Positioning analysis of Mailchimp versus Campaign Monitor using SmokeLadder

Video Transcript:

In this episode we’re looking at email marketing platforms to see how Campaign Monitor can improve their positioning to take on market leader, Mailchimp.

We’ll start by looking at both of their websites to see how they’re positioning themselves right now.

Website reviews of Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp

First, we’ll talk about Mailchimp.

Their value prop is built around the business case for email marketing They also lean very hard into being that market leader, industry leading email marketing platform.

They have some great stats to support this including: twenty two years in business. and twelve million users. A pretty strong position when you’re the market leader, you’ve obviously got some inherent advantages, around being able to speak to that.

Next we can look at Campaign Monitor and see how they’re positioning themselves.

Their headline here drive results with unforgettable email marketing. Focusing largely on the business case for email.

They’ve got some social proof, drag and drop your way to a beautiful email, speaking about ease of use customization.

Overall, I would say this is more of a general email marketing position. I don’t feel like there is a specific point that they’re trying to make here. So let’s look at how they scored in our app, and we can see which points of value they have that really stand out.

Positioning analysis of Campaign Monitor vs Mailchimp

This first section is the total positioning score. So we looked at campaign monitor’s homepage, analyzed it. And we can see they scored really well. This is made up of two pieces, value. So the different points of value that they provide, how that comes together, and then differentiation how do they separate themselves from category averages?

And if we look at the value piece down here, we can see these are all the different points of value that we rate every website on, and we’re rating each of these on a scale of one to ten. As we move left to right, we can see the points where they’ve scored the highest. On the far right, marketability, connects, reach, innovation, quality, design.

A lot of points that you would assume might be associated with a marketing product an email marketing product like this. That’s that’s good. Those are those are good signals. We can flip now over to the differentiation tab.

And we can see how campaign monitor compares against category averages for the category of communication products.

And we can see some some really nice separation. That’s really what we’re looking for here is do they have clear separation from category averages. Can they stand out in the market?

And so we can see things like marketability, generating revenue, simplifying.

A lot of different points where they they stand out. That’s, again, all good signals But what we really wanna take a look at now is how do they compare against Mailchimp?

So we also analyzed Mailchimp’s landing page.

And down here, we can see the comparison between campaign monitors page and Mailchimp’s page.

If we move left to right here, we can see there’s a little bit of gap here. Orange is campaign monitor blue, the turquoise color is Mailchimp.

Campaign monitor has a few little gaps here around configurable connects design. But as we move across, we can see either they’re kind of equal. So things like innovation, flexible, or Mailchimp actually is ahead in a lot of places. So things like lower cost, reputation.

Going back to that market leader position makes sense that reputation would be really strong for them, and also variety of tools So it it makes it a lot harder now to see where campaign monitor can stand out and and what their positioning should be focused on. If we come down to the bottom, above this, we can see the points specific descriptions on why they received the scores that they did across each of these value points. And then when we get to the very bottom, we can see where campaign monitor has the strongest points. So configurable connects design, reduce effort.

Not a huge gap, between that them and Mailchimp, but a little bit. And then the weaknesses are essentially where Mailchimp has has advantages. Variety, lower cost, reputation, responsive scalability.

The question here is what could campaign monitor do to improve their position and challenge mailchimp and essentially try to set themselves apart so that when people are evaluating these products, customers have a reason to choose campaign monitor.

Where Campaign Monitor has opportunities to win

And I think if we come back to their their page again, they’re hinting a little bit at an interesting idea here with driver results with unforgettable email marketing. So kind of thinking about the engagement with the actual emails themselves, They also, if we come back down a little further, we can see they’re introducing this new AI writing feature.

Almost everybody’s introducing AI now at their products. So this isn’t a differentiator by itself, but it does make me think that there might be some opportunities around the a how they’re using AI that could help set them apart a little bit more.

And I wonder if if we actually come back here, if rather than just thinking about maybe generative AI, helping to write content for emails, are there some additional, pieces that they could add in there, like, helping to create more branded content, capturing the tone of voice of your brand in the writing. And could they also apply some generative AI around the design of the emails the imagery that they maybe create for emails.

And all of this building around these three points of connects, design, and reducing effort.

With connects – can we create stronger engagement with our customer’s design? Can we improve the actual design aesthetics of of the email and reducing effort, can we make this easier? That’s I mean, that’s the big part of the AI play, of course, is efficiency for for people.

To me, that represents some real potential opportunity of a place that they could start to build a stronger position around, and we’ll come over and take a look at this last tab, the AI insights.

The decision maker section here is imagining if there was, say, a buying committee that was considering, campaign monitor for their business, how might they evaluate the, their position and message for their own business? What are the strengths and weaknesses they see?

Not a strong score for CFO.

They’re not seeing, like, a lot of information about maybe, like, use cases and how how cost effective it is or, you know, the cost savings, but the CMO score is very strong.

And they’re talking about the easy to use design AI writing tool and the AI writing tool.

I think in their case, the CMO is probably a good person to think about is, like, the champion for them within a within an organization, which again feeds into that idea of we can build a stronger position around design and you know, engage customer engagement and ease of use around the writing tools and and creating on brand writing generative writing. I think there’s something there. I think that they could really position around. This last section is the value proposition, evaluation, And just a couple other points in here in terms of value improvements, featuring more use cases and success stories.

That’s an area that they could improve in. And then we can also see include more customized template options. So, again, I think that feeds into the idea of creating stronger visuals, better, you know, more engaging content for their emails. So to me, that feels like a path to pursue for them.

Because as we’re considering, you know, if we’re looking at it through the eyes of a potential customer and they’re looking at this landscape, all these different options, They’ve got Mailchimp as this industry leader.

Why would I choose campaign monitor instead? We’ve got to have like a really clear case you know, made for that. And we’ve gotta have a position that those customers can identify and remember to really set campaign monitor apart. To me, I think that idea of more engaging content, reducing effort around the the content creation feels like something that they could really lean into to to help chip away at that position and climb up that ladder a little bit. So That’s it. Hopefully this gives you some ideas of how, you can think about your own brand and how you could do some, your own analysis with potential competitors and, You know, get some more customers for yourself and help your business grow.

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