MailChimp For Bloggers

MailChimp For Bloggers

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Table Of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Build Your Mailing List.............................................................................................................................................................. 4 Signup plugins........................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Signup forms.......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Embed code........................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Evil popup form...................................................................................................................................................................... 5 FAQ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 Set Up An RSS-to-email Campaign........................................................................................................................................... 6 FAQ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Customize With Merge Tags....................................................................................................................................................... 8 RSS-to-email: Basic merge tags................................................................................................................................................ 8 Work With Templates................................................................................................................................................................. 9 Socialize Your Campaign......................................................................................................................................................... 10 Social Share button............................................................................................................................................................... 10 Social Share merge tag.......................................................................................................................................................... 10 Auto-tweet............................................................................................................................................................................ 10 Auto-post to Facebook........................................................................................................................................................... 11 Facebook Like merge tag........................................................................................................................................................ 11 Tracking likes and tweets....................................................................................................................................................... 11 Track And Report..................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Standard reports................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Social tracking...................................................................................................................................................................... 12 Merge Tag Reference Guide.................................................................................................................................................... 13 Resources................................................................................................................................................................................ 14 Analytics360 for Wordpress.................................................................................................................................................... 14 Chimpfeedr........................................................................................................................................................................... 14

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Hello.

MailChimp makes it easy to send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists and track campaign performance--but why should bloggers be concerned about email? Turns out, there are great opportunities for increasing audience engagement when bloggers introduce email as an option for content delivery.

People have different preferences about how they consume information. Some folks want to come to your site and browse your latest posts; some are interested in the comments; and some just want to skim your content via RSS and never visit your site. But there's another group of people that prefer reading your blog in their email clients. It's true! They may not have many sites they care enough about to warrant a feed reader, or they just prefer getting email to visiting your blog. Whatever the reason, an email newsletter is a nice option to offer your readers, so they can engage with you in the way that suits them best.

Aside from promoting your regular blog content, there are other ways you can use email to engage your audience and track the effectiveness of your communications. You could send exclusive content to your mailing list, like special articles or sales. You could inform them about updates and news that may be outside the scope of your typical blog postings. The bottom line is this: When people sign up to receive updates from you, they're saying, "I'm interested in what you have to say." You may not know how engaged your average reader is. You don't know who's reading your RSS feed, or how devoutly they're reading it. But you know that people who give you their email addresses are indicating a certain level of commitment. And with a service like MailChimp, you know who those people are, and you can actually track their engagement by how often they open your emails, what they click and what they share with their friends.

And did we mention that MailChimp is completely free for lists with up to 1000 subscribers? That's right, FREE. No credit card, no expiring trial, and no hidden fees or commitments. You get access to our amazing features, including powerful reports, list management, awesome templates and lots of integrations.

Enjoy this guide to everything MailChimp offers for bloggers. If you have questions or comments that aren't addressed here, feel free to contact our support staff at support. We'll be happy to assist you.

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Build Your Mailing List

With MailChimp, you can present your readers with lots of opportunities to sign up and receive email updates.

Signup Plugins

You can easily add a signup form to your blog with plugins for WordPress, TypePad, Moveable Type, Expression Engine and Drupal. Go to mailchimp. com/plugins for downloads, descriptions and installation instructions.

Signup Forms

If you don't use one of the services above or would like to customize your signup form to put on your website, you can easily create a form in the MailChimp application. Here's how: 1. From the MailChimp dashboard, click the Lists tab.

2. Choose which list you want connected with the signup form, and click Forms in the list options.

4. When the form is finalized, copy the Link to Subscribe Form located in the middle of the page, and link to it from the website you choose.

Embed Code

If you'd rather keep your readers on your own site than direct them to an external landing page to sign up for your newsletter, use our embed code to create a customized signup form on your website. The embed code provides more customization options than the sign-up form. Creating the code is easy, and it;ll make signing up for your newsletter easier for your fans. Just follow the steps for building the subscribe form. Then click Create Embed Code for Small Form next to the link to subscribe form in the signup form builder.

3. Customize the details of your form. Use the Build It tab to determine what information you collect in the form and the Design It tab to change colors, header and more.

Copy and paste the code into the appropriate place on your site. If you're a TypePad user, you can send the code directly to your blog with the Send to TypePad button.

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