MailChimp Basics

@Cosmic_UK #CosmicUK
Nina Goodwin
@Cosmic_UK
Basics of MailChimp

Housekeeping
• Fire alarms and exits;
• Mobile phones/tablets;
• Toilets;
• Break.

Introductions
Please introduce yourself to the rest of the group; your
business and your expectations from this workshop.

Agenda
• MailChimp Basics
What is an e-newsletter used for?
Advantages & Disadvantages
What is MailChimp and what are the
costs?
Process Flow for using MailChimp
Three core principles; List;
Templates and Campaigns
• Lists
The Privacy and Electronic
Communications Regulations
Subscribing and Unsubscribing
Importing Lists
How to Set Up a List
• Campaigns
What is a Campaign?
Layouts and Content
Awareness of how to send a
Campaign
• Templates
What is a template?
The relationship between a
Campaign and a Template
Using Templates
• Advanced Topics
Segmentation
Merge Tags
Reports
Archives
Automation

MailChimp Basics

What is an email newsletter use for?
A powerful marketing and communication tool that has
various useful functions. It reminds your customers about
you; it informs users about your products; it tells them what
you have been up to; and it helps you build a unique
relationship with them.

Activity A
Individual Activity

Group Activity
In small groups think about the Advantages and Disadvantages
of using an e-newsletter

Newsletter
Advantages
• Helps promote your Business;
• Effective Communication tool
• Credibility & Relationship –
helps your customers know and
understand your Business;
• Delivery and Sales
• Cost
Disadvantages
• Have to provide an email
address to receive;
• May not receive the e-mail –
can get lost in junk
• May get Junk emails
• Time

Mailchimp is a web-based application that works in most web
browsers, no need to download or install any new software .

Pricing for MailChimp
• Monthly rates are determined by your total subscriber count;

Pricing and Features for MailChimp
Entrepreneur
fewer than 2,000 subscribers? - send up to 12,000 emails per
month for free.
Design experience not required; pick a pre-designed template or
use the email designer to create beautiful newsletters.
Templates are responsive email - newsletters look great on
mobile devices

Growing Business: Calculate your monthly costs
Subscribers Costs
0 - 500: unlimited emails per month £6.44 =
£77.28 per year
501 - 1,000: unlimited £9.67 = £116.04 per year
1,001 - 1,500: unlimited £12.89 = £154.68 per year
1,501 - 2,000: unlimited £16.11 = £193.32 per year
Is this right for your business?

Features for a Growing Business
• Send targeted messages to subscribers;
• Integrate with services you already use;
• MailChimp Mobile – apps available on IOS and Android
• Get automation, spam filter diagnostics, delivery by time zone,
email and chat support and more.
Need help getting started?
• Expert Discount Program connects you with proven experts – can
custom templates, list migration, email marketing strategy, and
more.

• If you’re not a frequent sender, you can purchase credits that
work like stamps for email. Buy them when you need them
don’t need to have a monthly plan;
PAYG for a Growing Business

• High Volume Sender - 600,000 subscribers for professional
senders

Examples of E-Newsletters
Need some further inspiration:
http://inspiration.mailchimp.com/#all

Process Flow
Start

Core Principles
List
A collection of subscribers who have opted-in to receive correspondence from
you or your business;
Template
An HTML file that serves as a starting point for a new campaign. This is the
container for the campaign's content where the design layout and all content
reside.
Campaign
An email you send to your list. Each bulk email that is sent to the list is
considered a separate campaign. Unlike an advertising campaign that can
include dozens of ads and take place over the course of months, MailChimp's
campaigns are a single instance.

Creating Lists

Compliance Tips
• Agree to comply with all antispam; regulations and MailChimp’s
Terms Of Use;
• Lists be permission-based;
• Email addresses collected verbally, from personal address books,
from business cards, social media/LinkedIn followers are not
considered viable opt-in methods;
• Must be recent customers (having purchased a product in the past
6 months) or customers that have already been regularly receiving
emails from your business;
• Only use addresses that have requested to be added to a list;
• Third party lists not allowed includes publicly available, purchased,
rented, or partner lists……..
Further help: Compliance Team for further clarification.

