Mailchimp Opens New Office as Global Focus Broadens Under Intuit Ownership

Atlanta small business marketing platform Mailchimp is growing at home, opening a large new campus along the Beltline even as it ramps up its solutions for small businesses and e-commerce retailers around the world.

Purchased by Intuit for $12 billion in 2021, the company announced last year that it would be vacating its longtime space at Ponce City Market for the nearby 360,000-square-foot Fourth Ward complex developed by New City Properties.

Mailchimp has taken most space in the buildings, aiming to inspire innovation and collaboration and launches at a time when tech companies are slowly requiring employees to spend more time in the office after embracing virtual work during the early post-pandemic period. Mailchimp’s blanket minimum is two days per week, with each internal team setting its own requirements beyond that.

For nearly 1,000 current employees at the Intuit Mailchimp headquarters, the company is aiming to make attendance a no-brainer by incorporating a slew of amenities that would be impossible to replicate working alone, designing a “city within a city” to spur serendipity and creativity.

“We are competing with people’s homes right now,” said Christian Widlic, group creative director at Mailchimp, during a tour of the building with journalists after Mayor Andre Dickens joined a ribbon-cutting alongside Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi and Intuit Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar.

Wellness rooms, an in-house food program and more than 100 breakout spaces with many designed as local storefronts are just a few ways the company is sweetening the deal for in-person workers.

“It’s no secret that Atlanta is a bustling tech ecosystem that Mailchimp has been central to for over 20 years,” Ms. Succar said in a release. “Our beautiful new workspace is one more way Intuit is doubling down on our commitment to this great city and doing our part to contribute to this thriving community while also amplifying our culture.”

In addition to outdoor spaces like the ninth-floor bridge level and porches that flow into the nearby Beltline and offer views of the Old Fourth Ward, the building includes artsy touches designed to represent the company’s culture and community connectivity. Each floor nods to a different historical art movement, and more than 200 original pieces and murals cover bright, open-floor-plan spaces laid out in “neighborhoods” grouped by team, “each with its own unique culture that flow together for one unified, diverse entity.”

Reflecting the office’s status as a growing Intuit innovation hub and a statement of support for the Atlanta tech ecosystem, the designers focused on getting employees thinking outside the box — and engaging with the local community.

A maker space is designed to help professionals get their hands dirty and their eyes off screens, working on personal projects or enjoying classes led by local artisans when they’re not delivering email marketing and automation solutions for small-business clients. The office also incorporates a Creative Lab for video and audio production to support its in-house agency, Wink, and its Mailchimp Presents content development arm.

All this comes as the company is utilizing Intuit’s vast resources to deepen integration with the company’s other financial software products and expand the geographic focus of its offerings.

Even at the time of the acquisition, half of Mailchimp’s 800,000 paying customers were located outside the U.S., and the prospect of the company adopting a more global reach was important in the sale, according to founder Ben Chestnut. At the time, the company had offices in London and Vancouver along with its headquarters in Atlanta.

That vision has been coming to fruition in the two years since the acquisition, as Intuit has expanded the Mailchimp platform to solve customer challenges all over the world, Jim Rudall, Intuit Mailchimp’s general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa, told Global Atlanta.

“Expansion into new markets is an important strategy for companies to remain competitive during this era of globalization,” said Mr. Rudall, who came to Intuit Mailchimp last April after overseeing the same region for e-commerce platform Shopify out of London.

“Especially in our international markets, we’ve observed a need—amongst early-stage startups and more established mid-market players alike— to provide flexible marketing solutions that accelerate growth to attract a hyper-engaged customer base,” Mr. Rudall said in an email. “Mailchimp has answered that need with app localization and translation into Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Portuguese, wider availability of our AI-powered tools, and over 150 new features and updates just last year alone.”

Intuit’s suite of platforms includes TurboTax, CreditKarma, Mint, but the initial focus post-acquisition was on better linking Mailchimp’s customer contacts and commerce data with the accounting and cashflow offerings in its other business software — Quickbooks — with the aim of providing an end-to-end solution for small business growth.

Even locally, Mailchimp’s philanthropic investments sometimes take on an international flair. During the week of the office opening, executives took part in the inaugural Give Where You Live Day, a bus tour to nonprofits around the city that culminated in $10,000 grants distributed at the Atlanta Hawks game Feb. 5.

Grantees included the Latino Community Fund of Georgia, multicultural preservation movement We Love Buford Highway, and the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, or RICE, which is incorporating international programming into its quest to build Black businesses and close the racial wealth gap in Atlanta.

The new Mailchimp office is located at 405 N Angier Avenue NE. Learn more about the space from: Mailchimp | Building architect Olson Kundig | Deeper coverage from our editorial partners at Hypepotamus