Email marketing tips to get you started

Create an email marketing plan

To assist you with the planning process, we’ve highlighted some best practices to consider when developing an email marketing strategy.

Define your target market

Whatever you sell, you must have a firm grasp on your audience in order to communicate effectively with them. Mailchimp enables you to segment users within your audience in order to send them personalized and targeted emails that increase engagement, foster trust, and generate a higher return on investment.

Signup sources

How and where subscribers subscribe to your list is some of the most valuable data your signup form has to offer. If you run an e-commerce business with a Mailchimp-connected store, knowing how your customers joined your list can help you determine how to communicate with them and where to focus your marketing efforts in the future.

Segments and groups

Once you’ve segmented your larger audience into smaller groups, you can use groups and segments to send more relevant and personalized emails to your recipients—and the more relevant the campaign, the better the results. While there will be times when you want to send to your entire list, segmenting users and utilizing Mailchimp’s segmentation tools can significantly increase your campaigns’ click-through rates and e-commerce orders.

Decide what to write

Now that you’ve identified your audience, it’s time to consider your content. What message do you wish to convey to your audience? How would you describe your content marketing strategy? You’ll want to send emails that are relevant and meaningful to your subscribers, so keep in mind why they signed up.

Establish your sending frequency and goals

There is no hard and fast rule for how frequently you should email your customers, but if you send too frequently, your subscribers are likely to tune you out or unsubscribe entirely. Some users who run a blog or news website may choose to send daily updates to their subscribers, while others may choose to send only twice a month to keep their subscribers engaged. Choose to send your email campaign at your own pace, and monitor unsubscribe and click-through rates to determine the appropriate frequency.

Make a schedule

Creating a content calendar to schedule your campaigns, blog posts, and social media posts is one way to ensure you stay on track.

Your email marketing schedule will be determined by your industry, the content you send (content marketing strategy), and the frequency with which you send emails.

Design your emails
Design tips
When designing email campaigns, keep your message in mind and your design simple. We recommend organizing your campaign’s elements in a hierarchy, with the most critical information or primary takeaway at the top, so people can quickly scan your email if they’re pressed for time
Create custom templates
Are you looking for more control over the design of your emails? You can also create your own HTML template and import it directly into Mailchimp.
Conduct a test of your emails
Conduct tests on a variety of email clients and ISPs.
Because each email client is unique, the campaign you created in Mailchimp may appear slightly differently in your subscribers’ inboxes. Always check emails on mobile devices as well, as responsive designs can cause them to appear differently.
Send a few test emails to acquaintances and coworkers
If you have any friends or coworkers who can proofread your email and provide feedback on the layout, you can send them a test email to allow them to preview the campaign directly in their inbox.
A/B Testing campaigns can help you determine the best version
Uncertain which subject line will generate the greatest number of opens and clicks? Consider whether there is a particular time of day when your customers are most likely to make a purchase as a result of your campaign. Conducting an A/B test enables you to experiment with various versions of your emails in order to determine the impact of any changes you make on your results.

What you can do with marketing automation
In contrast to traditional campaigns, automations are a targeted email or series of emails that you can schedule and forget about. From a welcome email series to follow-up emails following a purchase to rewarding your customers with a special incentive, automation streamlines your customer communications, giving you more time to focus on content creation and ROI (ROI). Additionally, you can create, send, and track order notifications to keep customers informed about their purchases from your store.

Track your progress

Mailchimp reports contain marketing analytics data that will assist you in refining your marketing strategy in the future.
Opens and clicks
These are the most obvious metrics for campaign engagement, as they indicate how well your subject lines and campaign content resonate with a specific list. However, it’s critical to consider how your open and click-through rates compare to those of other businesses in your industry; otherwise, you’re analysing your statistics in a vacuum.
E-commerce data
If you’ve integrated your store with Mailchimp and enabled e-commerce link tracking for your campaigns, you can view subscriber purchase data in campaign reports, subscriber profiles, and the account dashboard.
Website traffic
Your campaigns can assist you in increasing traffic to your website or online store. Additionally, there are a few integrations that you can sync with Mailchimp in order to monitor trends in website traffic or e-commerce activity following the delivery of a campaign.