• by Jess Nelson , September 15, 2016

Zoho’s online contact management software, Zoho ContactManager, is now compatible with MailChimp thanks to a product integration announced on Wednesday.

Zoho ContactManager helps small businesses unify contacts from multiple sources, including Google Apps, Facebook and Twitter. With the new MailChimp integration, Zoho small business owners now have an easy way to send email campaigns to their Zoho contacts as well.

Available now, the integration allows mutual users of Zoho and MailChimp to develop and send email campaigns to their contacts with no need for HTML or coding skills. Users can import their subscribers and campaigns from MailChimp into Zoho ContactManager, or vice versa, to ensure that both platforms have synced data.  

MailChimp’s email templates and pre-defined themes are also available in Zoho ContactManager, and ContactManager provides campaign analytical reports depicting if, how and when a subscriber engaged with an email marketing message.

Additional product features include Tasks and Notes, a collaborative feature that allows teammates to leave notes for colleagues or assign tasks, and a search engine to select and segment email lists. 

Syncing contact data streamlines the email marketing process and allows marketers to more quickly send emails, yet a majority of small business owners don’t keep customer contact information in line with email marketing services. A recent study by LeadPages and InfusionSoft of 1000 small business owners found that 20.6% of respondents don’t keep track of contact information for their leads or customers at all. 

An additional 42.4% of respondents did keep track of their customer’s contact information but had it siloed from their CRM or email marketing services by keeping it within their personal email, such as Gmail or Outlook. 

A lack of data cohesion can significantly impact email marketing’s success, especially in organizations that lack the resources and personnel of Enterprise companies.

Email marketing is the top channel for customer acquisition and retention for small businesses according to a July 2016 study by WBR Digital and Emarsys. Eighty-one percent of small business retail professionals selected email marketing as the primary driver of customer acquisition in a survey of 254 respondents, with 80% selecting email as the primary channel for customer retention. 

Organic search and paid search followed in second and third place in terms of customer acquisition according to the study, while social media and paid search ranked second and third for customer retention.

The MailChimp integration is available in Zoho’s paid subscription plans, ranging from $15 to $25 per month.