Mailchimp explained – an Introduction and Helpful Guide
Managing your email Newsletter communications is important nowadays, to stay in touch with Customers and Friends.
All that takes time, so we try to recommend some useful Apps – you may recognise some and others will be new. Lets look at Mailchimp, which is like Constant Contact, only FREE for up to 2000 contacts.
Create an email Marketing Plan
Useful FREE App MailChimp is a “Cloud” based FREE email marketing app that allows you create Newsletters and mail them FREE to up to 2000 subscribers and even share the newsletter via Social Media avenues, Facebook and Twitter.
Try emailing once a month and be consistent, same day or date and same time every month. You can move to weekly when you have the hang of it, if you have enough useful content to share.
Start by creating an account, then add your details. Now add your contact list by importing from say Excel to Mailchimp. Use first name, surname and email address. Import existing customer lists from your system with the FREE tool. Needless to say these contacts should have opted in and given you their permission for you to send them email newsletters.
Add new contacts and keep building up your list, as you go.
Get the message right in email Marketing !
E-mail marketing is all about delivering quality valuable content that people want to read, so personalise it, deliver it at the right time, measure results, test options and get better as you go – listen to the feedback. If you are offering something, make it a Special Offer – do not Spam people or they will simply “Unsubscribe”. If you get any Unsubscribes, take that as a hint and guidance, so work out why people might unsubscribe.
Tip: Do tweak the default Unsubscribe text to say something friendly such as ‘You can Unsubscribe at any time. However we promise we will never Spam you. And you may find some of our Newsletter very useful from time to time.’ Something like that
Nurture your list by sharing useful Tips or articles. Always add value when you are asking someone to read your mail or newsletter etc.
There is a FREE Version of Mailchimp and there is a paid version if you need more capacity, but most small companies can manage with a limit of 2000 subscribers. It is $30 a month for over 2000 names, but you can get the Essentials plan starting at $9.99 – see their Pricing Page.
email is under your control with no middlemen like Google or Facebook, who can change their policies or algorithms at will and affect your Digital Marketing. Any questions about email marketing for your business – contact [email protected]
Have a look at the video by Darrell Wilson here. Or why not take 15 minutes to read a more detailed article here about the best email marketing software options. Written by Gael Breton over at Authority Hacker this covers more detail, answers loads of questions and ranks the options available to you, to help you come to the right decision for your company.
What do we use ourselves?
As of 2020 we started using Active Campaign to send out our Mailshot every week. This is a paid app, so we pay for the ‘Lite’ version for 2500 names at $49 a month. The ‘normal’ rate is $99 a month, but we are happy with the $49 monthly deal. We feel we will use the integrations that are available with this plan. There is also an option for under 500 names for just €9 a month. AC will continually try to upsell you to their CRM Customer Relationship Managment tool.
The client onboarding at Active Campaign is excellent. And they offer loads of help, in the form of guides, videos and one to one personal support. They also help if you want to upload your list or import it from somewhere else. They will want you to show where you got the email addresses from, to ensure that your list is legit.
