How to use MailChimp

After reading my guide on how to start a successful blog, you decided to open your website and in a short time, you were able to get a decent number of readers. One of them advised you to create a newsletter, which allows you to subscribe and receive an email with all the news on the site on a weekly basis, but your knowledge about it is almost nil and you have no idea how to do it. If that’s the case, then I have the right solution for you: it’s called MailChimp.

MailChimp is a Web platform dedicated to sending newsletters: it allows you to create your own newsletter using numerous free templates or by creating a custom layout and to schedule automatic sending. It also allows you to manage the email addresses of registered users and to create registration forms to be inserted on your website. Interesting, right? So do not waste any more time and immediately investigate the functioning of this service thanks to the information I am about to give you.

Take five minutes of free time, read the next few paragraphs carefully, and let me explain in detail how to use MailChimp so that you can create your own personalized newsletter. I am sure that, in no time at all, you will be able to understand how it works, schedule the sending of your emails, and satisfy the requests of your readers. Let it bet?

How to sign up for MailChimp

To start using MailChimp, create user lists, and send newsletters, the creation of an account is required. The registration procedure is free and takes just a few minutes.

Then connect to the MailChimp site and enter your details in the Email, Username, and Password fields (at least 8 characters and contain at least one number, one special character, one lowercase, and one uppercase letter) and click on the Sign Up button. Within a few moments, you will receive an email containing an activation link: press the Activate account item to complete the registration.

In the new open page, complete the captcha (if required), choose a plan from those available – then click on Free if you want to use the service for free – and press the Continue button. Then enter your data in the form that appeared on the screen: First name and Last name, then name and surname; then the name and site of your business in the Business name and Website URL fields (optional) and telephone number in the Phone number field (optional) and press the Continue button.

Now, enter the data relating to the location of your business by entering them in the Address line 1, City, State / Province / Region, ZIP / Postal code, and Country fields, then press the Continue button, put the checkmark next to the Yes or No items to indicate if you have a list of contacts (if so, indicate its size), click on Continue and indicate what type of services you intend to offer (by ticking one of the available boxes). You can also skip this step by clicking on Skip.

As the last step, choose whether to subscribe to the MailChimp newsletter and press the Continue button to complete the registration.

MailChimp is a service that can be used for free with some limitations, such as a maximum number of subscribers to the newsletter and a monthly limit of mailings. If your needs are not met with the free plan offered by MailChimp, you can choose one of the available subscription plans.

• New Business: is the free plan of MailChimp dedicated to those who have less than 2,000 subscribers and send a maximum number of 10,000 emails monthly.
• Essentials: for $ 9 / month offers 50,000 contacts, 500,000 monthly mailings, and the ability to remove the site logo from the email footer.
• Standard: costs $ 14 / month and includes 100,000 contacts, 1.2 million monthly mailings, and advanced tools for audience analysis.
• Premium: costs $ 299 / month and includes all the benefits of previous plans with over 200,000 contacts, over 3 million monthly mailings, and advanced features for larger businesses.

If after creating a free account you want to activate a subscription plan, log in to your account and click on your avatar on the bottom left, and press the Upgrade Now button.

Add contacts

It is possible to add contacts to MailChimp either by manually entering user data or by importing CSV or TXT files.

To create a new contact list, press the Audience icon in the left menu and click the Import your contacts button if you want to import contacts from a CSV / TXT file or paste contacts from a spreadsheet.

Alternatively, select the All contacts item from the side menu, press the Add contacts button, select the Add a subscriber item from the menu that opens, and manually fill in the contact form with the data of the user you want to add (be sure to tick the This person gave me permission to email them option, to confirm that you have permission to add the person to your contacts).

In the add contacts form, you can also assign tags. Tags are labels that allow you to organize your contacts based on categories or other parameters. To create and manage tags, you can select the item Tags from the side menu; then to create a tag without assigning it to any particular contact, you can click on the Create Tag button, while to create a tag and assign it to a series of contacts at the same time you can press the Bulk Tag Contacts button (you will then be offered a form in which insert the tag in the Name your tag field and choose the list of contacts to assign to the latter by importing a file or pasting the addresses “manually”).

Another tool that allows you to optimally organize your contacts is the Segments, which are also accessible from the side menu of MailChimp. By creating a segment (via the Create segment button) you can create automated groups of contacts based on certain parameters, for example, campaigns in which they are included, activity, rating, activity on the landing page, address of residence, or date of birth, so to target your campaigns only to users who may be genuinely interested.

The beauty is that you can set multiple conditions, including negative ones (for example, triggering the entry of a contact in a segment if it does not live in a certain place or was not born in a certain year). Just use the drop-down menus and, in a few clicks, you’re done!

How to create and send a newsletter

After setting up your contacts, all you have to do is create your campaign on MailChimp and schedule it to be sent. Then press the Campaigns icon in the left menu and click the Create campaign button at the top. Then select the Email option, enter the name of your newsletter in the Campaign name field and press the Begin button.

Now, click on Add recipients and select the contacts to which the campaign should be addressed; then choose whether you intend to send the newsletter to all subscribers (All subscribers Iin audience), to a specific group of users (Group or new segment). Alternatively, you can choose to send the newsletter to the most active users (Active subscribers), to those less active (inactive subscribers), to those associated with a particular tag, and so on.

Continue with the creation of your campaign by pressing the Add from item, make sure that the name and email address displayed is correct, and click the Save button. Then press the Add subject option, enter the email subject in the Subject field and type a preview text (maximum 150 characters) in the Preview text field.

In conclusion, press the Design Email button to choose the template to apply to your newsletter: press the Layout tab to choose basic templates, press the Themes item to browse a rich catalog of templates with more captivating graphics, or press the Saved templates item to choose a template you have previously created.

On the new open page, you can build your newsletter: on the left side, you can see a preview of the layout you are editing, while on the right side of the page there are the contents (Blocks) that you can insert in the email, such as Text (texts ), Image (images), Button (buttons), Video, Share (options for sharing on social networks), Code (code), etc. In addition, by pressing the Style option you can customize the graphic appearance of the chosen layout, changing the colors, the font of the text, and setting a style for mobile devices.

You can also apply changes by intervening in the preview of the newsletter, by selecting the individual blocks that make it up. Then click on the block of your interest and press the arrows icon on the left to move the block, otherwise, you can press the pencil icon to change its content or the + button to duplicate the block. If, on the other hand, you can delete the individual blocks, you can click on the trash can icon and that’s it.

Once you have finished customizing your template, press the Continue button to return to the campaign creation screen and you are ready to send your first newsletter.

Finally, presses on the Send and Send now items to send the newsletter immediately, or on the Schedule option to schedule its sending. In the latter case, enter the sending date in the Delivery date field, set the time by selecting it via the drop-down menu under Delivery time, and click the Schedule campaign button to set the scheduled delivery. It wasn’t difficult, was it?