Which Email Marketing Tool is Best?

Email marketing has a whopping 3600 percent ROI, and in 2023, Statista estimates email marketing revenue reached over 10 billion dollars,

There’s no denying its success, and there’s no shortage of email marketing tools to choose from either.

If you’re unsure whether to select, I’ll help you decide.

In this post, I’ll compare two of the most popular platforms: Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp.

I’ll detail the main features, explain the different pricing options, and highlight any pros and cons of both platforms. Once you understand more about what both tools offer, you can make an informed choice.

Ready to learn more? Awesome! Let’s get started.

Key Takeaways: Klaviyo vs Mailchimp

• Klaviyo stands out for advanced segmentation and personalization capabilities.
• Mailchimp stands out for being easy-to-use and having a large selection of pre-built templates.
• Klaviyo is generally a better fit for e-commerce and enterprise business.
• Mailchimp’s extensive features make it a great option as an all-in-one tool for small businesses.
• Both tools include essential features like email templates, automations, and audience segmentation.
• Mailchimp offers more budget plans, but with limitations on access to features. Every Klaviyo plan includes access to the same features.

Using Klaviyo for Email Marketing

Leveraging Klaviyo for email marketing opens up many possibilities for businesses aiming to create highly personalized emails. Klaviyo’s strength lies in harnessing data to create targeted campaigns. 

With Klaviyo, you can easily segment your audience by their behaviors and preferences, ensuring that your messages resonate with the right people at the right time.

Moreover, Klaviyo simplifies crafting visually appealing emails with its intuitive design tools. The platform provides user-friendly features that empower you to create engaging content without extensive technical know-how.

By utilizing Klaviyo’s robust analytics, you can measure the success of your email campaign results and refine your strategy, ultimately building stronger connections with your audience through effective email marketing.

Klaviyo Features

Klaviyo has a wealth of features, including:

Customizable templates: You can access over one hundred templates to give your emails a polished look. Klaviyo provides mobile-optimized templates, custom HTML/CSS, and reusable sections for consistency.

Advanced Segmentation: This feature allows you to send hyper-personalized emails to your list and segment them by best-selling and most viewed items, send time, overall look, and more.

Automated Flows: Send welcome emails, cart reminders, price drops, shipping updates, etc. You can divide these emails into specific messages and audiences.

Image source: Klaviyo Community

Integrations: Klaviyo works with major e-commerce brands such as BigCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Wix, and WooCommerce. You can integrate over 300 tools and unify the data for a personalized approach to email marketing.

Artificial Intelligence: Like many marketing platforms, Klaviyo uses AI to improve your email marketing success. Some features are AI-generated subject lines, A/B testing, a recommendation engine built around consumers’ preferences, and predicted customer attributes for segmentation and email personalization.

Image source: Klaviyo

Pricing

Klaviyo’s pricing vs Mailchimp is more expensive, but it offers more bang for your buck. Every plan includes the full suite of tools. Pricing may vary based on the size of your audience. 

For an audience of 1,001-1,500 your options include:

• Email only: starts at $45, 15,000 monthly emails, and 150 SMS or MMS credits.
• Email and SMS: starts at $60, 15,000 monthly emails, and 1,250 SMS or MMS credits.

For audience sizes less than 250, Klaviyo does offer a free plan with 500 monthly emails and 150 SMS/MMS credits.

Customer Thoughts

Here are some Klaviyo pros and cons according to customers.

Reviewers like the integrations, ease-of-use, reporting, and analytic features. Klaviyo also gets positive reviews for its templates, flows, and automation.

Others say it helped them improve their digital marketing and SMS automation and revolutionize their email marketing.

Klaviyo does get some negative comments about slow loading times for larger mailing lists, and some reviewers feel cost is an issue.

In addition, some reviewers say there is a steep learning curve.

Using Mailchimp for Email Marketing

Mailchimp is user-friendly, and its templates allow you to create attractive, professional-looking emails, even if you don’t have design experience. There are over one hundred templates, and you can use the drag-and-drop editor to customize your email marketing designs.

Whether you want to grow your mailing list or track your campaign’s performance, MailChimp has something for you.

Let’s take a deeper look at the features.

Mailchimp Features

Templates: You can create personalized, eye-catching emails from scratch or from easy-to-use templates.

Image source: Mailchimp

Automation: Use the customer journey builder to automate your email marketing and streamline your omnichannel campaigns. Build your own journey or choose from 90+ pre-built automations.

Image source: martech.org

Audience Management: Use predictive analytics for personal campaign creation, segmentation for filtering your audience, and behavioral targeting for sending targeted messages. The marketing CRM feature helps you understand your audience better, develop relationships with them, and use tags and customer profiles to sort your audience.

There are sign-up forms for collecting data and surveys for customer feedback, too (which helps to improve your email deliverability). 

AI: Personalize emails with dynamic content, produce unique content with the generative AI tool, and use the subject line helper for writing engaging headlines.

Integrations: You can integrate Mailchimp with a host of platforms, including X, Facebook, Google Analytics, WooCommerce, Eventbrite, Zapier, Survey Monkey, and Squarespace Commerce.

Additional Marketing Essentials: In addition to email marketing, Mailchimp helps you build landing pages and websites with the landing page creator. You can also design, customize, and promote a website through the free website builder.

Pricing

Mailchimp has a subscription for every budget, but you need to look closely at the plan breakdown to ensure you’re getting all the features you desire.

For an audience of 1,500, your plan options include:

• Essentials: starts at $26.50, 15,000 monthly emails, and 3 user seats
• Standard: starts at $45, 18,000 monthly emails, and 5 user seats. This plan unlocks a majority of desirable features including reporting and analytics and advanced content creation tools.
• Premium: starts at $350, 150,000 monthly emails, and unlimited users

Mailchimp’s free plan is only accessible if you have an audience of 500 or smaller. It includes 1,000 monthly emails and 1 user seat.

Customer Thoughts

Users say Mailchimp is easy to get started with, and they like the pre-designed templates. Others like the social media templates, lead generation forms, and simple tracking.

The software’s integration with other platforms, such as QuickBooks, gets positive reviews, as does generative AI tools for content creation.

On the downside, some customers think the pricing structure is too complicated and expensive. Others found the user interface confusing to navigate. Overall, however, Mailchimp still scores highly.

Klaviyo vs. Mailchimp: What’s the Better Tool?

Both of these email marketing tools are popular for a reason. The right choice for you will depend on your budget and anticipated needs.

Mailchimp is a great choice if you’re looking for ease-of-use, budget pricing options, and features that extend beyond email marketing. This platform would be a good fit for smaller brands and email marketing beginners.

Klaviyo wins out when it comes to in-depth customization, segmentation, and automations. This makes it the preferred choice for enterprise and e-commerce brands.

FAQs

Conclusion

So what’ll it be? Klaviyo or Mailchimp?

The choice ultimately boils down to your business’s unique needs and preferences. Consider your business goals, level of technical expertise, and the specific requirements of your audience.

Whether you opt for Klaviyo or Mailchimp, both platforms equip you with powerful tools to implement email marketing best practices. Klaviyo excels in data-driven insights and personalized campaigns, while Mailchimp stands out for its user-friendly interface and diverse template options. 

Take the time to explore their features, experiment with their functionalities, and align your choice with the goals you’ve set for your email campaigns.

Ultimately, Klaviyo versus Mailchimp isn’t just a comparison of tools; it’s a decision that shapes how you connect with your audience, and by making an informed choice, you can pave the way for successful and impactful email marketing campaigns.

Which email platform do you prefer? Let me know in the comments below.