Getting started with email marketing? Every platform is different and offers its own unique benefits. While there is no standard for email marketing, we often recommend Mailchimp to our clients that are just getting started. MailChimp is one of the better known email marketing platforms and one of the easiest to use. It integrates with a lot of other services and is highly trusted. More than 10 million people currently use MailChimp to design and send emails and you could be one of them! Read on and find out how to get started.
5 Tips to Getting Started
1. Integrate Social Media
Integrating social media with your email marketing allows you to cross-promote your marketing materials. MailChimp makes it easy for you to post your e-blasts to social media. Under your account, go to ‘Integrations’ and connect your Twitter and/or Facebook pages. By doing this, you can automatically publish your e-blasts onto your social media platforms. This is great because it boosts customer engagement and improves your website’s SEO.
2. Spend Time on Your Subscriber Lists
Obviously before you begin sending email campaigns you will need to import a list of subscribers. While your list can be as simple or as robust as you want it to be, we recommend staying focused on your goals. If you want to segment your emails based on location, make sure the subscribers’ locations are specified. If you want to personalize the e-blasts, which we highly recommend, then you should include a field for First and Last Name. Segmenting your lists based on demographics important to you will help increase your open and click-through rates.
3. Create a Branded Template
Within MailChimp you will find a host of templates to choose from. While it is always an option to code your own, the MailChimp Basics and Theme templates offer drag-and-drop capabilities. If you are looking for greater flexibility with your layout, we recommend selecting a template from the ‘Basics’ tab. If you are looking for something quick and easy to add your content to, you may want to check out the ‘Themes’ tab. Either way, we suggest setting up a template before getting started. Make sure that it has your logo and is properly branded for your company.
4. Add Secondary Users
If you have a coworker that needs report access but should not be able to send campaigns, MailChimp has the perfect solution! By adding secondary users you can give others limited access to your account. You can also give full access to others, for example, when a freelance company wants to manage your email campaigns from their account. Make sure you take advantage of this feature and add secondary users when multiple people will be accessing one account.
5. Use a Corporate Email Address
When you set up your email list and before you send a campaign, you will need to specify and verify a legitimate “from” email address to send from. This email address can be anything as long as you have access to it and are able to verify that you own it. The best way to go about this is by setting up an alias email address under your website domain. For example, set up Enewsletter@CompanyName.com and have it direct to your marketing team. Or if you do not have this capability, you can set up a Gmail address to send from. Just make sure that it reflects your company name.
If you need assistance getting started with MailChimp, give us a call today!
