Mailchimp is an amazing tool for email marketing that puts enterprise class functions in the hands of small business owners. The trick, as with most marketing tools, is knowing how to leverage the platform for your uses. This article aims to provide you with 4 Easy Tips for Getting Started with Mailchimp automation. This article assumes you have a Mailchimp account and a WordPress-powered website, but the principles are largely transferable to other setups.
Automation does two major things for a small business owner—reducing the number of hours required from you to generate new leads, and simplifying interactions for your leads. That means a clear system to bring a client from cold to warm lead can take place with consistency and efficiency. Doesn’t that sound tempting? Let’s see how to get started with the Mailchimp automation…
4 Easy Tips for Mailchimp Automation
1. Gravity Forms to Mailchimp
Gravity Forms is my favorite plugin for WordPress. I feel like there is no task I can’t accomplish with the combination of WordPress and Gravity Forms. That has let to some misguided projects, for sure, but the never fail, easy to implement solution I offer most clients is integrating the Gravity Forms Mailchimp extension into their contact forms in order to grow their list without having to remember to manually place people into Mailchimp.
2. Pop-Up On Website
Pop ups suck. I’m sorry, they do. In my experience, they disrupt the user experience, create responsive display issues, and increase your bounce rate. BUT, if you are making a calculated move to add a pop-up, say, on a post that gets a ton of visitors from inbound links, then by all means, you need to capitalize on that. What I mean is picking up a plugin for your WordPress site like SumoMe or Popups and then take your Gravity Form from number 1 and put it in front on people as they engage with your site. Just watch your bounce rate and conversion goals if you know what those are.
3. RSS Campaigns
Got a blog? Got a newsletter? Why not make a newsletter from your blog? Mailchimp offers RSS campaigns to make reaching your list with fresh content without duplicating your efforts a breeze. Setting up the campaign template might take some work, and I found I needed to the Featured Image in RSS Feed plugin for WordPress to get the results I wanted. You can sign up in the sidebar and enjoy my own example of this automation!
4. Rich Welcome Emails
Do you do any form of intake or on-boarding through your website? Maybe you should. And maybe as you go back and use Gravity Forms for this, you’ll see that you can send a customized, just-in-time email to your clients. This is useful for counselors and practitioners who require intake forms to be submitted for an appointment. By leveraging Mailchimp, you can add that person to a specific distribution list and customize a response to them confirming you received their materials and that you look forward to connecting. The key to customizing these response emails will be leveraging merge tags based on the data you collect. Once you get the hang of this, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner!
Now that wasn’t difficult was it? You’re off to the races, reducing duplicate work, putting more quality content in front of your audience, and finding new ways to engage your potential clients. Mailchimp makes automation accessible for even a novice to help grow their business.
Need help with any of these ideas? Get in touch!
