Mailchimp
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryEmail marketing
Founded2001 (2001)
FoundersBen Chestnut
Mark Armstrong
Dan Kurzius
HeadquartersAtlanta, Georgia
Key people
Rania Succar (CEO)
ProductsEmail marketing
Revenue
Number of employees
800+[3]
ParentIntuit[4]
DivisionsTinyLetter
Websitewww.mailchimp.com

Mailchimp is a marketing automation and email marketing platform.[5][6][7] "Mailchimp" is the trade name of its operator, Rocket Science Group [8], an American company founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong,[9] with Dan Kurzius joining at a later date.[10]

History

Mailchimp was launched in 2001.[11] The platform was named after one of their most popular e-greetings card characters, earning a few thousand dollars monthly.[12] Mailchimp began as a paid service and added a freemium option in 2009. Within a year, its user base had grown from 85,000 to 450,000.[13] By June 2014, it was sending over 10 billion emails per month on behalf of its users.[14] More than 600 million emails are sent through the platform every two days.[15]

In 2016, Mailchimp was ranked No. 7 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list.[16] In February 2017, the company was named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies of 2017.[2] In August 2017, it was reported that Mailchimp would be opening offices in Brooklyn and Oakland, California.[17]

In February 2019, Mailchimp acquired LemonStand, a smaller competitor.[18] Mailchimp later announced its plans to shift from mail distribution to offering a full marketing platform aimed at smaller organizations. This shift includes allowing customers to record and track customer leads within the platform, build landing pages and websites, and run ad retargeting advertisements on Facebook and Instagram.[19] As part of this, Mailchimp acquired the London based media and magazine company Courier Media in March 2020, with the stated goal of international growth. The magazine has a readership of 100,000 readers in more than 26 countries.[20]

With founders Armstrong and Chestnut starting the company without outside funding or plans to go public, and never bringing on any outside investors thereafter, Mailchimp is considered an example of a successfully bootstrapped startup.[21][22][23]

Acquisition by Intuit

After turning down repeated acquisition offers for 20 years, Bloomberg reported on August 31, 2021, that Mailchimp was talking with Intuit about being acquired.[24] On September 13, 2021, Intuit confirmed it would acquire Mailchimp for approximately $12 billion in cash and stock.[25][26] On November 1, 2021, Intuit officially completed the acquisition for $5.7bn in cash, $6.3bn in common stock, and 573,000 restricted stock units. After the acquisition, Intuit changed the name of the platform to Intuit Mailchimp.[25][27]

Marketing campaigns

As a podcast advertiser, Mailchimp sponsored the launch of Serial, a podcast exploring a murder case over multiple episodes.[28] One ad became memorable for its inclusion of an unscripted mispronunciation of the company's name – "MailKimp" – as spoken by a 14-year-old girl from Norway waiting in line for an iPhone 6.[29][30] The ad was parodied and "MailKimp" became a meme.[31][32] In response, Mailchimp bought the domain name mailkimp.com and redirected traffic to mailchimp.com.[30]

In 2018, Mailchimp underwent a brand redesign to help visually demonstrate an evolution from an email marketing tool to a larger marketing platform. This redesign included an updated logo, color palette, typeface, new imagery, and illustrations. It updated the Mailchimp wordmark to "Mailchimp" rather than "MailChimp" with an uppercase letter "C".[33]

Transactional email

In February 2016, Mailchimp announced it was merging Mandrill transactional email service into Mailchimp as an add-on feature and gave customers 60-day's notice to switch to the new pricing structure or find an alternative service platform.[34] The new pricing structure required a paid Mailchimp plan before being able to purchase Mandrill credits, resulting in customers paying for two products to access Mandrill.[35]

Previously, customers were able to purchase Mandrill credits for sending emails without signing up on Mailchimp. The credits were originally priced at $9.95 for 25,000 emails but increased to $20 for the same number of emails under the new pricing scheme. In addition to needing to purchase Mandrill credits, customers now need to be on a paid Mailchimp monthly plan (the minimum monthly plan being $10 a month), even if the customer has no need for Mailchimp services and only wants access to Mandrill. Mandrill was later renamed Mailchimp Transactional.[36]

Data breach

In March 2022, Mailchimp suffered a data breach whereby intruders gained access to the data of 319 of their customers through social engineering. The exposed data includes email address, IP address, and the approximate location of their mailing list recipients.[37][38]

