Beyond sending out monthly email newsletters, are you really getting the most out of Mailchimp? In today’s podcast, I want to show you how powerful Mailchimp can be for connecting with your customers.
Nearly every small business owner I’ve ever worked with has used Mailchimp. It’s been around since 2001 and over time has developed into an incredibly powerful tool. Of course, you can use it to send regular email updates to your contacts, but there’s so much more you can do using the templates, segments, audiences and other tools that are now built in.
We’re going to look at 5 cool things you probably didn’t know Mailchimp could do.
Mailchimp secret 1: Sequenced emails for onboarding new clients or introducing new audience members to your business
One of the challenges, of an email newsletter, is that everyone on your mailing list is at a slightly different stage in their relationship with you. A new subscriber might find your next email newsletter feels a bit like arriving in the middle of a conversation. Also, people aren’t getting to see your back catalogue of newsletters. An introductory sequence for people who’ve just joined your mailing list, spread out over a week or two, gives you a chance to do things like;
- Share your best content, like blogs or podcasts. Essentially you can give people your greatest hits!
- Outline your services and products, so they have a good sense of what’s available to them.
- Share testimonials and examples of your work. Send a link to case studies or the page where people leave you google reviews. This is a great way to show people how good you are at what you do.
- Answer FAQs and help people feel like their specific needs are acknowledged and met.
This onboarding for new mailing subscribers can be so helpful to introduce your business and tell people everything they need to know. It’s a great way to make people feel welcome and keep them engaged.
You can do the same thing when someone signs on as a client. Create an easy to follow email sequence which helps get them on board, detailing the process or service that you’re offering.
Mailchimp secret number 2: Follow up with people visiting your website, through adverts not emails
We’ve all had that experience where you visit a company’s website briefly, and then see ads for their services around the internet for the next 30 days. This is called a retargeting campaign, and it’s a very effective marketing strategy. Retargeted ads can also be cheaper to run than adverts to cold audiences, because people are more inclined to buy from you when they’ve heard of you. If someone’s already visited your website independently, they are more likely to be a good prospect worth advertising to.
With a free Mailchimp account, you can set up Google display ads which retarget visitors to your website. If you also have at least 100 contacts in your list, you can create Instagram and Facebook ads to target your specific audience on social media. If you want to run retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram, you also need to have a standard subscription to Mailchimp, which will cost you around $15 dollars a month. The benefit of running all these ads through Mailchimp rather than directly on Facebook are;
- Mailchimp’s interface is more user friendly, if you’re apprehensive and have never run ads before you may find the Mailchimp interface is easier to pick up
- Great integration with your existing email list
In short it’s a great place to get started with advertising tools. You don’t want to stay there forever though because your editing and analytics tools are limited compared with the full Facebook and Google interfaces.
Mailchimp secret number 3: Build landing pages to help you capture new subscribers
This one might not be a secret, especially if you caught our recent episodes Four things you need to know about Landing Pages and Create your first landing page in 5 easy steps. You can build landing pages and send opt-in bonuses on Mailchimp, to help grow your email list. If you’ve had a mailing list for a while, you probably have a few different ways of getting people to subscribe to it. Basic pop ups on your website, trade shows (clipboard allowing people to sign up to your mailing list) and adding existing customers on to your list. These methods are fine, but they won’t grow your list very quickly, and they limit your ability to grow your list to people who are early in the customer journey.
Opt-in bonuses are a great way to get more people to join your list. You start by creating something, like a mini-training course, a downloadable template, a discount code or some other exclusive content. This should be something really appealing to the majority of people on your mailing list. Then in Mailchimp, you create a landing page which focuses on and promotes your opt-in bonus, for example, it lists the benefits, gives a tiny taste of it, and so on. People want the bonus, so they sign up for the mailing list, where you can continue to provide them with useful info and updates on a regular basis.
In Mailchimp you set up the landing page, and then you create an email automation which sends an email to everyone who signs up that includes the download or access link for your bonus. When you get good at this, you can have multiple landing pages for different bonuses that each target different segments of your audience, and then you can even target newsletter content to people depending on their segment! That’s all starting to get a bit sophisticated, get in touch if you have any questions – I’d love to talk more about this in future episodes.
Landing pages are great to use on your social media, and even in adverts, to get more people to join your mailing list where you can really focus on converting them into customers.
Mailchimp secret number 4: Use follow up emails to get reviews from your customers
As part of their e-commerce integration Mailchimp offers lots of different custom email types, specifically for e-commerce websites.
One of the most valuable is the follow up email, which you send on to people a few days after they’ve received your product, digital download, service or whatever it is they bought on your website. Your follow up email should thank them for buying, ask for their feedback on the process, and then include a link to at least one site where they can leave a review for you – Google, Facebook, Yelp, Trip Advisor, or whatever is your preferred review platform.
These reviews are crucial for getting your business noticed, and building trust amongst your potential customers, but it always feels awkward to ask for them personally. When you create an automated email to do this, you only have to feel awkward once, when you draft the email, and then you don’t have to stress about it ever again!
Mailchimp secret number 5: Teach free and paid for online courses entirely over email
The great thing about doing this through Mailchimp is there’s very low set up overheads. It’s easy to create a minimum viable product (MVP) before you invest in flashier materials and a hosted training course. Mailchimp also offers an automation called an education sequence. If you’re hoping to move into the online training space, this is an excellent tool to test out your material. Emails are much cheaper to create than video content, and if you have Mailchimp set up already then you’ve got everything you need to get started.
Think about how you would break up your training information into bite-sized chunks that you might email over a fixed time period. The number of emails you send will depend on your goals and the cost of the training course. If it’s a free mini training you might send five emails in a week. If it’s a paid for programme, covering something in depth, you might send two emails a week for 2 months. There’s not really any limit on how much content you can add to this, and you can even include links to video materials and downloads if you upgrade the course in future, without having to transfer everything to a different system.
If you combine this with Mailchimp’s landing pages and advertising, you can really see how powerful the platform is when you combine all the tools. You can create the product, the onboarding, the entire sales funnel and much of your marketing content all in the one platform – and a free platform to boot!
Get your Mailchimp questions answered
I’d love to feature more listener questions in the podcast. Drop me an email! I’d love to hear from you if you have any feedback. And of course you can subscribe to Whin Big on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a review.
