QUICKSTART GUIDE FOR MAILCHIMP

-INTRODUCING MAILCHIMPPage 2

  • ACCESSING YOUR ACCOUNT
  • REGISTERING CLIENTS

-MAILCHIMP CONCEPTSPage 3

  • AN ONLINE TOOL
  • MENUS OVERVIEW

-LET’S GET SETUPPage 4

  • SET YOUR ACCOUNT DETAILS
  • BACKUP THE STARTING TEMPLATE
  • FINISH SETTING UP YOUR CONTACTS

-THE FIRST CAMPAIGNPage 6

  • STEP 1 – CREATE A TEMPLATE
  • STEP 2 – CREATE A LIST
  • STEP 3 – CREATE A CAMPAIGN

VERSION HISTORY

  • Version 1 -21/05/14 - CSpillane - Initial Version
  • Version 2 -22/05/14 – CSpillane – Added Signup Form information

SUPPORT

Please refer to the LEO support forums if you have any questions.

Forum-

INTRODUCING MAILCHIMP

The LEO website has been integrated with the Mailchimp system in order to provide a newsletter/EZines system. An account has been created for all LEO’s, and will be made available on request for you to communicate with your clients as needed.

To learn more about Mailchimp, you can look at the feature list on the Mailchimp website here -

Mailchimp is designed to be easy to use. Similar to PTools, they provide a full suite of how to guides, and Video Tutorials. These can be found at the following location -

This document will provide a condensed introduction and everything you need to know to get started using the system.

ACCESSING YOUR ACCOUNT

Each LEO will have its general email address setup as the primary account for your system, and you would all have received an email to this address with a request that you pass it on the LEOAdmin email so it can be setup for you.

Once your account is setup, another email will be sent asking you to register your login details. Simply follow the instructions in this email to get signed in and start using the system.

REGISTERING CLIENTS

If provided during the creation of the LEO website, a list of your EZines/newsletter recipients will have been automatically imported into the system for you. Apart from this, new clients can register for your event in four ways.

  • They can opt in to your newsletter when they sign up for an event
  • They can sign in on your homepage, if you turn on the newsletter widget
  • They can use a link on the newsletter email, if it is forwarded to them.
  • They can be added in on the back end manually

MAILCHIMP CONCEPTS

The system has three main concepts; Campaigns, Lists and Templates.

  • A List is a collection of contacts emails and names
  • A Template is a design where you will insert your content into
  • A Campaign is the process of emailing a filled in template to a nominated list

AN ONLINE TOOL

Mailchimp is an online tool, and as such when you are working with it you will do so via a web browser. Mailchimp has been built to work best with Mozilla Firefox, so we recommend you use this browser when using it.

It will work in all browsers, however you may loose some features working with templates if you don’t use Firefox.

MENUS OVERVIEW

Mailchimp has a consistent menu structure which is used to navigate through its functionality, split into seven areas. These are as follows: -

Image / Name / Purpose
/ Account / Manage account details and passwords
Campaigns / Setup and manage ongoing newsletter campaigns
Templates / Review and create new newsletter designs
Lists / Manage and create lists of contacts
Reports / Reports on your newsletter activity
Auto Responders / Advanced auto emailing of newsletters biased on certain conditions
Search / Search Campaigns, subscribers, or everything from one place

LETS GET SETUP

Most of the account has been pre-configured for you however, before you can send out your first newsletter there are a few things you need to do, to finish the setup.

SET YOUR ACCOUNT DETAILS

This is the account you are signing into the system with. Click on your account name just under the logo, this will open the Accounts menu, from here you should select the ‘Account Settings’ menu entry at the top.

There are two areas you should adjust here.

  • My Profile: Change the email and password of your current account, as well as optionally setting up phone, security question for your account.
  • Account Settings/Contact Information: Select ‘Edit Contact Information’ button for account owner. Change the various details on the account owner page to reflect your office details.

BACKUP THE STARTING TEMPLATE

An initial template design, inline with the LEO branding has been provided. It would be a good idea to make a backup copy of this initial template in case you accidentally edit the template in a way you did not mean to. To do this:

  • Select Templates from the left menu
  • Select the ‘Edit’ button at the right of the screen
  • Select ‘Replicate’ from the dropdown. This will create a copy of the template, and bring you into the template designer.
  • Once here, you can select ‘Rename’ at the top left of the screen and rename the template to ‘Backup’
  • Press ‘Save and Exit’ at the bottom right. You will now see the backup template on your list of templates

FINISH SETTING UP YOUR CONTACTS

If you provided EnterpriseIreland with a contacts list from your original system, it will have been already added to the new system. There are two areas you should check to make sure your list of contacts is fully configured. To do this: -

  • Select ‘Lists’ from the main menu. You will see your list here.
  • Press the Name of your list, which will be highlighted in blue.
  • Select the ‘Settings Menu’.
  • Select the first entry in the list, ‘List name & defaults’
  • Update your ‘List Name’ if you want to.
  • Update the ‘default from name’ to the format “Local Enterprise Office [Office name]”
  • Update the ‘default from email’ to be the general email your account is registered as, eg: .
  • Press ‘Save’
  • Select ‘Required email footer content’
  • Update the Permission reminder with appropriate text
  • Enter in your contact details
  • Enter in your website URL
  • Press Save

THE SIGNUP FORM

On your LEO website homepage, you can choose to make a newsletter sign up form available by turning it on in the banners section.

