Getting Started with Mailchimp

Create your account

1. For compliance you must use an address, I left out my house number
2. You can follow through the start up screens and skip sections if you prefer
3. They even import your brand colors if you give them your URL which is kind of cool

Bit of extra set up

1. Go to Audience >>Settings and click Enable Recaptcha
2. Consider if you’d like to enable double optin.  This means people won’t be on your list until they confirm their emails.  This helps keep your list cleaner and often helps with your emails not heading to spam
3. Consider if you need to use GDPR settings
4. While we are here, let’s set up a group.  This is important because Mailchimp only allow people to sign up once. Which means if you offer a different pdf freebie in the future, your Mailchimp subscribers won’t be able to get it.
5. Go to Manage Audience and Select Groups.
6. Create new Group
7. Choose checkbox and for Group Category use a meaningful title, Like your Freebie name
8. Then in Group Names add  “Yes please send me my free pdf”
9. If you choose radio button and only add one option – your form will not show up on your landing page.

Important Groups can’t be edited.  If you want to change something you have to delete the old one and start again.  You can’t delete a group after people are signed up via it.

Landing Page Design

Mailchimp love to move things around, so it may look different the next time you login.

1. To create a landing page Click on Campaigns and click Landing pages>Create a landing page
2. Give it a name and select your audience (only 1 available on the free plan)
3. Pick a starter template
4. Click on an image and click Creative Assistant to see what AI has grabbed for you.  Click on Brand kit to add your personality type
5. Add images and logos to the landing page
6. Add your text
7. For the form…click on it and you can add in First name if you want (I’d recommend this as a minimum).
8. Add in your Group you created earlier and make it a required field
9. Scroll down on the Sign up form module and you’ll see options for what to do after the user has signed up…redirect to thank you or just a message.  You would have to create thankyou page elsewhere

 Landing Page Settings

1. You can add your favicon if you have one
2. Update the social share settings
3. To add your own domain you need to be paying for Mailchimp, but change the end part of the domain to something sensible
4. Audience and tags: If you have the free version you only have one audience, but it makes sense to add a tag in case you’d like to specifically email the people who have downloaded this freebie.  And if you have another optin in the future, it would be useful to distinguish between sign ups.
5. You can edit your design again if you need to.
6. Tracking: Add any tracking you’d like to below

Delivering the pdf

A free Mailchimp account doesn’t allow for automation, but I have a secret weapon.

Whilst logged in to Mailchimp Click here

I don’t know how long this will work for, but it works as of May 2023.

1. Choose Email subscribers when they are tagged
2. Click Edit next to Please select a tag
3. Set trigger to Immediately and the tag relevant to the optin
4. Click Design Email
5. Careful with Subject line as some words trigger spam alerts…”Free” often does
6. Choose simple layout
7. Add your content – thanks for signing up – here’s your free content
8. Add a button and under Link to choose file
9. Upload the file and link to button

Time to Test

Use an incognito window to do this and follow through the whole process