Skip to content

Mailchimp Email Marketing 101 (Ultimate Guide to Mailchimp Setup to Success)

  • by
Mailchimp Email Marketing 101
Reading Time : 9 minutes

One of the major challenges that small businesses face while competing with large enterprises is marketing and widening their brand presence to the wider spectrum of audiences cost-effectively. That’s where email marketing is a huge help as a cost-effective marketing channel. When an effective email marketing campaign is the key to marketing your brand, getting more sales opportunities, and growing revenue, Mailchimp is easily an obvious choice for marketers and entrepreneurs. 

But, Why Mailchimp?

Apart from the fact that it is one of the most widely used and trusted email service platforms (ESP) with more than 20 million users worldwide, it:

  • has an easy-to-use UI
  • Features all necessary tools you need
  • Has a reliable platform
  • Doesn’t cost a thing to start with
  • Can design beautiful, personalized email campaigns
  • Features email automation to manage your email workflow better and get more things done
  • Creates targeted emails based on your customer’s data that drive traffic back to your business and more sales
  • Syncs with all major eCommerce platforms such as Shopify.

Now these benefits and more are attainable when you set up and use Mailchimp effectively – that’s where this ultimate Mailchimp email guide comes in. Here we have compiled all the guidelines and tips you need while getting started with and using the platform to get more from your investment in the software. 

How to create an account on Mailchimp

Things to consider before you create a Mailchimp account: 

  • It doesn’t require installing but, but the browser needs to meet specific requirements.
  • Use an email address wherein you want to receive all the communications.
  • Requires a physical mailing address to receive mail 
  • You can start with a Free plan and later, you can get add-ons or choose a paid plan

Now, follow these steps to create your Mailchimp account:

  1. Access the webpage for Mailchimp’s signup.
  2. Key in your chosen email address and a password
  3. Now, click the “Sign Up” button.
  4. Then, it displays an email confirmation message.
  5. Access that specific inbox 
  6. Open the account activation email and click the “Activate Account” link to complete the setup process.

If you cannot find the email in your inbox, check the spam box, Also note that, Mailchimp does not accept role-based email addresses that may start with “admin” “tech support” or “security”. After that, when you attempt to log in for the first time, it requires filling in some information such as Name, Business name, Phone number, Physical address, Website URL, and some information about your organization. 

How to create a campaign on Mailchimp

A campaign can be content for distribution such as emails, landing pages, automation, or ads that are developed and analyzed in Mailchimp.

The Audience is the part where you build and manage contacts.

The Contact refers to the subscriber whose email is added to the Mailchimp account. Use your contact’s email marketing statuses such as subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, cleaned, or archived to define the kind of content they want in your campaigns.

Type of campaigns includes email campaigns (including regular HTML emails, plain-text emails, A/B testing emails campaigns where you can send multiple variants of emails, automated emails that you can send based on specific and pre-defined triggers), ad campaigns (such as Google Ads, Instagram ads, Facebook ads), printed postcard campaigns, social post campaigns, and landing page campaigns.

Each type of campaign requires a specific set of steps to follow to create that type of campaign. You need to perform those steps to target the ideal audience, incorporate tracking options, design the content for your campaigns, and then, make changes to optimize those campaigns as per your marketing goals and objectives. 

Campaign templates refer to those HTML files that you need at the starting point of creating any campaign. You can choose a template that matches your preferred layout of the text copy and images. You can choose from a wide range of predesigned templates to create and send stunning email campaigns. The drag-and-drop templates are easy to use and great choices to get started. You can choose editable templates to customize those by wring your codes from the “Template Language” section.

Campaign reports are used after launching a campaign to monitor and measure the campaign performance from these reports. These features all the metrics by which you measure campaigns such as email opens, link clicks, impressions, engagement, shares, and others. Different reports feature different metrics – you can choose the metrics based on your campaign goals. ..

How to delete the Mailchimp campaign

Things to consider when deleting a Mailchimp campaign:

  • Deleting a campaign in most cases, is permanent and cannot be undone
  • Sent campaigns get deleted from an account, but cannot be recalled.
  • You need to contact the Support team to recover deleted regular emails, templates, or landing pages,
  • Deleting a paused, completed, or canceled campaign also clears its report. 
  • To delete an ongoing campaign, you need to pause or cancel it first. 

