Mailchimp for Email Marketing: What, How, and Why?

According to Statista, daily email users are expected to reach 4.6 billion by 2025 from 4 billion. When there is a boatload of email users, you don’t want to miss out on them when promoting your product or service. However, sending emails personally to everyone is a near-impossible task, and you need organization. Therefore, it is ideal and beneficial to use Mailchimp for email marketing. Let us read further everything you need to know about using Mailchimp for email marketing. 

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is when an email is used to promote your business’s products or services— for example, commencing a new product or service, discount offers, newsletters, and advertisements. It keeps customers up to date with business news but can also drive them away with persistently spam emails. 

Types of Emails for Marketing Purposes:

• Welcome email
• Special offers
• Educational emails
• Cart abandonment emails
• Re-engagement emails
• Confirmation emails

History of Email

The history of mail goes back to 1965 when MIT implemented ‘MAILBOX,’ where users could leave messages for other computer users, who would see the message when they log in next time. However, this was effective only when different users used the same computer. 

In 1969, the US department of defense put ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) – a network connecting several computers across the department for communication – into effect. However, in 1971, Ray Tomlinson developed electronic mail by creating ARPANET’s networked email system.

He also discovered a solution to the challenge of indicating the message’s intended recipient by utilizing the ‘@’ symbol. In 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp, sent out the first commercial email to alert consumers about a new product. His email list had 400 addresses and resulted in around $13 million in sales. 

The internet was commercially available by the end of the 90s, communication channels saw a considerable change, and marketers understood that emails could play an influential role in advertising. In addition, with the need for regulation up-gradation, an ‘opt-out option also started to appear in all marketing emails. Since then, email marketing has seen dramatic changes and is now a part of every digital marketing campaign. 

Benefits of Email Marketing

1. It allows segmenting your audience based on their preferences and sharing personalized content with them. 

‘When marketers used segmented campaigns, they noted around 760% increase in revenue.’ (Campaign Monitor)

2. Email marketing builds a brand’s trust and credibility as most people trust emails over social media or SMS.

‘4 out of 5 marketers are ready to give up social media if needed, rather than email marketing.’ (Litmus)

3. By consistently delivering strategized email marketing campaigns, users start recognizing your brand and anticipating emails. 

21% of emails are opened within the first hour after delivery. (Get Response)

4. Email marketing can boost conversions. 

Around 65% of email users said they purchased email because of the compelling message. (IIDE)

5. The best stuff about email marketing is its cost-effectiveness, and small businesses prefer it.

64% of small businesses use email marketing to reach their customers. (Campaign Monitor)

Several things shall be taken into consideration when it comes to email marketing, like personalization, catchy content, graphics & design, and many more. However, most of it can be done using Mailchimp.

What is Mailchimp?

Mailchimp is an automated email marketing platform developed for businesses. It provides comprehensive services like managing mail lists, creating tailored email templates, and automating email campaigns. 

Also Read:  Effective Email Marketing Strategies

How to Use Mailchimp for Email Marketing?

1. Getting Started

• Visit Mailchimp’s website and select the ‘Sign up for free button from the top right corner
• Fill out the form, submit it, and you will receive an account activation email
• To activate your account click on the “Activate Account “ button
• Then you will be redirected to MailChimp 

Pricing Plans

• It offers several plans, and each is based on the number of contacts you want to store
• You can choose from premium, standard, essentials, and free
• The free plan will allow you to store 2000 contacts which is enough while starting out
• For an established business, you can use Mailchimp’s calculator, where you can choose a plan, use the sliding scale to select a contact threshold, and you can generate your monthly cost
• Click next to set up your account

Setting Up Your Account

• Here you will be asked for more information like name, business details, physical address, and others
• Then, it will ask if you have an email list, and if you do, it will provide a drop-down list to specify how many contacts you have
• However, if you do not have an email list, you can directly continue further
• Lastly, in the sign-up process, it will ask if you sell your product or service online; if you do, then select the options that are suitable and continue (this step is optional)
• After that, you will be taken to the dashboard

Winding Your Way Through the Dashboard

The essential thing in the dashboard is the toolbar on the left-hand side, which you will use to build strategies in Mailchimp for email marketing. 

