What is Mailchimp? A complete guide to using Mailchimp from A to Z

Mailchimp is a widely used tool, best described as a free email marketing services service that still gives users everything they need to run email campaigns as a newcomer. In this article, Mona Media will explain what Mailchimp is and show you how to use it, so you can run your email marketing campaign as effectively as possible.

What is Mailchimp?

When people talk about email marketing then you already know the name Mailchimp, one of the most widely used email marketing services around.

Like other email marketing tools, Mailchimp is a service for collecting recipients' email addresses, managing lists and addresses, and creating and sending bulk emails to everyone on a list.

It also lets you track and report on campaign results, such as click and open rates. Mailchimp is currently used by more than 10 million businesses and individuals worldwide.

Why should bloggers use Mailchimp?

With Mailchimp you can create an account and use the service without paying. You can upgrade later to a paid Mailchimp plan if you need more than the built-in features offer. On the free plan you can build an email list of 2,000 addresses and send up to 10,000 emails a month for free, which is very reasonable for a new user.

See also:

• What is a blog? A complete guide to blogs, blogging, bloggers and Blogspot

Mailchimp guide for beginners

Here is a basic guide you can follow along with, covering things like creating an account, designing an email collection form, creating an email campaign and sending it to customers.

Create a free Mailchimp account

First, go to the Mailchimp homepage. Then click the “Sign Up Free” button.

Next, fill in your email address, username and password.

Note that you can use a Gmail address to create the Mailchimp account. But when you start running a campaign to send marketing email, you should use an email on your own domain.

For better results and a more professional look, don't use Gmail as the address you send marketing email from.

Then check your email to confirm. Mailchimp sends you an email like the image below. Click the “Activate Account” button.

You will be taken to a new page, where you click “I’m Not A Robot”.

Now choose “FREE”. A message appears saying that on this plan you can build an email list of up to 2,000 contacts and send 10,000 emails/month. Click “Complete”.

Mailchimp will then ask you to complete some account details; just follow its steps.

That's your Mailchimp account done. Now let's move on to the next steps.

Add contacts to your email list

With a free Mailchimp account you only get one email list, and it is created automatically when you finish creating the account in the previous step.

During account creation you land on “Add your contacts”. You can click “import from a file” right away to add your customer email list. If you don't want to add a list at this step, just skip it by clicking “I’ll do this later”.

If you do want to add a list now, MONA suggests 3 ways:

• Method 1: Upload a CSV file.
• Method 2: Enter addresses manually by copying and pasting each email address.
• Method 3: Import through other services such as Google Drive, Zoho… (moving from another email service to Mailchimp).

Below is how to import an email list by uploading a CSV file.

Authenticate your domain with Mailchimp

As mentioned above, for a professional look and better results, you should use an email on your own domain. Emails you send will not land in spam when you use your own domain email and have authenticated the domain with Mailchimp, which makes your email marketing far more effective.

Mailchimp encourages and requires users to verify their own-domain email. MONA will walk you through the steps.

First, in the Mailchimp dashboard go to “Brand” -> “Manage Domains”.

In “Domains Overview”, click the “Verify Domain” button.

Now enter your domain email address. Click “Send Verification Email”.

You will immediately receive a verification code by email. Copy this code.

Then go back to Mailchimp, paste the verification code and click “Verify”

Once verified, you should do one more step: authenticate DKIM and SPF to make sending more reliable (in simple terms, to make sure spam filters don't send your email to Spam and that it carries enough trust as sent from domain your domain).

To authenticate DKIM and SPF, go to “Brand” -> “Manage Domains” -> click “Authenticate” on the domain row.

Mailchimp will then give you 2 records, a TXT and a CNAME.

Now go back to the DNS management service you use for your domain and add the 2 records. For example, MONA uses Cloudflare to manage DNS, so we add the 2 records there.

Next, go back to Mailchimp and click “Authenticate Domain”; if it works, you're done.

Note: It takes about 24-48 hours for Mailchimp to pick up the DNS records after you add them, so you can leave it and come back to click Authenticate later.

That's it. In the next step you can send from your own-domain email when you create an email campaign.

See more:

• Everything about domains, from A to Z

Create an email list and signup form

An email list is the first thing you need for email marketing. You also need a form to collect email addresses (a signup form) to put customers' emails on the list.

In Mailchimp, to manage your email list, go to the “Audience” menu -> “Manage Audience” -> “View audience” to see every list you have.

A free Mailchimp account is limited to a single email list. You need to upgrade to a paid plan to create more lists.

At this step, to create a signup form for the list, click “Stats” -> “Signup forms” as shown below.

Mailchimp then gives you 4 ways to create a form, as shown below:

• Forms builder (1): Design, build and translate the signup form and reply emails
• Embedded forms (2): Generate the code HTML to embed the signup form in your website or blog.
• Subscriber popup (3): Design a pop-up signup form you can embed in any website.
• Form integrations (4): Create a signup form using one of Mailchimp's ready-made links.

