Mailchimp is a heavyweight name in Atlanta's tech ecosystem.
The marking automation platform and email marketing unicorn was founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius. Since then, Mailchimp has grown rapidly to dominate the newsletter market and help small and medium businesses reach their customers online.
But a new pivot is in the works for the company: entertainment.
Welcome to Mailchimp Presents, a new vertical—creating web series, films and podcasts with entrepreneurs in mind. The content creation studio, launched earlier this summer, had produced top iTunes performing podcasts and projects such as Outer Monologue, an animated series exploring the narratives running through creative minds, and Second Act, a short-film series that follows five people who’ve chosen a new direction in their careers.Mark DiCristina, head of brand and Mailchimp Studios, said there were several reasons why the company chose to branch out into content creation.
“On one hand, we’ve been doing lots of sponsorship of podcasts and of other creative endeavors in the past and been really successful in those ways, but we found that we were frustrated because the sponsorship always involved a lot of money to get in front of everyone … The minute we stopped sending money, our name disappeared,” he said. “We were thinking about how making content, we could put ourselves in a different position and relationship with our audience.”
Mailchimp, DiCristina said, is a business that exists to support entrepreneurs and small businesses, which it already does with software and marketing. With content, Mailchimp is able to continue that mission to empower, motivate and inspire its customers.
“[We’re] very interested in trying to tell stories about that experience that builds up the entrepreneur,” he said. “We wanted to give people something of real value they could interact with throughout the day and not just send an email.”
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From podcasts to web series to short documentaries, Sarita Alami, production lead of Mailchimp Presents, said entrepreneurs are often working or thinking about work. Because they're so busy, Mailchimp wanted to provide moments of insight and clarity through short content. Podcasts aren't lengthy and the web series videos are typically between five to seven minutes.
"That approach has been really successful for us," she said. "All of the entertainment is pure entertainment content ... We really want to give [users] the opportunity to lean back and give them a break. And we want this to be content they really engage and want to come back to and to find new content again and again as we post more."
The first podcast Mailchimp released is called "Going Through It," which features women talking about moments in their lives and careers when they had to choose whether to quit or keep going.
"It speaks to the human experience for sure, but it’s a moment many entrepreneurs have experienced themselves," Alami said.
Some podcasts include interviews from entertainers and public figures, Alami said, so that listeners can learn from those they thought they might not have a lot in common with.
"One of my favorites is a docuseries that we have done a few episodes of called, 'Unlikely Business Lessons,'" she said. "Engagement with that has been great. The idea is you can learn some business lessons from some unlikely sources. We have a former cult disciple who delved into the psychology of building a loyal following by discussing some of the tactics cults actually do."
The content creation team is an internal group of nine, though Alami said the company is hiring a range of production companies to help the heavy lifting of producing a high volume of content. Plans for the rest of the year include producing more stories and finding ways to tell entrepreneurs' stories.
"Hopefully, we won’t be slowing down," she said. "We're really going all in on this initiative."
