--- title: "Segmented emails got 2× the clicks; the builder costs US$4.50 to US$20 a month" summary: "Mailchimp's segmentation study read against five email tools' pricing pages: which cuts moved clicks, and which plan unlocks them. Checked September 2026." url: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/segmenting-mailing-list-effective-email-marketing format: Note desk: "SaaS & business software" published: 2025-02-18 facts_checked: 2026-09-30 author: TechBag (The TechBag Journal) tags: ["email marketing","segmentation","Mailchimp","Zoho Campaigns","Brevo","HubSpot Marketing Hub","Pipedrive Campaigns","pricing","DPDP","GST"] cover: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/covers/segmenting-mailing-list-effective-email-marketing.png --- # Segmented emails got 2× the clicks; the builder costs US$4.50 to US$20 a month *Mailchimp's segmentation study read against five email tools' pricing pages: which cuts moved clicks, and which plan unlocks them. Checked September 2026.* Note · SaaS & business software · By TechBag · Published 2025-02-18 · Facts checked 2026-09-30 · Canonical: https://www.thetechbag.com/blog/segmenting-mailing-list-effective-email-marketing Segmented campaigns got 14.31% more opens and 100.95% more clicks than unsegmented ones sent by the same customers, in the only large study an email vendor has published: Mailchimp’s sample of about 2,000 users, 11,000 segmented campaigns and almost 9 million recipients.[1] The segment itself costs nothing extra. What the tools charge for is the contact count and the tier, and the tier at which the advanced builder appears runs from US$4.50 a month on Zoho Campaigns to US$20 on Mailchimp and HubSpot.[3] [5] [7] The 2023 version of this piece listed eight ways to cut a list, from demographics to A/B tests. The buyer’s question is narrower: which cuts moved the numbers when someone measured, and which plan you must be on to make them. ## Which cuts moved the numbers Mailchimp’s breakdown is the useful part of its study, and it argues against two of the 2023 list’s eight.[1] Segments built on **interest groups** did best on clicks, bounces and unsubscribes: 74.53% more clicks, 17.61% fewer bounces and 25.65% fewer unsubscribes. **Merge fields**, the demographic cut, added 54.79% clicks. Segmenting by **date added** looked good on opens, 29.56% more, and was a trap underneath: 55.18% more bounces and 33.76% more unsubscribes, because a sign-up-date segment is really a list of people who have not yet left. **Subscriber activity** gave the smallest click gain, 15.69%, and more abuse reports. ReportedMailchimp, updated 1 February 2017 Across all segmented campaigns against the same senders’ unsegmented ones: opens +14.31%, unique opens +10.64%, clicks +100.95%, bounces −4.65%, abuse reports −3.90%, unsubscribes −9.37%. The page states the sample but not the period the campaigns were drawn from, and the data is nine years old.[1] Read against Mailchimp’s December 2023 benchmarks, an all-industry average of 35.63% opens, 2.62% clicks and 0.22% unsubscribes, the click gain is the one that matters: doubling 2.62% is worth more than nudging an open rate that mail clients now inflate by pre-fetching images.[2] Our view is to segment on stated interest first, behaviour second, demographics third, and never on sign-up date alone. ## What the segment costs, plan by plan Four pricing pages, read in September 2026, put the richest segmentation on a paid tier and none of them on a free one.[3] [5] [6] [7] Mailchimp alone documents a builder on its Free plan: up to ten conditions with one and/or operator; the advanced builder, unlimited conditions with nested logic, needs Standard, which starts at US$20 a month for 500 contacts, and predictive segments are “Standard or Premium plans only”.[3] [4] Zoho Campaigns lists “basic segmentation” on Standard at US$3 a month for 500 contacts and “advanced segmentation” with dynamic content on Professional at US$4.50; its Free plan, 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, lists neither.[5] Brevo puts “advanced segmentation” on Starter at US$9 a month (US$8.08 billed yearly).[6] HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter shows US$20 a seat a month for 1,000 marketing contacts and caps you at 50 active segments with criteria “limited to form submission data, contact property information, and marketing email activity”; 1,200 active segments cost US$800 a month on Professional.[7] **Figure: Advanced segmentation unlocks between US$4.50 and US$20 a month at the entry contact tier** *Cheapest plan whose page names advanced or unlimited-condition segmentation, USD list per month, annual billing, September 2026* Zoho Campaigns Professional INR billing with GST invoice US$4.5 Brevo Starter US$8.08 billed yearly US$9 Pipedrive Campaigns add-on flat, per company US$13.3 Mailchimp Standard 500 contacts US$20 HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter per seat, monthly commitment US$20 | | Value (US$) | | --- | --- | | Zoho Campaigns Professional | 4.5 | | Brevo Starter | 9 | | Pipedrive Campaigns add-on | 13.3 | | Mailchimp Standard | 20 | | HubSpot Marketing Hub Starter | 20 | Source: Zoho Campaigns, Brevo, Mailchimp and HubSpot pricing pages; Pipedrive Campaigns from TechBag's intel page · as of 30 September 2026 · contact tiers differ: 500 for Zoho, Brevo and Mailchimp; 1,000 for HubSpot (per seat, 50 active segments); Pipedrive is a flat per-company add-on on live CRM fields TechBag countTechBag count Of the five tools charted, one bills Indian customers in rupees with a GST invoice (Zoho Campaigns), one prints rupee prices to Indian visitors but bills the card in whatever currency the account was opened in (Mailchimp), and three bill in US dollars with no GST invoice. Counted from the four pricing pages and the TechBag Pipedrive Campaigns and HubSpot Marketing Hub pages.