If you’ve been using Mailchimp for a while, there’s a good chance it started with a relatively simple goal – to get emails out to your contacts.
You had some contacts, you wanted to send them emails and Mailchimp gave you somewhere to keep everything organised and actually get those emails out of the door, simple, right?
Then your audience grows, you start adding tags and segments, a few automations creep in, more people become involved in the sales process and suddenly the thing you originally bought to send emails is being asked to do quite a lot more.
That doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with Mailchimp, it might be that your business has simply outgrown it…
Mailchimp can handle tags, segments and automated marketing flows, so there’s plenty you can do before you need to start looking elsewhere.
But there does come a point for some businesses where a more advanced CRM might make life easier.
So, how do you know if you’re there?
What do you actually want your CRM to do?
If the answer is primarily to keep your contacts organised, segment them and communicate regularly, then Mailchimp might still be exactly what you need.
But what happens when someone responds?
Maybe they make an enquiry, request a quote or book a call.
If that information immediately leaves Mailchimp and ends up on a spreadsheet, in somebody’s inbox or, worse still, sitting in somebody’s head, then you’ve potentially got a gap between your marketing and sales processes.
A more comprehensive CRM can bring more of that information together, so you’re not just tracking who you’re communicating with, but what actually happens next.
2. Your Follow-Ups Are Happening Somewhere Else
Think about what currently happens when somebody makes an enquiry…
- Do they automatically get assigned to somebody?
- Is there a reminder to follow up?
- Can everyone see whether they’ve been contacted?
- Can you easily tell what they’re interested in?
Or does Dave get an email saying somebody filled in the contact form, and everybody hopes Dave remembers to do something with it?
It might work perfectly well when you’re dealing with a handful of leads, but as your volume grows, there are simply more opportunities for things to fall through the cracks.
And that’s generally when having a clearer sales process within your CRM starts becoming useful.
3. Your Customer Data Is All Over The Place
Your Mailchimp account knows which emails somebody has clicked, the spreadsheet knows what they’ve been quoted, and your accounts system knows what they bought.
Oh, and somebody in sales knows they spoke to them three months ago about another service entirely… or something like that.
None of those systems are necessarily doing anything wrong, but it does mean that nobody really has the full picture of what’s happening and why.
For many growing businesses, one of the biggest advantages of moving towards a more comprehensive CRM is having one central place where you can understand your relationship with a prospect or customer.
Because the more places you need to check, the harder it becomes to keep everything organised.
4. Your Automations Are Becoming More Complicated
Mailchimp can absolutely handle automation.
You can create marketing flows, react to customer behaviour and use actions such as tagging to organise contacts automatically.
So having an automation or two is definitely NOT a sign that you need to leave.
But there is a difference between:
Someone downloads a guide → they receive three follow-up emails.
And:
Someone downloads a guide → they show an interest in a particular service → somebody in sales needs to be alerted → an opportunity needs to be tracked → the marketing they receive needs to change depending on what happens next.
Once your marketing automation starts becoming closely tied to your sales process, it might be worth considering whether you want all of that managed in one place.
5. More People Are Getting Involved
Things are relatively straightforward when one person manages the CRM.
They know what all the tags mean, where the data lives and why an automation called “New Lead V2 FINAL ACTUAL FINAL” exists.
Add several more people into the mix and it can become slightly more difficult, particularly when different people are responsible for different stages of the customer journey.
You might have marketing generating the enquiry, somebody in sales following it up and another person eventually managing the customer.
At that stage, visibility becomes increasingly important.
Everyone needs to understand what has happened, what needs to happen next and, crucially, whose responsibility it is.
6. You Can't Easily See Your Sales Pipeline
How much potential business have you currently got sitting in your pipeline?
- How many quotes are outstanding?
- Which opportunities need following up this week?
- Which leads have gone quiet?
If answering those questions requires opening several systems or asking everyone individually, there’s probably room to improve things.
More sales-focused CRM systems can provide pipelines for tracking opportunities and the actions associated with them. ActiveCampaign, for example, now combines its marketing platform with CRM functionality including pipelines, deals and tasks.
That doesn’t mean you automatically need ActiveCampaign.
It means you need to decide whether that sort of visibility would actually help your business.
7. Mailchimp Is Starting To Feel Like Hard Work
This is perhaps the simplest sign because the fact is that your CRM is supposed to make your life easier.
If you’re constantly exporting spreadsheets, manually moving data around, creating workarounds or worrying that your tags have become a Frankenstein’s Monster that nobody quite understands, something needs to change.
But that something isn’t necessarily the software.
You might just need to tidy up your existing Mailchimp account, rethink your tags and segments or strip out a load of automations you don’t actually need.
Moving CRMs won’t fix a bad process.
In fact, if you take a disorganised system and move everything into a shiny new CRM, you’ll probably just end up with a more expensive disorganised system.
So, Have You Actually Outgrown Mailchimp?
Well, maybe. But there’s no need to move simply because another platform has more features.
If Mailchimp lets you organise your contacts, target the right audiences and communicate with them regularly, then it may well still be the right tool for the job.
The question is whether your needs have changed.
If you now need to track sales opportunities, manage more complicated customer journeys, give multiple people visibility over prospects or connect your marketing much more closely with your sales process, then it’s probably worth investigating your options.
And before you start comparing CRMs, go back to your process.
- How does somebody become a lead?
- What happens next?
- Who follows up?
- What communication should they receive?
- How do you know if they become a customer?
- Once you’ve answered those questions, choosing the right software becomes a heck of a lot easier.
Once you’ve answered those questions, choosing the right software becomes a heck of a lot easier.
The CRM isn’t the solution by itself, it’s the thing that helps you make the process happen consistently – and that consistency is what pays dividends.
Who Are 3XM?
We’re 3XM Marketing, our goal is to generate you more leads and get more customers.
Simple, right?
The 3XM Marketing team with the ‘Best Strategic Marketing Firm’ Midlands Enterprise award from SME News.
If you’re looking for a strategic marketing partner to work with and ensure you’re doing the right stuff (and getting it to the right people) and you want to make sure it happens… consistently, then we can help.
Across our team, we’ve got most marketing bases covered, from strategy to copywriting, from paid traffic to CRMs, and we can work closely with you to:
- Get more marketing out the door
- Improve the quality and results of your marketing
- Enjoy your life and your business more
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During your Business Growth Call, we’ll:
- Take a look at the marketing you’re doing, and give you our two cents on how to improve it
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