When turned on it will display both a sign up form, and an archieve of past newsletters you have sent out.

This information is managed via Mailchimp, specifically the ‘Business Sector’ dropdown. By Default this has three fields, ‘Default 1’, ‘Default 2’, ‘Default 3’, so you will need to populate this with the business sectors that are appropriate for you. To do this, take the following steps –

  • Select ‘Lists’ on the main menu
  • Select your main list on the lists page
  • Select ‘Signup forms’ on the list page
  • Select ‘General forms’ on the signup forms page

This will open up the default signup form used for your newsletter. This works in a similar manner to the newsletter designer. When you select an element on the left, the edit field will appear on the right.

To actually add the fields –

  • Scroll down to the bottom of the form, and select the last field, which is the dropdown.
  • On the left side, you will see the default entries on the list, you can then either edit the text, or add and remove fields as you wish by selecting the plus and minus buttons.
  • Add the sectors for this as needed.

Note: Do not change or edit any of the other fields, or change the field tag name, these are required by the LEO website to work.

THE FIRST CAMPAIGN

Now that your account is fully setup, you can send out your first campaign. This can be done in three steps.

  1. Create a template
  2. Create a List
  3. Create a Campaign

STEP 1 – CREATE A TEMPLATE

In order to send out a newsletter the first thing you must have is a template or design of a newsletter. EnterpriseIreland and PTools have provided an initial sample template, which is consistent with the LEO brand, and will allow you to start sending out newsletters straight away if you wish. You can see this by clicking on the Templates menu item.

If you do not want to use this template, or wish to create additional templates you can do so by selecting the ‘Create Template’ button. This will take you to the create a template wizard, where you can either use the basic template builder, use an existing theme, or code your own.

Note: when you are working with the template editor, that the system will automatically save your changes regularly.

See the following link for the Mailchimp guide to creating a template.

STEP 2 – CREATE A LIST

If you provided a list of contacts from your previous website or mail system it will have already been included for you, and you will see it when you click on the ‘List’ menu item. You will not need to do anything else.

The list will tell you the number of subscribers, and the percentage of opens (They open your newsletter) and clicks (They click links in your newsletter)

The star rating will tell you at a glance how engaged they are with your newsletter.

Clicking on your list will bring up the full list of members and allow you to see more details, and add remove users as you wish.

You can create new lists, or target specific segments of your existing lists as well. See here for more details,

Note: You must have gotten permission to add any contacts to a list.

STEP 3 – CREATE A CAMPAIGN

The final step is to create an actual campaign. If you click on the ‘Campaign’ button in the main menu you can create a new campaign by clicking the ‘Create Campaign’ button at the top right. This will take you to the ‘Campaign Builder’ which is a wizard tool to help you setup your newsletter.

Note: if you exit the campaign builder at any point, the system will automatically save it, so you can carry on at a later stage. From step two you will see the Save and Exit button at the top right, and the current stage of the wizards 6 steps at the bottom.

Step 1 – Choose type of Campaign to send

In most cases you will use the first option, which is ‘Regular ol’ Campaign’, and this is what the provided template will work best with.

Step 2 – Choose the list to send to

You will either already have an imported list from your old site, or have created a new one yourself. All your available lists will be here, and you can select which one you want to send to by left clicking on it. It will default to selecting the entire list, but if you have created segments within a list, you can select to send to one of these instead.

Make your choice and press the ‘Next’ button at the bottom right.

Step 3 – Campaign Info

There are only two sections here to consider, the others you can ignore: -

  1. Campaign info –
  2. Pick a ‘Campaign name’; eg: Monthly Newsletter, or ‘Promote specific event’
  3. Pick a ‘From name’; Generally your LEO name.
  4. Email subject; Defaulted to “Newsletter from *|LIST:COMPANY|* ”, you can change this to something else if you want. Note that *|LIST:COMPANY|* will pull your data from your contact details.
  5. From Email address; the email that will be used to send the newsletter. Usually best set as the general email for your LEO.
  6. Social Media
  7. You can opt to automatically send a tweet or post to facebook by connecting to your social media accounts.

Press ‘Next at the bottom right when done.

Step 4 – Select a template

You can opt to use any of the template options, however if you want to use the provided template, select ‘Saved Templates’ and you will see it listed here. Press the ‘Select Button’, which will take you to the next screen

Step 5 – Design

You are now at the point where you can input the content into the template that you want to send out to your client.

The template designer is structured around blocks of content. Hovering on each ‘block’ will outline the contents of that block, and show you a menu at the top which you can edit. For example: -

There are four entries on this menu –

  1. At the very left you can select this and drag it to move it to another area of the website.
  2. You can click anywhere in the block, or on the pencil icon to edit the content of that block.
  3. Pressing the third plus icon, will create a copy of the current block.
  4. The fourth bin icon will delete the current block.

When you click in to edit an block, the left part of your screen will update to show the type of the block, and how you can edit it. It is here you will upload files, pictures and input content and links.

Details on how to work with the editor can be found here, Also note that you can save and exit to finish it at a later date. You can also use the ‘Preview and test’ button to send samples to various email addresses or lists.

Step 6 – Send

When you press Next, you will be taken to the review screen. This will show you all the elements you have selected, and let you jump to any area to change it.

If you are happy to send it you can either schedule it (Send it at a specific time) or send it straight away.