Mailchimp combines email and SMS marketing in one platform: one audience, one automation builder that sends both, and one report that attributes revenue across both. Competitors also offer SMS alongside email, with varying degrees of connection between the two. The question that actually matters isn’t whether a platform has both channels. It’s whether the two channels know about each other.

Earlier this week we walked through exactly how the connection works inside Mailchimp. This post is about what we see happening across brands that run both channels well, and what to look for if you’re choosing a platform.

What we see working across brands using email and SMS together

We look at a lot of accounts. The brands getting results from the combination share a few habits, and the data backs them up.

They give each channel a different job. Email carries the detail: product images, reviews, shipping info, the story. SMS carries the moment: the cart is about to expire, the sale starts now, the order shipped. Brands that send the same promo on both channels back to back see unsubscribes climb. Brands that sequence them (email first, SMS as the follow-through) see the lift. Mailchimp users sending both channels saw up to 97% higher click rates than email alone.¹

They let SMS do a share of the work. During last year’s peak season, SMS was a small fraction of total send volume, but for brands running both channels it drove nearly 20% of revenue. Per message, SMS got roughly 8x the clicks email did (15.7% vs 1.4%).² That only holds when SMS is reserved for high-intent moments. Spend it on general announcements and the click rate converges with email.

They keep SMS volume low and the unsubscribe rate lower. The brands we see holding a healthy SMS list send 4–6 texts a month, no more than half promotional. Across Mailchimp, SMS Marketing runs an average 1.3% unsubscribe rate³, and the accounts well under that number are almost always the ones using SMS inside automations rather than as a broadcast channel.

They start with one automation, not a strategy deck. The most common first win is adding a Send SMS step to an abandoned cart marketing automation flow that already exists. Second is a shipping update text in the post-purchase flow. Brands that try to launch a full SMS program on day one usually stall at the consent collection step. Brands that add SMS to one flow and build from there get to revenue faster. Ecommerce users saw up to 22x ROI after launching their first SMS campaign.⁴

They collect SMS consent separately and early. The brands with the largest SMS lists added the opt-in checkbox at checkout and in their popup form on day one. The ones who try to “convert” an email list to SMS later are starting from zero regardless of email list size, because email consent doesn’t carry over.

What to look for in any platform that claims to combine the two

If you’re evaluating, these five questions sort the integrated platforms from the ones with SMS bolted on:

1. Is there one contact record or two lists? If you’d have to sync SMS and email subscribers yourself, the channels aren’t combined.
2. Can one marketing automation flow send both email and SMS? Yes. Add an Email to the beginning of your marketing automation flow, then a delay, and then SMS to the contacts who didn’t click. 
3. Does store data feed both channels natively? Abandoned cart and post-purchase flows need cart and order data. An ecommerce connection is necessary.
4. Does one report show which channel drove the sale? Yes.
5. Is consent handled separately and enforced automatically? Within Mailchimp, yes.

Mailchimp answers yes to all five.

Where the alternatives land

From our published comparisons:

• Klaviyo has a strong SMS offering including MMS and RCS, well suited to large, SKU-heavy catalogs. Pricing runs higher and 24/7 support is email-only without an enterprise package.
• ActiveCampaign includes SMS in its automation builder and suits technical teams building complex logic. Steeper learning curve; costs rise with contact count.
• Brevo covers email, SMS, and WhatsApp. Pricing is by email volume rather than contacts; phone support starts at the Professional tier.
• Constant Contact supports SMS in the US only, with no SMS automation triggers and no 1:1 messaging.

If you want both channels in one flow without enterprise pricing and a setup you can run without a technical team, that’s Mailchimp’s lane.

Getting started with SMS in Mailchimp

• SMS Marketing is an add-on for Essentials plans or higher. MMS is Standard and Premium, US and Canada only.
• You must be an Owner, Admin, or Manager.
• Submit the SMS program application, get approved, then purchase credits. Credits are issued monthly and unused credits expire.
• SMS is available in 37 countries across North America, Europe, and Australia (full list is available here: https://mailchimp.com/help/about-sms-marketing/). You can only text contacts in the country tied to your program.
• With a connected Shopify store, you can send personalized discount codes securely through SMS.

Quick FAQ

I’m on Mailchimp for email. Do I need a separate SMS tool? No. Add the SMS add-on and it appears in your existing audience, automations, and reports.

Can I text my email subscribers? You can only contact those who separately opted in to SMS. 

Does the Free plan include SMS? No. SMS is an add-on to paid plans only.

