Who'll take you to the Top - HubSpot or Mailchimp?

A marketer’s to do list is never ending. Just as there’s no shortage of tasks to tick off, there’s a myriad of tools that will allow you to deliver a memorable customer experience and grow your business. While there are a multitude of marketing hubs and softwares out there, they don’t all perform equally. We’ve narrowed it down to the top two most popular platforms - HubSpot and Mailchimp. So let's jump right into comparing them so that you can determine what’s best for you and your team. But first off, what is marketing software?

To put it simply, a marketing software suite harnesses various tools that allow your business to strategically segment your buyer personas, attract highly targeted leads, successfully execute campaigns and much more! Each platform will have its pros and cons. Picking a suite that doesn't align with your strategic goals can potentially stack on a lot of extra work for your team; but fear not, all of your troubles can be avoided. All you have to do is take the time to read this comparison and you’ll be sweet with the best choice!

So, what's the difference?

Mailchimp was founded almost 20 years ago and has for quite a while been the most popular system out there. Known for being free and fairly simple to use, Mailchimp has been at the forefront of marketers' minds wanting to automate emails and reach leads. While users can start creating content instantly once they’ve signed up, it doesn’t integrate very well with other platforms you may be using for your CRM or CMS. Segmentation and lead targeting is quite limited too.

HubSpot’s Marketing Hub on the other hand, does much more than just automate your emails. Due to the integration abilities of HubSpot, it can easily be used as a stand alone software. HubSpot marketing hub implementation is also easy peasy. It integrates seamlessly with your social media channels and the CRM and CMS to allow your team to harness key data, make informed decisions and offer a more personalised user experience within a few clicks.

1. Email Marketing

With a ROI of up to 3800% for Email marketing, needless to say that it ain’t going anywhere. Email marketing is an effective way to engage with your leads and nurture them into loyal customers at a minimal cost. When choosing an email service provider, you’ll want to ensure it has the features you need now but tools to support you as your company grows.

2. Contact Management

As your business grows, so will your database of contacts. Making informed decisions about how these contacts have interacted with your brand is essential to provide a personalised experience that will stick.

Mailchimp’s Marketing CRM allows you to segment your audience in two ways. One, by segmenting your contacts based on a single variable and two, by tagging your contacts to create manual groupings. Free users of Mailchimp can key in up to five conditions to create a segment while premium will allow advanced segmentation with unlimited conditions to filter your contacts.

HubSpot’s marketing tools are built directly in conjunction with the CRM the company uses. This means that not only will HubSpot integrate seamlessly with your CRM but importantly, you’ll have a 360 degree view of your contact’s experience with your company from day 1. You’ll be able to see if your email has been opened, review their most recent sales call, and even if they’ve got an open ticket with the support team. The number of properties you can key in are endless whether you’re using HubSpot’s free marketing tools or are on the Enterprise tier.

3. Marketing Automation

As a company grows, the need for marketing automation becomes increasingly essential. Actions like sending nurturing emails to every single customer become too tedious and time consuming. Marketing automation allows you to continue giving a personalised experience while freeing up your time for more mission critical tasks (including Friday knock off drinks!)

Mailchimp’s marketing automation tool lets you send out marketing emails based on the actions your contacts take. You can send a reminder email to visitors that abandon their carts at checkout and even birthday emails. However, the big downside is that that’s all you can do -- automate your emails. When it comes to contact management or internal notifications, Mailchimp’s software is somewhat limited.

On the other hand, HubSpot’s automation platform goes beyond just sending emails. Triggering an email based on actions your contacts take is just the beginning. While Mailchimp can only handle kickback emails and drip campaigns, HubSpot’s workflows tool lets you easily manage your contacts database, share leads amongst your sales reps and automatically creates tickets advising your support team of outstanding queries. You’ll also be able to apply if/then logic to your automation and fine tune your workflows to meet the exact needs of your team. HubSpot is here to assist all of your departments; not just marketing.

4. Social & Ads

Having a strong social media presence is like wearing sunscreen daily; it is crucial and will have long term benefits. Being active on social channels allows you to engage with your audience 24/7. Ads on the other hand, allow you to target a specific audience. With ads, you can generate fresh leads faster, hone your messaging and nurture contacts who’ve already purchased from you too.

Mailchimp’s social tool allows you to publish organically to Facebook and Instagram.You can also manage Facebook ads and Google ads. Mailchimp can also produce analytical reports to tie spending to revenue. For Facebook, you’ll have to connect to an ecommerce platform such as Shopify. Targeting is limited on Mailchimp. You cannot use the contacts list for your Google ads nor can you refine or exclude your audience which means target ads are out of the question.

HubSpot will allow you to both drive organic traffic and manage your paid ads. Schedule out posts across each network and quickly collect data and build reports. HubSpot will give you insight into your performance whether you publish posts on HubSpot or directly within the network. As well as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can also connect your YouTube account to HubSpot to see how your audience is engaging with your video content. With the social monitoring tool, you can also keep track of trends in keyword phrases and also respond directly to your social media posts within HubSpot.

5. Landing pages & forms

An effective landing page should have a clear “sign me up” path -- you don’t want your site visitors to wonder how to access more content or how to get in touch with you. Your forms should be customisable to meet your business’s and customers’ needs allowing you to gather all the data you need to nurture your leads.

Mailchimp offers a simple drag and drop landing page editing experience, as well as a forms solutions. Forms are tied back directly to a list which makes it easy for you follow up with those leads.

HubSpot's advantage from Mailchimp stems from its tool flexibility. HubSpot allows you to add a tracking code to your site effectively pulling in data into its software no matter which form tool you use. Importantly, HubSpot also understands that each form submission isn’t necessarily a new client. With every form submitted, HubSpot can wisely create progressive profiling effectively changing what a visitor to your site sees as they progress on their buyer’s journey with you.

6. Supported languages

As your team grows, you may find yourself with offices across the globe. English may be your teams' first language and that’s absolutely okay (and probably quite common nowadays); but what if it's not? What you want is a software that can support various languages you operate in so all of your teams can be included and feel 100% comfortable in doing a cracking job.

Mailchimp essentially only has their product available in English.

HubSpot on the other hand, has products and documentation catered towards supporting your growing team in a wide range of languages such as French, Spanish, German and Japanese.

7. Growth with HubSpot

HubSpot can do so much more than just email and marketing automation - it'll solve all your problems! With HubSpot, you’ve got everything at your fingertips -- need a chat bot that can attend to your client’s when you’re out of the office - check; writing a blog for your website that can be accessed by the entire team to review before it’s out -- check; getting your blog optimised for SEO? - check and check. You get the gist here -- HubSpot will grow as you grow. You can add your sales and service teams to HubSpot too and see how having minimal friction in your customer’s entire experience and within your teams; makes it all better.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably guessed the verdict -- yes, HubSpot wins. If you’re simply after the basics, Mailchimp might be for you. But if your goal is to reach new heights without having to struggle through the technicalities, we say HubSpot wins ten-fold. HubSpot was built with growth in mind, ease of integration and more than just making marketers’ days easier - it is here to make all of your tasks easier and better.