Mailchimp vs Salesloft: Best for Cold Outreach? 2024 Guide

Mailchimp, originally an email marketing platform, provides a user-friendly interface for creating and formatting emails using simple drag-and-drop tools. While it was not initially designed for cold outreach, some users leverage its capabilities for this purpose.

Key features of Mailchimp's campaign creation:

• Pre-designed templates: Mailchimp offers a wide selection of email templates categorized by purpose, industry, and style, making it easy to find a suitable starting point for your campaign.
• Drag-and-drop editor: The platform's intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows users to customize templates or create emails from scratch without requiring coding knowledge.
• Branding consistency: Users can save their own branded templates to maintain a consistent look and feel across their email campaigns.

While Mailchimp may lack some of the advanced features and automation capabilities of dedicated sales engagement platforms, its simplicity and familiarity make it an accessible option for those new to email outreach or with limited technical resources.

Salesloft's Sequences feature provides a comprehensive solution for creating and managing multichannel sales campaigns. With a user-friendly interface and robust scheduling system, sales teams can effectively engage leads through a combination of emails, phone calls, and social interactions.

Key features of Salesloft's campaign creation:

• Multichannel engagement: Seamlessly integrate emails, calls, and social touches into a single campaign
• Detailed scheduling: Set specific timing and intervals for each step of the sequence
• Activity tracking: Monitor campaign performance and individual lead activity in real-time
• Upcoming task management: Easily view and prioritize upcoming actions within the campaign

Reddit users have reported mixed experiences with Salesloft's campaign creation feature:

👎 "Our reply rates on sequences are terrible" - r/sales

👍 "Gave me so much more confidence - I decided to go SalesLoft after all." - r/sales

Mailchimp is known for its strong reputation in email deliverability, thanks to its compliance with best practices for sending emails. The platform provides tools and features to help users maintain high deliverability rates and avoid spam filters.

• Domain authentication: Mailchimp requires users to verify and authenticate their sending domains, which helps establish trust and improves deliverability.
• Compliance with best practices: The platform follows strict guidelines and best practices for email sending, such as proper list management and opt-in processes, to maintain a good sending reputation.
• Performance monitoring: Mailchimp provides detailed analytics and reporting on email performance, including open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates, allowing users to monitor their deliverability and make necessary adjustments.
• Dedicated IP addresses: For high-volume senders, Mailchimp offers the option to use a dedicated IP address, which can further improve deliverability by establishing a unique sending reputation.

However, it's important to note that Mailchimp does not offer email warming services, as the platform is primarily designed for sending emails to existing subscribers and warm contacts rather than cold outreach. Users are responsible for maintaining their own list hygiene and ensuring that their email content is engaging and relevant to their audience.

While Salesloft does not offer a dedicated email warming feature, it employs several strategies to maintain high deliverability rates for its users' email campaigns:

• Reputable IP addresses: Salesloft sends emails from well-established IP addresses to minimize the risk of being flagged as spam.
• Gradual volume increase: The platform gradually increases the volume of emails sent over time, allowing the sender's reputation to grow naturally and avoid triggering spam filters.
• Personalization: Salesloft enables users to personalize their emails, striking a balance between volume and customization to improve deliverability and engagement.
• AI-powered efficiency: The platform's AI capabilities, such as generating follow-up emails, help users send targeted, relevant content that is less likely to be marked as spam.

Reddit users have reported mixed experiences with Salesloft's deliverability:

👍 "Get Salesloft. I have all 3 and Hubspot is not even close on sales automation. Salesloft is much easier to use and adopt." - r/sales

😐 "Has anyone felt like their SalesLoft emails are going to the prospects spam folder at a higher rate than if you sent the same email out of Outlook?" - r/sales

Mailchimp offers robust personalization options for email campaigns through the use of audience fields and merge tags. This allows you to tailor your messages to each individual lead based on the information you have collected about them.

Key personalization features:

• Audience fields: Customize signup forms to collect relevant data about your leads, such as name, email, phone number, and birthday.
• Merge tags: Dynamically insert personalized content into your emails using the data from your audience fields. For example, *|FNAME|* will be replaced with the recipient's first name.
• Custom merge tags: Create your own merge tags to include any additional information you have about your leads, such as their interests or previous interactions with your brand.
• Default values: Set default values for merge tags to avoid blank spaces in case the information is missing for some recipients.

Salesloft provides robust personalization capabilities within its Sequences feature, enabling sales teams to tailor their outreach to each lead's unique characteristics and behavior. By leveraging custom columns and behavioral data, Salesloft empowers users to craft highly relevant and engaging email campaigns.

• Custom columns for personalized emails: Salesloft allows users to define custom columns for each lead, such as industry, job title, or specific pain points. These custom fields can then be dynamically inserted into email templates, ensuring that each message is personalized to the recipient.
• Behavioral personalization: Salesloft's AI-powered lead suggestions take into account each lead's behavior and engagement history. By analyzing factors such as email opens, clicks, and replies, Salesloft can recommend the most effective personalization strategies for each individual lead, helping sales teams optimize their outreach efforts.

