EMAIL SERVICE RECOMMENDATION

Jessica Billson MARK 4650

OVERVIEW

Alan’s is a popular deli, bakery, and confectionery with 10

locations in the Metro Atlanta area. We have shops located near

large office buildings in Downtown and within the affluent

northern suburbs. Every day people frequent our locations to

enjoy fresh, locally sourced, beautiful breakfast and/or lunch items

in our upscale, yet informal, dining experience.

ABOUT ALAN’S

✮Alan’s is considered one of the best bakery's and or confectionary's in Atlanta.

✮ We are known for our wedding cakes, birthday, holiday, and special occasion desserts.

✮We also do a great deal of catering for offices. Whether it be a breakfast meeting of

bagels and coffee, boxed lunches, or staffing a chef to prepare hot foods on site, we are

ready to serve.

✮Most importantly, we are known for our strong reputation for quality,

reliability, and our friendly staff.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

We, Alan’s, have decided that the best way to

encourage repeat business is to create an email

program where we can stay in touch with our

customers. The ways we intend on using this

email program are as followed:

✮ Menu specials of the day and a place to

order online.

✮ Reminder about catering options for 10+

people.

✮ Send special emails targeting brides with

offers for wine and cake tasting parties.

✮ Invite VIPs to the “best customer events.”

✮ Send offers to cater office Christmas parties,

summer picnics, etc.

WH

AT

WE

NEE

D

✮An easy-to-use interface with templates that show our brand in the best,

most professional light.

✮ A robust analytics package that will allow us to have insights into the

effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

✮The ability to segment brides based on wedding month and send about 12

emails per campaign.

✮The ability to send a special email each month to people who have

purchased specialty cakes or desserts before reminding them that the

anniversary of their special day is coming and that Alan’s is ready to help

them celebrate.

We estimate that we will send emails out twice weekly to the lunch crowed (200k).

Target Audience

Tessa VanWhite

Mark Thompson

Leo Williamson

TARGET AUDIENCE BREAKDOWN

Tessa VanWhite

Leo Williamson

Mark Thompson

Tessa is the Maid of Honor in her best friends wedding. She is in charge of planning the engagement party and

ceremony. Between having a full time job and planning this wedding, she is up to her ears in stress. She is looking for a reliable, upscale, gourmet bakery and or confectionary. For the engagement party she needs multiple desserts and for the ceremony, she needs a wedding cake. She wants to find a place that can cater to both of her needs and meets

her standards.

Leo is the assistant to the CEO of a sales firm. His CEO has tasked him

with finding a reliable eatery that can provide catered lunch to the office

every Friday. He wants the flexibility of going from boxed lunches one Friday to having hot food prepared on site the next. The office is located within

Metro Atlanta and they want somewhere that is located near their

large office building.

Mark is the father of twin boys named Ashton and Jake. They have their 10th

birthday party coming up and with Marks wife being out of town on a

work trip, he is in charge of the planning. He has never planned their

birthday party before so he is way out of his party planning league. With the party being 2 days away, he realized

that he completely forgot to plan food arrangements. He needs a place near

the northern suburbs that has a friendly staff that can provide lunch,

desserts, and two birthday cakes.

APPROACH

In order to make a recommendation as to what Email

Service Provider we want to use, my supervisor and I

have narrowed down the options to two:

☞Constant Contact

☞MailChimp

Our recommendation will be made based on an analysis

and comparison between both service providers.

Ultimately, the provider that fulfills the needs and wants of

Alan’s marketing desires will be appointed.

SEGMENTATION

Range of options that can be used to segment your list / easy to find and do.

Limited options with segmentation / hard to find and do.

Subscribers can join groups when they sign up. You can segment by those groups when you’re ready to send.

Subscribers can join groups when they sign up. You can segment by those groups when you’re ready to send.

Ability to segment by date added, subscribers, past purchasers, engagement levels, purchase history,

demographic.

Ability to segment by company, city, state, gender, membership type, purchase history, geographic

location.

Auto-updating segment list. No auto-updating segment list.

Pre-built segments that allow you to quickly target members.