Mona Media will show you option 1 (Form builder). It is the basic option and gives you every tool to design a complete email signup form.

With this option you get a link to the signup page, so people can subscribe to your email list once the form is designed. Some popup plugins and email marketing plugins also use this same form to display to users.

Click the dropdown arrow in “Signup forms” and pick each part of a form. Mona found some important pages, circled in red in the image above. For example, the “Signup form” and the “Confirmation thank you page” should be made a bit eye-catching

• Signup form: The main content of the signup form (important).
• Signup form with alert: The signup form with error messages for missing required fields, such as no email entered or a mistyped email.
• ReCAPTCHA confirmation: Text confirming the person is human, not a bot signing up automatically.
• Confirmation thank you page: The page confirming the email signup was successful (important).
• Final welcome email: The thank-you email confirming the signup was successful.

To save time designing the signup form, you can switch to the “Translate it” tab and choose “Vietnamese” to translate it into Vietnamese as before.

You can go to the “Build it” tab to design the form's fields.

A typical signup form has basic fields such as email address (Email Address) and first name (First Name).

To add colors or change the form's font, switch to the Design it tab. After each change in Mailchimp, click “Save Field”.

You can design other pages the same way, such as the Confirmation thank you page.

See more:

• Top 10 WordPress popup plugins for creating popups quickly and easily

How to create an email campaign to send to customers

Once you have collected a number of newsletter signups, the next job is to email readers whenever there is a new blog post, a promotion, news and so on. Doing this regularly builds a bond with readers and also shows you are professional.

First, to create a campaign, choose Campaigns -> Create Campaign.

A popup appears; choose “Email”.

If you only send ordinary emails (announcements, promotions, newsletters and so on), choose Regular (the ordinary everyday email in HTML or plain text format).

Enter the campaign name in the “Campaign Name” box. This is not the email subject; it is only for telling campaigns apart, so name it in a way you can remember and sort. Click “Begin”.

There are 2 other options:

• Plain-text campaign: Sends email in plain text format only.

• Automated campaign: Sends an automated series of emails. This suits automatic newsletters that send new posts from your website to customers (MONA covers it below).

You will go to a new page with a few sections to complete:

• From: Enter the sender's name and email address.
• Subject: Enter the email subject.
• Content: Enter the email content.

At the bottom there are links to view the email in a browser and to share it on social networks.

After filling in the “From” section as shown below, click “Save”.

In “Subject”, enter the main and secondary subject lines for the email, and remember to click “Save”.

In “Content”, choose a template (email layout), or simply choose “Simple Text”.

To edit any part of the email, click it in the left panel and edit the content in the right panel. The most important part of an email is the text. Write clearly and simply, and use as few images as you can. This helps keep the email out of spam or the Promotions tab.

When done, click “Save & Close” and “Continue”.

Next, to preview the email, send a test to an address of your choice. Once you've checked it, click “Send” to send it to the whole email list.

Back in “Campaigns”, you can see the open and click rates of your campaigns. For more detailed statistics, click “View Report” on each campaign.

Set up an automated email campaign in Mailchimp with an RSS feed

Mailchimp's automated emailing through your blog's RSS feed lets you announce newly updated posts on a set schedule.

To set it up, go to “Automate” -> “Email”.

Then choose “Share blog update”.

Enter a campaign name, then choose the email list to send to (a free account has only 1 list, so there is nothing to choose).

On the next page, enter the RSS feed URL. It is usually http://yourdomain.com/feed

Then you can schedule sending daily, weekly and so on, at a specific time. For example, MONA sets a weekly update for Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Leave the defaults and click “Next”.

Then enter the campaign name in the Campaign name box. Mailchimp fills in the rest automatically, or you can set them as you like. From experience, you can enter information just like a normal campaign, but the wording should be more of a summary since this is a notice sent from the RSS feed.

Next, you can pick any template for this campaign, but pay attention to the content: choose content that supports RSS, namely RSS Items and RSS Header.

When you drag and drop them into the email content you will have 2 blocks, RSS Items and RSS Header, as shown below.

You can click “Preview and Test” to preview and send a test.

If all looks good, at the final step choose “Start RSS” to save the campaign, or “Send now and start RSS campaign” to send this one immediately.

That's it. From now on, on the day and time you set each week, Mailchimp pulls your blog's RSS data and emails your contact list a roundup of the latest posts.

You can also create other automated emails:

• Welcome New Subscribers: Send a welcome email after a user signs up to your list.
• Educate Subscribers: Create a sales and nurturing email series for your list (requires a paid upgrade).
• Say “happy birthday”: Create an automatic email sent to customers on their birthday.

With the free Mailchimp service, Mona Media we believe you can run email marketing easily and professionally. The weakness of Mailchimp, even on paid plans, is that however well you optimize, emails still go straight to the Promotions tab in Gmail. Think about this before you use it.