Salesforce Mailchimp Integration Review

Well, we all know that CRM is one of the biggest SaaS industries when it comes to business software, because CRM is basically the core of business nowadays. It’s amazing how quick we get used to something. And with all the lauding of Salesforce for its integration, such as Salesforce Mailchimp integration, it’s going to lead us to some important questions, if we’re new. Why Expand CRM: The first thing that I hear newcomers and naysayers bring up about things like this is, why take your CRM of all things, and make it be a platform for expanded features beyond its normal domain? Isn’t that kind of odd and a lot of effort? Well at one time, before CRM was, as I said, so central, and before app systems became a de facto part of Salesforce, I’d say certainly. But, CRM as a core for all data and processes, calls for all other things to sit on it as a foundation. Without Salesforce Mailchimp integration, all incoming responses and analytics from Mailchimp regarding a specific campaign would have to be manually entered into Salesforce. Likewise, all data from Salesforce to tell Mailchimp what to say to whom would require an intermediary. Well, it’s obvious why this would not be advantageous. Why Mailchimp: Well, you have a few choices for email marketing, but the two big contenders are Mailchimp and AWeber. They both have their merits, but for general across the board recommendation, Mailchimp is better. On top of this integration, it’s cheaper, easier to use and has a wider user base. But it’s a little weaker and less flexible. An ok tradeoff really. Why Salesforce: Well, at one time just citing integration like this via the app exchange would have been sufficient. But, everyone and their grandmother is cloning that now, so all the main competitors, from Dynamics to Zoho, Netsuite and even Sugar CRM are supporting this capacity. Simply, on top of award winning CRM, the fact that they did the apps for CRM thing first still bears weight, though not out of dues but rather preexisting repertoire of software. Why Email at All: Well, email is probably the least annoying method of blind or targeted outreach that is guaranteed to at least be detected no matter what. Web ads can be blocked or ignored on a whim, soon nobody will use radios or televisions, let alone magazines. So that leaves email and social media for the brunt of it. This will change in a few years when some technologies we just developed are more mature and ubiquitous. For now, though, it’s all there is. Does it Work: Having made peace with why we need this specific set of stuff preferably, does it actually work? Yes, it does, and splendidly. It simply adds interfacing and linkage so that Salesforce can send data and scheduled jobs to Mailchimp based on its leads or any number of mechanisms. It can accept and log all receipt of email records for a customer from Mailchimp into Salesforce, as well as logistics, replies as leads and the like. It does exactly what a name like Salesforce Mailchimp integration, which is to integrate them utterly seamlessly. So we want this, and thankfully, we have it.