In anticipation of heavy demand during the holidays, email marketing and automation platform Intuit Mailchimp has unveiled new features and a partnership with website building platform Wix.
The new features include integration with Buy with Prime, enhanced generative AI (genAI) and SMS features, bringing marketers more tools and data than ever to better target, personalise, and automate their marketing during the holiday shopping season.
Bracing for the holidays
For many marketers, the holiday season is critical to their bottom line. According to the survey of e-commerce professionals and consumers conducted by Edelman DxI on behalf of Mailchimp in June of 2023, two-thirds of marketers estimate that the holiday season drives between 21%-40% of their company’s annual revenue. During the 2022 Black Friday weekend, Mailchimp customers sent more than 8 billion emails.
With so many businesses vying for the attention of customers, it can be difficult to break through the noise—especially in inboxes that are already crowded. A common response from time-strapped marketers is to send as many emails as possible to as many people as possible, but marketers see better business results when they take a more focused, personalised approach.
Customers are 87% more likely to click into an email if it’s personalised to them, and 71% of customers are more likely to purchase from a company that sends them personalised email.
With marketers being pressed for time, learning (and adopting) new techniques or strategies isn’t always easy. Nearly 3 in 4 marketers feel overwhelmed by all the different capabilities offered and the same percentage don’t have the time to explore all of those capabilities.
“No matter the size of your business, whether you’re speaking to an audience of 15 or 150,000, delivering personalization at scale is challenging. In one single platform, our users can manage customer engagement from attraction to purchase so they reach their customers at the right place and time this holiday season,” said Kenneth Chestnut, Global Head of Ecosystem at Intuit Mailchimp.
“We’re thrilled to announce a multi-year, strategic partnership with Wix to deliver a single source of truth for marketers and small businesses. Marketers can tap into a wealth of marketing best practices when connecting their Wix accounts to Mailchimp, getting recommendations and generated content that are built with insights derived from an international data footprint at their core.”
Partnering with Wix to Help Businesses Grow
Soon, Mailchimp users with a Wix account will be able to seamlessly sync and organize their customer data with a Mailchimp and Wix collaboration. This will help marketers using Wix customize their campaigns based on Mailchimp’s real-time behavioural data with segmentation and customer journey tools to drive better engagement and use AI-powered features that automate and offer performance suggestions for strategy optimization.
Marketers can set themselves up for success when they can integrate their customer data. Through the upcoming integration between Wix and Mailchimp users will benefit from stronger functionality and ease of use between marketing and business management.
Intuit’s substantial solutions combined with Wix’s comprehensive online platform will provide mutual users with the necessary tools needed to manage and grow businesses through this strategic partnership.
For self-creators using Wix, the integration will provide greater functionality and ease of use. Agencies and freelancers using Wix Studio will benefit from offering their clients a complete email marketing suite with industry-leading marketing tools.
“We see great strategic value in this partnership with Intuit and the positive impact it will have on our complementary users,” said Anthony Scaglione, EVP of Global Partners at Wix.
“This partnership is a true collaboration of best-of-class solutions to support the ever-changing needs of businesses and will give users more tools to grow their businesses and thrive in today’s digital landscape.”
The cross-platform integration will have a gradual global rollout in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom soon.
Boosting Conversions with Buy with Prime
The Mailchimp for Buy with Prime app, built by Alloy Automation, is an integration that helps boost conversions and enhance merchant-customer relationships. It transfers Buy with Prime events — such as an abandoned checkout — and the shopper’s contact details to Mailchimp, enabling automated personalised checkout recovery campaigns built by Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder, whose automations generate up to 7x more order for users with connected stores than bulk emails. In fact, Mailchimp customers see an average lift of 21% in their click-rates in one week after connecting their store with Mailchimp’s e-commerce integrations.3
Shown to help increase shopper conversion, Buy with Prime helps independent e-commerce sites grow their businesses using the trusted, convenient experience and benefits of Prime, including fast, free shipping, seamless checkout, and easy returns.
Together, these powerful tools equip marketers with unsurpassed access to actionable insight for advanced opportunities to re-engage and cultivate relationships with customers with automated reminders or incentives that lead to complete purchase cycles.
Enabling Personalisation at Scale with Generative AI, SMS, and More
Mailchimp’s Holiday Report found that more than 1 in 4 customers say they want more content that feels personalized to them. As we approach a holiday season during an economic change and evolving consumer preferences, the purchasing power that personalisation can unlock for marketers is invaluable.
In addition to the new integrations, Mailchimp is enabling customer personalization with new genAI and SMS features, including advanced segmentation, automations, and email build and text generation.
Mailchimp customers in Standard and Premium plans can leverage their customer data and the power of Intuit Assist to unlock a new level of personalization in their marketing.
Intuit Assist for Mailchimp is a genAI-powered marketing assistant that helps marketers generate content, deeply personalise their marketing, and optimise their marketing strategy by unlocking insights from all of their customer data. Intuit Assist is currently available in beta to select customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia, with broader global availability coming soon.
Furthermore, US-based Mailchimp customers on paid plans can now automate their SMS outreach in Campaign Manager and Customer Journey Builder and manage 1:1 conversations with SMS in their Mailchimp Inbox, bringing all their customer communications in one place.
By adding SMS to their marketing strategy, marketers can reach even more customers at scale — attaining peak levels of engagement while also building and maintaining 1:1 connections.