Mailchimp: It isn’t just for email anymore. The service that helps small businesses send marketing emails to their customers now wants to help them set up online stores.
Nearly 40% of Mailchimp’s 14 million customers are in the commerce space, and 61% offer services. They’ve been asking the company to add more commerce functionality to service, it said in a post last week announcing two new services: Mailchimp Stores and Appointments.
The Stores product will enable merchants to create an online storefront, add and edit products, process orders, and configure payments, tax, and shipping. Stores is rolling out in beta now and will be available to all US and UK customers by May 18.
The Appointments product will allow businesses to offer services bookings online and manage their schedule. Appointments will be available to all beginning April 28.
“The real magic lies in the built-in access to our award-winning marketing platform capabilities to find, build, and engage with customers,” Mailchimp cofounder Ben Chestnut said.
“The compelling thing is that we’re going to provide the complete package and make all the elements of our platform connect and work together, which is what our customers are asking for. Small businesses told us they were tired of paying monthly fees to multiple point solutions (CRM, email, websites, ecommerce, surveys, etc). They were even more tired of trying to sync all their data back and forth between all these services. They wanted all of it combined into one place.”
You can find the full announcement on the Mailchimp website.
