Intuit Mailchimp has been serving the Australian market for almost 20 years with a customer base that spans hundreds of thousands of businesses. Now the company has officially launched into Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) with the building of a local team on the ground.

At Intuit Mailchimp’s first major event in Sydney, From: Here, To: There conference, Retailbiz spoke to ANZ regional director, Anthony Capano about his ambitious growth plans for the region including the launch of new services and expanded partnerships with local businesses.

“Being able to launch the world’s largest and number one AI-powered email automation platform in Australia and New Zealand is exciting for both myself and the wider organisation,” Capano said.

“ANZ is already the fourth largest market for Mailchimp but to have boots on the ground is an exciting opportunity to work more closely with, and further support growth, for local brands and agencies.”

At the From: Here, To: There conference, Intuit Mailchimp made several announcements:

Adding SMS

“We are expanding our platform services by adding SMS capabilities, which enables retailers of all sizes that already use our email services to access SMS on the same platform. This delivers ease of use and allows them to better understand customer journeys, knowing when to engage and how to engage. We’ve already seen the results of SMS deliver up to 16 times better conversion,” Capano explained.

“The ability to now use the Mailchimp platform and execute multi-channel campaigns – email, web development, socials and now a key channel like SMS – be it a customer loyalty channel or a transactional channel or understanding customer journey touchpoints – SMS enhances our current offering.

“SMS also fuels more data points. Mailchimp sends half a billion emails each day, which makes it one of the world’s largest data pools and to now execute with SMS is even more powerful.

“We’ve invested resources in making sure that our channels continue to drive scale for brands but typically, brands will look at their data, find smarter ways to execute and explore other channels to help harness that which feeds well into our SMS offering.”

Revenue intelligence

Mailchimp also announced the rollout of revenue intelligence technology, a system of always-on predictive and generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) models designed to proactively give marketers opportunities to win more revenue.

Many brands have already partnered with Intuit Mailchimp to leverage this technology including membership-funded cycling publication and Melbourne retailer, Escape Collective.

“They use Mailchimp to share media and messages, promote merchandise, and drive membership conversion and retention. Understanding propensity to pay is one of their biggest challenges as a brand. With revenue intelligence, they set up six to seven automated customer journeys in about 20 minutes,” Capano said.

“When it comes to AI, it can help brands find new audiences and simplify daily tasks. With revenue intelligence, it’s about using the Intuit ecosystem and the data we have at a global level, combined with retail data to then find more prospective customers. We’re spending a lot of time operationalising and simplifying it to make it even easier for brands to execute marketing campaigns.”

Expanded integrations

Mailchimp integrates with technology partners that Australian brands love and announced an expanded partnership with Canva, enabling users to automatically synchronise image folders and files with the platform – eliminating the need for manual updates and providing a more efficient workflow across all channels. 

“There are over 300 apps in the Intuit platform, including Canva allowing brands to automatically put any of their content in our platform. We invest in resources to ensure we’re automating as many processes as we can because we know Australian retailers are time-poor,” Capano said.

The power of email marketing

Email continues to be at the core of the Mailchimp platform and remains an extremely valuable channel in Australia, with average open rates of 35.89% and average click-through rates of 3.1%, according to Mailchimp’s 2023 benchmark data – higher than those recorded for the US, UK and EMEA, as well as the global average open rate of 18%.

“Amid rising inflation and cost of living pressures, marketing budgets are being reviewed. The cost of marketing channels is also skyrocketing in terms of cost per click (CPC) so brands are re-focusing and using email to nurture and grow their customer base, as well as find new customers,” Capano said.

“There’s still a strong affinity with email and it’s where customer personalisation and segmentation come into the conversation. However, retailers need to spend time and effort on the data they’re sitting on.

“There are hygiene factors to consider, which is where tools like revenue intelligence come in. It helps understand customer segments within your database and the tactics you can easily deploy to drive growth among existing loyal customers, while expanding and acquiring new customers. Using revenue intelligence is powerful in helping with data hygiene, providing steps on what action to take next and simply clicking a button to automate that process.”

What’s next?

Intuit and Mailchimp are going to significantly invest in AI technology and tap into the Intuit ecosystem to improve results and experiences for small, medium and enterprise brands, according to Capano.

“It’s not to simply say we have AI capabilities but to help brands execute simply and drive growth for their business. As a business, we’re about powering prosperity for our partners to drive performance,” he said.

“Customer personalisation and segmentation is only as good as the data that fuels it so from a data perspective, we’re in a unique position globally to partner with retailers and provide access to data that will drive future iterations of their business.

“As ANZ is the fourth largest market for us, we will be bringing best-in-class technology to market quickly and continuing to expand our local team. We’ll be expanding aggressively to support the growth of ANZ brands and to help them navigate complexities by bringing in tools like revenue intelligence and new channels like SMS. You will see a lot more of us so get ready.”