No pre-built segments.

FEATURES: MAILCHIMP

Create

• Email Designer• Email Templates • Multi-User

Accounts• Merge Tags• Email Beamer

Manage

• Custom Forms• Segmentation and

Groups• Advanced Segmentation

• Subscriber Profiles

Deliver• Automation• Product

Recommendations• Abandoned Cart• Geolocation• Email Delivery • Predicted Demographics

Analytics

• A/B Testing• Reports

• Multivariate Testing• Comparative

Reports

Mobile

• MailChimp Mobile• MailChimp Snap• MailChimp

Subscribe

Share

• Campaign Archives• Social Profiles• Social Sharing

FEATURES: CONSTANT CONTACT

Creating & Editing

• Email Templates• Email Editing Tools• Image Library &

File Hosting

Sending & Tracking

• Email Tracking• Deliverability

Social & Mobile• Social Media

Marketing • Mobile Apps

Contacts

• List Building Tools• Contacts

PLUS Features

• Autoresponder• Event Marketing• Donations• Surveys• Coupons

Your Account

• Multi-user• Client Manager

• Apps & Integrations• Support &

Resources

PRICE

MailChimp

Constant Contact

$875 per month

+ $199 Pro subscription

$ 895 per month

Pricing is based upon 200k emails per month.

REPORTING: MAILCHIMP

With MailChimp, you have multiple, easy-to-access and read ways

that allow you to track your performance. There are:

✮ Interactive Graphs

✮ The ability to monitor trends

✮ Subscriber activity reports

✮ Revenue Reports

✮ Opens by location

✮ Bounces

✮ Unsubscribes

✮ Industry Comparisons

✮ VIP and printable reports

✮ Email domain performance

✮ Click maps

REPORTING: CONSTANT CONTACT

With Constant Contact, there are a few easy-to-read reports

that track your marketing success in real-time. There are:

✮ Engagement Reports

✮ Compare Campaigns

✮ Click-tracking heat map

✮ Mobile open rate

MAILCHIMP

• Created with simplicity in mind.

• Extremely easy to understand.

• Has a much better and modern design interface.

• High usability / ease of business.

• Lacks the charm and simplicity that MailChimp has.

• More difficult to understand.

• Less modern.

• High usability / ease of business.

CONSTANT CONTACT

INTERFACE

MAILCHIMP

• Self-help articles and email support.

• No phone support information available online.

• Harder to reach.

• Offers phone, email, chat, and twitter support.

• Phone support open M-Thurs: 7am-11pm Friday: 7am-9pm.

• Easier to reach.

CONSTANT CONTACT

CUSTOMER SERVICE / SUPPORT

CUSTOMER REVIEWS

MailChimp Constant Contact

“A very user friendly interface”

”A great start in email marketing”

”Easy to use email marketing tool”

“Simply the best and easiest way to do

email marketing”

“Great for getting started”

“Efficient and effortless”

“Showing constant growth”

“Great way to keep people updated”

“Improved, but not enough”

“Good, but not the best”

Reviews were both pulled from G2 Crowd – First 5 reviews on each company.

FINAL RESULTS

Category: Winner: Reasoning:

Segmentation More options available for segmentation / easier / faster.

Features More features available.

Price Cheaper price on a per month basis.

Reporting More ways of reporting available for use.

Interface More up to date and easy to understand interface, known for being

simple and appealing.

Customer Service / Support Easier to reach and has a faster response rate.

WINNER: MAILCHIMP

Through this analysis, it can be seen that Alan’s marketing needs

are best met with MailChimp. This Email Service Provider has

more opportunities available for easy segmentation and has a

more extensive list of features, compared to Constant Contact.

Although MailChimp is more expensive, you are getting more out

of what you pay for. Hence, the price is worth what they offer.

MailChimp has more than double the amount of reporting

options and its interface trumps Constant Contacts. Despite the

fact that Constant Contact has better customer support,

MailChimp is seen to have better customer reviews. The majority

of users favor MailChimp over Constant Contact. Thus, Alan’s

goals can be met with using MailChimp as his Email Service

Provider.