Mailchimp Launches GenAI-Powered Marketing Assistant for SMBs
The email marketing and newsletter giant Mailchimp is at it again. Earlier this week, the company launched its latest game-changing solution for SMBs — a marketing assistant powered by generative AI. Intuit Assist for Mailchimp is expected to help businesses generate content, personalize their marketing, and learn faster from their marketing mistakes.
Rather than being a replacement for more traditional marketing automation tools, Mailchimp is positioning its new solution as an ally. According to the company’s own promotional materials, Intuit Assist for Mailchimp will be equipped with generative AI enhancements to “enhance the entire marketing journey” and understand “customer desires.”
Small and mid-size businesses make up the bread and butter of Mailchimp’s clients, and yet companies in this category often face a common challenge — limited resources and manpower to effectively market their products and services. Research shows that SMBs often struggle to navigate the complicated world of martech, which includes email marketing, social media campaigns, and audience analytics. While larger corporations can afford to invest heavily in marketing technology and hire frontline experts, SMBs often find themselves at a disadvantage.
With Intuit Assist, small and mid-size businesses now have access to features like connected commerce integration, so they can launch new product campaigns with content generated from scratch based on real-time updates, and in-line email editing that streamlines the email editing experience. Using basic prompts, like “rewrite this as a product announcement and make it short,” businesses can generate text that integrates with Mailchimp’s email builder, and even translate copy into multiple languages.
Because Intuit Assist is connected to Mailchimp, users will see ideas for product announcement promotion campaigns—from subject line to CTA, including product imagery—generated with their own brand identities already incorporated whenever they sign into the platform.
In a blog post about the new product release, Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar focused on Intuit Assist’s ability to “truly understand” what users are asking of it with natural language prompts. She cited a recent study, which showed that nearly 90% of marketers know they need AI to be competitive, even though just 50% have adopted it thus far.
While many SMBs recognize the potential of generative AI, they often find themselves struggling to figure out how to use the technology to their advantage. The majority of AI solutions available today are tailored for larger enterprises with substantial budgets and specialized IT teams.
According to another recent survey by Constant Contact, a Mailchimp competitor also looking to make headway in the generative AI space, around three-quarters of SMBs are interested in using AI or automation, and 55% say their interest has grown in the last six months. Forty-six percent of SMB marketing leaders say they only have a “beginner’s knowledge” about the benefits of AI technology, pointing to a huge opportunity for martech companies like Mailchimp.
Mailchimp’s AI solution for SMBs is another step towards democratizing AI-powered marketing. By introducing accessible and affordable capabilities, the company is addressing a crucial gap in the market. This new product ensures that even businesses with modest budgets can harness the power of generative AI to enhance their marketing efforts.