Now follow these steps to delete a campaign:

  1. First, select the campaign you want to delete by clicking the “Campaigns” button.
  2. Then, click the “All campaigns” option.
  3. Select the checkbox next to the specific campaign intended for deletion.
  4. Next, click the “Delete” button.
  5. Finally, the “Are you sure?” message will pop up, wherein you need to key in “DELETE” in all caps in the pop-up modal and then, click the “Delete” button to complete the deletion process. 

How to add a button in Mailchimp

Adding a button to an email or a newsletter is inevitable to include a call to action that drives engagement and conversion from the email. And adding it on the Mailchimp platform is extremely easy! There are different ways you can add a button on Mailchimp. 

Using the Mailchimp Button Content Blocks

You need to access the Button Content Blocks from the new email builder. Follow these steps to add a button block – 

  1. You can click a Button block or you can drag the Button block and drop it into your layout from the panel.
  2. Next, you need to add (or edit) the button text 
  3. Now, select a font and font size to format the text from the editing toolbar. 
  4. From the Button menu, navigate to the “Link to:” drop-down menu where a default address is selected under the “Web Address”. You need to type in an absolute URL that starts with an “http://” or a more secure version “https://”.
  5. Then from the Button menu, you can define the preferred “Alignment”, “Shape”, “Size”, “Border”, “Colors”, and “Padding” options.

You can also change the default button styling options by clicking “Restore default styles”.

Using an Image. 

Another way of adding a button is adding an image for the CTA button area. Then, you can and then, you can hyperlink the button image with the preferred URL. 

This method will enable you to add any effective image or even an animated GIF button to your Mailchimp email. a GIF button is a more interactive and attractive button option that can improve click rates. 

Using Code

Another method of adding a button is writing your own HTML and CSS code if you are well-versed in HTML and CSS coding. 

How to wrap text in Mailchimp

In Mailchimp’s editor, you can wrap text around an image to save space and enhance your design. To wrap text around an image, you’ll insert the image in a text content block, and choose its alignment.

Things to consider before getting started:

  • Use smaller images with a width that should not exceed 300px to ensure the displays are as intended.
  • Mailchimp enables wrapping text around an image within a text, an image in a boxed text, or the text from Footer Content blocks in the drag-and-drop template, 
  • For custom HTML templates, the image can be wrapped in any content block which has text and an image.
  • The appearance of the text wrapping might vary from one email client to another. Therefore, you need to test and preview the email campaign after you implement text wrap around an image.

Now follow these steps to wrap text around it in Mailchimp:

  1. Navigate to the “Content” section from the “Campaign Builder”
  2. There, hit the “Design Email” button.
  3. In the “Design Email” step, you need to click the existing content block. You can also drag and drop the new content in the layout.
  4. From the editing pane, select the text area where you want to position the image.
  5. Next, select an image from the “Content Studio” option, in the toolbar.
    1. You can choose an existing or uploaded image by clicking that image and the “Insert” option.
    2. To select an image file from your device, select “Upload” and the image to insert. Once selected, click the “Open” button.
    3. To source an image that is stored in any online drive, select the drop-down menu from “Upload”.
    4. Select “Import from URL” to get the image from the source and click Import.
  6. Once you have selected the image, edit the image from the “Edit Image” screen
  7. Click to access “show image style options”.
  8. Select the “Align” drop-down menu and select where you want to place the image whether to the left, center, or right of the text.
  9. Choose a number from the “Margin fields” to insert space within the wrapped text and the image.
  10. Now, hit the “Save and Insert Image” option.
  11. To make more changes to the margins or the image settings, you need to double-click the image to access the editing pane where you can make additional changes.

How to add Mailchimp to the Godaddy website

Do you own a Godaddy website domain? You can link the domain and its subdomains to a Mailchimp account. Once linked, you can add the URL to your landing pages to promote your domain. 

Here is how to add your Godaddy website to your Mailchimp account:

The domain connection takes copying and pasting information from the Mailchimp account to the Godaddy website or DNS management tools. Therefore, it is best if you use two browser tabs or windows simultaneously to alternate between two sites.

Now, follow these steps: 

  1. Click the “Website” option.
  2. Next, click the “Domains” option.
  3. Navigate to the “Connected Domains” part 
  4. Now, click the “Connect A Domain” option.
  5. In the next step, enter the Godaddy domain name you want to connect in the “Add a domain or subdomain” field
  6. Hit the “Submit” button.
  7. Copy the “CNAME” information.
  8. Switch to the other browser window or the tab wherein you need to paste the CNAME value named www. 

