Are you ready to start growing your email list and connecting with your customers better. MailChimp is one of the most used email marketing platforms for a reason. They offer a fantastic email service and lots of technology that will help with that. Of course, all of this can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. Here are the steps that I recommend for all of my clients who are starting fresh in MailChimp.
Create You MailChimp Account
When starting your MailChimp account, it absolutely makes sense to start with the Free or Standard Package at the beginning. If you are just sending newsletter to your followers, you may just need the Free Package. If you are interested doing more involved email sequences then the Standard Package is the way to go. You can always upgrade or downgrade your package as needed.
Set Up Your Account
You will be able to connect your MailChimp with your website domain, allowing you to send emails from your company email address. You will also need to give a physical address for you business. This is mandated by US spam email laws.
Make a Plan
- How do you want to organize your audience?
- Tags – internal labels, 1 subscriber can have many tags
- Group – labels that can be included in signup forms so subscribers can choose how to categorize themselves
- Segments – a label that can combine different factors including: tags, groups, campaign activity, birthdays, when they were added to an audience, etc.
- What type of emails do you want to send?
- Welcome email
- Newsletters
- Automation
- Sales emails
- How will you be creating your audience? (Hint: the more ways people can sign up the better)
- Will you be importing contacts that you already have?
- Will you be having people sign up on your website?
- Will you be sharing a sign up on social media?
- Will you be offering an incentive for email sign ups like a freebie?
Create Your Audience
- Create the Tags or Groups that you’ll need.
- Import contacts who have already giving you permission to send them emails. This may includes current customers, lists from you previous email system, etc. Ideally you’ll download these contacts as a CSV file. You can attach a tag or group to your contacts as you import them.
- Create a pop-up or sign-up form for you website
Create a Landing Page
A Landing Page is a website page that is hosted by MailChimp and allows people to sign up for your email list. It is a great opportunity to introduce your company, let people know about the freebie you’re offering with your email sign up, and have them sign up for your emails.
MailChimp offers templates for these. Keep it simple.
Create a Welcome Email
This is the first automated email that you should create. Use this email to give your new subscriber a warm welcome and give them the link to the freebie you promised. You can also create different welcome emails to send to subscribers based on how they are tagged.
Comments are closed.