MailChimp:A Brief Introduction

Joe Struss / Creative Services (ITS)October 11, 2010

Permission to reproduce all or part of this document for noncommercial purposes is granted, provided the author and Iowa State University are given credit. To copy otherwise requires specific permission.

The author’s contact information is available at the IT Learning Pods web site: http://css.ait.iastate.edu/Copyright © 2010 by Creative Services / ITS

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MailChimpWhy use MailChimp?MailChimp is an online application that can help you organize your mail lists, create online mailings and newsletters and help you e-mail them out to people plus get a report back on your results. MailChimp is free to store up to 1,000 subscribers and send up to 6,000 e-mails a month making it an excellent online tools for departments and student organizations on campus.

How do you access MailChimp?To access MailChimp, you need to go to http://www.mailchimp.com/ and click on the Sign Up Free button. If your club or group has a web site, twitter or facebook page- including access information for MailChimp to those sites/pages will also be helpful when putting together your resources within MailChimp. If you already have an account with MailChimp then you just click on the login button on the lead page and enter your MailChimpID and password then you will be taken to the dashboard page. You will also be taken to the dashboard page once you have completed initial account registration.

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What are the main parts of MailChimp?The tabs in the upper area show you the five main areas of MailChimp which are the dashboard (starting area), campaigns (e-mail and newsletter creation), lists (list of subscribers), reports (from your campaign e-mails and newsletters) and autoresponders (which give back automatic replies). There is also help and logout in the upper right hand corner and tutorial videos and blogs down below.

What are the primary MailChimp tasks?The primary MailChimp tasks in order are to: 1.) create a list of subscribers or create an online link which creates a list, 2.) create a campaign for an online e-mail or newsletter and 3.) view campaign reports which show you your results.So you basically put a link on your web site that asks people to subscribe or unsubscribe to your e-mail list or newsletter and then send out information to your subscribers via your MailChimp campaign and view the results via a report.

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How do I create a list?You can create a list pretty easily by clicking on the lists tab and then clicking on the create new list button. MailChimp will prompt you to create list(s) or create groups. You want the create list button as the create groups button give you the ability to sub-divide an existing group.

After you have selected the create list button, MailChimp will prompt you for your list information such as the name of the list, the from name for the list, a default reply-to email address, a default subject, a reminder about how people got on your list, a normal postal mail

contact address, an option to e-mail the owner of the list when you subscribe or unsubscribe from the list, and subscriber format information. Fill out the information and click on the Save button when you are finished.

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Once your list is created, you can import a group of e-mail addresses to your list, change the fields of your list (the default is first name, last name and email address) and add groups to your list. You can also just start an email campaign at this point or edit one of your existing lists. Probably the most important thing to do though is to create a signup form so people can subscribe to your email list.

How can I import an e-mail list of subscribers into MailChimp?Click on the Lists tab then click on the import link for your list. You can upload a csv delimited list, do a copy paste from excel or upload from a Constant Contact list or other commerical lists.

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You must, however, have permission of the people on the Contact list to have them subscribe to your list. Valid permission is imperative to MailChimp and if you fail to follow this rule- your MailChimp authorization can be revoked. Further MailChimp guideline information on validity of email lists can be obtained from: http://www.mailchimp.com/kb/article/can-i-use-my-list-in-mailchimp

How do I add a single subscriber to an email list?Click on the List tab, click on import in the list that you want to add a member then click on the add people button to add a person to your list. Try adding yourself. You can also remove people from there as well.

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Click on the Subscribe button when you are finished.How do you create an online signup form for a list?Click on the List tab then under design signup form pull down to the list for which you want to create a signup form. You will see a signup form on your left and additional fields that you can add along with field settings on your right.

Click on any field on the right to add it to your form and/or alter its options. Clicking on any field already in the form allows one to add or subtract that field and/or alter its options. You can also have more complete control over the “look” of the form by clicking on the design it tab.