Privacy and Electronic Communications
Regulations 2003
The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003
covers the sending of email marketing. This legislation says that
organisations must only send marketing emails to individuals if
you have agreed to receive them, except where there is a
clearly defined customer relationship.
Further information can be found
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi?title=The%20Privacy%20and%2
0Electronic%20Communication

How to Subscribe

Sign Up Forms and Response emails
• Default set of forms,
emails, and pages for
your new list that guide
subscribers through
subscription and
related processes.
• Forms, emails, and
pages are stored in
each list's Form Builder.

• The Forms and response emails
drop-down menu divides the
different forms, emails, and
pages for your list into four
categories:
Subscribe
Signup form, pages and emails;
Unsubscribe
Form, page and email that make
up the process;
Update Profile
Forms, pages and emails
Other Bits
Forms and pages associated with
Forward to a friend, permission
reminders, archive page and
survey landing page.

How to Unsubscribe
• Every campaign sent through MailChimp must include a link to an
unsubscribe form. Our *|UNSUB|* merge tag generates a link to
your MailChimp-hosted Unsubscribe form.
• If the system doesn't detect an *|UNSUB|* merge tag in your
campaign, MailChimp will add a grey footer to your campaign with
the required footer information.

Importing a List
• Uploading a CSV or tab delimited text file;
• Copying and pasting your list from Excel;
• Importing contacts from your Mac Address Book with the help
of OSX app;
• MailChimp Import;
• Importing directly from Salesforce, Google Docs - that
integrates with MailChimp (see integrations directory);
• If your contacts are stored in an application or program that
doesn’t currently integrate with MailChimp, refer to that
program’s support documentation or customer support team
for assistance with getting a CSV file of the contacts.

Activity B – Creating a List

Time for a break

Templates & Campaigns

Templates V Campaigns
Templates
• A template is a pre-set layout that you build your campaign
on. Choose the template you want to use on the Template
step of the Campaign Builder before moving to the Design
step to add content to your campaign.
Campaigns
• A campaign is the email message you design and send to
subscribers. After you select a template, you'll design your
campaign on top of the template layout.

Templates

Types of Templates
• Basic
Basic templates provide you with blank layouts where you can add and style content to create a customized, mobile-
friendly email, all using our Email Designer. Our Basic templates make full use of the Campaign Builder's Drag and Drop
Editor, allowing you to fully customize the look and layout of your campaign. Two template styles are available in the
Basic tab: regular and banded. Regular templates default to a single color background with a border. Banded
templates include Boxed Text blocks that offer background color options.
• Themes
The predesigned themes offer a number of categories to choose from including Newsletters, Holiday, Sports, Coupons,
Music, and more.
• AutoConnect
Templates in the Themes section let you promote products you're selling on iTunes, share reviews from Yelp, pull in
information from Twitter or Facebook, and send surveys or event invitations by connecting to these applications and
pulling the info right into your campaign.
• RSS-to-Email
Use our RSS-to-Email templates to easily increase reader engagement and help people get your content the way
they'd prefer it. Just create an RSS-Driven Campaign, give us a link to your RSS feed, and select a template. We'll send
newsletters whenever you publish new content to your blog daily, weekly, or monthly. You can also use RSS merge tags
to build your own template or customize how your content appears. RSS-to-Email is the best way to publish a consistent
newsletter without having to spend a lot of time creating new content.

Campaigns

What is a Campaign?
• A campaign is the email message you design and send to
subscribers;
• MailChimp makes it easy for you to reuse campaign designs
or replicate existing campaigns, but in general, you should put
reusable content in templates and message-specific content
in campaigns.

Key Ingredients
• Keep it snappy;
• Keep it simple 2-3 stories
• Use great photos;
• Experiment with time and techniques
• The subject is key for CTR:
• Relevant to your campaign “30% off all men’s footwear for 24 hours”

Activity C

Advanced Topics
List Segmentation, Groups and
Segments

List segmentation; Groups and Segments
• When subscribers join your list, they provide information you can use to create
segments to send targeted and relevant content. Segments can be based on
list field data, group choices, and any subscriber information collected by
MailChimp.
• List fields/ Merge fields, hold information you collect from a subscriber, such as
their email address, first name, and last name;
• Subscriber profile; Each subscriber has a profile that contains list field
information and other information collected by MailChimp, like signup source,
opens and clicks on campaigns, or their preferred email client. Any
information stored in a subscriber's profile can be used to create segments.
• Segment: A segment is a portion of your list that includes only subscribers
whose profile information matches your custom target criteria, like "All
subscribers with a birthday in March" or "All subscribers who didn't click in my
last campaign."
• Group: A means of categorizing subscribers based on things like their interests
or preferences. Like other list fields, group information can be used to create
segments.
• Group Title and Group Names: The group title is the broad category for your
group and group names are choices. For example, if you want to organize
subscribers based on their favourite colour, the group title is Favourite Colour,
and group names could be red, blue, and green.

