2018 create and manage wp newsletters

HandsOnWP.com @nick_batik @sandi_batik
Austin WordPress Meetup - September 17, 2018
How to Create and
Manage Newsletters
from Your WordPress
Site
Nick Batik
Senior WordPress Back-end
Developer /Information Architect
Pleiades Publishing Services

What Is eMail Marketing
❖ Email marketing is an efficient
way to stay connected with
your clients while also
promoting your business
❖ eMail Marketing is
❖ Cost Effective
❖ Relatively Simple To Do
❖ Results Can Be Easily
Tracked

Why Building Your eMail List is
Critical
❖ An email list is a list of names and email addresses of
people who gave you permission to send them updates
and promotions from your business via email
❖ When a site visitor signs up giving you 'permission' to
contact them by email, that user has taken the first step
in building an ongoing businesses relationship

Permission Marketing
❖ In 1999, Seth Godin,
published Permission
Marketing: Turning Strangers
into Friends and Friends into
Customers
❖ This book changed how we
viewed and approached
marketing
❖ How to Use Permission
Marketing to Build Your
WordPress Business

❖ Offers the site visitor an incentive to voluntarily share
their email (giving you permission to contact them)
❖ Makes sure that in exchange for the site visitor's trust,
your offer delivers value beyond expectation and
familiarizes your prospect with your product or service
❖ Continues to enhance the bonus offerings to assure
that the prospect maintains and even extends their level
of permission based on the perceived value you offer

❖ Over time, your communications offering further
incentives, build a trusted source relationship with the
consumer who continues to grant access
❖ As your potential client becomes more familiar with your
product or service, and you have made a favorable
impression they are willing to become paying customers

Why eMail Marketing Works
❖ eMail is Personal
❖ eMail is Purposeful
❖ eMail is Targeted
❖ You Own your eMail List
❖ eMail is One-On-One

What is MailChimp?
❖ MailChimp is an easy to use
eMail marketing software
(EMS) that has several great
WordPress plugins for
designing, sending and saving
templates of your emails.
❖ Provides a quick and easy way
of creating, sending, tracking
email campaigns
❖ Shows who opened your
emails, and whether they
clicked your links

MailChimp for WordPress
❖ The MailChimp for WordPress
plugin is a great solution for
subscribing visitors to your
MailChimp List.
❖ The Featured Images in RSS &
MailChimp Email plugin
outputs images in your RSS
feed to MailChimp, and other
services that use RSS feed
data for content marketing

MailChimp Helps You
❖ Design email newsletters
❖ Nurture relationships by
keeping in touch
❖ Stay on top of mind with your
prospects
❖ Provide valuable information to
build a relationship of Trust
❖ Automate the process of
sending emails

You’re Ready, almost set — but before you go…
Before You Push the
Button on your first
MailChip eMail
campaign
There Is Some Stuff
You Need To
Know…

Making sure your newsletters get to the right
inboxes
❖ Acceptable
❖ Clear email / newsletter signup form
❖ Manual entry of recent customers

Making sure your newsletters get to the right
inboxes
❖ Not Acceptable
❖ “Contact Us,” “Apply For A Quote,” or “More
Information” forms
❖ Informally collected email addresses
❖ Any kind of third party list (publicly available,
purchased, rented, or partner)
❖ MailChimp Compliance Team
http://mailchimp.com/contact/?department=complianc
e

Structuring Your eMail List
❖ You have the option to create multiple lists, but…
❖ MailChimp determines monthly rates by total
subscriber count
❖ duplicate subscribers across multiple lists count
toward that total

Structuring Your eMail List
❖ Keep your list clean and your billing rate low:
❖ by maintaining a single list
❖ segmenting data
❖ interest groups

Creating Your List
❖ Choose Lists from your MailChimp dashboard
❖ Click the Create List button in the upper righthand corner.
❖ On the List details page, you can choose a name
❖ Set the default From name and email address
❖ Write a short subscribers remind – how and why they’re
receiving email from you.
❖ When you’re finished, click Save.

