How to set up your Mailchimp autoresponder
In this blog you will learn, Setting Up Your MailChimp Autoresponder, to help your business nurture your cold leads into paying customers. You will see how you can save hours daily, by automating your email marketing and spending more time on your business.
What is an email autoresponder?
An email autoresponder holds all your leads and customers’ email addresses and data gathered from your marketing channels. Much like a CRM (customer relationship management) system. Your email automation system will handle all day-to-day marketing emails, that will be sent to your leads and customers as they subscribe to your business.
How does it work, and why must you have one?
Let’s say you are running a lead generation campaign, and you are asking people to sign up or download a brochure. You are going to want to capture that data somewhere, which you get from each lead. This will come in from their email address, names, their contact numbers.
Save hours daily by automating your email marketing and spend more time on your business
If you don’t have an email automation system, your new leads that enter your marketing or sales funnel, will each need to be contacted manually. This will cost you time and money, as you have to do it daily and on demand.
Setting up your Mailchimp autoresponder
At the end of this blog, you will have a complete email automation system.
In this blog post, we will be covering the complete process of how to set up your own email account in MailChimp, and automation for the first email in your leads’ journey to turn them into customers.
It’s important to remember that most people who make contact with your business on the first touchpoint will not necessarily buy from you. Using email automation is going to be the tool to help warm your leads up and turn a percentage of them into potential customers.
This is why Setting Up Your Mailchimp Autoresponder, is vital for your Business.
What will we be covering in this blog post:
Let’s get started, and remember that you can leave any comments below in this blog if you are struggling with something.
Let’s get started at the beginning by setting up your account
Save hours daily by automating your email marketing and spending more time on your business.
We will be using MailChimp for this marketing channel. Now, MailChimp has a free option, but we will highly recommend making use of their paid version, known as their Standard Package.
Setting up your account
Our very first step is going to be opening your Free MailChimp account. Before we upgrade it to their standard package, you can create your free account by clicking here.
If you find that your username has already been taken, be creative and design your own, as we have seen that most times your username might have already been used.
Below you will see the process of signing up for your free account, start by completing the form.
Follow all the needed steps in adding your business information, and once you are done click on the Get Started button at the bottom.
But first, let’s set up your audience, to Setting Up Your Mailchimp Autoresponder.
Navigate to the Audience link in the top part of your account.
Once you have accessed this page, you will see your own name as the first contact on the page. Next, click on the number shown in the image below to access your audience.
If you need help creating your account, and setting it all up, click here to contact us and we can help you do so.
Next, we are going to want to make sure that all the settings in your audience are correct and make a couple of changes if needed.
Click on the settings link you see in the image below, then click on the Audience name and campaign defaults link.
Next, we need to do a couple of settings in your audience account to ensure all is working as we want it to.
You can use the same settings as displayed in the images below and add your own email as the default address.
Customize your signup form
Every audience needs a signup form, that you can send to people to join your mailing list or embed on your website to help you generate new leads. It’s the front door to entering your email automation journey.
Next, let’s navigate to the signup form. You will find this at the top under your audience, see the image below.
Now that you have accessed the signup form tab, you are going to only want to open your form builder, as displayed in the image below.
In the form builder, you can see all the fields that your leads can complete to enter your email automation.
We will recommend leaving all the fields that you see for now as default in your account. Once you learn more about MailChimp and how it works you can come back and edit them.
So, for now, you can exit this page and we can move to our next step.
Now, MailChimp will work fine without this membership. But you will not be able to send automation emails. Now you might be saying but I don’t have the $14/pm! to set up your Mailchimp Autoresponder.
Your choice
Let me share with you, that the time and money you are going to save by using this option will be way more than the price you had to pay to get this option.
So, next, you are going to want to follow the steps below.
Navigate to the upgrade button on the top right-hand side of the page.
Next, select the Standard package. The price tag might be different.
