Sending Newsletters is an extremely important part of any online business. In this post I’ll teach you how to use Mailchimp to send Newsletters.
Even though almost every small business owner I discuss email newsletters with say that they are constantly annoyed with newsletters, they still remain one of the top marketing strategies outperforming most social media outlets.
Facebook Click Through Rate is about 0.9% while email lands at 10.29%.
According to Litmus, “On average, email drives an ROI of $36 for every dollar spent”
On top of all that, You own that email list. AS technology continues to advance, we really don’t know what will happen to the popular social media channels. If Facebook user count drops or their algorithm changes , will you still be able to reach your audience?
Setting up Your Mailchimp Account
This is a very simple process. Just head over to Mailchimp.com and click the Sign Up button in the top right corner.
Once you have gone through their onboarding questions you’ll end up on your account Dashboard
Let’s start by adding any contacts you may already have.
On the left side toolbar, click on Audience and then Audience Dashboard. You should see a large button that says “Add your Contacts”
At this point MailChimp offers an option to import by CSV or copy and paste from a spreadsheet. I have always found the copy and paste was an easier option.
Simply copy the cells of your spreadsheet and past them into MailChimp as directed
Then they will ask you to add your contact to an existing list. The default is “Subscribed”, which will be fine for most purposes.
The next step is to “Tag” your Contacts.
Thsi is really useful for different types of email opt-ins. You can have all contacts on a master list and have clients receive different emails based on how they signed up.
For this project, I created a tag called “Presale”
Now it’s time align your list and make sure the names and emails are in the correct columns and then verify and complete.
You Now have an Audience waiting to receive your newsletter!
Designing Your Newsletter
This is probably the easiest part of the process. Mailchimp makes it very easy with several design templates that will walk you right through the process.
From the Left Side Dash Board, Select Campaigns and then All Campaigns. Once that page loads, Select the Create Campaign Button on the Upper Right Side
That will lead you to a new page with a new options on the left side.
Select Emails and Then Regular.
This will give you the option to Name Your Campaign. This is what you are naming this individual email you are sending. You can name it anything you want, it will only be seen by and not the recipient. A name like Newsletter 12/18/21 or New Years Promotion would be appropriate.
At this point, it’s as simple as moving through the steps provided by Mailchimp and sending it out. You will have the opportunity to send a test email to yourself for verification.
- Add Recipients (Choose Contact List)
- Add From Email and Name
- Write Subject and Preview Text
- Design and Write Content using Mailchimp's Email Builder
Connecting your WordPress Site to Mailchimp
The purpose of connection your WordPress site to Mailchimp is so that you Email Opt-ins are automatically added to your newsletter.
I am going to demonstrate using Elementor Pro, but just about every Newsletter Plugin will have similar functionality.
You’ll need an API Key from your Mailchimp account. Here are the steps to get that.
From the main Dashboard Page, Click on your Profile Icon in the Bottom Left of the page and select Account.
Then click Extras and API Keys from the dropdown menu.
Click the “Create a Key” Button and it will then show up. Highlight and Copy it to your clipboard.
Now back to your WordPress Dashboard. Hover on Elementor . then click settings.
From here you will click the Integrations tab and scroll to the Mailchimp section to enter and then validate the API Key.
On the page where your Opt-in or Contact form is, Once you select that module, you’ll click on “Actions after Submit” in the builder sidebar.
Select Mailchimp and then default for API key.
After that the option will appear to select audience and add tags.
Click update and you are Good to Go!
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