MailChimp Campaign: In the previous MailChimp Tutorial #1, we covered signing up to MailChimp and creating a new List (importing subscribers list via a .csv file). Today, let’s move on to creating a Campaign.
MailChimp Tutorial #2
You can find more information about Campaigns with this Getting Started with Campaigns, from the MailChimp KnowledgeBase. But my short explanation is:
think of different types of newsletters you might want to send out. For example,
- for women or men only
- for Christmas
- for Valentine
- about latest products,
- an (automated) RSS only campaign
- etc.
You can imagine that you might want different looking newsletters to be sent out for each of those scenarios. Well, each of them is denoted as a “campaign”. For those more astute around you, you might already realise that you will need subscribers (i.e. “Lists”) to run a campaign. Otherwise who would you be sending those newsletters out to? That is why we covered creating a list in the MailChimp Tutorial #1.
Create a (RSS) Campaign
Tip: I find it helpful to think “newsletter” when I see the word “campaign”.
Go to “Campaign” on your dashboard >> click “Create a Campaign”
MailChimp – Create a Campaign
You will be asked to name your campaign. This is only for your (internal use). And you can change it later. Next choose the type of campaign.
Here I will be choose an RSS campaign. (I like as little work as possible while still being able to update my subscribers.) Then click “Create Campaign”.
Next you will set up your RSS feed. (I use FeedBurner).
Tip: An RSS feed URL generally looks like this:
http://www.[yourdomain.com]/feed/
And a FeedBurner RSS feed URL generally looks like:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/[your Feedburner feed name]
You can specify how often your campaign (newsletter) will be sent out. If you haven’t posted anything within your specified timeframe, nothing will be sent out.
Sidenote: I am only a very spasmodic blogger. So I choose to send out my RSS campaign very week, knowing that nothing will be sent out to annoy my subscribers if I have not posted new content.
All this is explained on the MailChimp RSS form.
MailChimp Campaign – RSS details
Tip 1: if you have a RSS feed but cannot remember the URL for the feed, just enter your website URL in the “RSS feed URL” field. You will see the useful MailChimp hint about them finding the needed RSS feed URL for you.
Tip 2: I chose not to check the “Resize RSS feed images to fit template”. Unless your images are huge. If you check this box, your images, even the small ones, will be resized to fit a full width. Which is what you might not want.
Then choose if you are sending this particular campaign/newsletter to the entire list of your subscribers or to a specific portion of the list (viz. segment or group). I am choosing to send out to the entire list for my RSS campaign.
Next, you will specify some more campaign info including Email subject titles, etc. You can change any of this at a later date, so no worries. When done, click the “next” button.
Template & Layouts
When you click the “next” button, you will be taken to where you can choose a template layout for your newsletter.
This will take some time as you customise the newsletter to how you want it to look. I will leave the details of that to you. I will leave you here because the rest of the process is fairly self-explanatory. Just fiddly.
Addendum: for those of you interested in working through a detailed example of using a template layout, see: MailChimp Template Layout for Newsletter.
Alternatively, you can also look at the 2 tutorial videos from the previous article (MailChimp Tutorial #1) which also covers some of this aspect.
References:
- MailChimp Knowledge Base: Templates vs Campaigns
- MailChimp Knowledge Base: Create a RSS Campaign
- MailChimp Knowledge Base: RSS Merge Tags
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