Using MailChimp to manage an email newsletter
Email newsletters, how hard can they be? Well, I just set up my first HTML e-newsletter campaign and it’s been a difficult, sometimes frustrating experience, but worthwhile because email is a great marketing tool. I never realised it would all be so complicated!
These days most web designers know they should write standards-compliant HTML and CSS code. But unlike websites, there are no standards for email. There are so many different software programs and web-based email applications and they all display emails differently from one another. Many of them strip out html code; some don’t display pictures by default; some won’t show background images; and some ignore CSS altogether.
Creating an HTML email newsletter is like a trip back in time to the dark ages of web design: tables for layout, repetitive style attributes within the HTML, and lots and lots of font tags.
There are pitfalls ahead. For example, if too many recipients hit the spam button you could get your organisation blacklisted as a spammer. And legally you are supposed to ask people to opt-in to receive your email newsletters and provide them with a means to unsubscribe.
You can’t use Outlook and your usual email address to send off your e-newsletters. If you’re going to do the job properly you need the proper tools. That’s why I’ve started using MailChimp. You might have heard of its older brother, SurveyMonkey. MailChimp has the cuter logo. Sadly, I think it was the logo that originally convinced me to get a MailChimp account.
Here’s a summary of what you have to do:
1) design an HTML email using antiquated coding methods.
This is the difficult step and you may need help from a web designer. Your code has to be correctly coded but differently than you might be probably used to. Read MailChimp’s very readable guide to Designing, Coding and Delivering HTML email.
You also need to provide a plain text version. That’s much easier.
2) provide the correct information
If your message contains too many of the wrong sorts of words it’s likely to be given the boot by recipients’ spam filters. I had to remove the words ‘free’, ‘funding’ and ‘grants’ from the text before I could be confident of anyone actually receiving it. Which was a bit annoying because the whole point of the email campaign was to offer organisations free funding grants.
Your email must give your organisation’s address, offer an unsubscribe link, and explain to recipients why they’re receiving the email. If you don’t do this properly someone at MailChimp writes you a very polite email to tell you off and offers you advice.
3) test it in dozens of different email clients
You could send test emails to people you know who use Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Lotus Notes, Eudora, Thunderbird etc etc and ask them if it looks ok. No seriously, use Inbox Inspector instead. That’s MailChimp’s testing tool - you have to pay extra but it’s worth it.
4) compile a list of people to send the email to
You can either put a subscribe link on your website, or import a list of recipients’ emails (but you must have asked their permission first). Be careful when doing this as MailChimp, quite rightly, are very strict about what you can and can’t do with people’s emails. You’ll get one of those lovely tellings-off if you transgress the rules so figure out what the rules are before you send your e-newsletter.
5) send the campaign
Click a button to send ‘em all off. By this stage you’ll be giving a huge sigh of relief but it’s not over yet.
6) check your stats
Now you’ll find out how successful your email campaign was. Find out how many people opened the email and if they forwarded it to anyone else. Track how many of them clicked on a link to visit your website.
If there are too many bounced emails you should check the quality of your email address list. If too many recipients hit their spam report button you could get banned.
Figure out what worked well and what didn’t and use this information to improve your next email campaign.
Final thoughts
So what do I like about MailChimp? Well, the website is clear and fairly intuitive. There’s a lot of functionality in there should you need it. It’s inexpensive (I spent $30 to send 1,000 emails). The customer support is firm but friendly. The documentation is helpful.
Most of all, whenever I got frustrated with the whole confusing business of trying to send bulk emails, the friendly little monkey face in its cute-looking postman’s hat looked back at me, giving me encouragement.
And their blog’s called Monkey Brains - how cute is that?