In January 2023, Mailchimp confirmed another breach of data for 133 accounts via social engineering.[39] [40]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Want Proof That Patience Pays Off? Ask the Founders of This 17-Year-Old $525 Million Email Empire". Inc.com. 11 December 2017. Retrieved 2018-05-29.
  2. 1 2 "Why MailChimp Is One Of The Most Innovative Companies Of 2017". Fast Company. 2017-02-13. Retrieved 2018-05-29.
  3. ↑ "Mailchimp's About Us". Retrieved 2018-05-29.
  4. ↑ "Rocket Science Group". Archived from the original on 2018-05-20. Retrieved 2012-10-05.
  5. ↑ "Mailchimp 2023 Pricing, Features, Reviews and Alternatives".
  6. ↑ "Mailchimp Overview". GetApp. Retrieved 2022-09-20.
  7. ↑ "Mailchimp Review 2022: Pros & Cons, Pricing, Features". Merchant Maverick. Retrieved 2022-09-20.
  8. ↑ "Rocket Science Group LLC /The". Bloomberg L.P.
  9. ↑ Grantham, Russell. "'Everything came and went too fast,' dot-com vet says". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. No. 2000–12–03.
  10. ↑ Manjoo, Farhad (2016-10-05). "Mailchimp and the Un-Silicon Valley Way to Make It as a Start-Up". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2017-06-07.
  11. ↑ Mandel, Eric (August 11, 2022). "Mailchimp Co-founder Ben Chestnut steps down as CEO". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
  12. ↑ Konrad, Alex. "The New Atlanta Billionaires Behind An Unlikely Tech Unicorn". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  13. ↑ Ben (2010-09-27). "Going Freemium: One Year Later | Mailchimp Email Marketing Blog". Blog.mailchimp.com. Retrieved 2013-06-17.
  14. ↑ "Mailchimp Hits Milestone 10 Billion Emails Per Month; Adding Headcount and Office Space". Archived from the original on 8 December 2015. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  15. ↑ "Email Marketing Software Comparison: MailChimp vs. GetResponse vs. Constant Contact". bestemailmarketingsoftware.com. 20 January 2019. Retrieved 2020-07-19.
  16. ↑ "Forbes Cloud 100". Forbes. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  17. ↑ "Mailchimp to open office in Downtown Brooklyn - Technical.ly Brooklyn". Technical.ly Brooklyn. 2017-08-04. Retrieved 2017-11-02.
  18. ↑ "Before breaking up with Shopify, Mailchimp quietly acqui-hired LemonStand, a Shopify competitor". TechCrunch. 27 March 2019. Retrieved 2019-04-30.
  19. ↑ "Mailchimp expands from email to full marketing platform, says it will make $700M in 2019". TechCrunch. 13 May 2019. Retrieved 2019-05-13.
  20. ↑ Swant, Marty (2020-03-03). "Mailchimp Acquires British Bimonthly Magazine Courier". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-03-25.
  21. ↑ Kim, Larry (2019-04-10). "10 Fascinating Facts About Mailchimp CEO Ben Chestnut". Inc.com. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  22. ↑ Lunden, Ingrid (2019-05-14). "Mailchimp's Ben Chestnut on bootstrapping a startup to $700M in revenue". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  23. ↑ "The Case for Bootstrapping w/Ben Chestnut". WaitWhat. Retrieved 2020-11-16.
  24. ↑ Baker, Liana; Porter, Kiel; Hammond, Ed (2021-08-31). "Intuit in Talks to Buy Mailchimp for More Than $10 Billion". Bloomberg.com.
  25. 1 2 "CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of The Securities Exchange Act of 1934" (PDF). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 1 November 2021. p. 3. Retrieved 11 December 2021. Purchaser provided total consideration of approximately $5.7 billion in cash, 10.1 million shares of Purchaser common stock (the "Stock Consideration") with a fair value of approximately $6.3 billion (based on the October 29, 2021 closing stock price of $625.99 per share), and 573,000 restricted stock units to be valued based on the November 1, 2021 closing stock price.
  26. ↑ Watkins, Kim (2021-09-13). "Intuit to Acquire Mailchimp". businesswire.com. Business Wire. Retrieved 2021-09-13.
  27. ↑ Hirsch, Lauren (2021-09-13). "Intuit to buy Mailchimp for $12 billion". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-01-07.
  28. ↑ "How Mailchimp is moving beyond email marketing". Ad Age. 2022-09-21. Retrieved 2022-11-10.
  29. ↑ Rosen, Christopher (2015-04-30). "The voice from the MailChimp ad has been revealed". EW.com. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  30. 1 2 Epstein, Adam (18 November 2014). "How MailChimp's irresistible "Serial" ad became the year's biggest marketing win". Quartz. Retrieved 2021-08-08.
  31. ↑ Roe, Mike (November 8, 2014). "Serial: The hottest podcast with the most spot-on parodies". 89.3KPCC. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  32. ↑ Fitzpatrick, Molly (November 6, 2014). "Why are Serial podcast fans so obsessed with Mailchimp?". V[ ]cative. Vocativ. Retrieved November 12, 2014.
  33. ↑ Polianskaya, Alina (2018-10-01). "Playful Mailchimp redesign aims to unify brand while encouraging creativity". Design Week.
  34. ↑ Williams, Owen (2016-02-25). "In hostile move, Mandrill gives all developers 60 days to switch to paid Mailchimp service". The Next Web.
  35. ↑ Nicastro, Dom (2016-02-26). "MailChimp's Mandrill Move Enrages Email Users". CMSWire. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  36. ↑ MailChimp (2016-02-24). "Important Changes to Mandrill". Mandrill Email Platform Blog.
  37. ↑ Page, Carly (4 April 2022). "Mailchimp says an internal tool was used to breach hundreds of accounts". techcrunch.com. Retrieved 2022-04-04.
  38. ↑ "Mailchimp Suffers a Data Breach". dataprivacyandsecurityinsider.com. 7 April 2022.
  39. ↑ "Information About a Recent Security Incident". Mailchimp. Retrieved 2023-01-24.
  40. ↑ "Mailchimp suffers third breach in 12 months | Computer Weekly". ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved 2023-01-24.
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