Have you ever wanted to send an HTML email for a special event but didn’t know how? MailChimp is a web platform that makes sending these emails very simple. HTML emails are just emails that are formatted like webpages. They can add another dimension to how to promote events, share your church newsletters or generally connect with people within your church community.
According to MailChimp’s website they are “the world’s largest marketing automation platform. It’s like a second brain that helps millions of customers find their audience, engage their customers, and build their brand.” It really is a wonderful platform that we have used for a number of years.
MailChimp allows you to create ‘Lists’ within their platform which is a list of emails. For example, we have a POS Church list, a NSW Pastors list, a UPCA Ministers list etc. This is a very helpful tool, especially if you do not have a church database system that you already use. You could easily use ‘Lists’ to create groups within your church so you can email specified individuals rather than always having to email the whole church. When adding emails, MailChimp will ask you to include that person’s name so you can easily update it if their email address ever changes.
You can also create personal ‘Templates’ and save them on MailChimp by editing the hundreds of layouts and themes that are readily available on their platform. Once you have picked a theme or layout you will be able to edit it just like you would be able to do on a platform like Squarespace or WordPress. Below is one that we used recently for our Easter event this year.
I was able to design something like that with no knowledge of code. Using MailChimp helps your emails stand out from the hundreds of emails flooding people’s inboxes.
One final thing that I want to highlight that MailChimp allows you to do, is to track how many people are opening the emails that you are sending out. You can monitor a LIVE report of how many opens your ‘Campaign’ receives and also how many clicks (if you include links in your email). It also automatically weeds out any emails that bounce or are redirected.
The best thing about all of this is that you can use MailChimp for FREE. If you have less than 2,000 subscribers and plan to send less than 12,000 emails per month than you can use it for free. If you want to get rid of the MailChimp branding on your emails and also unlock a few other features then you can get a monthly plan that costs as little as $10 a month. That is great value for all that they offer their customers!