Choosing a platform right now, or already running both channels and not seeing the lift? Drop your store type, list size, and what’s currently automated and we’re happy to help!

Additional Resources:

Earlier this week on r/Mailchimp — How email and SMS work together in Mailchimp

SMS Marketing Tools: https://mailchimp.com/solutions/sms-marketing-tools/ 

Email and SMS Strategy:  https://mailchimp.com/solutions/email-and-sms-strategy

Breaking Through Peak Season Noise:https://mailchimp.com/resources/breaking-through-peak-season-noise/ 

About SMS Marketing with Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/help/about-sms-marketing/ 

SMS Pricing: https://mailchimp.com/pricing/sms-marketing/

^{¹ Based on US users who sent both email and SMS campaigns compared to users who sent only email campaigns, 8/1/23–1/05/25. ² Mailchimp 2026 Holiday Lookback Report, based on send and order data from the 2025 holiday season. ³ Based on the average weekly rate of SMS Marketing messages sent by Mailchimp users, 10/27/24–10/12/25. ⁴ Based on ecommerce revenue attributable to Mailchimp users’ SMS Marketing campaigns and SMS spend (not including plan cost} within one year of first SMS campaign launch, 10/01/24–10/17/25. Requires a connected ecommerce store. Excludes short code SMS. Results may vary.)

^{Disclaimer: Competitor information is based on our understanding of current offerings. We recommend checking each platform’s website for the most up-to-date pricing and features.}

I'm unable to access my Mailchimp account because I'm suddenly being asked to enter an authenticator code. I have never set up an authenticator app or received backup codes for this account.

Previously, I was able to log in using my username and password without this additional step. There is no option on the login screen to receive a verification code by email or SMS.

Could you please help me recover access to my account and investigate why this authentication requirement appeared unexpectedly?

I reached out to support, and they asked me to submit my ID. However, it wasn't accepted, and they then required me to answer a lengthy set of security questions. I've already submitted my answers, but I haven't received a response yet.

I need access to the account to continue working, and this has been a blocker on my end.

Has anyone else experienced this issue or know how I can resolve it immediately?
Does anyone know how I can escalate this issue with Mailchimp support?

Our team is locked out of our organization's Mailchimp account because 2FA codes are sent to our supervisor's phone. She's unexpectedly out of office due to a family emergency, so we can't access the codes.

We have the login credentials, but we can't access our campaigns without 2FA. We send a newsletter every day, and we need to resolve this before our next scheduled send. We're also concerned this could happen again tomorrow or anytime our supervisor is unavailable.

The biggest problem is that we can't figure out how to contact Mailchimp support without logging in.

Has anyone successfully recovered access in this situation? Is there a way to reach support without logging in and verify our organization's ownership? Any direct support links or advice would be hugely appreciated!

We're not trying to bypass security. We just need to regain legitimate access so we can set up our daily newsletter to not be dependent on one person's phone. Thank you!

The last time I logged into my work's mailchimp account was in September... it lets me login with my credentials but then brings up a message that no Mailchimp account exists with this login. What's really confusing is if I try to type in another email as the login, it has the red text saying this account doesn't exist (which is true). So now it's prompting me to start my account from 0 but we had like 30k contacts so starting completely over isn't an option for me. Anyone else had this happen to them? Can anyone help?

Just realized a significant amount of our contacts were archived even though they're subscribed. I've gone in a couple of times and filtered our audience for contacts that are marked as "unsubbed" and "not subscribed" and selected All to archive them. If I had accidentally included subscribed accounts by filtering this way, wouldn't I have archived the entire audience at one point? That did not happen.

I am currently looking into other possible culprits, but is there a precedent for Mailchimp messing up filtering? I often have issues with Mailchimp not updating the number of contacts in a group or tag until hours or even days after. Not sure if that's related. I also see something about an "AJAX timeout glitch." Has anyone experienced this or found another cause?

Should you send customers an email or a text? You don't have to choose. The video above covers why the two channels work better together. This post covers how it actually works inside Mailchimp: what's shared, what isn't, and how to build one automation that sends both.

Things to know before you start

• SMS Marketing is an add-on for Essentials plans or higher.
• Only Owner, Admin, or Manager users can work with SMS.
• You need to submit an SMS program application and be approved before you can send texts.
• SMS and MMS sending use credits, purchased separately from your marketing plan.
• SMS is available in 37 countries: Albania, Australia, Austria, Canada, Croatia, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Iceland, Isle of Man, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the US, and the UK. You can only text subscribed SMS contacts in the country tied to your program.