When to Use Segments
• Segments allow you to speak more directly to specific sets of subscribers
in your list, which can help campaigns feel more like a conversation, and
less like a catch-all e-blast. For example, create segments based on
when someone joined your list, where they signed up, or which
subscribers purchased a specific product.
• After you create a segment, you can save it for reuse. There are two
ways to save a segment.
• Auto-updating segment
Checks your list to include any subscribers that meet your criteria each time
you view or send to that segment. Auto-updating segments are best when
you expect the subscribers targeted by that segment to change over time.
• Static segment
Include only subscribers that meet your criteria at the time the segment is
created. Static segments are best when you don't want the subscribers
targeted by that segment to ever change.

When to use Groups
Groups are a type of list field that lets subscribers choose interests
or preferences. To find out what type of content your subscribers
prefer to receive, present groups on your signup form or update
profile form. Groups can also be hidden from your signup form if
you'd rather sort your subscribers into groups behind the scenes.

Are Groups right for you?
• Do I need to categorize my subscribers in any way, like how
often they'd like to be emailed?
• Do I have different audiences I want to cater to, like country
music fans or rock music fans?
• Do I want to engage specific sections of subscribers on my list
based on their likes?
• Do I have the time and resources to create tailored content
based on subscriber interests?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider setting up
groups in your list.

Other Benefits of Groups
• Subscribers can be a member of multiple groups in one list;
• Each list can have up to 60 group names;
• You can select multiple group names in one piece of
segmenting criteria, allowing you to get more mileage out of
the five-segment criteria limit in MailChimp.

Advanced Topics
Campaign Merge Tags

Campaign Merge Tags
Merge tags correspond to field data in your MailChimp lists, and
can be used to insert personalized or dynamic content into your
campaigns, signup forms, response emails, and Automation
workflows. Whenever a new field is added to a list, we'll create a
corresponding merge tag. Each time you send a campaign that
uses merge tags, we'll pull the most recent data from your list.

Merge Tags
• How to Use Merge Tags
When you type, paste, or choose a merge tag into a content block in your campaign, it just looks like a snippet of text. Then, after you send your campaign,
MailChimp replaces that text with the dynamic content the merge tag refers to, whether subscriber profile or list information, or system tools. Merge tags can be
added to any campaign type, Automation workflows, and in the Final Welcome Email in the Form Builder. Some merge tags can also be used in the subject lines
of your campaigns and automation emails.
• Choose a Tag in the Toolbar
To choose a merge tag in the content block, use the Merge Tags drop-down menu on the editor toolbar. Place your cursor where you want to insert the merge
tag, click the drop-down menu, and choose the merge tag you need. When you insert a tag this way, you never have to worry about syntax errors or typos.
• List Merge Tags
Each list creates default merge tags for each list field.
• Customize Fields
Edit and customize these merge tags in your list settings. Change the default tag from *|MMERGE1|* to something more descriptive like *|NAME|* or *|CITY|*..
You can also enter default merge tag values on this page. We recommend you input default content for your most commonly used merge tags, if not all of them.
• Where to Use List Fields
List field merge tags can also pull list information into your campaigns, like company name or subscriber count, and footer information like a link to your signup form
and campaign archive. You can even use list field data to build segments. When you create a new segment in the Recipients step of the Campaign Builder, you
can choose list fields from the criteria drop-down menu.
• System Merge Tags
MailChimp uses many system tags to dynamically create content within your campaigns, including social content, RSS content, account information, and
translated content. Use this cheat sheet as a quick reference for each merge tag available in MailChimp. System merge tags are also used to add unsubscribe,
update profile, and forward links to your campaigns.
• Testing and Troubleshooting
You should always test your merge tags in the Preview Mode before your campaign goes out. Preview is available on both the HTML and plain-text versions of your
campaign. To test merge tags in your signup forms and response emails, signup to the list and go through the double opt-in process to review each step.
Note
Merge tags will not render in previews or test emails when working in the Template Editor. If you want to see how merge tags will render for subscribers, create a campaign, and use our preview and test options. Different
lists often have different merge tags, so be sure you're using the correct merge tags for the list you plan to send to.

