Setting up your account:

1. Go to www.mailchimp.com and click Sign Up.
2. Enter your eMail address, a user name, and a password.
3. Check your eMail for a message from MailChimp. Open it up and click “Activate Your Account”.
4. Choose security questions, enter answers, enter your name, address, and company/organization info, and then click “Save and Get Started”.
5. MailChimp will route you to a page of MailChip information. Scroll to the bottom and then click, “Let’s Go”.
6. You’ll be taken to your MailChimp dashboard.

Create a List:

A list allows you to organize your contacts into groups to make sending eMails easier.

1. From your MailChimp dashboard, click “Create List”.
2. Enter a name for your list.
3. Choose and enter a default “from name”, “reply to” eMail address, and (optional) subject line.
4. Write quick note to recipients to remind them of how they got on your eMail list in the box provided.
5. Click “Save”.
6. Now you’ll be taken to a page where you can add people to your list. If your contacts are already gathered in one place (either on your computer or another service, like GoogleDocs), click import, select where you want to upload your contracts from, and follow the directions there.
7. If your contacts can’t be imported, then enter the contact’s info manually by clicking “Add People.” After you fill out your subscriber’s information, check the last box (“This Recipient Has Given Me Permission To Add Him/Her …”), and then click subscribe. You can add more information to their profile if you choose, or you can scroll to the top of the page and click “Add Subscriber” for as many other subscribers as you have.
8. When you’re done, click back to the dashboard.

Sending eMails:

1. To send an eMail, click “Send a Campaign”.
2. Select a list to send the eMail to, and then click “Send to Entire List”. (You can also choose different options for determining who receives your specific eMail campaigns.)
3. Enter a subject for the eMail and verify the “from name” and “reply to” eMail fields.
4. If you’d like to personalize the “to” field, check the box next to “Personalize the ‘to’ field. The merge tag should be *|FNAME|*. This will personalize it to the recipient’s first name.
5. Click the right arrow located on the navigation bar across the top.
6. Click on “Designer Templates”. You can narrow the search results by selecting certain boxes in the left-hand column. “Newsletters” might provide you with the best options.
7. Once you see a template that you like, click on it.
8. Edit the different fields of the eMail by hovering over them and clicking “Edit”.
9. If you’d like to change the colors of the theme, click “show themes” or “show style editor” and customize it however you’d like.
10. When you’re finished, if it’s an eMail template that you will want to use again, click “Save to my Templates” towards the top of the page on the left side.
11. At this time, you should also click on the “Preview & Test” button to send yourself a test of the eMail.
12. Click the right arrow.
13. Now you’ll see the plain-text version of your eMail. This is what recipients who can’t receive the HTML version will see.
14. At the top of the plain-text version, write a preview to your message. This will prevent it from getting trapped in spam filters and help people know what they’re opening before they open it.
15. Click the arrow again.
16. Confirm the information that you entered and then either select “Send Now” or schedule the message to send later.

Bloggers: Create an eMail newsletter for posts from your blog.

1. From the Dashboard, click “Campaigns” at the top.
2. Hover over the red “Create Campaign” button and click “RSS-Driven Campaign”.
3. Enter your blog’s RSS feed URL. Select how often you would like the eMail to send, and at what time.
4. Click the right arrow in the navigation bar at the top of the screen.
5. Select what list you’d like to send your blog newsletter to, and then click, “Send to entire list.”
6. Select your subject line, “from name”, “reply to” eMail address, and if you’d like to personalize the “to” field (See steps 3 and 4 in Sending eMails, above).
7. Click the right arrow.
8. Click “Designer Templates” then on the left side, unselect the “Newsletter” box and select the “RSS-to-eMail” box.
9. Choose your template.
10. You can change things like the title, but leave the other merge tags (like *|RSSITEM:TITLE|*) intact. If you’d like to see what your eMail will look like, hover over “Preview and Test” and select “Open Pop Up Preview”.
11. If you’d like to change the colors of the theme, click “show themes” or “show style editor” and customize it however you’d like.
12. When you’re done, click the right arrow.
13. Now you’ll see the plain-text version of your eMail. This is what recipients who can’t receive the HTML version will see.
14. At the top of the plain-text version, write a preview to your message. This will prevent it from getting trapped in spam filters and help people know what they’re opening before they open it.
15. Click the arrow again.
16. Confirm the information that you entered and then click “Start RSS Campaign”.

NOTES:

• Many thanks to Bethany of one dress. one year. for freedom for compiling these steps!
• Find more help from MailChimp, including: videos on their site, YouTube videos, and PDF  guide books.