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Today you'll learn how to use Mailchimp to set up an email list and send your first newsletter. I'm David. I've partnered with Mailchimp for today's video and I'm working with Kevin to bring you more great tutorials like this one.
To get started, head to the link in the description below. You'll land here on the Mailchimp pricing page, and you'll see all the plans available when you scroll down. You can get started for free using the plan on the far right, but you'll see several things throughout this video that you'll miss out on in Essentials and Standard. But if you're okay with the 250 contact limit and the 500 emails per month limit, go for it. You can compare and contrast other features you have access to down below. Choose the plan you're most interested in and sign up for an account. Make sure you sign up with a real business email. If you try to send mass emails with a Gmail, Outlook, or any other consumer email platform, chances are you'll end up in the spam folder. Finish up the sign up process and I'll see you on the other side.
At some point, Mailchimp will ask you about your business address. Two points here. Number one, fill in a legitimate business address to follow anti-spam laws. Number two, this address appears in every email that you send. If you work from home and don't want to reveal your home address, consider getting something like a P.O. box.
Eventually, you'll get to the home dashboard, which looks something like this. I'm on the standard plan, so your dashboard might look slightly different. Step number one is to get some email subscribers. Now, in most places, Mailchimp calls subscribers contacts, and you can import contacts from another tool, but let's assume you're starting from scratch here. So, go ahead and click on the forms button in the left sidebar. Forms are a way to collect contact information and get people subscribed to your list. If you have a website already, you can create what's called a popup form to pop up on your website. If you don't have a website though, you can create a standalone landing page by clicking on other forms. To keep things simple, let's create a landing page together.
Scroll down here to browse the different kinds of forms you can create and then click on create landing page. We'll start with our landing page name. Make it something descriptive because this will show up in the title of the web page. Now, audience is just Mailchimp's term for your email list. On the free plan, you only get one audience, but on higher plans, you get more. Let's continue to the website builder.
Next, you'll choose a template for your site. Now, there aren't a lot of choices here because Mailchimp is putting more effort into their popup forms. So, if you have an existing website, definitely check that path out instead. Let's use the lead genen template with a big background image. We're now in the landing page editor. On the left side of the screen, we have the entire page which we can preview. And on the right side of the page, we have blocks which we can drag and drop in or use to modify the style of existing blocks. Let's make a few changes to make this feel like my doughnut shop instead of a plant shop.
Starting with the background image. If you've clicked on any block on the page like I have, click save and close. Then click on style in the top right. Then click on header. Click the replace button. We're going to replace this image with one of my doughnut shop. You can drag and drop any image you want into this file list or click the upload button in the top right. Now it looks a little big. That's okay cuz we're zoomed in for the video. But the problem is we can't read our text anymore. That's where the overlay color comes in. To add that overlay, we'll keep the color as black and then adjust the transparency level until the contrast looks good. There are a ton of other options to go through on the header, so I encourage you to play around and see what looks good to you. Then, very important, make sure to click the save button at the bottom left.
Here are a few other things you can do to spruce up your page. First, you can modify your logo by moving your mouse over it and then clicking the edit icon. Our logo is actually an image that wouldn't look good here. So, I'm going to delete this using the trash can icon. Then, click delete. Next, let's change the header text by editing this block. And you can make changes directly in this text editor. As you edit your page, you'll want to change other blocks, too. So, pay attention to the content, style, and settings tabs. On the content tab, you can design the text and images shown. The style tab is usually about fonts and sizes, anything that affects the display of the text and images. And settings usually enables different layout choices.
Now, let's save this and talk about the actual form on this page. By default, you just get their email address, but the more fields you ask for, the less likely someone is to subscribe. I think asking for the first name is a good compromise. And with the first name, you can personalize the email with merge tags on the standard plan or higher. For any field you add, make sure you order it properly with these grip handles. Then mark it required if you choose. You can also change the message your customer sees after they subscribe. That setting is all the way at the bottom of the page. I don't know about you, but this is not what I want my customers to see. Instead, I want them to check their email for their discount coupon. I'll show you how to send that first email automatically in the automations chapter.
