Thousands of new WordPress projects spring up every day, but very few of them actually manage to turn into successful businesses. A lot of this is down to marketing (or lack thereof).
No matter how great your idea is, you need to put it in front of people’s eyes, which is often easier said than done.
However, you can check out tools like MailChimp that can immensely improve your chances of getting people to talk about your product.
Let’s see the Mailchimp for WordPress benefits and how easy is the setup process.
What is MailChimp?
MailChimp is an email marketing service that you can employ to set up a newsletter or marketing campaign to keep users informed about your company and products.
But how to overcome people’s hesitance when it comes to email-based services?
Nowadays, we get most of the information about the surrounding world from online and social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Still, we believe you can find a case for email marketing, even in the social-media-driven 21st century.
The counterargument is quite simple – you pay attention to every single message that lands in your inbox. Even if you don’t open every email – you still check out the subject line to see where it’s coming from.
By contrast, most of the screen time on social media is spent scrolling. With hundreds of friends sharing photos, videos, and thoughts about the world, you’re much more likely to miss a piece of important news.
From that standpoint, email marketing can be a very powerful weapon.
Why MailChimp for WordPress?
MailChimp is by far the most widely used email marketing service in the world, and this is in no small part die to its seamless WordPress integration. WP powers more than a third of the world’s websites, so MailChimp’s developers were smart to ensure their service works well with the CMS.
WordPress support is far from MailChimp’s only merit. With an extensive knowledge base and easy to navigate dashboard, it has built a reputation as one of the most user-friendly platforms of its kind.
This advanced email solution won’t break the bank, either.
If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers and send no more than 10,000 emails per month (the daily limit is 2,000 emails), you can use MailChimp for free.
The free plan is stripped of some of the features found in the paid subscriptions. However, it still helps up-and-coming online projects to steadily grow their audience without blowing a massive budget on an expensive service.
When your WordPress website gains enough momentum, you can easily upgrade your MailChimp subscription and boost your marketing capabilities sky-high.
MailChimp Essential Features
In addition to its ease of use, MailChimp has been widely hailed for its diverse set of features. The feats can help just about any website owner optimize their email marketing efforts and craft effective campaigns.
Here are just some of the extras you can get with a MailChimp account:
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RSS-to-email subscriptions
Automation plays an active role in boosting the efficiency of email marketing campaigns. Theoretically, you can manually send every single announcement from the MailChimp dashboard, but tying it to your RSS feed will save you time and ensure your subscribers never miss a thing.
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Custom email templates
The tool lets you create and customize an eye-catching design that entices subscribers to interact with your emails. This is especially important in email marketing campaigns, where failing to grab the user’s attention can swiftly undo all your hard work so far.
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Automatic welcome emails and autoresponders
You can configure the MailChimp plugin to greet each new subscriber for you. It’s a set-and-forget functionality that saves you a lot of time, especially if you have a large number of subscribers. Autoresponders further automate the task of sending out large volumes of messages and let you focus on building a solid relationship with your subscribers.
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Comprehensive analytics reports
Knowing your user base demographics helps you tailor your content and present it in a way that would engage the visitor’s attention. Some of the MailChimp paid subscriptions supply you with detailed analytics data and help you build a successful promotional strategy.
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Performance monitoring tools
Of course, even the most carefully planned campaigns don’t always work as expected. To help you spot potential problems and make timely adjustments to your strategy, this WordPress plugin helps you monitor your marketing campaign’s progress and success.
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Abandoned cart emails
A high cart abandonment rate is an ecommerce site’s worst enemy, and over the years, it has caused the downfall of more than a few online stores. MailChimp can help you bring those people to a minimum by reminding them they have pending items in their cart, even after they’ve long left the website. This one is perfect in cases where people just lost focus and forgot they were in the middle of a purchase.
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Scheduled email campaigns
Usually, such marketing campaigns are launched during very busy periods for the company. By scheduling the emails, you can focus on growing your business.
