Image credit: Adam Friedberg
4 min read
This story appears in the October 2019 issue ofEntrepreneur. Subscribe "
Mailchimp wants its employees to think creatively -- and the company will do just about anything to get its staffers' minds to open. The online marketing company hosts weekly innovation labs, design studios, and brainstorming sessions. Once a month, a brand-wide "coffee hour" invites employees to explore new ways of thinking via a speaker series that's featured everyone from rapper Big Boi to a 74-time Jeopardy! champ. As a result of all this, departments have learned to embrace unexpected paths to creativity -- and the company has grown rapidly, cracking $600 million in annual revenue. Here's some of what's happening at its Atlanta headquarters.
Related: What It's Like Inside DraftKings"Every Tuesday we do innovation labs, where we brainstorm ways to solve customer problems. We put ourselves in other people's shoes and wear many hats -- a user hat, a devil's advocate hat, a psychologist hat -- and they're literal hats: crazy, glittery, paper top hats we ordered off a party website. It's an interactive way to problem-solve."
"I started the week of our annual kickoff party, and the theme was prom. The dance floor looked like a gym, our mascot in the center and bleachers lining the sides. People dressed up like prom kings or queens. I was on the dance floor, looking around, and I saw a bunch of executives. That was my first real glimpse of Mailchimp: Wow, these people have fun."
Related: 5 Tips for Better Email Marketing Performance"You never know when a good idea is going to strike, and on my team, we find that shared experience amplifies that. For our last team-building activity, we sat together for an oil painting done in a classical style. Now we just have to figure out where to hang it."
"I was in Chicago a couple of months ago with a customer who makes these beautiful shoes out of Turkish rugs. Our shopping cart connectivity didn't work with the way she had her commerce platform configured, so I took a picture of her struggling with that roadblock. I try to capture those emotional moments to help our teams see things from the customer's perspective."
"We run Mailchimp Community College with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. A group of employees spends eight weeks learning about Atlanta, then gives $200,000 in grants to local nonprofits. It's incredible to see employees wrestle with complicated issues, think through how to be helpful, and then act."
Related: What It's Like Inside Uber's Innovation Space"I got into this industry as an HR coordinator, so I did the admin side of things -- background checks, the interview process, employee life cycle maintenance. I came from a small but formal company, so what I really loved about joining Mailchimp is the lack of formality. I can just walk up to someone and have a brainstorming session."
"We just built a tool that allows emails to be triggered based off events that happen in our application. Let's say you're a Mailchimp client and a customer just purchased an item for the fourth time. Now you can automatically email 'Congrats on making your fourth purchase,' and offer a discount."
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Image Credit: Adam Friedberg
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