• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

A new set of tools designed to help small to-midsized businesses better understand their customer data was unveiled by Mailchimp on Thursday at its FWD: London event. 

The goal is to close the loop between “advertising, marketing automation, and powerful customer insights, giving businesses the tools to engage at the right time and place of the customer journey from attracting new leads and nurturing relationships to driving conversions and building lasting loyalty,” says Ken Chestnut, director of global partner ecosystem for Mailchimp parent Intuit.

The new tools, built on the Intuit platform, use AI to segment and utilize zero-party data, the company says.

The company points to research showing that 71% of SMBs are concerned with customer acquisition. 

Later this year, Mailchimp will add tools allowing marketers to send audience segments directly to Meta technologies and Google Ads to find lookalike audiences or retarget ads to existing customers.

Meanwhile, Mailchimp has updated its marketing suite with over 2,000 product updates since December 2024. These include simpler audience segmentation, faster loading times across the app, and a more powerful Marketing Automation Flows feature (formerly Customer Journey Builder), the company states.

Also announced at FWD: London were:

- New or enhanced lead generation integrations with Meta, TikTok, Google, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. These are designed to help businesses automate, streamline, and get the most out of every step of the lead-to-conversion journey. 

- More than 100 new pop-up templates, allowing businesses to use customizable pop-up forms

- More robust custom reports within the Metrics Visualizer, providing over 40 performance analytics across email and SMS channels.