If that value cannot be found in the DNS records, you need to create it.

  1. Next, copy the “A record” value.
  2. Now, paste the “A record” value into the A record field in the Godaddy domain provider account.

When you own one or multiple IP addresses in your “A record”, then you need to replace all of those with the IP address provided by Mailchimp. If you already have an AAAA record for IPv6 addresses, you have to remove the record and use the “A record” for that listed IPv4 address.

  1. In the last step, go to the “Domains” page of the Mailchimp account and click the “Connect” button.

It takes up to 48 hours for a successful domain connection depending on the domain provider. You can find connection updates on your “Domains” page and can also find an email confirmation when the connection is complete or if it fails. Once the domain connection is complete, you can use your Godaddy website with the Mailchimp landing pages or site.

How to create a waitlist on Mailchimp

The Free Mailchimp plan allows adding up to 500 contacts to the subscriber list and sending 1,000 emails per month, with a daily email send limit of 500. However, if you want to add more audiences to your subscriber list in your free plan, then, those new audiences will be added to a new list or a waitlist. 

You can use a waiting list for segmenting a new list of subscribers for launching a new program or targeting with a specific lead magnet or some special offers. Therefore, you can set them apart from your main list after adding new audiences. To add a person or people to this new list, follow the same steps to add a new audience. 

How to merge audiences in Mailchimp

If you’re working with a new audience and want to merge your subscribed audiences and their basic information, then, you can use the “Combine Audiences” tool which is a shortcut to meet your needs.

Follow these steps to merge audiences.

  1. Go to the list of audiences in the Mailchimp account.
  2. Click the drop-down menu with the audience which you want to merge with the primary audience, 
  3. Select “Combine audiences”. 
  4. When the pop-up appears, select your primary audience from the click the drop-down menu. Select the box next to the group(s) to add these contacts to, If the primary audience is organized as groups.
  5. Hit the “Next” button.
  6. In the confirmation message, read the data notification and take a backup of the audiences if not backed up. Note that some information such as group and tag data, email metrics as email opens, clickthrough rates, opt-in time stamps, signup source, member rating, and GDPR permissions do not get transferred to the new audience. Data that are not backed up will be lost.
  7. In the last step, key in “CONFIRM” and click the “Combine Audiences” option.

You need to follow these same steps to merge each audience to be combined.

How to resend the Mailchimp campaign to unopened

If some of your subscribed contacts have not opened a specific email campaign that includes important offers or information optimized for them, Mailchimp will allow you to send it again. Though sending the same email might lead to unsubscribes, you can resend only once within the same day. In case your subscriber has missed it on the first attempt, they can get it on the next attempt and open your email which can improve audience engagement.

Replicate the original email campaign when resending an email campaign to audiences who have not opened it. You need to send the unopened email to the segment of unresponsive subscribers. Now follow these steps to resend your unopened email:

  1. First, click the “Campaigns” option
  2. Now, hit the “All campaigns” option.
  3. Pick an unopened email campaign from the drop-down menu.
  4. Select the “Replicate” option. 
  5. Now, select the campaign you want to resend from the drop-down menu. 
  6. Click “Replicate” to complete the process.

Now this replicated email copy loads the campaign checklist from the “Campaign Builder” section.

How to add columns in Mailchimp

Columns will make your email look better and clean. You can add a background in each column as per your choice. The “Content block” of the “Boxed Text” offers different options to add content, for instance, links and images to your campaign. “Boxed Text” blocks can also be used for wrapping the texted content around an image, setting various colors in the background of your written content in every block of “Boxed Text,” and more. 

Conclusion

By following our comprehensive guide, you can effectively set up and utilize Mailchimp to maximize your marketing efforts, drive traffic, and achieve higher sales. Embrace the potential of Mailchimp and unlock new opportunities for success in your business.

At Sootra, we specialize in creating MailChimp email campaigns tailored to our client’s needs and goals. Our team of experts has years of expertise in Mailchimp campaign execution and can provide comprehensive support throughout the entire process.

If you seek some professional help to get started with Mailchimp, then let Sootra Consulting guide you. All you need is to ask or send us your business information or email requirements at support@sootraconsulting.com. So, let’s start talking!

Also, if you want to check out our other awesome blogs, you can click here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *