Mailchimp for Beginners: Adding Contacts
Mailchimp is a fantastic marketing tool for any sized business or non-profit and can help you extend your customer reach. Collecting emails from customers, clients, and others is a great way to keep in contact and update people on what your business is doing!
Adding contacts:
There are a few ways you can add contacts to your Mailchimp account. You can add a single contact, you can import a sheet into Mailchimp with all the contact information, or you can add an opt-in form on your website!
Adding a Single Client
It’s extremely straightforward to add a single client in Mailchimp. We recommend using the add client option when you have only a few to add, otherwise it gets rather tedious. To begin, start at the home page for your Mailchimp account (you need to be logged in!). Click on the Audience button on the left-hand side.
Click on the All contacts option on the yellow bar (highlighted in green above). This will bring you to the Audience portion of your Mailchimp where you can view subscribers, manage contacts, add contacts, and much more! Click on the Add Contacts tab and select the Add a Subscriber option. Now you can add in the new Subscriber!
Fill in the required information and add or create a tag if you wish. Make sure you have permission from the subscriber before adding them to your Mailchimp, you do not want to violate any privacy or anti-spam laws!
Know the laws!
The Canadian Laws regarding anti-spam are in-depth and specific, you must: (1) obtain consent, (2) provide identification information, and (3) provide an unsubscribe mechanism. And Canada is not alone in their anti-spam laws! The United States and the European Union have their own set of anti-spam laws. Make sure you are familiar with all.
Importing Subscribers
If you have a list of subscribers you wish to add to your Mailchimp importing them is the most straightforward way to go! Starting at the Audience Dashboard click on All Contacts in the yellow bar on the left. Click on Add Contacts and then select the Import contacts option, below the Add subscriber. This will bring up the below options.
Either option is great for importing contacts, however the copy and paste will require more effort on the users end. If you decide to upload the file make sure it is in CSV format or a tab-delimited TXT file as it will not work if the files are not correct. A handy feature of Google Sheets allows you to download your Google Sheet as a CSV file without any extra work!
Once you have chosen your option the next screen will allow you to upload the file and continue to the Organization portion.
Select the audience and the status of the subscriber. The next screen will allow you to choose or create a tag for the Subscriber. Once you have selected or applied the correct tag you will then move on to the matching stage! Here you will make sure the contacts information is recognized and the correct columns will be imported.
When you’re happy with the information and all looks correct click Finalize Import to review before completing the importation! After selecting Complete Import you are done!
Final
Thoughts
Adding subscribers to your new Mailchimp account may seem daunting, but it’s pretty straightforward! There are three different ways to add subscribers. You can import them, add single subscribers, or copy and paste them from a sheet. A great way to grow your subscriber list is to add an opt-in form on your website.