• Create

You can create emails, landing pages, websites, brand designs, and automation here.

• Audience

In the audience section, you can manage email lists, import existing contacts, and create signup forms, tags, segments, surveys, etc.

• Campaign

Here, you can manage your campaigns and access campaign reports.

• Automation

You can create customer journeys, transactional emails, and retarget ads to bring back old customers in this tab.

• Website

Here you can build your website.

• Content studio

It allows you to create and store creative designs, images, videos, and other documents. It also permits connection with Instagram. 

• Integrations

In this section, you can add and manage your applications attached to your Mailchimp for email marketing.

• Search

Here, the name is self-explanatory – it is the section where you can search anything across your Mailchimp account.

The very bottom of the toolbar contains a little box with your initial, where you get options to manage notifications, upgrade your account, edit your profile, or hire an expert. 

2. Integrate Mailchimp With Your Website

First things first, you have come to Mailchimp for email marketing because you might be already having a business website up and running. Integrating it with Mailchimp is easy and a great way to channel visitors into your email list. 

• Go to the integration section in the left-hand toolbar.
• Here, you can select from the provided platforms.

Mailchimp offers various platforms to select from, and the platforms are segregated according to industries like eCommerce, website builder, custom website, and others. You can also connect your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other accounts to Mailchimp for email marketing. 

• Then you will have to enter the URL, and then they will provide a custom code.
• Copy and add this code to your website’s HTML, and then you can check the connection by clicking the button below the code box.

Here are the Best Email Marketing Tools

3. Adding Contact List and Building Signup Forms

If you have got an email list, well & good. 

• Head to the audience section on the left-hand toolbox.
• At the top of the screen, click the “add your contacts” below “grow your Mailchimp audience.”
• Then, you can select how do you want to upload your contacts- manually copying & pasting or as a .csv file.
• Manually uploading contacts can be tricky as you need to follow the format like first putting the email address, then the first name, last name, and address. Mailchimp also provides a formatting guide that can be accessed below the “copy and paste your contacts” headline.
• However, if you choose to upload as a .csv file, it will redirect you to select a file from your computer for uploading.
• It will then call for the selection of the status of your new contacts from a dropdown menu, and you can assign them as subscribed, unsubscribed, non-subscribed, or cleaned. 
• In addition, you can also organize your contacts by giving them tags. Here, you can use tags provided by Mailchimp or create your own. 
• Then, you can check if Mailchimp has recognized all your contacts; if not, it will alert you of any errors, and you can fix them before completing the process.
• Lastly, you can click “Finalize Import.” Then, after running your eye over the final review page, you can click on “Complete Import.”

If you do not already have a contact list, you can build your email database from the ground up. 

• Mailchimp has your back on this, and you can build your email list through a signup form.
• Go to “Sign up” forms in the audience section of the left-hand toolbox.

1. Form Builder

• Use the form builder to create a signup form.
• You will be taken to a form template, where you can add or delete fields according to your requirements.

2. Embedded Forms

• The form can be integrated into your website here, and the form will be turned into HTML code. 
• You can alter the style of your form, use checkboxes to determine what your audience can see, and enable GDPR fields.
• After selecting everything, you can copy the code from the bottom right box and paste it into your website builder to embed it into your webpage.

3. Subscriber Pop-up

• To create a pop-up subscription box, Mailchimp will take you to an editor where you can use options from the left-hand side menu to edit the pop-up form. 
• After designing it, you can click on “save and publish.”

4. Contact Form

• To create a contact-us form, you can use the already provided template to edit it as per your desire.
• Through the contact-us form, customers can directly reach your inbox.

4. Create Your Email Template

Email templates are the starting point of creating an email. So, when you want to send your email, you can just fill up the necessary information in the template and schedule it to send to your customers. 

• Select “create” from the left-hand toolbox, choose “email,” and from it, select “template.”
• Once you click on “get started,” you can pick one of the layout options and start editing.
• You can select from different themes, images, colors, and other things.
• It generally works on a drag and drops principle, and you can get the hang of it as you play around. 

5. Creating Your Campaign

A campaign includes using all marketing tools that Mailchimp offers, like ads, social media posts, and landing pages. Let’s build a regular email campaign!

