Mailchimp is such a versatile tool but can it be used as a CRM? This blog post will explain how and if you should be using Mailchimp as a CRM.

CRM for small business owners

The straight answer is Mailchimp is no CRM. However, it certainly can be used as one if you are not collecting a whole heap of data from your customers. For example, small businesses who would like to keep basic information of their customers in one space and send customised emails to them, could use Mailchimp as a CRM.

Top Tip: Mailchimp also partners with some external CRM programs. See more below.

Basic information

Now, what is basic information? Mailchimp provides you with a pre-selection of data that you can collect from your customers such as:

• First Name
• Last Name
• Birthday
• Address
• Language
• Website
• Notes

When customers are signing up via your signup form you can request them to fill in the above information. Alternatively, you can add it manually.

Customised information

When building your sign up form you can also add additional fields in which you can request any information from your customers you may need. This could be something like:

• Which type of service they need help with
• What their role is
• How often they do something (i.e. reading)
• What type of food they like

I think you get the hang of it… (See screenshots below)

Top Tip: You can also hide the fields, if you would only like to collect certain information in various sign-up forms.

Tags & Groups

Once you have collected the above information you can create beautiful customised journeys so that every customer feels special. And this is just the beginning of their customised journey with your business. Take it further by tagging and grouping them. 

Adding contacts

There are two ways of adding customers to your Mailchimp CRM:

1. Customers sign up via your sign up form

2. You can add customers manually

Mailchimp makes it super easy for you to add customers manually via their app or website. See options below:

• Import contacts from your phone to the Mailchimp app
• Add contacts directly to your audience via the app (i.e. after or during a meeting)
• Scan your customers business card via the app
• Import your contacts via an Excel spreadsheet via the website

The scanning option is a bit hit and miss but worth trying out. Make sure that the picture you are uploading is clear.

Top Tip: If you add customers manually be sure that you have their consent to email them in line with GPDR laws.

Integrating another CRM to Mailchimp

If the above options aren’t suiting your CRM requirements, Mailchimp has a few integrations with other CRM software companies that allow you to integrate only the relevant data from your external CRM into Mailchimp. See which platforms are supported.

Conclusion

If you are a small business owner and you are just starting out, Mailchimp is definitely a good CRM alternative. However, once you need to collect more in-depth details from your customers, I would recommend to use another CRM and integrate it with Mailchimp.

The advantage of using Mailchimp as a CRM is that you have all data in one place. This makes life a lot easier if you send a lot of emails and also gain new customers constantly because it can be tiring to import data from other sources into Mailchimp.

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