Mailchimp and Shopify May Have Done You A Favor

You have brand campaigns to run. Promotions to launch. Customer communication to manage daily, hourly, and even minute by minute. The last thing you need is a marketing platform change. The pain of switching Email Service Provider (ESP) software—essentially uprooting the very center of your MarTech stack—is often so great that marketers won’t make the change at all. Sometimes it’s just easier to just grin and bear it with what you have. But following the Mailchimp and Shopify break-up last week, many marketers are now in a bind to re-evaluate.

While the obvious solution is to rip and replace—find another ESP that meets your requirements, determine the impact to your customers and your team, and implement a new tool that can manage your email program today, what if this is an opportunity to rethink your customer engagement strategy? Not just another ESP, but a scalable platform that can pick up where you left off and help you easily grow into a larger customer base. After all, how can you be expected to establish meaningful relationships with your customers when you’re changing vendors every time someone else makes a decision that impacts you?

That’s why we built Maropost, the first unified customer engagement platform built from the ground up. When you’re trying to create an exceptional customer experience, technology should enable closeness and personalization, not distract you from your goals. We believe in a simplified platform that marries commerce and marketing in a single place and provides a 360-degree view into a customer’s touchpoints, communications, and purchase history. An alternative to complex solutions often created by cobbling together technologies from multiple providers. We also believe in an open platform where smart connections with the solutions that you—the customer—deem best for your unique needs are available.

Whether you’re suddenly in the position of needing to evaluate a new solution, or you’re interested in graduating from an ESP to a scalable customer engagement platform, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Will this tool meet my requirements for connectivity? Smart touchpoints are critical for keeping your programs up and running and tend to be the most complex part of making the switch. Make sure you have the connectivity you need available to you, the support you need to make the switch, and an alternative solution if that integration is no longer available for any reason. Expect a scalable platform with a robust set of APIs and integrations.
2. Can it scale for both volume and capability? If you’re looking for a long-term solution, you want something that can grow with your team. Not only when your customer base gets bigger and you need to be great at personalization at scale, but when you need your strategies to branch out from email into omni-channel and beyond. Expect a rich set of marketing and commerce capabilities in an easy-to-use platform.
3. Will I have relentless customer support? Technical support is fine, but things like a smooth implementation process, ensuring your email deliverability rates always exceed expectations, and having a trusted resource when your team needs to scale up are important. Truly engaging with your customers is hard work. Is there a reliable service team to help you get everything stood up and producing value as quickly as possible? Will the service person feel like an extension of your own team? Pick a support team that’s going to take you toward your goals and give you answers as soon as you need them. Expect nothing less than the best customer service.
4. Does this solution advance my customer engagement strategy? If you’re going to go through the pain of switching providers, don’t make a lateral move just to satisfy what your program needs today. Find a simplified solution that will help you envision a bigger and badder customer engagement strategy, and then allow you to execute on your ideas easily. Expect a platform that will rise to your customer’s expectations.

When you take a step back from the temporary pain the MailChimp and Shopify news has inflicted (easier said than done), you might realize this is actually the nudge you needed to do what you’ve been wanting to do for a while now—build your marketing tech stack for the company you will be, not the company you are today.

Talk to one of our experts about how Maropost could be a simplified platform that works for your team right now and for the future.

Call Us: 1.888.438.3152, Ext. 1

Email Us: [email protected]

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