Effortlessly Manage Mailchimp Invoices for Inventory

Mailchimp invoices for Inventory

One of the saddest situations of a small business  owner is when nobody knows that your business   exists. Today we'll show you how to use mailchimp  to attract customers and keep your business top   of mind, so that never happens to you. By the  end of this video, you'll know how to capture   contact info from potential customers, even if  you don't have a website, how to set up an email   newsletter and how to automatically engage your  customers when they sign up to your email list.   Let's jump in. To get mailchimp, head to the  following website. You can click on the card   in the top right, or I've included a link in the  description below. From the homepage, click on   start free trial. Now mailchimp has four plans  to choose from. What we'll cover today requires   the essentials plan. If you're concerned about  providing a credit card at the start and want to   start with the free plan, scroll down and click on  about free. We'll go back to the free trial at the   top to keep it simple. Click on sign up free. First, you'll need a business email. While you   can use a Gmail, Outlook or other free email  host, I strongly discourage it because it makes   it way more difficult to ensure successful  delivery of your emails. For this reason,   if you don't have a domain, I recommend you get  one and come back later. Type in your password   and then click sign up. Then check your email  to activate your account. Type in your payment   info and click pay now. Don't worry. This  is a one-month free trial. Your card will   not be charged as long as you cancel before the  end of your one month. Once you're all set up,   click on the close button to get to the next  step, add your business name and click next.  Then confirm your business address. This is  required to comply with anti-spam laws and will   appear in the footer of every email that you send.  If you run a business from home and don't want to   share your address, I recommend getting a PO box  if you're in the United States. mailchimp also   has some alternative ideas, which you can learn  about by clicking on alternatives. I'll confirm   our address and click next. Now mailchimp is going  to ask a bunch of questions to get to know you and   your business. We're on a mission to get started  quickly, so I'll skip through these. Finally,   you've made it to the homepage. Let's get  to work. The mailchimp interface is pretty   simple. You'll see the sidebar on the left  with several options for your main operations,   including audience to see and edit your contacts,  campaigns to manage your emails, and automations   to automate sending emails. So, remember, we have  three goals today. Get customers to market to,   send emails to engage those customers, and  automate sending a welcome email when a new   customer signs up for our list. Let's get those  contacts first by creating a landing page. This   is a great option if you don't already have  a website. So, start by clicking on audience   and then sign up forms. Now there's a default  form set up for you, but it's pretty bland.   So, we're going to create a landing page  instead. Scroll down and click on create   landing page. We'll call this David's Donut  Den deals and click begin. mailchimp has   a few website templates to choose from. Since  we want to get customer emails, we need a lead   generation template. This cactus template looks  good, so let's click on that. So now we're in   mailchimp’s landing page editor. Let's start  by making this feel more like a donut page.  Let's scroll down and hover over the background  image and click on image to change this cactus   out. I'll grab a background image  I made earlier by clicking upload.  Okay. This is starting to look more like home. Let's now change the headline to something that's   more donutty. Move your mouse over the headline  and click on the pencil icon to edit it. Change   the headline in the text editor and you'll see it  change automatically on the page. Note that you   also have a number of different formatting options  available to you. Next, let's look at the email   submission form. When a contact submits their  email, they'll see a confirmation message. The   default message isn't great, so let's change it.  Click on the form, then scroll down the properties   editor to see the confirmation message. I wasn't  kidding, right? Here's a better one. Okay. We're   getting close. Let's next remove this logo from  the header by clicking on the trash can icon.  We'll click on delete to confirm our choice. From  here you can add customer logos and social proof,   but we'll checkpoint here and click save and  close to launch this. So, before you publish,   there are a few more housekeeping items to take  care of. First, the site icon. It's that little   icon that shows up in your browser tab next to  your website name. Sites that have these just look   more professional, so let's click on edit title  and icon and upload one, just like we did the   landing page image. Then we'll click save. Next  is social share preview. You don't want a blank   image and description showing up when someone  shares your landing page on social media. So,   we'll add our image by clicking upload image and a description and then click save. Finally,   the URL. I know what you're  thinking. This mailchimp URL is ugly.  So, you can make some small adjustments here, or  you can connect your own domain. The only downside   is connecting your own domain costs an additional  $10 per month. And that is not included in the   plans that I showed you earlier. Let's stick with  this for now and click publish. Excellent work.   You've now got a landing page. Let's test  it out and see if our contacts get added.  We'll type in an email address and hit subscribe  and we're in. Okay. Now we've got a way to get   contacts. Let's send them some deals, go back to  the main mailchimp page and click on create, give   this email a name you'll recognize later and then  click create email. Let's advertise some deals   with this first email. Even though we don't have  a lot of subscribers right now, it's important for   us to get in the habit of rewarding the customers  who are interested in us. Let's knock out these   fields one by one, click on subject first. Subject lines are super important to hook   your audience's attention so that they open  your email. mailchimp gives you a lot of good   advice about crafting a great subject line and  it can optimize your subject line using AI. Let's   try the AI feature, click on get started and  then type a few words so it knows what you're   trying to write about, then click generate. There are some decent options here. Let's   choose the last one and then modify it just a  little bit by removing newsletter from the front.  