[3] [8] [9] ## Buying and sending in India Zoho Campaigns is the one of the five that invoices in INR with GST, which is why the TechBag Pipedrive Campaigns page tells an Indian buyer to weigh it against any USD-billed tool: a direct foreign-card purchase means 18% IGST under reverse charge and the FIRA and FEMA paperwork that comes with it.[8] Mailchimp’s page for Indian visitors prices Free at ₹0 for 250 contacts and 500 sends a month, and Essentials at ₹845 and Standard at ₹1,265 a month for the first twelve months as a half-price offer; the ongoing rupee price is not printed.[3] On the sending side, the regulation that bites is the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: consent must be free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous, and withdrawing it must be as easy as giving it, which makes every behavioural segment a stated purpose in your notice and the unsubscribe link a legal mechanism rather than a courtesy. The DPDP Rules were notified on 13 November 2025, with the consent and security duties applying from 13 May 2027.[10] How we did this Figures as of 30 September 2026 The segmentation uplifts are Mailchimp’s own, from a page last updated 1 February 2017, reproduced as reported; we did not see the underlying data. The benchmarks are Mailchimp’s December 2023 table. Prices are list prices on the vendors’ public pages read in September 2026, USD unless marked, before tax, annual billing except HubSpot’s monthly-commitment figure; the Mailchimp rupee figures are the introductory offer shown to Indian visitors. Pipedrive Campaigns’ US$13.33 comes from TechBag’s intel page. Segmentation wording is quoted from each page. No vendor was contacted. Spotted an error? Write to us; corrections are published at the foot of the piece. Sources 1. [Mailchimp, Effects of List Segmentation on Email Marketing Stats (about 2,000 users, 11,000 segmented campaigns, almost 9 million recipients)](https://mailchimp.com/resources/effects-of-list-segmentation-on-email-marketing-stats/) — updated 1 February 2017 2. [Mailchimp, Email Marketing Benchmarks by industry (all-user averages 35.63% open, 2.62% click, 0.22% unsubscribe)](https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks/) — data last updated December 2023 3. [Mailchimp, Marketing pricing page (Free 250 contacts; Essentials from US$13 and Standard from US$20 for 500 contacts; rupee introductory prices shown to Indian visitors; predictive segments Standard or Premium only)](https://mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing/) — undated page 4. [Mailchimp Help, Getting Started with Segments (ten conditions and one and/or operator on Free and Essentials; unlimited nested conditions on Standard and Premium)](https://mailchimp.com/help/getting-started-with-segments/) — undated page 5. [Zoho Campaigns pricing (Forever Free 2,000 contacts; Standard US$3 and Professional US$4.50 a month at 500 contacts, billed annually; local taxes extra)](https://www.zoho.com/campaigns/pricing.html) — undated page 6. [Brevo pricing (Free; Starter US$9 or US$8.08 yearly; Standard US$18 or US$16.17 yearly; Professional US$499)](https://www.brevo.com/pricing/) — undated page 7. [HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing (Starter US$20 a seat, 1,000 contacts, 50 active segments; Professional US$800, 2,000 contacts, 1,200 active segments; Enterprise US$3,600)](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/marketing) — undated page 8. [TechBag, Pipedrive Campaigns intel page (US$13.33 per company per month; USD billing, no GST invoice, IGST reverse charge; Zoho Campaigns bills in INR)](https://www.thetechbag.com/pipedrive/pipedrive-campaigns) — mid-2026 9. [TechBag, HubSpot Marketing Hub intel page (priced by marketing contacts in USD; 18% GST via reseller)](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-marketing-hub) — mid-2026 10. [MeitY, Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (section 6, consent and its withdrawal) and the DPDP Rules, 2025 (notified 13 November 2025; substantive duties from 13 May 2027)](https://www.meity.gov.in/data-protection-framework) — 13 November 2025 Related on TechBag: the [HubSpot Marketing Hub page](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-marketing-hub) for the contacts-tier arithmetic, the [Pipedrive Campaigns page](https://www.thetechbag.com/pipedrive/pipedrive-campaigns) for the India billing comparison, and [the catalogue](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse-products). **Disclosure.** TechBag is a software reseller: it earns a margin when a reader buys through it, including from vendors named here. The analysis is TechBag’s own; no vendor paid for or saw this piece before publication. Facts are labelled reported, TechBag count or our view. Go deeper on TechBag - [HubSpot Marketing Hub intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/hubspot/hubspot-marketing-hub) — the marketing-contacts tier arithmetic and GST via reseller - [Pipedrive Campaigns intel page](https://www.thetechbag.com/pipedrive/pipedrive-campaigns) — the flat add-on, and USD billing against Zoho's INR invoice - [Email & collaboration security guide](https://www.thetechbag.com/browse/security/email-security) — the DMARC tools that protect the domain your campaigns send from