Intuit, parent company of Mailchimp, is making it easier to target customers and acquire new ones, while Worldwide Golf taps Adyen for unified commerce options
This story is part of “The Stack,” a weekly column that takes a deep dive into the ways tech companies are shaping the future of fitness and wellness
I missed Mailchimp’s flagship event, FWD: London, last month, which is a bummer since parent company Intuit Inc. (the tech platform that also owns Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks) rolled out a new suite of tools and integrations “designed to help marketers and small- and mid-sized businesses better understand and leverage their customer data,” the company said in a statement.
It added that Mailchimp’s latest set of tools “are designed to address this need by providing a connected, data-driven solution that empowers businesses to engage with customers more effectively.”
This will help boost conversions and drive repeat business while generating more referrals, thereby accelerating growth. In the highly competitive fitness and wellness space, this is critical as Intuit notes that research has shown that 71 percent of SMBs are concerned with customer acquisition — especially in the current market.
Intuit said the tools “leverage AI to segment data and surface actionable insights for the user with higher-quality zero-party data, enhancing the insights they can glean and act on.” By automating these tasks, Intuit said its platform is powering “done-for-you experiences that are saving businesses time and giving them more insights to better run and grow their business.”
Better Together: Why Integration Is Key
Success is not only found by unlocking data, but also in the integration of previously siloed functions.
“Mailchimp is evolving into the essential bridge between advertising and customer relationships for businesses, seamlessly connecting ad campaigns to powerful marketing automation that nurtures leads and drives sales,” said Ken Chestnut, director of global partner ecosystem at Intuit. “We’re closing 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.”
The company said enhancements include simpler audience segmentation and faster loading times across the app, along with a more powerful “Marketing Automation Flows” feature (formerly Customer Journey Builder).
“These latest product features represent the next step in Intuit’s journey to become the end-to-end business platform that integrates the power of Mailchimp and QuickBooks, enabling customers to both run and grow their business, all in one place,” the company said.
But there’s more. The platform can facilitate enhanced lead generation by integrating with Meta, TikTok, Google, Snapchat and LinkedIn. And it does it via an automated and more streamlined way.
“With these new integrations, marketers can seamlessly bring lead information from their social and paid advertising campaigns into Mailchimp, helping them build richer, more comprehensive customer profiles and automatically nurture leads with hyper-personalised marketing campaigns in real time,” the company said.
Imagine being able to target a specific audience segment on social with a marketing message that is timely and relevant to that customer cohort.
And there’s more to come later this year. Mailchimp said it will add new custom audience tools, “enabling marketers to send audience segments directly to Meta technologies and Google Ads to find lookalike audiences or retarget ads to existing customers.”
“The combination of all these tools is helping marketers turn ad spend into real insights and revenue, provide a 360-degree view of their customers to fuel smarter segmentation and personalization, and drive efficiencies for finding and retaining customers across their channels,” the company said.
Upgrading the Payments Process
Worldwide Golf, which describes itself as the premier destination for golf equipment and apparel, said it has teamed up with Adyen, the global financial technology platform, to be its unified commerce payments partner.
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
The retailer said by leveraging Adyen’s single platform and SFO1 terminals, Worldwide Golf can continue to evolve and innovate by “delivering a seamless and modern payment experience across all channels.”
“As we looked to modernize and streamline our payment process, it was essential to find a partner that could unify our transactions across in-store and digital touchpoints,” said Dan Appell, chief financial and strategy officer at Worldwide Golf. “Adyen’s technology provides the flexibility, scalability and reliability we need to elevate and further personalize the shopping experience for our customers while optimizing our payment operations.”
That’s an Affirmative
Affirm, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) payments provider, is offering zero percent APR on home fitness equipment. This includes brands such as NordicTrack, Major Fitness, Tonal, BowFlex and Therabody. Affirm’s online marketplace also offers BNPL on footwear and apparel from Nike, Lululemon, Adidas, Puma and Under Armour.
Shoppers can also take advantage of Affirm’s flexible payments for purchases from Alo Yoga, Trek bicycles, Callaway Golf, and, as a fisherman myself, Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops. Now, I just have to find that fishing license…
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