A Guide to Mailchimp 1. Home page guide

Once you have set up and logged into Mailchimp, this is what you see as your home page, if you have a new account you won’t have your past email campaigns listed (highlighted in red) once you do though you will be able to see what percentage of your list opened and clicked a link in your email

2. Create a list

you can either add people into mail chimp manually or upload a CSV file. You can easily convert an excel spreadsheet into a CSV by saving as a different file format in excel, just make sure all of your emails occupy a different line on the spreadsheet. You upload a list by going to the top bar and clicking lists, then this screen appears, click create list:

Fill out the details about your list, make sure you add a line about how you collected the emails, don’t worry about ticking any of the boxes at the bottom, you can always change settings later.

You will then have the option to upload the list, create a sign-up form or you can add individual contacts by going to the Add Contact tab on the task bar

3. Create a new campaign / email

With the unpaid version of mail chimp you can only send one email, with the paid version you can create a campaign that sends multiple emails automatically, to create an email, click campaign on the top right corner of the screen, then click the create campaign button

This screen appears, click create email

Name your campaign and click Begin

First, fill out the details of your campaign, such as list, which email will show up in the recipients email and the subject line, which the recipient will be able to see before they open the email

Finally start creating your content of the email, select your template, some templates have layouts designed for a specific purpose but are often inflexible. The basic templates are the easiest to use. (The basic 1 column is my favourite, you can always split elements into different columns later) alternatively, to send just a plain looking email, select the simple text option and your email will look like it came from any normal email account

Once you have selected a template, you will be shown the editer screen, you can always go ack and change your template later. The left side is what your email will look like to the recipient and the right side is where you can add and edit elements. To add extra elements select the element on the right hand side and drag it to the place in the email you’d like that element to appear.

To edit an element, hover over it, on the right you can change the text, font, add links etc. and the left hand side will automatically edit what you have done. To edit, move, duplicate and delete a block use the icons highlighted below, you can also add your social media accounts to the buttons highlighted and add social accounts. When you have finished editing that block, click save and exit.

When you are happy with the email, click preview and test to send yourself a test email to check your links work and it looks how you want it to, you can also save as a template then wait to send the campaign until you have uploaded all your emails (for example preparing your list and emails for freshers and sending the email after freshers fair)

When you are ready to send an email click save and close in the bottom right hand corner and you will be taken back to this screen, when you have completed all the sections the top left will say ‘your email is ready’ and click the send button on the top right hand corner

4. Create a template

An email template can be created without assigning it to a list, it can also be used several different times for different emails (or the same email in different years) go to the templates tab at the top of your screen and follow the same instructions to create an email as above.