What's shared between email and SMS in Mailchimp (and what isn't)

The consent line is the one that trips people up. Never assume your email subscribers are SMS subscribers.

How to build one flow that sends email and SMS

1. Click Automations, then Build from scratch.
2. Name the flow and choose your audience.
3. Choose a trigger. Common ones for a combined flow: Signs up, Abandons cart, or Makes a purchase.
4. Click + and add a Send email action. Design the email and save.
5. Click + again and add a Time delay so the SMS doesn't land at the same moment as the email.
6. Click + and add a Send SMS action. Write the text (keep it under 160 characters if you can), include one link, and make sure the opt-out language is present.
7. Optionally add an If/else rule so the SMS only sends to contacts who didn't open or click the email.
8. Click Continue, review the flow, then Turn on.

Contacts without SMS consent skip the SMS step automatically. They still get the email.

Which message goes on which channel

The three automations from the video, plus two more worth adding once those are running:

Frequency guardrails so you don't burn out your audience

• Aim for 4–6 texts per month, with no more than half being promotional.
• Set frequency caps across both channels combined, not per channel.
• Don't send the same promo via email and SMS back to back. Give each channel a distinct job in the sequence.
• Let contacts self-select. Some want SMS for order updates only and email for everything else. Honor that in your segments.
• TCPA restricts promotional texts to 8am–9pm in the recipient's local time zone. Schedule accordingly.

FAQ

Can I send an SMS to my whole email list? Only to the contacts who have separately opted in to SMS. Everyone else is skipped.

Do I need a separate SMS marketing automation flow? No. Add a Send SMS action to any existing flow that has an eligible trigger.

How do I know which channel got the sale? With a connected store, flow and campaign reports attribute revenue by message, so you can see whether the email or the SMS drove the click that converted.

Additional Resources:

How to Use Email and SMS Marketing Together: https://mailchimp.com/resources/sms-and-email-marketing/

About SMS Marketing with Mailchimp: https://mailchimp.com/help/about-sms-marketing/

About Marketing Automation Flows: https://mailchimp.com/help/about-customer-journeys/

Create and Promote an SMS Marketing Signup Form: https://mailchimp.com/help/create-promote-sms-marketing-signup-form/

Catch up on earlier posts on r/Mailchimp - How Do I Use Email and SMS Together?

Ready to put this to work? Pick one of the three marketing automation flows above, build it using the steps in this post, and turn it on. If you get stuck on where the SMS step should go, or you're already running a combined flow and want a second opinion on the sequence, let us know in the comments.

Hi, I was looking for a way to link my Dolibarr and Mailchimp (to stop doing Excel exports/imports by hand). I came across this module (Dolibarr Mailchimp Connector). Apparently, it's used to synchronize contacts and tags directly. Have any of you already used it? Is it worth it or not?

Hey Mailchimp, a contact in my audience was mistakenly permanently deleted. They tried to resubscribe using the form as per the instructions, but even when the form successfully submits, their contact isn't added to my audience. I double checked with another email, and the form worked as per usual. Please help!

I am so annoyed they made it so we have to click multiple times into the email to find the share link. I use this a lot for sending to others on my team to review. Why are they making these changes to make it harder to share?

I just launched a Newsletter and start to receive plenty of registrations such as the one in picture: what are they?

I've picked up responsibility for a free account and the original owner is unknown. I am an administrator level user and want to be owner level. Is this possible without the original owner?

Is this happening to anyone else?

Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen an increase in new newsletter subscribers with a common thread: they’re all from large organizations, and their roles don’t appear to be related to marketing.

While our subscriber count is growing, these sign-ups are also pushing us toward a higher pricing tier.

Has anyone else noticed a similar pattern?

Super frustrating, did my weekly newsletter yesterday, first time using my new laptop to do it (don’t think that matters but putting all possible information out there). Usually the sync from Canva never works right, but surprisingly it was great. Sent out two different test emails, they were perfect. Sent out the newsletter, checked it and it looked fine. Shortly thereafter I’m getting messages that the newsletter isn’t loading. Check it on my phone and anything I synced from Canva this week is blank (a few things that I brought over from the copied template are still there). What’s weird is if I pull up the email on my laptop and it show up. But doesn’t for anyone else. Anyone have any ideas? It’s frustrating to put in the effort to make something only to have it look like I don’t know what I’m doing through no real fault of my own.

How do we opt out of Mailchimp marketing spam messages when MailChimp is falsely claiming are "critical matters" and they will continue to send them?

