A newsletter is one of the best tools to both maintain your current clients and keep past and interested potential clients in-the-know about you business and your services.
Why Mailchimp? I've worked with several newsletter platforms and Mailchimp, with all its drawbacks, is still the best and most user-friendly freemium platform out there! Learn the six basics of designing and publishing your Mailchimp newsletter below.
Step 1: Learn Mailchimp terminology First of all, you need to learn Mailchimp terminology to create your newsletters:
The first time you work with Mailchimp click on Create (on the main menu) and then select Email. An Email is a newsletter.
Once you name and save the email it is listed in Campaigns (on the main menu) and becomes a Campaign. From this point on Mailchimp calls every newsletter a campaign.
You create and maintain your database of subscribers in Audience (on the main menu).
You upload and store all your images in Brand (on the main menu) > Content studio.
You format your newsletter using Blocks to add empty content blocks and then Style to add color, font and size to each block.
You Send your campaign (newsletter) to publish it.
You can reuse a published newsletter's styles by either saving it as a template or clicking the View Report button and select Replicate.
Step 2: Time to create!
Select your campaign (your newsletter) and click Design Email.
Pick a template style.
Add your content.
Experiment with all the content blocks and options.
Once your newsletter is complete, send a test newsletter to yourself and someone you trust!
Step 3: Get subscribers! This isn't a one-time activity. To get more subscribers you must always market (post and share) your latest newsletter on social media, on your website and in 'the real world'! See How do I people hear about my newsletter? in the introduction above for more information.
Step 4: Tickle your readers! Once you've completed your newsletter with content and images, you're not done yet! Don't forget to add all the following information; these fields are found when you click Edit for any campaign (newsletter). You can edit these fields as many times as you wish until you publish.
Edit name: This is the newsletter name. Create a name that is catchy and true, without sounding like SPAM. Your readers should know your business name, so you don't need to include it in the title
To: Add your database audience - once you are ready to publish.
Subject: Add a subject line of 124 characters and a preview text of 150 characters. Both these fields should give your subscribers a short and sweet taste of your newsletter, tickling them to open it and read it.
Scroll further down the page until you get to Share your campaign Link. The link will look similar to this: https://mailchi.mp/[xxxxxx]/name-of-newsletter Make sure the name in this link is the same as your newsletter's name. If you replicate an old newsletter or change the name after you created the newsletter, you must update the name manually.
Step 5: It's time to shine! Click Send to publish your newsletter. You can publish immediately or click Schedule to publish at a later date and time.
Once published, share, share, share your newsletter on all your social media channels using the link you updated in Step 4 in Share your campaign. Or you can link Mailchimp to Facebook and Instagram and let the platform do the work.
Add a link to your newsletter on your site. Here's how I link all my newsletters on my website.
Step 6: So how are you doing?
Once published, you can view the success of your newsletter. Click View Report on any given campaign (newsletter) and view an incredible amount of information, including demographics, opens, top links clicked, subscribers with the most opens, unsubscribes, bounces (emails not received) and more.
Want to learn to design your own newsletters in Mailchimp or have us design and publish them for you? Click here.
Do you want to open yourself to a more successful business? Are you lost in the social media jungle? Let me help you re-energize your business and rediscover your passion in your profession. We’ll work together to improve your marketing strategy and online exposure and find the perfect target markets for your business. Contact me today to schedule a free introductory meeting.
