A campaign is the most common concept in the Mailchimp email marketing platform. A MailChimp campaign is anything you send to your audiences whether it’s an ad, landing page, or email. It’s the first step to start communicating with your audiences and is an easy tool to use once you get the hang of it. Its price points are ideal for a wide variety of budgets.
Create Your First MailChimp Campaign
Few things to note before you commence your campaign; ensure you have subscribers in your audience but if you don’t have subscribers in your audience, you can import your contacts or invite people to subscribe with a signup form. Be sure to verify your email’s domain before you send your first email.
1. The first step to creating your MailChimp campaign is to go to Campaigns and click Create Campaign. Then click on select Email, enter a campaign name, and click Begin
2. In the section menu, click Add Recipients and choose who you’re sending the email to. Ensure to classify your audiences into different segments. Use tags to target specific sections of your contacts or use Mailchimp pre-built segments. 1n the Audience drop-down menu, select the audience you want to send your email to. And in the Segment or Tag drop-down menu, you could choose either All subscribers in the audience, Segment, Group, or any one of the available saved or pre-built options.
3. Next is to click Save and move on to the From section, where you enter the name and email address you want the message to come from and click Save. To avoid your emails entering spam, type the name of your brand or company. Let it be a recognisable name to subscribers so they feel compelled to open it.
4. To proceed, enter the Subject section. Make your subject captivating, let it draw the audience’s attention to want to know more about the content. It should be concise and faithful to the campaign’s message. Click Save and move on to the next section
5. Type the preview text. This text will be displayed after the subject line on your subscriber’s inbox. Mailchimp recommends using no more than 9 words, 60 characters, and just 1 emoji.
6. You have selected your audience, created a captivating subject, now it’s time to design your MailChimp campaign. Choose a template to start crafting your campaign. Mailchimp Free Plan comes with basic templates and these Free Plan includes different template options. You can select depending on your goals and how it can get the job done. Note that Mailchimp Free Plan does not include all pre-built templates, which means to use some of the templates available, you’ll need to upgrade. But if you prefer, you can also use this step to add content and design your email rather than using the Template feature for adding content.
7. Once your content is ready, you have the option to connect your social media account like Facebook and Twitter accounts so that Mailchimp can automatically share your campaign with your followers. It is optional.
8. Lastly, you’ll see a bulleted list at the bottom of the page that summarises the things you are and aren’t including in your email, review to ensure you are tracking everything you want to be tracking with the email. Before you send it, start by sending it to yourself to see what it looks like before sharing. Click Send and confirm or, click Schedule and select the time you’d like your email to go out. Bravo, you succeeded in creating and sending your first MailChimp campaign!
Types of Mailchimp Campaigns
To build your campaign, you need to first determine which type to use. MailChimp got different campaigns for all of its business goals. You’ll be able to add tracking options to send an email to all of the subscribed contacts in your audience, design your content, target repeat customers, edit changes, find new people on other social platforms, analyse and study its results.
1. Regular MailChimp Campaign
The Regular is the most used type of campaign. Here emails could either be sent in bulk or using segments and groups. Campaigns could also be designed and sent at a scheduled date or sent immediately.
2. Plain-Text Campaign
Is a campaign that contains only text and has no rich text formatting options, no images, no embedded hyperlinks, and is useful to send a simple email featuring only your essential content. This plain-text version of your campaign is automatically generated when you create a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) campaign and sent to contacts who prefer to receive plain-text campaigns. It is harder to read plain text emails than HTML emails. So it is vital to use dividing lines and line breaks to make it easier for your audience to read.
3. A/B Testing Campaign
This type of campaign involves creating two versions of a digital asset to see which one users respond to better. You can test subject lines, From names, content, and send times. You can also test up to eight different versions with a Multivariate campaign if you’re a MailChimp Pro user.
4. MailChimp Automated Campaign
Automated emails called drip campaigns are sent when triggered by a specific date, event, or contact’s activity. You can create custom automation from scratch, or use one of our many pre-built automation campaigns.
5. A Landing Page Campaign
Mailchimp landing page is another type of campaign aimed to communicate news or promote your services, as well as sign up new subscribers, which are the goals of any campaign.
6. Social Posts Campaign
MailChimp has also made it possible for businesses to create social posts. You can create posts on Facebook and Instagram from Mailchimp with Facebook Mailchimp integration.
Tips for Creating and Gathering Content
Keep Content Useful & Short
Most people receive numerous emails every day, so keep yours on point to make it easier for your subscribers to scan them. Make sure you’re sending subscribers new information that’s useful to them, a piece of information they don’t already have. Most people quickly scan an email before they decide whether they want to open it, so you need to keep your subject headline on point. Make it clear that the campaign is worth their time.
Show some Personality
People get more connected with your content when they feel it’s beneficial to them in one way or the other. Make your content look personal, no one wants to read an email that drones on and on. Inject some personality, add some voice, tone, and sense of humour. Let your writing reflects the way you would speak to your audiences, and keep in mind the personality of the people you’re talking to.
Treat your Audiences Like VIPs
People who subscribe to your email list are so interested in what you have to say or offer. Treat them with care and know the right content to send to them and the times. Do not over-push your products or services into their face, and also post frequently. Try to engage them in certain activities, it will serve as a motivation to them. You can also read How to Avoid Email Marketing Campaign Mistakes.
If in need of a reputable agency to help manage the MailChimp campaigns you can trust the Xanda Digital Marketing team. For more information, get in touch.