Let's save and close this and let's publish it. You can preview your page before you publish it by clicking the preview button in the top right. It looks pretty good on desktop, but on mobile it's not so great. This is a real limitation of the landing page editor. Besides font size and line spacing settings you can find under mobile styles, you don't have a lot of control over appearance on mobile. For more control, you'll need to use Mailchimp's pop-up forms. But you know what they say, done is better than perfect. So, let's click save and close.
Before you publish, you can change the page title and the site icon. You can change how this page looks when you share it on X, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Here's a big one. You can also change what URL you use. You can either connect your own domain or use a Mailchimp one. And if you're on the free plan, the only option you'll have here is to generate a random Mailchimp domain. You won't be able to customize it to your brand. We'll keep the defaults here. And now, let's click publish. And congratulations, your page is live. Check it out by clicking on the link here. And test it out by becoming your first subscriber.
Now that you can get subscribers, let's make your first newsletter. Now we're back on the Mailchimp dashboard. Click on the campaigns link in the left sidebar. Then click create in the top right. We'll call this email our first newsletter and then click create email. I'm going to assume that you don't have an existing email design, so let's skip this step. You've got three options for design. If you're hardcore, you can go from scratch. You might think the fully designed template sounds best, but you don't tend to see many newsletters these days that look like this. Or at least I'm not subscribed to them. For that reason, let's choose a basic template and we'll stick with the minimal layout in the top left.
Okay, we are now in the email builder. Just like the landing page editor, you can drag and drop content blocks onto your email. You can also change the styles for the entire email by clicking on the styles tab. And to edit a specific content block, you just click on it. This logo element, for instance, is a special image. You can click set logo here, then upload your logo image once, and it will appear everywhere there's a logo. Now, pay attention to other options in the content window, too. For example, if you want to change the size of your logo, click on the scale button and then use the slider to slide it up and down. You can also link this logo to your website.
Now, one of the most important parts of your email is the copy. You can treat this block like its own text editor. For this first newsletter, I'm going to introduce a new doughnut flavor. And just like with Google Docs or Microsoft Word, you can use shortcuts like control B or control I to style text. You've also got a full editing toolbar up here. And if you're HTML savvy, you can edit the code directly. Images can be a great way to bring your message home. So, let's add an image of the donut we're talking about. Now, that's going to get some clicks. We'll scale this down just slightly. And now we need to give our reader something to do. So let's click on this button. This button is your call to action. So in this case, we want our customers to order online. You can choose where this button links to. And it doesn't have to be a website. Could be an email or even a phone number. And you can change the style of the button or any element on this page by clicking the styles button. We'll make this a pill shape. And let's remove the border. And let's make this color a bright orange.
That's looking good for the content. So now let's check out the footer. On this template, you have the option to include your social handles. That's as simple as adding your links to this page. And you're not limited to the three that they show you here. Finally, you've got the required parts of your footer, including the mailing address. Even though this is a text editor and you can delete things, Mailchimp will make sure that your address shows up. On the free plan, you'll also see a Mailchimp logo down here, which you can only get rid of if you use a paid plan.
Now, before you save and exit, there are two more things to take note of. First, definitely definitely preview how your email looks on mobile. If you need to make something look different on mobile, click on the content block to edit it and then uncheck link desktop and mobile styles. This allows you to make some changes on mobile that won't be present on desktop. Once you're happy with the mobile look, make sure you send a test message, even if it's just yourself. Here's how this shows up in Outlook. Not bad, right? But did you see this notice? This can cause you a big problem if you don't address it. It's called email authentication, which is a fancy term to say that Mailchimp needs permissions to send email on behalf of your web domain.
