like myself, I'm pretty sure doesn't really warrant a lot of excitement. I realize I'm a free user, but I use it for a small list of people. I really have zero use for any of the new stuff they're offering. I'll probably just jump over to MadMimi or something else similar since it seems their focus is moving more towards multi-channel marketing and less on running a mailing list. Speaking of: I'm confused by their push into "Marketing Software™" to be honest. There are a lot of people doing that already, and all the MC users I know (which, granted, is only a sample of say 20 people) don't use it in the way they're trying to pivot towards. I'm guessing they'll shed a ton of current users in this change up, but maybe they'll gain an equal or greater number of folks looking for what they're offering? I guess we'll see.

jvagner 7y ago
It's a pretty significant cost-calculation change, and thought the charge may not land yet, it'll probably land later on. Also, a lot of people manage MC accounts for clients, so this will be a head's up discussion in those engagement discussions ("That tool we use for audience segmentation..? The price calculation may be changing because they're now counting unsubscribes.."). That said, to your second point: a lot of people just want simple, email list management. And for that, MailChimp has gotten a little unwieldy. But in a more sophisticated digital marketing strategy, some of their other components make more sense. They're competing with the base CRMs out there, and they'd rather not be one half of an equation where they'll eventually lose out because customers need to move up the offering chain. And in remarketing and attribution oriented campaigns, the new MC features make more sense, in theory. Lastly, many many many companies out there barely use their marketing tools. If you think in terms of analytics, tracking, audience targeting, remarketing, etc., a lot of people are just using the thinnest feature set to fake their marketing. If you tie a few tools together, it gets a bit harder, so those MC customers who are trying to level up a bit need to figure out an additional element of integration. It's detail oriented and prone to error. By bundling these together, they can help their customers level-up without confronting the integration burden.
shostack 7y ago
All of the major ESPs (email platforms) are moving to be marketing clouds. They realized they were well suited as they store much of the audience data and logic for that sort of automation. Then they just need to connect to other platforms which is relatively easy integration. This in turn gets them more lock in with features and data. Exporting all that data and logic is a major headache. I know because I've dealt with such a migration twice now. Since there's still valuable data about unsubscribed users if they are wired up to your DB, and since you could presumably still retarget them with audience lists in other channels that aren't impacted, I understand this move. Likewise, their pricing change from auto changing your pricing tier to having you forecast is fairly standard for large email platforms, but frankly a little customer hostile imho. It shifts the risk from them to you to know your volume. Sure if you want true pay as you go, you can use the underlying mailer tools (Amazon SES, Sparkpost, etc) but business users will struggle with that.