If you have less than 500 contacts or leads to import into your account, make sure you drag the contacts slider all the way to the left, and the price should drop before you proceed to the checkout process.
Once you have done so, you can now click on the upgrade button and follow the checkout process.
Remember that you can at any time cancel your account. But once you start using MailChimp you will quickly understand why this is a must-have for your business.
Setup your Mailchimp automation
Now we are getting into the exciting stuff.
Next, you will learn how to set up your first automation, as well as how to get your first email to be sent out to new leads who sign up for your automation.
The great thing about this is, that any new subscriber you get in, will follow a process of emails that you have designed. You only have to create it once. It will run on its own, nurturing all your leads 24/7 without you having to do a thing. Big money and time saver!
Let’s get started
Save hours daily by automating your email marketing and spend more time on your business
First, navigate to your Automated tab at the top of your account and click on it, then click on the Email link to bring up the following window.
Next, you can select the MailChimp Automated option, and then you can use the welcome option as your first automation.
Now, you will see an option asking you to give your new automation a name, do so next.
Then in the drop-down, select the Audience that you created in the last section of this blog. Then click on the Begin button once you have done so.
Great job!
You have now created your first automation.
On this page, you will see a series of emails that you can design with images and content. You can use these to send to your new leads that come into your automation. This will help you to stay in contact with your new leads and create engagement with them over time.
Next
we are going to set up the first email. Once you understand how this first email works, the rest will become clear and you can create your own set of emails to be sent to your leads, over time.
The first thing we need to do is to click on the Design Email button on the right-hand side of the screen.
As you can see, we are going to follow 3 steps to set up this first email.
The first thing we need to do is to add all the basic info to the setup page. So add in your Email Name, Subject Line, Preview Text, and From Name, and you can leave Google Analytics as is for now. Unless you have Google Analytics set up for your business.
Now you will need to select a template for your automation. You will see in the next step that we are able to edit the template and add our logo and content once you have made your selection.
A quick tip: Try to use templates that don’t use too many buttons and headings, less is more.
Now let’s have some fun
You will now have the option to upload your logo, add your content, and place a button in your email. The limits are endless. Just remember that less is more. People will prefer to read an email that has less content than an email with pages of content. So keep it simple and light.
Once you are done, you can click the proceed button at the bottom right of the page, which will take you back to the automation process.
You’re now close to the end. Just a couple more steps and you are ready to launch.
The trigger must be correct
In this step, you want to ensure that the Trigger is correct. You want this first email, to be sent as soon as someone signs up for your MailChimp autoresponder.
So, click on your trigger button and make sure your setting displays the same as what is in the image below.
Last step
One more step and you will be launching.
Next, go and delete all the emails below this email that you have just created.
The reason you want to do this is so that when you create the next email in your journey, you can copy your first email, and make sure you use the same template. This will save you time, by not having to do the whole thing over again!
We will be covering this in a later blog, but for now, do this last step. See the image below.
What have you achieved in this blog post?
You have learnt how to set up your MailChimp account, secure membership and set up your first email automation. Save hours daily by automating your email marketing and spending more time on your business.
Once you see your email automation working, you are going to want to start building on that first email. Hence keep adding new emails so that your existing leads are constantly getting emails from your business, keeping them engaged with your brand.
Very important
Make sure that you do not send emails every day, try and space your emails with a 3-7 day gap in-between them, otherwise if they get too many emails from you, they might end up unsubscribing, and you will lose leads like this.
Once you have all the basics, it’s time to start looking into taking your email automation to the next level. This will be advancing your skills, in email automation and building a strategy. You will surely, Save hours daily by automating your email marketing and spending more time on your business.
So, here is your challenge…
There really isn’t much left to say here…
Follow the fundamental guidelines above, open your Mailchimp account start building your own email autoresponder and start saving hours daily by automating your email marketing and spending more time on your business.
So, give it a try and let us know how you are doing.
If you need any assistance in creating an autoresponder with a journey of emails, click on the link and make contact with us.
