If you want to be a marketer, one of the most popular ways to reach and connect with your audience is with an email campaign. One of the simplest and most informative programs to use for this is Mailchimp.
But what if you don’t know how to use Mailchimp?
Never fear, here is a simple intro to Mailchimp guide. As you go through it, it’s fairly simple to figure out, so I won’t be covering all the details. If you have a head on your shoulders and enough of an online presence to have a need for
Set Up Your Account
Very simple and basic. An email, password, and username. You need to include your business’s name, address, and a website link. There’s nothing too complicated here, just fill out the forms and confirm your account
Create a List
You need to have at least one email list before you can set up a campaign and actually send out emails. To create one, simply go to your dashboard, lists, and create a new list. When you name your list, remember your subscribers can see it, so keep it professional. Put in the default name and email address you want people to see when they receive your emails. You can include a short note to remind people why they subscribed in the first place. Choose what kind of emails you want people to receive once they sign up.
Once you have your settings figured out, it’s time to actually add subscribers. Click the man icon next to the list name you want to add contacts to, or click the list then “Add Contacts.”
You can manually add subscribers one by one by filling out an individual form for each, or you can import them. This still involves filling out a spreadsheet and exporting it as a CSV file. Here’s Mailchimp’s in-depth tutorial for importing contacts.
Create a Sign-Up Sheet
You can create a simple sign-up page you can put on your social media people can sign up on. Select a list, go to the sign-up forms button, select “General forms”. It’s very simple to edit text, images, add links, and add buttons from here.
To change the “call to action” buttons, click “Translate it” and edit the different button’s text here. Personally, I recommend making your calls-to-action as unique and fun as possible without being distracted. I enjoy seeing personalized buttons when I sign up for something, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Once you have your form complete, copy the link they provide you with and post it to your social media. New subscribers will get a confirmation email (which you can also customize if you want), then a welcome email (if you offered a free PDF, eBook, whatever, you can attach it here).
Embed a Form on Your Website
If you want to embed a simple form on your website, head to the same page where you selected “General forms” above, and instead select “Embedded Forms.” Create your form (there’s a little less customization ability here), copy the code, then go to your (WordPress) website dash, appearance, widgets, text box, paste the code into the box, save, and double check your website to make sure it looks okay.
Google Analytics
You need to make sure you have a Google Analytics account set up. You can get your code from your account, then on Mailchimp plug it in under lists, settings, Google Analytics. Here’s a link to Mailchimp’s how-to for a more in-depth guide.
Create Templates
A template is simply that, a template you can customize to send to your subscribers. There are different templates optimized for different campaigns, like making announcements or selling something. You can also create your own. These templates are just as easy to customize as the forms.
Create Campaign
To create your campaign, simply click on “Campaigns” on your dashboard, name it, and select what type of campaign you want to send. You can choose regular (a manual email), A/B testing, Facebook ad, plain-text, or RSS (automatic email when Mailchimp sends a post from your website/blog to your subscribers). Choose the list you want to send it to, then select to send to the entire list, saved or pre-built segment, or group or a new segment. From there you simply finish filling out the form.
You can test your campaigns before you schedule and send them to make sure they look the way you want them to.