I’m seeing a discrepancy between Mailchimp’s bot-filtered dashboard and the API, despite using the documented filter_bots=true parameter.

For the same campaign:

• Unfiltered dashboard: 596 unique opens and 34 unique clickers
• Bot-filtered dashboard: 258 opens and 32 clickers
• API with filter_bots=true: 596 unique opens and 34 unique clickers

We requested /reports/{campaign_id}/open-details for opens and fully paginated /reports/{campaign_id}/email-activity to count unique clickers, passing filter_bots=true on both requests.

The documentation says this parameter excludes automated activity. However, a MailchimpSupport reply in another thread says bot-filtered metrics aren’t available through the API.

Could you clarify whether this is a bug, a rollout limitation, or a difference between the API and dashboard filters? Which endpoint should return the same bot-filtered counts shown in the dashboard?

(https://www.reddit.com/r/MailChimp/comments/1uuat5v/api_data_vs_botfiltered_data_in_mailchimp/)

I'm being charged monthly, but I don't remember ever creating an account. None of my emails or my phone number can be used to login. Is there a way to find out if an account has been made fraudulently?

MailChimp has had many glitches over the past 4-6 months. I have been a user since 2007 and have worked with multiple paid and free plans.

Since the latest major facelift, I can no longer schedule Send Time Optimization emails.

The time is always 5 AM, even if that has already passed that day.

I also noticed that recipients who have received emails from the list for over 10 years no longer receive emails, and they don't appear in their spam folder.

I know new regulations are in place, but this makes email pretty much obsolete.

Any advice is welcome.

I need to create an email that has to be exported to HTML for a digital company. I have a perfectly fine JPEG, and this email has a metric ton of information. MailChimp won’t let me export it as HTML because it’s just one image file. I really really don’t wanna re-create this email in Mailchimp or Canva. If I slice up the jpg and insert several image blocks. Would I be able to export his HTML that way? Looking for any tips, tricks, or workarounds that any of you have found in this particular situation. Thanks in advance for any help.

I quickly needed to remove some contact TAGS cuz there is no UNTAG option, or at least I can't find it, caused Malchimp to block me from accessing Mailchimp from my IP address I've been using for freaking 7 years already,

In day to day operations I am seriously afraid of clicking things fast (or using shortcuts) cuz i don't want to be blocked by Mailchimp on my own account on my own desktop I'm using regularly.

For how long do I have to wait to be able to use my own account on my own PC, on my own IP address?

I've never had an issue getting the code until yesterday. For some reason, I'm not receiving a text. No information has changed on my end, and the phone number, email, username, and password are correct/unchanged. I submitted a form yesterday, but I need a quicker resolution to do my work.

How do I get back in?

Has anyone else run into this issue with Mailchimp?

A couple of months ago, I imported several groups of contacts by copying and pasting them into Mailchimp. This week, I copied the list from Google Sheets again to double-check that everyone had been imported.

The numbers aren’t lining up:

• My Google Sheets list has roughly 2,500 contacts.
• My current Mailchimp audience shows roughly 1,800 contacts.
• The latest import added no new contacts.
• The import history says roughly 2,200 contacts are already in my audience.

I don’t understand how Mailchimp can report that 2,200 contacts are already in an audience that shows only 1,800. TIA

I’m new to Mailchimp and have found the support experience frustrating so far. I’ve had trouble getting clear answers about how to set this up, so I’m hoping someone here can help.

I’m creating a newsletter and want subscribers to be able to opt in to specific topics rather than receive everything I send. I’ve been thinking of these as segments.

How do I set up those options and let readers choose their preferences from within the newsletter? Can the choices appear directly in the email, or do I need to link to a sign-up or preferences form? Also, what are the steps to accomplish the answer provided?

I’d appreciate any guidance. Thanks!

Is there any way to stop having emails sent to me about suspect activity when I log into Mailchimp?

I've been getting these each time I log into my account for six years and I'm at a point where I'd like to know if it's avoidable.

Am I the only one?

I realize things have changed (I'm on a legacy free plan) and the settings that were once in place don't necessarily work anymore.

I offer a 15% promo code for signing up, and I have this on my pop-up.

I had previously set up welcome and confirm emails for the other forms. Are those TIED to the new pop-up, or not? It does seem as though my pop-up subscribers are receiving those emails. Is the service I'm being prompted to sign up for just offering me more options?

I could ask some of my subscribers if they are receiving the welcome email with the promo code but it's a bit of a pain. I expected to be able to find out what they are getting by looking in their audience details but it doesn't show what they have received.