In today’s world of cloud computing, the ‘small pieces, loosely joined’ approach is very often the only sensible one for small to medium-sized businesses on a budget. And so it’s always nice to see two Software-as-a-Service offerings come together, especially when they bridge the Atlantic.
Such is the case with today’s announcement that the UK’s KashFlow is integrating its online accounting software with US-based MailChimp to make it easy for SMEs to create targeted email campaigns for existing customers based on their historic spending patterns.
Duane Jackson, KashFlow founder and MD, says the feature puts small to medium-sized businesses on more of a level playing field with larger enterprises by enabling them to make use of the business intelligence that remains otherwise locked in their accounting data. That’s because a company’s accounts contain information “such as who has bought what and when and how much they’ve spent and how often”, says Jackson. Data that has a lot of value when coupled with email marketing.
Specifically, the integration between KashFlow and MailChimp gives users the ability to push all of their customer information (name, address, number of invoices, total invoiced, etc.) into MailChimp’s software so that they can create those targeted campaigns. This might include offers to a specific set of customers based on how much they spend or how often. Mailchimp then provides a range of tools and reports to make it easy to create those emails and track their success.
Interestingly, it’s a case of KashFlow eating its own dog food. Even prior to integrating with MailChimp, Jackson says his company have been using the service for their own campaigns.
For customers of KashFlow’s paid-for subscription service there is no extra cost for the MailChimp add-on, while MailChimp itself can also be used for free if usage stays below a set amount of campaigns (2,000 customers and fewer than 12,000 emails a month) – a classic freemium play.