Getting Started with Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you manage and talk to your clients, customers, and other interested parties. Our approach to marketing focuses on healthy contact management practices, beautifully designed emails, unique automated workflows, and powerful data analysis. We're here to help you become an expert marketer. Ready to get started?

In this article, you'll learn how to start using Mailchimp to create impactful marketing emails. We'll also provide some helpful resources to use as you work.

Things to know

Before you jump into the tasks ahead, here are a few helpful things to know.

• Mailchimp is a web-based application that works in most web browsers, which means you don't need to download or install any software on your computer. To be sure Mailchimp works properly in your browser, you should enable cookies, pop-ups, and JavaScript.
• It's important to note that when you create a Mailchimp account, you agree to comply with our Terms of Use.
• We offer a number of online resources to provide help and insights about our tools and features. Check out our searchable guides and tutorials if you want to learn how something works, or if you run into any trouble.
• As part of Mailchimp’s onboarding services, new users with a paid Marketing plan are eligible for advanced assistance via a 1:1 consultation with an onboarding specialist. To learn more about the onboarding service included with your pricing plan, check out About Personalized Onboarding with Mailchimp.

Task roadmap

Here's an overview of the tasks we'll cover in this article.

• Set up your account
• Set up your audience
• Customize your signup form
• Create an email
• View your email report
• Review next steps

Set up your account

When you sign up for a Mailchimp account, you'll enter your name and email address, and we'll send you an activation email. When you receive the activation email, click the link to activate your account.

The next time you log in to our website, we'll walk you through the rest of the setup steps. You'll input profile details, such as your website and physical address, and connect your social media accounts. If you sell products online, you'll have the option to connect your store to Mailchimp.

To learn more about account creation, read the article Create an Account.

Set up your audience

The foundation of great marketing is a clean, up-to-date record of your contacts, known as your audience. When you create a Mailchimp account, we'll use your setup details to automatically generate your audience for you. You can edit the default information for your audience if you need to, or immediately start adding contacts.

Mailchimp was designed so you should only need 1 audience. We have a number of helpful audience management tools so you can organize and separate contacts. If you do decide to create another audience, keep in mind that data isn't shared across audiences, and contacts who are in more than 1 audience will count separately toward your subscriber limit.

Import Contacts to Mailchimp

Customize your signup form

If you don't have any contacts yet, don't worry! We'll automatically generate a signup form for your audience, which you can post on your website or Facebook page, so you can start collecting contacts right away. Plus, we give you lots of options to customize the design of your signup form, so it'll fit your brand.

To customize your signup form, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience, then click Audience dashboard.
   
2. If you have more than 1 audience, click the Current audience drop-down and choose the one you want to work with.
3. Click Manage Audience, then click Signup forms.
4. Scroll to the Form builder tile, then click Manage forms.
5. Click the Forms and response emails drop-down, then choose which form you want to edit.
6. Click the Design it tab.
   
7. Click through the Page, Body, Forms, or Referral tabs to review the customization options. Use the fields and drop-down menus to make any changes you want to the styles, colors, and fields. We'll save your changes automatically.

For in-depth instructions, check out How the Form Builder Works.

Create a regular email

Next, you'll craft your first email.

To get started on a regular email, follow these steps.

1. Click the Create icon.
   
2. Click Email, then click Regular.
   
3. Enter the internal email name, then click Begin.
   

For detailed instructions on how to continue, check out Create a Regular Email.

Designing an email in Mailchimp can be fun, but also complex, because we offer a lot of customization options. Take some time to get used to the controls and always plan your emails before you start designing them. You'll be an expert before you know it.

Design an Email in Mailchimp

View your email reports

You've clicked Send, but it's not over yet! A key component of successful marketing is tracking audience engagement, so you can provide more of what your contacts want and less of what they don't.

The next time you login to Mailchimp after sending an email, you'll see how many contacts opened, clicked, or unsubscribed from your recent email, right on your Dashboard. Click Reports for more detailed information, and to download, share, or print your email reports.

Mailchimp's open- and click-tracking data tells you how many people looked at your email, which links they clicked, and other information, like their geolocation. Integrate your Google Analytics account with Mailchimp for more in-depth reporting.

About Email Reports

Next steps

After you've become familiar with the basics, look into how our different features can take your marketing to the next level.

Customer Journeys

Mailchimp’s Customer Journey feature helps you build dynamic, automated marketing paths for your contacts. Create a journey map with multiple starting points, branches, and unique actions so each of your contacts has a personalized experience with your marketing.

About Customer Journeys

Ads

You can buy ads through Mailchimp, with no additional fees from us. Take advantage of Google's huge audience to reach your best customers, similar people, and people who like your products but don't subscribe to your email.
Create Google Remarketing Ads

Landing Pages

Create beautiful landing pages to grow your audience or promote products, then share those pages around the web to drive traffic to them. Landing pages are great for achieving specific, short-term marketing goals.

About Landing Pages

Mobile apps

Mailchimp for iOS or Android Mailchimp for iOS or Android is a free mobile app that helps you manage your account on the go. Track subscriber and email activity, view various reports, and add new subscribers to your audience directly from your mobile device.

About Mailchimp for iOS
About Mailchimp for Android

Developer tools

API 3.0 API stands for application programming interface. You can think of an API as a way for different applications to talk to one another. Advanced users who are familiar with custom coding can use the API to pass data from their application to Mailchimp for advanced customization and utility.

API 3.0 Developer Documentation