Waalaxy vs Mailchimp: Best for Cold Outreach? (2024)

Waalaxy's Sequences feature provides a range of pre-built templates for automating multi-channel outreach campaigns on LinkedIn and email. These templates are designed to help users quickly set up effective prospecting sequences without starting from scratch.

• LinkedIn-focused templates: Many of the sequence templates are geared towards LinkedIn, with options for sending invitations, messages, and visits to prospects' profiles.
• Email integration: Waalaxy also offers email-based sequences, although these appear to be more limited compared to the LinkedIn options. Users can set up email finders and send emails as part of a sequence.
• Multi-channel campaigns: Sequences can be created that combine both LinkedIn and email touchpoints, enabling users to reach prospects through multiple channels for better engagement.
• Personalization options: Templates can be customized with personalization tags to tailor messages to each prospect, improving the chances of a response.

👍 "Create your first outreach campaign. Choose a campaign type and define your target audience." - r/Waalaxy

Mailchimp, originally designed as an email marketing tool, provides a user-friendly interface for creating and formatting emails using simple drag-and-drop tools. While it's primarily used for marketing emails, some users also leverage it for cold outreach.

Key features of Mailchimp's campaign creation:

• Pre-built templates: Mailchimp offers a wide selection of pre-designed 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 intuitive drag-and-drop editor allows users to customize templates or build emails from scratch without requiring coding knowledge.
• Branding options: Users can ensure consistency with their brand by saving custom templates and accessing a library of branded emails.

Waalaxy implements several measures to maintain high deliverability rates and avoid spam issues when sending emails through their platform:

• Multiple inboxes: Waalaxy supports connecting multiple inboxes, allowing users to distribute their email sending across different accounts.
• Email warming: By gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from a new inbox, Waalaxy helps establish a positive sending reputation and improves deliverability.
• Rate limiting: The platform enforces rate limits on email sending to prevent accounts from being flagged as spam by email providers.
• Credit system: Waalaxy uses a credit system that replenishes monthly. This helps users stay within the platform's sending limits to maintain optimal deliverability.

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

• Domain authentication: Users can verify and authenticate their custom email domains to improve email deliverability and establish trust with recipients.
• Custom email domains: Mailchimp allows users to send emails from their own custom domains, further enhancing credibility and brand recognition.
• Compliance with best practices: The platform adheres to strict email sending guidelines to maintain its reputation and ensure optimal deliverability for its users.

However, it's important to note that Mailchimp does not offer email warming services, which is a process of gradually increasing the volume of emails sent from a new IP address to establish a positive sending reputation. This highlights why Mailchimp is ideally suited for warm outreach to existing subscribers rather than cold outreach to new contacts.

The email dashboard in Mailchimp provides users with a clear overview of their email performance, displaying key metrics such as open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates. This data helps users gauge the effectiveness of their email campaigns and make informed decisions to optimize their strategies for better engagement and deliverability.

Waalaxy provides features to personalize emails in sequences using custom variables. This allows emails to dynamically include recipient-specific information, making the outreach feel tailored to each lead.

• Insert variables: Easily add custom variables like first name, last name, company name and more into email templates.
• Wide selection: Choose from a variety of pre-defined variables or create your own custom ones to fit your needs.
• Preview functionality: See how the email will look with the variables populated before sending to ensure it looks right.

Mailchimp provides powerful personalization options for email campaigns through the use of audience fields and merge tags. This allows you to tailor your content to each individual lead based on the information collected in your signup forms.

Key features of Mailchimp's personalization:

• Customizable audience fields: Define the specific data points you want to collect from your leads, such as name, email, phone number, and birthday.
• Merge tags: Insert dynamic content into your emails using merge tags that automatically populate with the corresponding audience field data for each recipient.
• Conditional content: Use merge tags to display different content based on a lead's specific interests or characteristics, making your emails more relevant and engaging.
• Signup form integration: Collect personalization data directly from your signup forms, which can then be used in your email campaigns.

Waalaxy's AI-powered prospect finder is a standout feature that automates lead generation and campaign optimization. By leveraging AI, Waalaxy helps users find contacts and leads more efficiently, saving time and effort in the sales process.

Key aspects of Waalaxy's AI capabilities:

• Prospect finder: AI algorithms identify and suggest relevant prospects based on user-defined criteria.
• Lead generation: Automates the process of finding and importing leads into the platform.
• Messaging optimization: Utilizes AI to craft and optimize messaging for improved engagement and response rates.
• Campaign strategy: Analyzes data and provides AI-driven insights to optimize overall campaign strategy.