Notice how the AI generated both the subject line  and the preview text, lock this in by clicking   save. Next, let's add a send time. Now you want  to send your emails at a time where you have the   best chance of reaching your customers so that  they open your emails. I recommend trying send   time optimization where mailchimp looks at  your subscribers’ patterns to identify the   best send time. Now you might not have enough  subscribers yet for this feature to work. So,   the plan B is we know that donuts are a favorite  weekend morning treat. So, we're going to send   at a specific time and choose Saturday morning  at five am Eastern, so we give our customers an   idea to buy from us before they start their day. Now mailchimp gives us the option to send email in   batches to prevent overloading any websites we'll  send our customers to. This isn't a concern for   us right now, so let's skip it and click save. Finally, let's design the email. We'll scroll   back up and click on design email. mailchimp has a number of templates   to choose from, but we're going to  keep things simple and choose minimal.  This editor is pretty similar to the landing  page editor we saw in the earlier. First   we'll add our logo by clicking on the  header image and then clicking set logo.  Next you can edit the headline and body text  right in line. So, we're going to advertise   our new spicy Chupacabra donut. As you can  see, I can edit the text right in line and   make any changes that I need to. Finally,  we've got to show a picture of this donut,   so we'll scroll down below, click on the image,  then click on add, and then upload image.  We'll double click on the spicy Chupacabra image. And there we go. Doesn't that look great?  Now it's always a good idea to put a  call to action in an email like this,   but we don't have a website to direct our  customers to. So, let's delete this button.  Now at the end of the email, you can put your  social media handles. mailchimp includes your   logo and then handles all of the rest of the  compliance needs to satisfy anti-spam laws. This   is looking good. So, let's click save and exit. Now we feel ready to send this, but there's a big   step that we missed that could really bite you if  you don't do it. When mailchimp sends emails, it   looks as though it comes from your email address.  But if we try to send this now, most modern email   clients will put our emails in the spam folder.  And that's because we haven't given mailchimp   permission to send emails on our behalf. So, let's  fix this. Click on finish later to go back to the   homepage, click on your profile icon in the top  right, and then click on account and billing.  Click on domains. And then you'll see next to your   domain that it needs authentication.  So, click on start authentication.  This is normally a technical process, but  mailchimp works with software called Entri   to make it easy. Click continue, provide  your email and your password for your domain   hosting account, and then click continue. You might be asked to confirm the changes   that Entri wants to make. If you're  not sure what any of this means,   this is a good time to click on cancel and consult  more technical help, especially if you have a   domain that's been around for a while. This is  a brand new domain set up through Hostinger,   so I'm not concerned with messing anything up. With authentication complete, let's click done   and get back to our campaign. We'll click  on all campaigns and then monthly deals,   and then click on schedule. Everything looks  good here, so let's confirm scheduling the email.  Okay, last step. Remember, we set up a  landing page to give our customers 15% off   their first order? Let's make that happen.  On the main menu, click on automations,   then click on welcome new contacts. This is  a quick start to mailchimp's journey feature,   which allows us to communicate with our customers  in response to actions that they take. So, in this   case, when a customer signs up to our email list  on the landing page we just created, we're going   to send them an email. And now mailchimp's AI is  generating an email for us to send. Now we're not   quite ready to trust AI blindly with our emails,  so let's click on edit email and builder. Let's   spot check this. The subject is pretty decent  and the schedule is every day as soon as possible   because we want this to be sent whenever a new  contact joins the list. Let's quickly edit the   email content to include our deal. We'll quickly  add some texts that tells the customer about   the secret code for the 15% discount and  then click on save and return to journey.  Now we're in the journey editor. This is a rich  workflow experience, which we'll use to increase   customer engagement. Now remember our goal is  to get these new contacts to try our delicious   donuts. So, if they don't open this first email  for a week, let's send them a follow up. So, after   the first email in the workflow, click on add a  journey point and then click on wait for trigger.  Now there are a lot of different actions that we  could wait for. Let's go to marketing activity   and select opens email. So, the customer goes  through this workflow and gets the next step   only if they open the welcome email or seven days  have passed. So, we'll configure the seven days   by checking this set a time limit option, then  click save. We only want to send a follow up to   the customers who don't open it. So, let's  add another journey point called if else.  Again, here, there are a number of  ways we can segment our audience,   but we're going to scroll down all the way to  email interaction and opened, and this will   be specifically the welcome email. And we'll  click use segment. We now have two branches.   If they open the email, the contact exits the  workflow, but if they never opened that email,   then we can send them another email by clicking  at a journey point and clicking send email.  This brings up a familiar email  builder so we can add our template   and then click close. Finally, click on turn  on in the top right to turn on this automation.  And congrats. Now you've got a great deal for  your first customers. Wow, we covered a lot to   get your email marketing up and running. If you  learned something today, please give us a like   and don't forget to hit that subscribe button.  Let us know in the comments if you want to see   any part of mailchimp in more detail. This is  David signing out, and I'll see you next time.