Founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Dan Kurzius Mailchimp has become one of the most popular all-in-one Marketing platform’s for small business. It also rates very high for medium to large business too…

Over the years of being a Mailchimp Expert I’ve seen it develop and grow into a powerhouse for email marketing…and beyond. To be honest, most people will probably only use the basics of what Mailchimp can offer and will be missing out on some awesome capabilities. To be honest, most people will probably only use the basics of what Mailchimp can offer which is fine and appropriate in some cases…but what if you’ve been missing out (and paying for) some awesome capabilities that will take your business to the next level?

To help out, a few of us “experts” got together to share our Top Mailchimp Hacks And Tips Everyone Needs To Know.

Landing Pages

Robin Adams – Founder of Chimp Answers

I think Landing Pages are so underutilised it’s almost criminal. Once you’ve got your branded domain sorted and a nice base design, it’s so quick and easy to set up a new page in minutes and link it to a FB Ad, a Google Ad, a Promotional post…anything…and because it’s so easy, you can make it hyper-specific and get a much better response.

Customer Journeys and Automation

Doug Dennison – CEO & Co-founder of  MailNinja 

The new customer journey tool is amazing, the possibilities unlocked by connecting your store (or website) is as big as your imagination. One great hack is using Facebook retargeting ads based on your audience tags. One simple feature, so many use cases!

MaryAnn Pfeiffer – Digital Marketing Strategist 108 Degrees Digital Marketing

While Customer Journeys are fabulous, sometimes all you need is a single, one-off email autoresponder. The traditional autoresponder automation is fantastic for that. It’s simple, direct and you don’t have to muss or fuss with a longer term plan when you’re not ready for it.

Tags, Groups and Segments

Adam Q. Holden-Bache – Director of Email Marketing Enventys Partners

I’m not sure this is a hack, but understanding how and when to use Tags, Groups, and Segments can be key when managing your data. Tags should be used for things you know about a contact so that you can identify and organize based on the tags you’ve assigned. Groups are basically “interests”. Use them to allow the subscribers to identify what their interests are. Groups are especially helpful during sign-ups so subscribers can select the types of messages they want to receive. Segments are smaller sections of the larger audience. You can create segments based off of both Groups and Tags, allowing you to identify a targeted subset of contacts within your Audience.

Audience Forms and Messages

Alessandra Farabegoli – Digital Strategist, Co-Founder, Digital Update and Freelancecamp Italia Alessandra Farabegoli

One of the first things I do is to check and personalize the Audience forms and messages, those that are hosted on (or sent by) Mailchimp servers during subscribe, update and unsubscribe process. There are so many things you can do to improve them, the first one is to use the right images / colors / fonts and to change the copy in order to follow your style guidelines. Have you ever noticed that you can substitute the standard “sign up thank-you page”, “confirmation thank-you page” and even “unsubscribe success page” with personalized landing pages built by you? This is so useful in order to build the best possible onboarding experience, or to give the last chance to resubscribe to those who are going away (while at the same time avoiding “this is spam” feedback).

Business Tools and Link Checker

Templates

Emily Ryan – Co-Founder and Email Strategist Westfield Creative

Some of my favourite Mailchimp hacks…Mailchimp has a lot of pre-designed templates, but I will tell you, we pretty much always start with the Basic Layout (one column). There is so much you can do with the email builder. You don’t need to start with a bunch of columns and such. Keep it simple and focus more on creating great content, great images and a CTA button that people want to click on.

Also, don’t forget to utilize Mailchimp Landing Pages. They work amazingly and you can even take payments through them. Mailchimp has so many features that people don’t even realize- from the website builder, to postcards, retargeting ads and so much more. I encourage you to take some time to look through the whole “Create” menu of products that come with your account.