No Subscribers Yet? No
Problem!
❖ MailChimp can automatically generate a signup form for
your list, which you can easily:
❖ customize
❖ share
❖ post on your website

Subscription Forms
❖ MailChimp offers the ability to easily customize
subscription form options
❖ Gather to segment your list
❖ Forms require double opt-in
❖ For more information about the double opt-in

Importing Your eMail List
❖ Importing a list of contacts or subscribers who have
opted-in to receiving email:
❖ Uploading a CSV or tab delimited text file
❖ Copying and pasting your list from Excel
❖ Importing contacts from your Mac Address Book
❖ Import directly from a third-party application or
program—like Salesforce, Google Docs, or Highrise

Building and Customizing Signup
Forms
❖ MailChimp automatically generates a series of signup
forms and response emails
❖ The Create forms page has tools to customize:
❖ Unsubscribe sequence,
❖ Update profile sequence
❖ Double opt-in process

Signup forms
❖ Steps for creating and designing forms in MailChimp:
❖ Embedded forms - Generate code that can be embedded on your
website
❖ Subscriber popup form - a signup form in a popup on your website
❖ Form integrations - integrations with Wufoo, CoffeeCup, Twitter,
WordPress, and Squarespace
❖ Facebook form - Add a signup form to your Facebook page.
❖ Tablet form - Collect signups in store or at events with
Chimpadeedoo for iPad or Android tablets

Build It
❖ To build your signup form and begin customizing:
❖ Navigate to the Lists page
❖ Select the appropriate list
❖ click Signup forms, then General forms
❖ Click the Build it tab

Build It
❖ Default fields: Email address, First name, and Last
name. Imported lists can containing additional fields
❖ Add a field tab on the right side of the page
❖ Customize field text and set default merge field values
❖ Click Save & Exit to save all changes to your form

Adding an Extra Security to
Form
❖ Preventing spambots from adding email addresses to
your list:
❖ Check the Protect your signup form with reCAPTCHA
❖ A Google reCAPTCHA box that says "I'm not a robot."
will be included on your signup form

Design It
❖ Choose the colors, styles, and fonts
❖ Style changes are made universally and not form by
form
❖ MailChimp applies changes to each of the other forms
and response emails for your list
❖ Use the MailChip Knowledge Base for tips on
customizing the look and feel of your list forms and
response emails.

Translate It
❖ Translate it tab enables or customized translations in
any of MailChimp's 40+ supported languages

Creating Templates and
Campaigns
❖ Once your list and forms are set up, you’re ready to start
building an email message to send out to your
subscribers
❖ MailChimp refers eMail messages you design and send
to your subscribers a “Campaign”
❖ Each campaign is built using a preset layout called a
“template”

Creating or Importing a Custom
Templates
❖ You can import your own templates or create custom
coded templates for design or branding needs
❖ Templates you create are found under the Saved
Templates tab
❖ To customize templates you will need to use the
MailChimp Template Language

Creating a MailChip
Campaign
❖ Variety of basic email layouts you can customize easily
❖ Many layouts use a drag and drop editor
❖ You can save your design as a template for future
campaigns

Creating Campaigns
❖ Regular Campaigns
❖ Plain-Text Campaigns
❖ A/B Testing Campaigns
❖ RSS-Driven Campaigns
❖ You can create a series of automated emails with
MailChimp's Automation features

Regular Campaigns
❖ Recipients:
❖ Determine which subscribers will receive the campaign.
❖ You can choose to send it to the entire list
❖ Segmentation tool targets list
❖ subscriber data, campaign or e-commerce activity,
group membership, manual selection, other

Campaign Setup
❖ Choose a name (not visible to the recipient)
❖ Email subject
❖ From name
❖ From email address

Tracking Options
❖ Add Google Analytics tracking to track clicks from your
campaigns all the way to purchases on your website
❖ If you want to track purchases, you'll want to be sure
Google Analytics is set up to track conversions

Merge tags
❖ Merge tags personalize response emails, automation workflows, and
regular campaigns.
❖ Merge tags pull personalized or dynamic data from your list to:
❖ Greet each subscriber by their first name in the email
❖ Populate RSS or social media information
❖ Translate content in a campaign
❖ Populate unique coupon codes / links for each subscriber
❖ Include/exclude content within each email based on a subscriber’s
profile information

Merge tag Resources
❖ Getting Started with Merge Tags
❖ All the Merge Tags Cheat Sheet
❖ How Conditional (or Smart) Merge Tags Work
❖ Smart Merge Tags and Groups
❖ Troubleshooting Merge Tags

Preview and Test Your
Campaign
❖ Use Preview Mode to see how your campaign will render
on desktop and mobile environments.
❖ If you're using merge tags in your campaign — they're
replaced with placeholder text
❖ Placeholders let you know that the merge tags will be
replaced with subscriber-specific information when you
send the campaign
❖ You can preview subscriber-specific information before a
campaign is sent

Campaign
❖ Send test emails to any email address
❖ Preview the mobile version of your campaign directly
from your mobile device
❖ Use the Link Checker to make sure that all links in your
campaign are valid
❖ Set up Social Cards* for your campaign.