Advanced Topics
Reports

Find, View and Access Campaign
Reports
• Reporting features that can help you analyse the
performance of your campaign and provide insights to fuel
future campaign successes.
• MailChimp Mobile app so you can view your reports (or
manage lists, add subscribers, and send campaigns) while
you’re on the go.

Reports
• Would you like to view a list of all subscribers who received, opened, didn’t open, or
clicked a link in your campaign? Want to see which addresses bounced, unsubscribed,
or even filed an abuse complaint?
• Links gives you a better idea of how well each tracked link within a campaign
performed.
• Social reveals who has liked your campaign on Facebook, provides a list of the top
influencers and referrers, and displays a map of clicks from around the globe.
• If you’ve set up eCommerce 360 in your account, all reports that it generates will be
displayed in the E-commerce section. Here, you’ll find the total sales generated by the
campaign, total number of conversions (orders received), and a breakdown of each
subscriber's purchases. You can track sales from a click in your campaign all the way to
purchase. This lets you see which customers make a purchase—and what they buy—
after opening your campaign.
• The Conversations tab shows replies to your campaign when conversation tracking is
enabled. Conversation tracking offers more flexibility than a standard reply-to email
address by allowing other account users to receive email notifications when a subscriber
replies to your campaign.
• The Analytics 360 reports section displays Google Analytics/ Analytics360 data when
applicable, as well as stats from integrations such as SurveyGizmo, Eventbrite, or
SurveyMonkey.

• MailChimp generates a free unique URL to a permanent,
mobile-friendly version of every campaign you create. By
default, our templates include a View in Browser link to the
archived version of your campaign. The campaign archive
can also be accessed when your campaign is auto-posted to
Facebook shared on Twitter, or forwarded by a subscriber
using the Forward to a Friend feature.

Archive Link
Once you've sent your campaign to your list, copy the link to your campaign archive and share your
campaign with people who aren't on your list.
Use the archive code to create a Past Issues or a Campaign Archive section on your website.
Organize your campaigns into a folder, and we’ll provide a folder archive code to paste on your
website. The code displays archive links to the campaigns you placed in the folder. You can choose
the campaigns, and decide how many campaigns display on your site.
Host Your Own Archives
You have the ability to host your own archives of your MailChimp campaigns on your website. This
requires a decent knowledge of HTML coding in order to set it up. You can copy the HTML code of
our hosted archive and move it over to your website as a new page. You can also use the API to
automate this process.
Note
Campaigns are archived and stored for as long as they exist in your account. If a campaign is deleted, the archive will be removed
as well. For more information and details, check out our Terms of Use. If you want search engines to index your content in a way
that your domain gets the credit you have to physically host the content as a file in your website. You would have to manually save
the archive content and save it to an HTML file on your server or you can dynamically get content and post it to your site using the
MailChimp API.

Automation
Getting Started

• Think about MailChimp's powerful segmenting and scheduling tools. Roll them into one easy-to-
use and even more powerful package, and that's Automation in a nutshell. With Automation,
you can build a series of campaigns to send over a period of time—hours, days, or weeks.
• This is a paid account feature, and is included with all Pay As You Go, Monthly, and High
Volume Plans.
• Why Use Automation?
• A regular, scheduled campaign sends to a list or segment at the time you choose, but an
Automation workflow sends emails to specific subscribers as they meet your sending conditions,
which we call trigger criteria. Automation uses activity and subscriber data to offer a more
custom experience for individual subscribers.
• For email marketers whose subscribers have a clear path from signup to conversion or repeat
engagement, Automation can streamline your communications process. You could send a
simple birthday coupon once a year or a series of solicitations every few days.
• You’ll reduce the time you spend replicating or recreating campaigns when you organize
recurring campaigns into Automation workflows to reach the right subscribers at the right time.

Any questions?

MailChimp Basics

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