How to make a personalized Newsletters with Mailchimp

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1. How to set up your automatic newsletter campaign with the latest blog posts to your subscribers periodically in 6 steps
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If you already have a blog, it's because you count things in it. You write with certain frequency, and in your mood grows the desire to be read to you, that your content is interesting for someone or that your knowledge will sometimes help those who need it.

If you are a brand, idem of idem...you will want your products or services to reach your potential customers...and as a constant reminder to encourage purchase.

In short and speaking in silver, you want to have followers, and if they are assiduous much better. If you become a referent for someone, you will at the same time gain their trust and increase your credibility.

We already know that news collectors such as feedly have considerably reduced the volume of subscriptions on web pages.

However, there are still many who wish to receive your periodical publications in their mailbox.

Currently, in which subscribers become part of a community of privileged people who receive gifts from the pages to which they subscribe in the form of e-books or manuals and tutorials specially dedicated to this purpose.

Although most page templates have their own automated subscription forms, with widgets that perform this function themselves,

The way your content reaches the mail managers of your followers is not always the most suitable.

Nor does it maintain the corporate identity of your website, nor does it carry that pinch of your creativity that encourages you to click and continue reading, your personal "call to action".

If you are at the moment when your observers start to acquire a certain volume and your contents start to be shared regularly, you probably want to take care of the way in which your efforts are reaching your prospects.

In your page you have included a subscription form, so that your contents arrive periodically to your "official followers", but what do they get?

With Mailchimp you can design your own personalized newsletters, in accordance with your contents, maintaining the identity, colors and typographies of your web, as well as preserved from all the fulfillments and legalities that the sending of any e-mailing activity demands.

The basics of creating an account in mailchimp will be done as any registration in any channel or website.

Don't panic if you haven't logged in to your account in a while and you see that the home panel has changed.

Now it's much simpler and simpler. In fact, the site we're looking for is now in the first tab: Campaigns. On the right you have the link: Create Campaign

Once inside, you select the type of campaign you are going to design:

In our case, we want to send new content that we are adding to subscribers to our blog, automatically, so we will do it through an RSS feed on our website.

The rest of the options do not create automatic or periodic newsletters, only punctual.

Step 1: Get the url from our news feed

If we have not yet configured our RSS Feed we access Feedburner for example, and there we create our syndication url: FeedBurner is a web feed management provider.

And as simple as logging in with our gmail account and enter the url of our website

We follow step by step the authorization to feedburner: enter our web address and define the url of the feed among the options offered by the RSS reader.

Feedburner will finally provide us with a url like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/xxxx where the xxxx corresponds to the final name you have accepted for your feed.

Go back to our previous mailchimp tab and select:

Enter the url in the RSS Feed URL box and configure the periodicity of the shipments, day and time.

The list of recipients will have been created previously, as well as the rest of previous configurations of our account. Now create a test list with your email address as the only recipient.

Keep in mind that at any time you can go back to configure each step of sending your newsletter, for which mailchimp will ask you to previously stop the campaign while you edit it.

Step 3: Settings: Define campaign name and other preferences.

In this step the fundamental thing is to define the name of your campaign. Try to put a name that you remember and distinguish from other denominations. It's for internal use only, it won't be published.

The rest of the boxes will appear auto-completed. I recommend that you leave them as they are and then modify them once you have seen the final result.

Just translate the mail "Subject" leaving the MERGE TAGS (combination tags that perform a function) from Mailchimp for your RSS feed:

*RSSFEED:TITLE|* title of your blog
*|RSSFEED:DATE|* date of last update of your RSS feed
*|RSSFEED:URL|* URL of your RSS feed or "channel".
*|RSSFEED:DESCRIPTION|* description of your blog or RSS feed "channel

Check the box to create a link to track the clicks of your Google Analytics campaigns. Obviously, your website must have an Analytics account. If not, configure it: Google Analytics30

It would look like something like that:

Subject: Latest posts by *|RSSFEED:TITLE|* for *|RSSFEED:DATE|*

In this section you can also configure the automatic notification of the sending of your newsletter in your social channels Twitter and Facebook. If you are interested, you must connect and authorize Mailchimp.

Now the design begins. You can choose between template templates, or customizable thematic templates, predefined according to the objectives of your campaign or the category of your business (ads, coupons, e-commerce, education, events ... etc).

As in this case our goal is to include our RSS feed, we selected a basic model that includes our news source.

If you click on the image you will be able to visualize a preview, to work on it, you must click on "select".

To the right of the page you have all the customizable options that you will see on the template on the left. The system is drag and drop. Drag and drop in the design box.

The header, if you have chosen this template, will be the only thing you have to design and upload to your mailchimp files. It measures approx. 600 x 185 px.

You can design the rest by clicking on the three tabs in the menu on the right: CONTENT - DESIGN - COMMENTS

You can edit the text above the header (or at least translate it) and then review and modify the content of each block.

To modify or translate the texts you must click on the box you want to modify on the left side and in the window on the right you will see and choose "custom".

You can also add new blocks from the main menu "Content", such as the buttons to share or follow in your social channels.

Modify fonts, colors, blocks and go testing...at any time you can check how your newsletter will be by pressing the button "preview and test".

When you estimate that you are ready for a preview, send a test by email (send a test mail)

Step 6: Confirm and review the latest details of your campaign

The last step: Confirm, and you will see all the logistics of the campaign for final review. "It's all ready to send."

If something still doesn't work for Mailchimp it will prompt you to resolve it (the tab will appear in yellow instead of green, and instead of "Edit" you will read "Resolve".

From this screen you will be able to modify any detail of the campaign that you had left pending configuration or that you wish to rectify now.

As you can see, from a basic template you can design your newsletter without any knowledge of html design or complex applications.

Little by little you will be modifying and adding additional steps, such as a subscription form on your website, a thank you page to subscribers, etc., etc..

This was our final design for the time being:

And if you want to know the previous process or what happens next, just enter your name and email address here

Once you start your journey in mailchimp, you will see the infinite possibilities offered by the tool:

Sending newsletters or e-mail marketing campaigns
Create and manage mailing lists. Add them automatically and manually. Segment them by type of shipment.
Design and customization of shipments and forms, notices, messages and alerts.
Integration of mailchimp in your web, through widgets or also with the mailchimp plugin
Perform testings a/b, to check the opening rate of shipments and make decisions on prior testing
And the most important thing: comply with the requirements of current legislation regarding spam and unauthorized sending.

So going back to the beginning, if you have a blog and you want to be read, learn how to take advantage of your mailings, to keep your readers loyal and attract new ones.

And in a while...monetize your blog or sell your services.