Mailchimp Review — Email Marketing That Keeps Your Business Top of Mind Between Jobs

Real Pricing

⚠ Pricing scales aggressively with contact count. At 2,500 contacts, Standard costs $45/month. Automation features like welcome sequences and behavior-based emails require paid plans. Free tier is genuinely useful for small lists.

What It Actually Does

Mailchimp is email marketing software built around three things: collecting email addresses, designing and sending professional-looking emails, and tracking who opens and clicks them. The drag-and-drop email builder means you don’t need design skills. You pick a template, drop in your logo and photos, write your content, and send. It looks like a professionally designed email because the template handles the design for you.

Beyond basic newsletters, Mailchimp does marketing automation. You can set up a welcome email that goes out automatically when someone joins your list. A follow-up sequence that sends three emails over two weeks to new leads who haven’t booked yet. A we miss you email that triggers when a customer hasn’t booked in six months. These automated sequences run in the background without you touching them once they’re set up.

Mailchimp also tracks results. You can see who opened your email, who clicked on links, and which subject lines performed better. Over time, that data tells you what your customers respond to. Seasonal maintenance tips get higher open rates than promotional offers. Project photo emails get more clicks than text-heavy updates. The data improves your marketing without requiring marketing expertise.

The postcards feature is unique among email platforms. Mailchimp can print and mail physical postcards to targeted customers on your list. It sounds old school, but for contractors whose customers are homeowners who pay attention to physical mail, a well-timed postcard can outperform an email. HVAC spring tune-up postcards in March. Pool opening reminders in April. Landscaping fall cleanup offers in September.

What Works Best for Contractors

Seasonal maintenance reminders are Mailchimp’s killer app for trade businesses. Set up an email once that reminds past customers to schedule their spring AC tune-up or their fall furnace inspection. Send it every year at the same time. Customers who forgot they needed maintenance suddenly remember and book. The email costs you nothing to send and generates thousands in booked work.

The we miss you campaign is the second highest-value automation. After a customer hasn’t booked in six or twelve months, an automated email goes out checking in, reminding them you exist, and offering an incentive to book again. Most customers don’t leave because they’re unhappy. They leave because they forgot about you. A simple reminder brings back a meaningful percentage of them.

Project showcase emails work especially well for pool contractors and landscapers. Send an email once a quarter featuring a recent project with before and after photos. The email isn’t selling anything directly. It’s showing your work. Customers forward these to friends and neighbors. Those forwards turn into referrals.

From the Trenches

Email marketing for contractors is underrated because it feels like something other businesses do. But the economics are straightforward. A past customer who booked a $5,000 HVAC system replacement three years ago is still a past customer. They might need maintenance. They might need another system for a different property. They definitely know other people who need HVAC work. An email that stays in occasional contact with them costs a fraction of a cent to send and keeps your name in their mind for the moment they need you again.

The system that works best is simple. Send one email a month. A seasonal tip, a recent project photo, or a maintenance reminder. Nothing aggressive. Nothing salesy. Just enough to stay visible. After a year, you have a list of customers who’ve heard from you 12 times and remember your name when they need work or when someone asks for a recommendation.

Mailchimp’s free tier handles up to 500 contacts with 1,000 emails per month. For a local contractor with a few hundred past customers, that’s plenty. The upgrade to a paid plan happens when your list grows or you want automation features that the free tier restricts. Most contractors never outgrow the paid plans because their customer list doesn’t need to be larger than a few thousand names to be valuable. A list of 1,000 past customers who’ve actually hired you is worth more than a list of 10,000 random email addresses that will never convert.

Alternatives

• Cheaper: Buttondown ($9/month, newsletter-focused, simpler but fewer features)
• Simpler: Constant Contact (similar pricing, slightly better support, more templates)
• More powerful (and more expensive): ActiveCampaign or HubSpot (advanced automation with CRM integration, higher cost)