Infusionsoft (now Keap Max) is a gold standard in marketing automation for small and mid-size businesses. However, people still wonder why they should consider Infusionsoft versus an email autoresponder like Mailchimp.
To help answer that question, let’s compare Infusionsoft vs. MailChimp for marketing automation.
Mailchimp – Easy Peasy (But Limited Functionality)
Many small businesses use MailChimp because they can get what they “need” for free (or for a low monthly fee). MailChimp branding, however, comes standard with these freebie accounts.
People also assume that MailChimp’s features differ from other platforms like Constant Contact, AWeber, etc. For the most part, that’s not true. All the SaaS email autoresponder tools on the market offer unlimited lists, social integration and opt-in forms for your website. They also offer bare bones tracking and email analytics.
All these freebies are great, but settling on a limited (albeit cheap) platform can cost your business in terms of marketing effectiveness.
For example, with Mailchimp you can only send emails to one of your lists at a time. This means you can’t automate multiple lists and multiple campaigns at the same time. This makes it nearly impossible to target the right buyers with the right offer based on their behavior (aka “behavioral campaigns”).
The other major problem with Mailchimp is integrating with a CRM. This integration is, in a word: difficult. We have yet to encounter a CRM that plays well with Mailchimp. It’s a clunky solution to use Mailchimp for your email marketing and a CRM like Salesforce for your sales team.
For someone just starting out with an email newsletter, Mailchimp is a simple and easy solution. If you’re looking to connect your message with the buying actions of your prospects, then you need a full marketing automation platform. That requires a well-integrated CRM, real time behavioral campaign sequences, e-commerce capabilities, etc.
As an Infusionsoft services and marketing automation team we know Mailchimp fundamentally lacks these core marketing automation capabilities.
Compare to Infusionsoft’s Marketing Automation
Infusionsoft’s complete marketing automation and CRM platform allows you to run fully automated behavioral marketing campaigns, sell products and services, collect payments, etc. all in one place.
Infusionsoft’s marketing automation capabilities give you the ability to focus on the bigger picture – growing your business with a marketing funnel that will generate revenue.
One of the challenges with Infusionsoft is coming up to speed on its functionality. Learning and getting the most out of the platform requires an investment of time and money. It’s not as simple as learning a basic campaign planner — you need to learn sequences, goals, timers, tasks, action sets, tags and more. Infusionsoft vs. Mailchimp in this respect is not really a comparison, since we’re talking about a lot more functionality with Infusionsoft.
Infusionsoft (Keap Max) vs. MailChimp Feature Comparison
| FEATURE | INFUSIONSOFT | MAILCHIMP |
| Web based | Y | Y |
| Windows | Y | Y |
| Mac OS | Y | Y |
| Linux | N | N |
| Mobile app | Y | Y |
| iPhone app | Y | Y |
| Android app | Y | Y |
| Windows phone | N | N |
| Free trial? | N | Y |
| Freemium account | N | Y |
| Subscription based? | Y | Y |
| API | Y | Y |
| Campaign segmentation | Y | N |
| Custom forms | Y | Y |
| Activity monitoring | Y | N |
| Customizable fields | Y | N |
| Lead capture | Y | N |
| Lead generations | Y | N |
| Lead scoring | Y | N |
| Sales tracking | Y | N |
| Software management | Y | N |
| Software metrics | Y | N |
| Visitor tracking | Y | N |
| Web forms | Y | N |
Is Infusionsoft a big step to get started? Of course. Any time we retool the way we do things, it takes time, effort and sweat. The main thing to understand is that Infusionsoft is a more complex platform that requires more investment to take advantage of.
Investing in Infusionsoft can help generate more leads and sales, engage customers and transform them into repeat buyers much better than Mailchimp. If you’re ready to make that sort of commitment, then it’s well-worth the effort.
Infusionsoft vs. Mailchimp Bottom Line?
Mailchimp acts more as an email auto-responder or newsletter automaton software and does a great job at these two things. Otherwise, its marketing automation functionality is limited and requires a lot of API integrations to build a complete solution.
Infusionsoft (Keap Max), while more complex out of the box, offers behavioral campaigns, an integrated CRM, e-commerce, a good API, an active marketplace of add-on providers, and tons of other capabilities. Infusionsoft has full support (you can call or chat with Infusionsoft Support and get a decent answer on pretty much anything). It will carry your business forward with any marketing automation need you may have.