Mailchimp offers an AI-powered content generator that helps craft compelling email copy for campaigns. This feature leverages artificial intelligence to provide suggestions and assist in writing more effective emails.

Key aspects of the AI content generator:

• Paragraph generation: The AI can write entire paragraphs based on a selected content type, such as a product description or company information.
• Tone adjustment: Users can adjust the tone of the generated content to match their brand voice or target audience.
• Customization: The generated text can be edited and customized to better suit the specific campaign or product.

By utilizing AI to generate email content, Mailchimp aims to simplify the process of creating engaging campaigns while maintaining a professional and effective tone. This feature can save time and effort for marketers looking to optimize their email marketing efforts.

Salesloft leverages AI extensively to personalize emails and suggest actions for each lead based on natural language processing (NLP). This AI-driven approach helps sales teams prospect more efficiently and effectively engage with their contacts.

Key AI features in Salesloft:

• Personalized email drafts: AI generates custom email content for each prospect based on relevant inputs like company name, character limit, and call to action.
• Action prioritization: The AI-powered workflow guides users on which actions to take to build pipeline and close deals, prioritizing the most impactful tasks.
• Intelligent lead insights: NLP analyzes lead data to provide valuable context and insights, enabling more targeted outreach.

Mailchimp, as a sales engagement tool, does not offer native enrichment capabilities. This means that to gather additional data on leads, such as buyer signals from other sources, users must rely on integrations with external tools.

While Mailchimp provides a robust platform for email marketing and automation, the lack of built-in lead enrichment features may be a drawback for some users who require a more comprehensive view of their prospects.

To access lead enrichment data, Mailchimp users can:

• Integrate with third-party data providers
• Manually import data from other sources
• Use Mailchimp's API to connect with other tools

Despite the absence of native enrichment, Mailchimp's extensive integration ecosystem allows users to extend its functionality and gather the necessary data to inform their sales engagement strategies. However, this may require additional setup and management compared to platforms with built-in lead enrichment features.

Salesloft does not offer native lead enrichment capabilities within its Sequences feature. However, it supports integrations with third-party services that can provide additional data and insights on your leads, helping you gain a more comprehensive understanding of your potential buyers.

While native enrichment is not available, Salesloft's integration options still allow users to:

• Connect with external data providers: Integrate with popular lead enrichment services to gather additional information on your leads
• Gain valuable insights: Access buyer signals and other relevant data points to better understand your leads and tailor your outreach
• Streamline your workflow: Enrich your lead data without leaving the Salesloft platform, thanks to seamless integrations

Mailchimp, as a sales engagement tool, offers some social media integration capabilities. However, these are primarily focused on cross-posting content and managing social media ads rather than enriching lead data.

While Mailchimp does provide some social media functionality, it may not be as comprehensive as other tools specifically designed for social media automation and lead enrichment.

Salesloft does not currently offer the ability to send LinkedIn messages as part of email sequences or campaigns. While Salesloft provides robust email automation features, social media automation, particularly for LinkedIn, is not supported within the platform.

If LinkedIn outreach is a critical component of your sales engagement strategy, you may need to explore alternative solutions or use LinkedIn's native messaging tools alongside Salesloft's email sequences.

Mailchimp provides a range of pricing options to suit different business needs, from a free plan for those just starting out to more advanced paid tiers with additional features and higher usage limits.

• Billing model: Monthly subscription plans
• Free trial: No free trial, but offers a free plan with limited features
• Pricing structure: Price per plan based on features and usage limits, not per seat
• Paid tier features: Higher monthly email sends, more users and audiences, advanced customer support, and personalized onboarding sessions
• Sales contact: Not required, plans can be purchased directly online

The free plan includes basic features for up to 1,000 contacts and 1 audience, making it suitable for small businesses or those new to email marketing. Paid plans start at $13/month for the Essentials tier, offering more advanced features like A/B testing and scheduling, followed by the Standard plan at $20/month with additional optimization tools and enhanced automations. The Premium plan at $350/month is designed for teams, providing unlimited contacts, users, and audiences, as well as priority support and personalized onboarding.

Salesloft offers three pricing tiers designed to meet the needs of different sales teams: Essentials, Advanced, and Premier. The company does not provide a free trial, and pricing details are not publicly listed on their website. To get started with Salesloft, you need to contact their sales team for a customized quote based on your specific requirements.

Key aspects of Salesloft's pricing:

• No free trial available: You cannot test the platform before committing to a paid plan.
• Contact sales for pricing: Pricing information is not transparent, requiring a conversation with a sales representative to get a quote.
• Tiered feature access: The Essentials plan includes basic features like pipeline generation and rep coaching, while more advanced features such as conversation intelligence and forecasting are limited to higher-tier plans.
• Per-user pricing model: Costs are likely based on the number of users, which is a common pricing structure for SaaS sales tools.

Salesloft's pricing model may not be ideal for smaller teams or those looking to trial the software before purchasing. However, their tiered plans allow for a customized solution that can grow with your team's needs.