• A regular email is sent manually and is useful when you have to send a one-off announcement. 
• Go to the “create” tab in the left-hand toolbox, and from the email dropdown menu, select “regular.”
• Then, name your campaign and select to whom you want to send the mail (It will add your whole email list).
• If you do not want to send to all of them, you can click “edit recipients” to refine your audience.
• Then tick the small box below the “edit recipients” tab, labeled as “ “personalize the ‘To’ field.” As a result, it will appear as ‘To Aditi Goel’ instead of ‘To: [email protected].’
• Now, edit the “from” field and add a compelling subject line. Make sure you do that because: “69% of email receivers report emails as spam after reading the subject line.” (Finances Online)
• Then, edit your content the same way you built the template and let your creative juices flow.

Personalize Your Emails with Merge Tags

“88% of consumers said that they are more likely to respond positively if an email appears to be personalized for them.” (Dynamic Yield). Personalization is a critical factor of new-age marketing, and you can personalize your emails using ‘merge tags.’

For example, 

You can add [LIST: COMPANY] to insert your company’s name in the footer of your email, and you can add a default value to the tag. Thus, your company’s name will appear in every mail’s footer. There are a plethora of merge tags provided by Mailchimp for email marketing, which you can use to personalize your emails. 

Send Your Email Campaign

Before hitting the send button, you should send a test mail to yourself. You should make the most of the draft feature accessible under the content preview. After adequately checking, you can send the emails immediately or schedule them for a particular time. However, the scheduling feature is not included in the free plan, for which you need to upgrade your plan.

Track Email Performance

You can check your campaign performance in the “Campaign tab,” You can either watch it online or download the full report. 

Recommended Read: Digital Marketing Courses in India

6. Automation in Mailchimp for Email Marketing

Here, you can build workflows to send particular emails in response to your subscriber’s action—for example, a reminder email when a visitor leaves their cart without making a purchase and persuade customers further in their journey. 

• You can access “customer journey” through the left-hand toolbox under the “automation” menu. 
• There you can choose from a ready-made map or create your workflow. 

7. Conduct A/B Testing

Mailchimp understands that you might be conflicted between which CTA copy is best or which subject line is catchy? Hence, you can put your best email forward by conducting A/B testing. Here, you can break your audience into sections A and B and send two email variations to them to analyze which works better. However, A/B testing is not allowed in the free plan.

• Select the “create” tab and click on “A/B test” under the “Email” sub-option. 
• Then, after naming your email campaign, you can “begin.”
• Now, select a list of emails to which you want to send a particular mail.
• After this, you can choose one of the variables: subject line, name, content, and send time. 
• You can select any one or all of them (selecting more can complicate the process) and decide how many variations of the email you want to send.
• Use the slider to determine the percentage of subscribers you want to send the mail to and select your winning metrics.
• You will be asked to enter the different versions of emails you wish to send.
• Then, you can use Mailchimp as you set up your regular campaign.
• You can now send or schedule your emails and then check the results.
• Lastly, you can select a winner under the “finalize your test” section and it will be sent to all subscribers. 

Also Read: Free Digital Marketing Tools

Why Should You Use Mailchimp for Email Marketing?

Here are the benefits of using Mailchimp for email marketing

• Benefit from free features and avoid a hole in your pocket
• It is easy to use 
• They offer the best customer service support
• You can easily grow your mail list
• Segregate and personalize customers’ journey
• Track results and improve your marketing efforts

FAQs

1. When is the most preferable time to send an email?

Though there is no ‘magical moment,’ you can decide the best time by conducting A/B testing of your emails.

2. How do I grow my email list?

• Create and offer a lead magnet to people for signing up
• Promote on social media and tell them about the benefits of subscribing 
• Remind people to join your email list everywhere and in everything you do

3. How much does membership cost?

You can make the most of the free features, and there are plenty of them. However, if you wish to take up paid plans, Mailchimp offers various plans to select from.

4. Where can I get information about earning rewards?

You can earn money by assisting your clients in achieving their marketing goals.

Conclusion

When email marketing shows good marketing results, it is best to integrate them into your marketing strategies. However, the best option is Mailchimp for email marketing to ease your process.