Setting up an amazing welcome email with MailChimp

YouTube videos that could help you do this task :

Create an Automated Welcome Email in Mailchimp :

Mail Chimp for beginners :

Goal: Creating an engaging, compelling automated welcome email in MailChimp.

Ideal Outcome: You will create a welcome email that is in-sync with your brand, and which will be sent automatically to your fresh newsletter subscribers.

Pre-requisites or requirements: N/A

Why this is important: You need to create a good relationship with your subscribers - and a great welcome email can give you a good jump-start into this. Consequently, you will stand a much better chance of engaging your subscribers and making them want to come back to your business.

Where this is done: Mostly in MailChimp, an online service that allows business owners to automate their newsletter welcome emails.

When this is done: Preferably, as soon as you start building your email list - this way, the welcome email will be all set up by the time you get your first subscribers.

Who does this:

You, your content writer, your email marketing specialist, or a digital marketing agency you have employed.

• Environment setup

1. Create an account at MailChimp. The service is completely free of charge for small businesses that don’t have more than 2,000 subscribers and/or don’t send send more than 12,000 emails/month.

• Writing an welcome email

Unlike with many other elements of digital marketing, there’s no actual recipe on how to write a truly compelling welcome email. A large part of it depends on the type of business you own and the type of audience you target. Beyond that, though, there are some basic rules that will help you make sure your welcome email is really attractive.

Here’s the basic structure you should follow to create an email template. Of course, you should adapt this to your own needs, so that your welcome email is unique and fully coordinated with your brand.

1. Start with greetings. Show your gratitude for the amazing subscriber you’ve just earned!
2. Set expectations. Explain the value your subscriber will get for being part of your subscribers list, as well as how often you will email them.
3. Tell them something about you. This will help you build credibility in your brand (and in you, as the representative of your brand).
4. Include a call to action. It can be any of the following options:
5. Invite them to check some of the most popular articles on your blog.
6. Tell them to whitelist your email, to make sure they receive your emails.
7. Ask them a question and invite them to this email to answer.
8. Something else.
9. Include your signature. This is pretty self-explanatory, but you might want to sign with something simple and easy to remember (e.g. your name or your name and surname, probably not Princess Consuela Bananahammock :) ).
10. Include a headshot. This is completely optional, but, again, it will help you increase your credibility (especially if your actual name is Princess Consuela Bananahammock).

Here’s the email we created as an example:

Hey,

Thank you so much for joining ClickMinded’s newsletter list! This is THE place to learn digital marketing – so you won’t regret subscribing. We’ve got a lot in store for you – from Emoji news to the latest tips in the digital marketing industry!

I’m Tommy, CEO at ClickMinded. I’ve been doing SEO for more than a decade (whew!) and I created Clickminded to help business owners like you reap more benefits from everything digital.

Some examples of what we do include our Six-Figure Project, as well as our article on how to gather the best SEO intelligence for your website. Check them out – they’re really helpful!

Yours sincerely,

Tommy G.

• Automating your welcome email

Sending a manual email to every single subscriber is way too 1991, so you’d better automate this via MailChimp. It’s an easy process that can be set up in a matter of minutes if you follow these steps:

1. Go to your MailChimp account.
2. Click on “Create campaign”.
3. Click on “Create email”.
4. Select “Automated”.
5. Select “Welcome new subscribers”.
6. Rename your campaign. Our suggestion is to rename it “Welcome Email + Name of Website”, so that you can recognize it at a further date.
7. Click “Begin”.

8. Click on “Add Email”.
9. Click on “Design Email”.

10. Fill in the “Email information” form, then click “Next” (bottom-right side of the screen).

11. Select the design. Our recommendation is to use a plain text email design. Not only is this the easiest way to go about this, but it will also feel less “marketing-y” and more human - which is precisely what you are aiming for if you want to boost credibility, engagement, and customer recurrence.

• If you want to select a simple text design, click on “Simple Text”.

12. Edit your welcome email headline by clicking on the headline bar or the pencil icon. Edit the actual text in the box that will appear on the right side of the screen. Once done, click “Save & Close”.

• MailChimp’s Merge Tags help you customize your email according to the data you upload into the service, via a .csv file.
• As an example, we added a First Name Merge Tag that will automatically customize each email with the subscriber’s first name. This will make the welcome email feel more personal and trustworthy.

13. Edit your welcome email body by pasting the email you have created according to the tips relayed in this SOP. Click “Save & Close”

14. If you want to add a picture, go to “Content” on the right side of the screen, click on “Image”, drag the box, and then drop it in the email. Upload and/or select the image you want to use, then Click “Save & Close”.

15. Click “Save and Continue” in the bottom-right side of the screen.
16. You will be redirected to the initial Welcome Email Workflow page. From here, change the trigger from “1 day after subscriber joins” to “Immediately” after the subscriber joins.

17. Click on “Save and Exit” in the top-right side of the screen.

There you go, you have created your very first welcome email in MailChimp! As easy as 1-2-3, right? Trust us when we say, your subscribers will definitely appreciate this warm welcome into your business!

Grow your email list :