How to Set Up MailChimp on WordPress?
A search for “MailChimp” on WordPress’s official plugin repository returns more than a few results. That’s because, apart from MailChimp itself, you can find quite so many MC plugins. You can use the add-ons to integrate the email marketing service with your WP installation and customize your subscription form to perfection.
Some plugins extract and display MailChimp analytics data in the WordPress dashboard as well, simplifying the task of managing a campaign.
It’s worth checking out the plugins to see what they have to offer. Many flaunt some excellent ratings but keep in mind that some haven’t been updated in a while, and you can’t be sure how well they’ll work with the latest WP versions.
If you simply want to integrate the MailChimp service with your WordPress website, you can do it without installing additional plugins.
Here are the steps to do so:
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Create a MailChimp account
Setting up an account requires nothing more than a valid email address and a couple of minutes of your time. After you activate your account, you will need to choose a plan and enter a few essential details about your project. Then, you can move on to configure MailChimp.
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Upload your audience data
Go to the Audience dashboard and set up a list of addresses you’re going to send emails to. If you already have a base of subscribers – you can easily import it following the steps in this article.
If you’re just getting started, a list of valid addresses you can check will help you test everything before building up your email marketing efforts.
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Integrate your MailChimp account with WordPress
It’s now time to use MailChimp to create the subscription form for your website. Click Integrations from the sidebar on your MailChimp dashboard, and select WordPress.
Ensure the URL is correct and choose the audience you configured during the previous step. When you’re ready – click Get Code, select the generated code, and copy it.
Log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Theme Editor. From the right sidebar, select the header.php file of the theme you’re currently using.
Paste the code just before the closing </head> tag.
To make sure everything works, go back to the Integrations sections of MailChimp’s dashboard and click on Check Connection.
With this, your subscription form will appear on your WordPress site, and subscribers will automatically have their data added to your MailChimp audience.
ScalaHosting and WordPress
WordPress might be one of the most user-friendly content management systems available out there, but building a successful website with it is not possible without the right hosting environment.
ScalaHosting has been on the market for well over a decade now, and it’s safe to say we know what creating this environment involves. Over the years, we have helped thousands of WordPress-based projects get off the ground, and we’ve gained the invaluable experience that helps us optimize our servers and create the setup your website needs.
We have shared hosting plans specifically optimized for WordPress, which should be the perfect starting point for any new project. If your plans are more ambitious – you can start directly with an SPanel managed VPS.
In addition to the extra security and more reliable performance, our virtual servers will also give you access to SWordPress – an in-house-built WordPress management system that installs the CMS in seconds, manages its auto-updates, and protects it from hackers.
When it comes to sending emails, we have high limits on the number of messages you can send per hour. This guarantees you will have no problems running your email marketing campaigns and keeps spammers away from our servers as well.
Conclusion
Although it’s been around for quite a while now, email marketing continues to be a highly effective way of raising brand awareness. Its impact can be enormous, but it’s often another laborious task for website administrators.
MailChimp takes a lot of the burden away, and its range of features gives you the freedom to create your marketing campaigns precisely the way you want them.
FAQ
Is MailChimp compatible with WordPress?
Yes, it is. In fact, MailChimp offers seamless WordPress integration by default. Dozens of third-party plugins give you the freedom to customize your subscription forms, view MailChimp data inside the WP dashboard, and set up the service to work with other popular add-ons.
How does MailChimp integrate with WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce plugin for WordPress, and it works well with MailChimp. Many add-ons help with MailChimp’s WooCommerce integration, and a few online-store-specific features make the email marketing service even more suitable for internet retailers.
Is MailChimp free?
MailChimp offers a free plan that is stripped from some of the service’s features but could very well be the perfect starting point for small businesses. With the free subscription, you can have an audience of up to 2,000 contacts and send up to 10,000 emails per month.
ScalaHosting – MailChimp for WordPress – Benefits and Setup
