“More than Email”
My time so far at Mailchimp can be summed up in one, small phrase: More than email.
Mailchimp has been evolving from an email service provider (ESP) for over 7 years now. I helped start the Product Marketing organization at Mailchimp as one of the first 5 people on the team over 6+ years ago. Since then, the team has grown to over 20 people spanning nearly all of Mailchimp’s core products. I’ve lead the go-to-market on nearly every major product launch outside of Email (oddly enough I’ve never touched Email during my time at Mailchimp). These new products were designed to continue that storyline of “more than email”.
Landing Pages
Mailchimp Landing Pages have been nothing short of a major success. With well over 1,000,000 users have used the feature to create, design and publish over 2,000,000 landing pages.
I created and led the go-to-market strategy working alongside the product managers. I built out a competitive dashboard to understand what best-in-class landing page providers were doing in the space. I developed the framing of new product opportunities through methodical market and opportunity sizing.
I’m exceptionally proud of this product and what it provides for small businesses.
WEBSITES
Mailchimp Websites were the natural evolution of our Landing Pages product. We had the cards stacked against us with this one. We were entering a market with incumbents that had been in the business for 20+ years.
Our product development was focused on building a simple website builder (perfect for pre-launch businesses…more on that soon) and a greater integration into our full marketing platform. I developed and executed the go-to-market strategy and implemented new beta program processes with our product team that the entire org now uses.
Thus far we’ve had nearly 60,000 websites published on our platform.
DOMAINS
Mailchimp Domains are built to support users on a number of levels. Users can use them for landing pages, websites and even our email product. It’s a foundational aspect of a small business.
As part of the launch of domains, I developed the strategy that we should give them away for free. While this isn’t a novel idea, my idea was that we should give them away for free for 5 years. Small businesses needed to get online quicker than ever. This promotion helped expedite the process for them. I created and executed the go-to-market and rallied nearly every team in Mailchimp together to get this out the door.
At the end of the promotion, we gave away ~33,000 free domains.
SMS
Mailchimp SMS is exactly what it sounds like. It allows businesses to send offers, notifications, and personalized content directly to their customer or prospect's phone through text.
SMS isn’t new so I had to take an innovative approach. I extensively researched competitors, best-in-class providers to understand what they were doing, but I also dug deeper to understand what drove their customers. Taking this approach allowed me to effectively communicate “Why Mailchimp SMS?” in a way that no other company could. It revolved around “Email🤝SMS” and this approach has lead to tens of thousands of businesses adopting SMS in just 7 months (from the time I’m writing this). Excited to see where I can take it next.
“Mailchimp Your Marketing”
Mailchimp Your Marketing was a game-changing campaign that I spearheaded to redefine how the world sees Mailchimp.
Our challenge? Shift perceptions from "just an email tool" to a comprehensive, AI-powered marketing platform. I dove deep into our product capabilities, identifying key features that set us apart in the MarTech landscape.
Working closely with our in-house creative agency, Wink, we crafted a strategy that balanced showcasing our advanced tech (think AI, intelligent segmentation, and multichannel capabilities) with Mailchimp's quirky personality.
The result? A campaign that not only turned heads with its "expertly absurd" B2B approach but also effectively communicated our platform's evolution. By focusing on the "Mailchimp Your Marketing" concept, we demonstrated how our tools could make any company's marketing distinctly "Mailchimp-y" – innovative, effective, and a bit unconventional.
Start with Mailchimp
Start with Mailchimp was a company wide initiative designed to support pre-launch business or early stage startups with educational content, products developed for their needs and support to start marketing their business early from the very beginning.
I spent 4+ months developing the go-to-market strategy, completing research to understand the needs of these users and refining the messaging strategy. It’s a brand new muscle we’re working on and so far it’s going really well.