Campaign
❖ Inbox Inspector
❖ Automates the testing and renders campaign as they will
appear across multiple email clients
❖ Can also run spam filter checks on the content to help
identify potential red flags in your campaign
❖ Is free for all users with monthly paid accounts—up to 25
inspections can be run each week at no cost.
❖ Users with free and pay-as-you-go plans can purchase a
single Inbox Inspection for $3

Sending Your Campaign
❖ Confirm is the final the step of the campaign building process
❖ Scan the campaign to verify that all previous steps properly
completed
❖ Confirm will alert you to anything that might need your
attention before sending
❖ You can preview both the HTML and plain-text version
❖ Run a final Inbox Inspection, or send one last test email to
make sure everything is just right

Pushing SEND
❖ Send the campaign immediately or to schedule it for a
specific date and time
❖ Paid accounts have 3 additional scheduling options:
❖ Send Time Optimization
❖ Timewarp
❖ Batch Delivery

Avoiding Spam Filters / Junk
Files
❖ Learn how spam filters think
❖ Spam filters look at a long list of criteria to decide
whether or not your email is junk
❖ SPAM criteria grows/adapts as spam filters learn
more every time someone clicks the Mark as spam in
their email client
❖ MailChimp has a dedicated guide - How to Avoid Spam
Filters

Common Mistakes
❖ Lists: Sending to inactive, stale, or non-permission-based
lists
❖ Formatting: ALL CAPS, crazy colors, and too !!! many
!!!exclamation !!! points !!!!
❖ Content: Anything about getting money, paying less money,
or money-back guarantees
❖ Code: Sloppy code, extra tags, code pulled in from Microsoft
Word
❖ Images: Too many images, or one single image with no text

Mail Chimp Reports
❖ Help you analyze the performance of your campaign
❖ Provide insights for future campaigns
❖ MailChimp Mobile give you access from your mobile
device
❖ manage lists, add subscribers, send campaigns, view
your reports

Understanding MailChimp
Reports
❖ Overview gives you at-a-glance information about your
campaign
❖ opens, clicks, social engagement, unsubscribes, and
bounces

Reports
❖ Activity menu
❖ View or export recipients that interacted with your
campaign in a specific way
❖ View all subscribers who received, opened, didn’t
open, or clicked a link in your campaign
❖ See which addresses bounced, unsubscribed, or
even filed an abuse complaint

Reports
❖ Links gives you a better idea of how well each tracked
link within a campaign performed
❖ Find a list of all tracked URLs from the campaign
❖ The number of total and unique clicks for each one
❖ Populate a click map to give you a visual
representation of how each link performed

Reports
❖ Social reveals who has:
❖ liked your campaign on Facebook
❖ provides a list of the top influencers and referrers
❖ displays a map of clicks from around the globe
❖ Keep in mind you’ll need integrate your account with
Facebook — which is a moving target…

Questions?

Presenters
Sandi Batik - Event Host & Organizer
WordPress evangelist, consultant, trainer, curricula
developer, author, unapologetic geek, unrepentant
capitalist, lucky enough to do what I love everyday. I’ve
served as Austin WordPress Meetup co-organizer since
2010. With my husband Nick Batik, co-founded Pleiades
Publishing Services in 1992 and Hands-On WordPress
Training in 2010.
Follow me @sandi_batik / @WPATX
Contact me at: handsonwp.com
Nick Batik
Started in web development in 1994 and have been a
WordPress consultant, and web developer since 2007.
A WordPress evangelist, I’ve served as Austin
WordPress Meetup co-organizer since 2010. With my
partner, co-founded Pleiades Publishing Services in 1992
and Hands-On WordPress Training in 2010.
Follow me @nick_batik / @WPATX
Contact me at: handsonwp.com

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