SECURE YOUR AUDIENCE WITH AN EMAIL LIST
How to setup your Mailchimp account.
In my previous post, “What if Facebook Shut Down Tomorrow?”, I touched on the importance of converting your audience from social media into an email list so that you never need to worry about platform or algorithm changes cutting you off from your hard-earned followers.
Today, I’m going to show you how to set up your free account on Mailchimp. While some of you may have audiences that are too big for the free account (>2,000 contacts), it will be a great option for the vast majority of small business owners.
Here’s what we’re going to go over…
- Setting up your MailChimp account
- Setting up your audience
- Creating a campaign
...Let’s get started!
Setting up your account
Ok, this first step (well, all of them really)
is really easy!
- Head over to Mailchimp’s signup page and click “Sign Up Free”
- Type in your Email address, desired Username, and Password. Click “Get Started!”
- Look for a confirmation email and click the activation link.
The first time you login to your Mailchimp account they will ask you for some required information, but then you’re ready to set up your audience!
Did something go wrong? You can find Mailchimp’s support article for creating new accounts here: https://mailchimp.com/help/create-an-account/
Setting up your audience
Your audience is an up-to-date record of your marketing contacts. After you create your Mailchimp account, you can immediately start adding contacts. They have a lot of optional features for organizing and separating contacts within your audience, if you’re interested in using them.
There are two ways to get contacts into Mailchimp.
- If you already have a list of client emails from elsewhere, you can easily import them.
Here’s a walkthrough that Mailchimp provides to show you how to import your contacts to their platform: https://mailchimp.com/help/import-contacts-mailchimp/
I’m going to work with the assumption that you, like a lot of small businesses, don’t already have a list of client emails to simply import into Mailchimp. What do we do now? Don’t worry!
- Mailchimp will automatically generate a signup form for your audience that you can share on Facebook or your website to start collecting those emails right away. They even have optional features for customizing the look of your signup form so it can match your branding.
To access these Signup forms, go to the Audience
section, click “Manage Audience” and then click “Signup forms” from the drop down.
If you would like additional support on the signup form builder, Mailchimp has a support page for it here: https://mailchimp.com/help/how-the-form-builder-works/
Creating a campaign
Congratulations! It’s time to start your first email campaign!
- Click the “Create” drop-down and choose “Email”.
- Enter a name for this specific email campaign and click “Begin”.
From there, you craft the email that you want to send to your audience. You can make it super simple or use their more complex tools to customize the look of your email.
Here are a few Mailchimp support articles that may be of help to you.
Need help getting started with your campaign?
Create a Regular Email Campaign https://mailchimp.com/help/create-a-regular-email-campaign/
Need help getting your email to look the way you want it to?
Design a Campaign in Mailchimp https://mailchimp.com/help/design-an-email-campaign-in-mailchimp/
Conclusion
Welcome to the world of Email Marketing.
Email Marketing platforms like Mailchimp are great tools for your business and will help you keep in contact with your audience regardless of any potential social media platform algorithm changes. Nurture your list, treat your audience with respect and don’t spam their inboxes
with too-frequent sales messages and your email list could grow to be your business’s biggest asset.
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