So, our email content is done. So, let's click save and exit. But before we send it out, we have to give Mailchimp permissions. If you don't do this, your email will end up in spam or junk. To fix that, click on your profile icon in the top right. Then click on account and billing. Then click on domains. You should see the domain of the email address that you signed up with. And you should also see that it needs authentication. So click start authentication to start the process. You can manually do this if you understand DNS settings and you want to do it yourself, but I'd really recommend to use this entry app to do it for you. You'll go through a couple of steps depending on your host. And after a minute or two, your domain is authenticated. So, we can get out of here and head back to our existing campaign. This authentication for your domain will usually only take a few minutes.
So, let's head back to our first newsletter by clicking edit. And now let's fix up these settings. Starting with the to field, you'll want to personalize the send to field if you have the first name or last name. This means you'll actually address the person by name instead of by their email address. This can help you avoid the junk folder. We only have first name here, so that's the merge tag we'll select. And if you don't see this and you're totally confused, it means you need to be on the standard plan or higher.
Let's check out the from line next. This from line shows up as the sender of the email. You can leave it as is or I've seen companies do something like this. Next, you need to set a proper subject line. These are like YouTube titles. What's going to get your customer to click on? Higher plans, Mailchimp also allows you to create A/B tests. Preview text also shows up in the inbox. Almost everyone uses this. You'll see several examples here. If you're struggling for ideas, you can also use Mailchimp's AI to generate some. Finally, when are you going to send this? You have a few options in the send time section. If you're on the free plan, you can only send now. Send time optimization like send when recipients are most likely to open or send with time warp are only available on the standard plan and higher. Let's keep this one simple and send.
Now, if you followed along with me, you've just created your first newsletter. Now is the nerve-wracking point to click the send button. Trust me, it's going to be okay. Click on send now. And this is what it looks like when you receive it. You're no longer unverified. You also see the preview text here. Keep in mind, not everyone will see your images because you might not be a trusted sender yet. But let's say you were trusted and the email shows up like you'd expect.
Now, when you head back to the campaigns view, you'll see analytics associated with your campaign. Let's review some of the most important metrics by clicking view report. First, it'll take about an hour for metrics to start showing up, but once you do, you'll see four main metrics across the top. Open rate is the percent of messages sent that were detected as opened. Click rate is the percent of messages sent that register to click on some link. Bounce rate is the percent of messages sent that were blocked or returned to sender. This also happens when an email doesn't exist. An unsubscribe rate is the percent of your audience who unsubscribed using the link in this email. Here's what this might look like on a real email. And after you send several emails, you'll get these really valuable email benchmarks. Here you can compare your metrics against your average performance and the average performance for your industry. And definitely check out some of the other information here like click traffic as well as audience demographics.
Now remember, we wanted people to get a discount code when they joined our list. Let's wrap up talking about automations. This time, back on the dashboard, click on automations. Now, this is only available in the Essentials plan and higher. With automations, you can send email or SMS messages based on a number of different triggers. One of those triggers, which we see here, is a welcome flow. So, we'll use this template to send that discount code. This opens the automation builder, and it's actually going to create an email using AI. It'll probably give you a decent start, but you'll want to edit it yourself. So, instead of clicking turn on, which will send this email right away, let's click on edit email in builder.
This email editing experience is very similar to the email newsletter we just built together. So, I know that you can change the subject and the content. What's more important is the automation builder itself. This is a workflow view. You can navigate around by clicking and dragging or by zooming with the buttons in the bottom right. Workflows can start with one or more triggers. The trigger that's already set up for us is when someone signs up to our list. You can click on add trigger to browse other triggers, including when a tag was added, they were sent an email, or it's even their birthday. Once a trigger occurs, you can either start an action right away, or you can use a rule. Actions include anything in this list, like sending an email or an SMS. Rules include splitting the path based on a certain condition. This will send your subscribers down different paths in your workflow depending on their properties. With these actions, rules, and a little help from the Mailchimp API, you can make funnels to meet just about any need.
All right, it's time to stop watching and start doing because you know enough to send your first email now. So, head to the link in the description below to get started and stay tuned for our next tutorial where we dive into SMS marketing with Mailchimp. I'm David and I'll see you in the next video.