Mailchimp's AI-powered content generation feature simplifies the process of writing engaging and effective email content. With just a few clicks, you can generate text tailored to your specific audience and campaign goals.

Key features of AI-powered content generation:

• Customizable content type: Select from various content types, such as paragraphs or listicles, to match your email's purpose and style.
• Tone adjustment: Adjust the tone of the generated content to align with your brand's voice and target audience.
• Seamless integration: The generated content can be easily edited and incorporated into your email campaigns within the Mailchimp platform.

Waalaxy's Sequences feature enables dynamic lead enrichment by integrating buyer signals and data directly from LinkedIn. This native enrichment provides valuable context about prospects, helping to inform and optimize outreach efforts.

• LinkedIn activity data: Waalaxy captures prospect interactions on LinkedIn, such as profile visits, follows, and messaging, giving insight into engagement levels and interest.
• Company and job details: The platform pulls in prospects' job titles, companies, and other relevant professional information from their LinkedIn profiles.
• Centralized prospect view: Enriched data is displayed in a consolidated prospect list, making it easy to review key details and tailor outreach accordingly.

Mailchimp does not currently offer native lead enrichment capabilities within its platform. To gather additional data and insights about your leads, such as buyer signals or other relevant information, you will need to rely on integrations with external tools.

While this may add an extra step to your workflow, Mailchimp's extensive integration ecosystem allows you to connect with a wide variety of lead enrichment services to supplement your lead data. However, the lack of built-in lead enrichment functionality may be a drawback for some users who prefer a more streamlined, all-in-one solution.

Waalaxy's Sequences feature includes social automation capabilities that enable you to get leads from LinkedIn and sync them with your CRM system. This integration allows you to send information about your prospects directly to your connected CRM, streamlining your sales engagement process.

Key features of Waalaxy's social automation:

• LinkedIn lead generation: Get leads from LinkedIn and add them to your sequences.
• CRM integration: Connect Waalaxy to popular CRM systems like Hubspot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zoho.
• Automatic data sync: Send prospect data from Waalaxy to your CRM with just a few clicks.

Mailchimp is primarily an email marketing and automation platform, and its features for social media are focused on cross-posting and ads management rather than lead enrichment or social selling. While Mailchimp does offer some social media integrations, they are not as comprehensive as dedicated sales engagement tools that provide social automation for lead generation and outreach.

Key aspects of Mailchimp's social media features:

• Cross-posting of email campaigns to social media channels
• Social media advertising management
• Limited social media integrations for lead enrichment

If you're looking for a tool that can help you leverage social media for lead generation and sales engagement, you may want to consider other options that specialize in these areas.

Waalaxy provides a flexible pricing model to suit different needs and budgets. The tool offers a free plan and two paid plans (Advanced and Business), with prices displayed in Euros. Users can choose to be billed monthly or annually, with a discount for annual billing.

• Free plan: Includes basic LinkedIn features and 80 invitations per month at no cost.
• Advanced plan: Priced at €112/month, it includes additional features like a cloud-based solution, CRM synchronization, auto-imports of prospects, and 25 email finder credits.
• Business plan: The highest tier at €160/month, offering 500 email finder credits, cold emailing automations, and live chat support with real humans.

Users can purchase add-ons like an inbox solution and extra email finder credits. The pricing page allows you to start a free trial without contacting a sales representative.

Mailchimp provides a range of pricing options to accommodate businesses of all sizes, from those just starting out to established enterprises. The platform offers a free plan with basic features and three paid plans with increasing levels of functionality and support.

• Free Plan: Ideal for businesses just getting started, the free plan includes all the basics for up to 1,000 contacts and a single user seat.
• Essentials Plan ($13/month): Designed for businesses that need to send the right content at the right time, this plan includes testing and scheduling features for up to 5,000 contacts and 3 user seats.
• Standard Plan ($20/month): Best suited for businesses looking to optimize their marketing efforts, the Standard plan offers personalization and automation tools for up to 6,000 contacts and 5 user seats.
• Premium Plan ($350/month): Built for teams that need to scale quickly, the Premium plan provides unlimited contacts, users, and priority support, along with advanced features like multivariate testing and comparative reporting.

All paid plans are billed monthly and include a 30-day email support window for new customers. Mailchimp does not require users to speak with a sales representative to sign up for a plan, making the process simple and straightforward.