New Zoho Integration with MailChimp Lets You Send Campaigns to Your Contact List

Business applications provider Zoho has announced the integration of its contact management software ContactManager with the email sending platform MailChimp. The aim is to make it easier for small businesses to send email campaigns to their contacts.

According to Guru Raja Subbaiah, Zoho product manager, who spoke with Small Business Trends via Skype, when integrated, ContactManager will take over many of the functions typically reserved for MailChimp.

Users can import and synchronize email subscribers from MailChimp into ContactManager, generate mailing lists from search results, create email marketing campaigns, see campaign statistics and track contact engagement, all from within the ContactManager interface.

“With this integration, we want to give small business owners an easy way to reach out to their contacts and track campaign results in addition to capturing campaign engagements of each contact, all from a single interface,” Subbaiah says. “All they have to do is connect their MailChimp account with Zoho ContactManager.”

Zoho and MailChimp Integration Benefits

Small businesses that use both ContactManager and MailChimp will be able to benefit from the integration in the following ways:

Synchronize Data on a Continual Basis

ContactManager keeps subscribers and campaigns imported from MailChimp in sync both ways on a consistent basis.

Carry Out Email Campaigns with Greater Ease

“Creating an email campaign usually involves multiple steps, with users navigating back and forth between wizards,” the announcement says. “With this integration, ContactManager makes it easy for users to create campaigns with a simple, single page interface.”

Users just have to select the recipient list, add a subject line and body content and hit the “Send” button. They can also choose from pre-defined MailChimp themes and templates, to add aesthetic and branding value.

Track Campaign Statistics

Users can track email campaign statistics from inside ContactManager. Also, because the platform has some CRM capabilities built in, users can see the actions taken by each recipient. (Zoho ContactManager is not a full-blown CRM but compares to platforms such as Highrise, Capsule CRM and Act.)

For example, when a ContactManager user opens a particular contact's detail, he can see how that individual responded to all the campaigns sent, giving the user a more objective way to assess the person's interest.

Create and Update Mailing Lists on the Fly

Creating a segmented mailing list often involves several steps. ContactManager's search feature lets users refine the results quickly and add them directly to an existing MailChimp list or create a list directly within ContactManager.

Team Collaboration

ContactManager users can collaborate with their team members using “Tasks” and “Notes.” They can also call out particular team members using “@membername” to get feedback from those individuals.

Users who send a campaign can create a “Task” and assign other team members to follow up with contacts as needed.

Zoho ContactManager Pricing and Availability

Zoho ContactManager is available in three editions:

• Free (forever and without ads): one user, 500 contacts and ten deals;

• Smart: $15 per month - Unlimited users, 10,000 contacts and 1000 deals;

• Ultra: $25 per month - Unlimited users, unlimited contacts and unlimited deals.

The MailChimp integration is only available on Smart and Ultra plans, however.

A free mobile app is available for Zoho ContactManager, for use on Android and iOS devices.

Images: Zoho

This article, "New Zoho Integration with MailChimp Lets You Send Campaigns to Your Contact List" was first published on Small Business Trends