As organisations grow, their email marketing often grows with them.

New newsletters are introduced, different teams begin communicating with different audiences and, over time, what started as a straightforward Mailchimp account becomes increasingly difficult to manage.

That was the situation facing the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

NICE had four distinct corporate newsletters across separate Mailchimp audiences, alongside another audience used to support events. While the structure had evolved for good reasons, it was creating unnecessary administration, making reporting more difficult and limiting how effectively the organisation could communicate with its subscribers.

Rather than continuing to work around those limitations, NICE decided it was time to rethink how their email marketing was organised.

Recognising the limitations of the existing setup

The challenge wasn’t simply that there were five audiences.

It was what those separate audiences prevented the communications team from doing.

Duplicate subscribers existed across multiple lists, increasing Mailchimp costs and making it difficult to build a complete picture of their audience. Communicating with their whole subscriber base meant coordinating several campaigns instead of one, while subscriber data remained fragmented across different audiences.

Angela Wallace, marketing communications manager from NICE explained:

“Our Mailchimp account was set up inefficiently with multiple separate audience lists for our four key corporate newsletters. This meant we had duplicate subscribers across lists, which was costing us unnecessarily, and made it difficult to get a clear, unified view of our audience.”

The team also recognised they weren’t making full use of Mailchimp.

As Angela put it:

“The biggest challenge was knowing we were underusing the platform, but not having the internal expertise or time to restructure the account ourselves with confidence.”

Their objective wasn’t simply to reduce the number of audiences.

They wanted a structure that would be easier to manage, preserve existing subscriber journeys and provide a stronger foundation for future communication.

Finding a solution that fitted the organisation

When you’re working with a large organisation, there’s rarely a one-size-fits-all solution.

Different teams have different ways of working, existing processes need to be respected and any changes have to be practical for the people who’ll be managing the system long after the project has finished.

Before deciding to work with us, Angela wanted confidence that we understood those challenges.

“Chimp Answers came to our attention as a Mailchimp Pro Partner, so we knew they had the specialist expertise we were looking for. Before committing to any work, I signed up to their newsletters and attended some of their free online sessions, which gave me a good sense of their approach and depth of knowledge.”

Together, we reviewed the existing audience structure, how subscribers joined each newsletter, how preferences were managed and how different teams needed to work with the platform.

Rather than simply consolidating audiences, the project became an opportunity to design a subscriber management system that reflected the way NICE actually wanted to communicate.

That included bringing the corporate newsletters into a single audience, redesigning the signup process, introducing a bespoke preference management system using Jotform, rebuilding welcome automations and ensuring subscribers continued receiving the specific newsletters and corporate communications that were relevant to them.

Looking back, Angela felt the approach reflected the way NICE worked rather than forcing them into a standard solution.

“What stood out most was how tailored their approach was to our specific needs. Rather than offering a generic solution, they took the time to understand the particular challenges of our account and our team’s ways of working.”

A better foundation for communication

The technical work happened behind the scenes.

The real benefits became visible in the way the communications team could now work.

With a single, well-structured audience, NICE could see their subscribers in one place, communicate with their whole subscriber base more efficiently, regardless of which newsletter they’d originally joined, and make better use of the information they already held.

Angela described the change like this:

“We now have a single, well-structured audience for our corporate newsletters, rather than duplicate subscribers spread across multiple lists. This means we’re no longer paying for the same contacts more than once, and we can send cross-cutting messages far more efficiently.”

Perhaps even more importantly, the organisation could now use subscriber data to create more relevant communication.

“We can now easily send targeted, personalised messages to specific segments of our audience based on their interests and engagement, rather than segmenting by newsletter alone.”

Instead of being constrained by separate audiences, the communications team could organise campaigns around subscriber interests while maintaining a much simpler structure behind the scenes.

Simpler day-to-day management

One of the biggest improvements wasn’t particularly technical.

It was the amount of time the team saved.

Managing several audiences had become part of everyday life. Once everything was brought together, routine tasks became significantly easier.

As Angela explained:

“The biggest day-to-day impact has been the time we’ve saved by no longer having to manage and coordinate sends across multiple separate lists. What used to involve juggling several audiences now happens in one place, which has made our workflow much simpler and given the team more confidence in using Mailchimp effectively.”

That confidence is often one of the most valuable outcomes of projects like this.

A well-designed system doesn’t just reduce administration. It gives people confidence that they’re working with the platform rather than around it.

Looking beyond the migration

It’s easy to describe this as a Mailchimp consolidation project.

In reality, it was about creating a communication system that better supported the way NICE wanted to work.

The result wasn’t simply fewer audiences.

It was cleaner subscriber data, simpler administration, more relevant communication and a platform the team could confidently manage into the future.

Reflecting on the project, Angela summed it up well:

“Overall, working with Chimp Answers was a positive experience from start to finish. They took the time to understand our specific challenges and explained technical concepts clearly, which meant our team never felt out of our depth despite this being a fairly significant piece of work.”

Every organisation reaches a point where the systems that once worked well begin to show their age.

For NICE, taking the time to redesign their Mailchimp setup wasn’t just about simplifying administration. It created a stronger foundation for communicating with the people who rely on their newsletters, both now and in the future.