Mailchimp Vs Member Jungle: How They Compare
MailChimp is a marketing automation platform that specialises in email marketing campaigns. Member Jungle is an all-in-one membership management system with an email marketing campaign system. Comparing them against each other doesn’t really make sense or work. It’s a bit like comparing this $8,000 awesome-as-hell fridge to this lovely modern kitchen with a great $2,000 fridge in it.
The $8,000 fridge is obviously better than the $2,000 one, but we aren't comparing the fridges; we're comparing a fridge to a whole kitchen. So, it isn't a fair comparison of the fridge or the kitchen.
Ultimately, the choice isn't really between MailChimp and Member Jungle; it's as a club or association. Do you need just Member Jungle do you need Member Jungle and MailChimp or is Mailchimp all you need?
So that's what we are going to be discussing today.
A Promise To Be Unbiased And Honest
It is worth pointing out that I work for Member Jungle and, therefore, have an obvious bias here. However, I promise to put all that aside, only write facts and be as unbiased as I can. At the end of the day, me lying to you about this isn't actually going to help you, Member Jungle or me; all it will achieve is wasting everyone's time and breaking the trust you have in me and us as a company. So, I promise to be honest and only include facts.
Intuit MailChimp For Your Club
Free Trial: Yes
Free Version: Yes
Price Range from $19.90 - $535.65 per month
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform that offers a range of tools for businesses to simplify their marketing efforts. MailChimp has a user-friendly interface and provides visually appealing email campaigns, automating marketing sequences based on user behaviour and managing audience lists with segmentation capabilities. It also has data analytics to track email campaign performance. Mailchimp can be integrated with various other pieces of software, including the website builder Wix.
MailChimp allows you to run sophisticated, top-of-the-line email marketing campaigns. That will help grow your club and communicate with your members better than ever before.
Member Jungle For Your Club
Free Trial: Yes
Free Version: No
Price Range from $89 - $319 per month
Member Jungle is an all-in-one membership management system designed to do everything your club needs in an online system. Member Jungle provides a membership management system, an automatic membership renewal system, an event management system, an online store, a website, a mobile app and an email marketing campaign.
Member Jungle's email marketing system is similar to MailChimps, though a bit simpler and less specialised.
Mailchimp Vs Member Jungle: Which Is Better For My Club?
I can pretty much sum up this whole comparison in two sentences. If you want just an email marketing system, or you don't have memberships and members, then choose MailChimp; if you have a membership, have members and want a membership management system with an email marketing system, choose Member Jungle. That's the long story short.
If you are an administrator of a club, and you are trying to decide whether MailChimp or Member Jungle is right for you, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you already have an online event management system?
- Can you already sell tickets online?
- Can people sign up online for your club?
- Can members renew their memberships online?
- Do you have a digital product store?
- Do you have digital membership cards?
- Does your club have an up-to-date website?
- Does your club have a mobile app?
- Do you have access to member engagement tracking?
- Do you have access to data analytics for your membership?
If you answered yes to all those questions and the only thing you are missing is an email marketing campaign system, get MailChimp. They are great at that. Job done.
If you answered no to any of those questions, then you should probably consider a membership management system like Member Jungle because Member Jungle can do all of the above things and has an email marketing campaign system built in. You don’t even need to choose Member Junge; one of our biggest competitors, Wild Apricot, does all of that stuff, too and is always a quality option.
Does My Club Need Member Jungle or Member Jungle And MailChimp?
So, we have established that Member Jungle is better at giving you all the various systems needed to automate and digitise the running of your club completely. However, MailChimp’s email marketing and automation system is incredible and much better than Member Jungle’s version.
So, let’s see how they stack up and whether your club should be using MailChimp with your Member Jungle system.
There is no denying that MailChimp’s email marketing system is better than Member Jungle’s. Email marketing campaigns are the only thing MailChimp does, and they do it very well. That isn’t to say that Member Jungle’s email campaign system is bad, far from it. Both email campaign systems are high quality and will work extremely well for you. It really comes down to how vital your email marketing is to your club.
Both MailChimp and Member Jungle offer different packages at different prices. Each of these packages comes with different amounts of included marketing emails that you can send per month.
MailChimp's included marketing emails vary depending on the package, from 1,000 to 150,000 per month. Member Jungle's included marketing emails vary depending on the package, from 2,500 to 15,000 per month.
Both companies also allow you to purchase more emails if you run out of your allotted monthly emails. MailChimp charges $20 per 25,000 extra emails, though remember that those extra emails will expire at the end of your next billing period. Member Jungle charges $100 per 10,000 additional emails; the extra emails do not expire.
MailChimp's email campaign filtering, customer journey automation, and beautiful and easy-to-use email templates make them truly head and shoulders above Member Jungle's email marketing system. If email marketing is going to be super important to your club and you are going to be sending tens of thousands of emails a day, then using MailChimp is a great option.
Several Member Jungle customers, usually quite large associations, use Member Jungle as their membership management system and MailChimp as their email campaign system.
That said, those are usually large associations; the average club tends not to need all the more advanced features of MailChimp and is more than happy with Member Jungle's simpler system. Of course, whether you think your club needs MailChimp as well or even instead of a membership management system like Member Jungle, it is entirely up to you.
How MailChimp And Member Jungle Work Together
Let’s now have a look at how MailChimp and Member Jungle work together when it comes to emailing your members.
MailChimp works great for emailing subscribers, and Member Jungle can really help with that. We can embed subscription details into your Member Jungle-made club website, allowing your website visitors to subscribe to your MailChimp email campaigns.
However, this brings us to one of the only problems with using MailChimp to email your club members. MailChimp was designed for businesses, not necessarily clubs. In practice, this means that unlike Member Jungle, which separates your members from non-members who have interacted with your club, MailChimp won’t do this.
With Member Jungle, if someone signs up to your club, they will automatically be added to your “active members” email campaign contacts list; if they leave your club or let their membership expire, they will automatically be removed from your “active members” list. This is super helpful for ensuring that member-only emails are only going to current members, not expired members or even members of the general public. MailChimp won’t do this. You must manually reconcile who should be in your “active members” list and who shouldn’t be. You will have to manually enter and update expiration dates in MailChimp to ensure that former members are removed from the “active members” lists.
Essentially, where Member Jungle can automate your “active members” and “marketing contacts” email lists, MailChimp will need to be manually updated and organised. Member Jungle does integrate with Zapier, which can help the two systems work together to organise your lists in MailChimp. Still, you need to decide if the added work of maintaining your MailChimp email contact databases is worthwhile.
Should Your Club Use MailChimp And Member Jungle?
If large-scale intensive email marketing is going to be crucial to your club, and/or you will be sending extensively designed and customised marketing newsletters, then MailChimp is likely a perfect option for you. Using it with Member Jungle or another membership management system will round out some of the crucial membership management features that MailChimp lacks.
If you are looking to send simple mass emails to your club members to keep them informed about upcoming events or updates or to contact potential new members who might be interested in joining your club, then using Member Jungle or any other membership management system would be more than enough for your needs. As great as MailChimp's heavy-duty systems are, they will probably be overkill for your average hobby club.
Email Marketing For Your Club: Where To Next?
At the end of the day, this decision is yours and yours alone. Whether you choose Member Jungle, MailChimp, or neither, that decision is 100% up to you. I hope this article has helped make that decision a little easier for you.
If you want to know more about how Member Jungle works as software for large associations, then check out Association Management Software - How Does Member Jungle Rate?
Speaking of creating newsletters for your club, if you are looking for some tips for creating a great club newsletter, have a look at 5 Steps To Write A Club Newsletter Your Members Will Love To Read.
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