When you are finished, click on the save & exit button. Then to create the html code for your form, click on the forms button for your list then click on for your website and then Signup Form Embed Code. You can also create unsubscribe link code from that page as well. On the Define Form Structure side, remember to click on include all fields if you have added additional fields to your form.

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There are plenty of other options to look at on the right as well. When you are happy with your form, simply cut and paste the html at the bottom left of the page onto your site’s web page where you want the subscriber form to occur. It is probably a good idea to add an unsubscribe link as well just to let people know that they can unsubscribe as well as subscribe to your email list or newsletter.

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Once you have a list, how do you create an email newsletter?You can create an email newsletter under the campaigns tab. Click the campaigns tab then click under Create Campaign and pull down to regular ‘ol campaign. Next choose the list for which you want to make your campaign and click on Next.

Fill out the information on the left and the options on the right. You will need to Name your campaign, give it a Subject line as well as giving it a From and a Reply-to. On the right, you will probably want to track your opens to see if anyone actually reads you email or newsletter and if you hook in Twitter or Facebook to your account- you can also announce the email or newsletter on Twitter and Facebook automatically. Click Next when you are ready to move on.

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The next step is the most fun. Here you get to design your email or newsletter. You can use one of the pre-designed templates, design a template yourself from scratch or use the MailChimp design genius. Click around on some of the pre-designed templates and see if there is anything that you like. For class today we are going to use the Design Genius as it is usually the fastest way to get started.

Click Design Genius. MailChimp will show you the three steps inside Design Genius which are: 1.) Choose your header, 2.) Choose your colors and 3.) Pick you layout. Click get started to continue.

Choose one of the headers from the pull down menu on the upper left. There are many to choose from and you can do color alteration on them later on. You can also preview one of the templates by hovering over one of them and selecting View.

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Alternatively, you can also upload a 600 pixel wide .jpg, .png or .gif if you choose to create your own header. Click Select on one of the headers to move on to the next step.

Next choose a color scheme from the colors on the right. You can change the category of your color scheme if you would like a different color palette.

Also at this point you can click on the design header button at the top of the page to alter the text & design background for your header. It is a three step process whereby you choose your header background, the titling information and finally your linking information. Take some time at this juncture and try reshaping your header. When you have that done then have selected your final color scheme then finally click on the Next button above to continue.

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Lastly, you choose the Structure of your email or newsletter. The choices on the left are usually: Basic, Left Column, Right Column or Postcard. Click on each and then give MailChimp a little time and it will show you what that structure will look like with your selections. Select a structure and then click on save & add content to finish.

You will be prompted for a template name, enter one then click on Save to continue.

At this point, you would enter the content of your email or newsletter by clicking into the areas of your structure and then using the simple editor provided to add content such as text and pictures. You could also simply save & exit if you want to do this step a little later. Try adding some simple content then click on the pop-up preview button to see what your changes are going to look like then finally click on next to continue.

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After that, it shows you a plain text version of your email or newsletter. You can then alter the contents for the plain text version, view what it is going to look like with the pop-up preview button then finally click on Next to continue.

Lastly, you can see what your final email or newsletter looks like with the popup preview button, you can also send out a test version of the newsletter/email to yourself, you can edit a variety of items, you can click the send now button to send out your newsletter/email or you can schedule your newsletter/email to be send out at a particular day and time. Click the pop-up preview button and send a test message to yourself.

Click on Send now when you are all finished. Once you have sent out your first newsletter/email, you can get back reporting statistics on how many people opened your email and clicked on your email/newsletter links under the campaigns tab.

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Then click on the view report button to see how your campaign is going. It probably gives you more detailed information than what you might ever want to know.

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ReferencesFor more information on MailChimp, watch the MailChimp tutorial videos under Helpful stuff on the MailChimp dashboard tab:

For more complete information on MailChimp, watch the tutorials in the MailChimp Academy training center at:http://mailchimpacademy.blip.tv/

MailChimp Academy is also available as a podcast/videcast on iTunes.

The updated version of this workshop handout can also be found on the Social Networking area of the IT Learning Pods web site: http://css.ait.iastate.edu/Networking/

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