Samuel
Updated :
As a business owner, it is going to be important for you to gather contact information from your potential customers. When you gather this information you basically now have a way to reach out and romance and market to these people on a regular basis. They have invited you into their email inbox and that is a valuable position to be in.
To facilitate this process, Art Storefronts allows its customers to integrate their sites with MailChimp. By linking Art Storefronts to MailChimp you can transfer captured email addresses from ASF to a list in MailChimp without having to do anything but the initial set up of MailChimp and the Lead Capture tool.
This support article will walk you through the process of creating a MailChimp account. Please note: once you have finished the steps here, go back to the MailChimp Master Article to move onto the next step in the set-up process. This article only covers how to create the MailChimp account, not how to connect the account to Art Storefronts.
- Let's head over to www.MailChimp.com to create a free account.
- Enter your email into the Email and Username fields. This can be a personal or business email address. The customer will not see this information.
- Create a Password for the account. Please, follow the character requirements.
- Once all the details are added, click on the blue button labeled "Sign Up!".
- Now, you will need to check your email for a confirmation email to verify your new MailChimp account.
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Locate the email with the subject "Activate Your MailChimp Account" and click on the blue button labeled "Activate Account".
- A new browser tab will appear. Click on the blue button labeled "I'm Not A Robot" to confirm that you are indeed a human.
- You'll need to complete the reCAPTCHA to prove you're not a robot then click "Verify".
- From here, you will see the three steps into finishing your registration. The first step is choosing your plan. Select your preferred plan (in most cases the Free plan will be all you need) then click on Next at the bottom of the window. (If you have more than 2000 contacts you will need to select a paid plan)
- Now it's time to add your business details, beginning with your First and Last Name
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Add your Business Name. This can be your gallery/studio name or your artist name. Many artists use their own names as their brand name. You're not required to have a gallery/studio name.
- Leave the Website URL and Phone Number fields empty, and click on the Continue button.
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The next step is your Business Address. Click on the Continue button once you’ve filled this out.
- On the next page, you’ll be asked if you have a list of contacts which you would like to add to your Mailchimp account. Select No here, as if you have an existing contact list this should be added to your contacts list on your Art Storefronts site directly, and they will automatically be synced across to Mailchimp. For more information you can refer to this article: https://artstorefrontssupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/226621908-How-To-Import-Contacts-To-Your-Art-Storefronts-Website
- In the next few steps there are multiple pages that ask for information about your business, but as you won’t be utilizing their services for another beyond sending out emails you can just click on the Skip button for each of these.
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On this page, you can opt-out of their marketing emails, and click on Continue at the bottom of the page.
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You will now be on the main page of your Mailchimp account, and you will be ready to move on to the next step, which is connecting it to your Art Storefronts site. Please click on this link to move on to the next article in this series: Integrate MailChimp and Art Storefronts
Please Note: We advise that you should have the audience's "Send Welcome Email" turned off. This way, MailChimp does not send out a mass email when one uploads new contacts. Additionally, if this flag is set as ON, Mailchimp will send out an email having the wrong name sent out to them. To turn off this feature:
1. Click on your Audience, which will have a drop-down. Please Choose Audience Dashboard
2. Please find the Manage Audience Drop Down menu and click on Settings
3. Choose the "Audience name and defaults" link
4. Here you'll find a couple of options. Please ensure that the "" option us NOT checked:
IMPORTANT: When you send your first email, you may see this scary warning message in your email client
This is generated because you are sending an email from yourself, to yourself - which many email clients interpret as spam. Fortunately, no one else on your email list will see this warning.
Please Note: We advise that you should disable 'Email Unsubscribe Notifications to' option "
It is usually a bad signal, drains your energy and is therefore a mental trap. It is okay to every once in a while look at your unsubscribe rate, but to be notified of every unsubscribe is flat out unhealthy and unproductive. It will also get your mind sidetracked, worried about your emails, how much you are sending. Your primary goal is to dramatically grow your email list over time, and part of this means a percentage will unsubscribe as you go — this is perfectly normal. So long as you are following our email advice in the Art marketing calendar, and you are providing value in your emails, then you can rest assured you are not emailing too much and you can permanently ignore the unsubscribe metric.
To turn off this feature:
1. Click on your Audience
2. Please find the Manage Audience Drop Down menu and click on Settings
3. Choose the "Audience name and defaults" link
4. Here you'll find a couple of options. In the "New subscriber notifications" section, please ensure that "Email unsubscribe notifications to:"text field is NOT filled in:
What Do I Do Next?
Now that you have your Audience list set up, you’re ready to connect Mailchimp with your site. Click on the link to learn about Integrating and Verifying your site with Mailchimp.