Knowing the ins and outs of email marketing can give your business a much-needed boost, and MailChimp is a perfect tool to give you a leg up on the competition. Read on for an explanation of MailChimp’s services, and a few tips from SalesWings to make the most out of your MailChimp subscription.

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is an email marketing service with a wide variety of pricing options and features that make it a perfect solution for businesses of all sizes. With MailChimp, you can create beautifully designed email campaigns and sign up forms, and also automate them, so you can plan without worrying about remembering to send out emails. You can also track your campaigns to see how many people opened messages, which links were clicked on, and other details like bounce rate, subscriber activity, and unsubscribes.

MailChimp offers a few different levels of membership, with the first and most fundamental being free. From there, you can upgrade your account to allow more extensive email lists, and take advantage of more useful features.

MailChimp features explained

Build professional-looking emails and sign up forms – MailChimp provides users with the layout and design options where all you need to do is plug in content and images. And with MailChimp integration, you can also design a sign-up form to use on your website that will automatically sync with your email lists. That means anyone who signs up on your site will automatically appear on your MailChimp list.

• Automation — MailChimp’s automation means that your messages will always get to the right people at the time they need to. You can set up campaigns so that, for example, someone who signed up for your email list will get an automated email upon signing up, another one a week later, and then again after being signed up for a month. This way, you can keep in regular communication with your customers without needing to remember when they signed up. You can also target customers based on previous sales, or other actions they take.

• Reporting — Do you want to know who clicked on which links in your email, or how many times a particular person opened one of your messages? With MailChimp’s reporting feature, you can see all your data mapped out in helpful and easy to understand charts and graphs. With a paid account, you can use MailChimp integration to link to Google Analytics and track how your email engagement turns into web engagement, and eventually, sales.

• Link with e-commerce and social media — MailChimp integrates seamlessly with other marketing campaigns on social media. Create linked ads on Facebook or Instagram, or connect your e-commerce store so you can send more personalized emails when someone makes a purchase. With a paid account, MailChimp predicts the gender and age range of customers and analyzes the demographics of your email lists so that you can better understand your customer base.

Also, MailChimp offers a convenient mobile app so that you can manage your account on the go. With all the data you need right at your fingertips, you can brainstorm effective marketing campaigns to help you reach your sales goals.

MailChimp is a powerful tool for anyone who wants to take control of their email list and turn casual fans into repeat customers who are happy to spread the word about your products. If you aren’t sure whether MailChimp is right for your business, take it for a test run. Free accounts can send 12,000 emails a month to up to 2,500 email addresses, so you can get a feel for how the platform works, and how your business might benefit from more professional email campaigns.