MailChimp Email Newsletters
- Lucian Tucker (Deactivated)
HumTech offers support for HTML email newsletters. The WebOps team uses MailChimp to create email templates that allow Humanities' staff to easily create and send attractive emails to its audience. Learn more about the process to request newsletter assistance and how to create newsletters below.
Getting Started
Staff have the option of either signing themselves up to MailChimp, or scheduling a meeting with WebOps where we will assist with the sign up process.
Those interested in signing themselves up can visit the MailChimp Signup Page. Once you fill out the sign up form you'll get an email with a link you'll need to click to activate your account. From their you'll be asked for some additional information needed to get started, such as the name of your department and your email address. Answer no to the questions "Does your business sell anything online," and "Do you have a list of email subscribers." Lastly, you'll be given the option to connect your MailChimp account to your departments social media accounts.
Once you're in, let WebOps know the email address you used to sign up so we can connect your account to our account, allowing us the ability to provide you with support as well as manage your email templates.
Once we have this access, WebOps will work with UCLA IT to make sure that your emails don't get flagged as spam. Otherwise the emails you send may not ever make it into your inbox.
How to Request Support
If you need assistance with your newsletter, email support@humnet.ucla.edu and we will get back to you within 2 business days.
Mailing Lists
To get the most out of MailChimp, you'll need to create a mailing list within MailChimp. This allows you to do things such as track who's opening up your emails and who's clicking on links within those emails, and allow people to easily subscribe and unsubscribe.
Creating Mailing List
Before you can send emails, you first need to create a mailing list where you'll store the email addresses and other information about the people you want to email. MailChimp provides steps on how to create a new list, but I've also summarized it below.
You are limited to only one audience with 2000 contacts in the free version of MailChimp. Upgrade to increase these amounts.
When logged in to MailChimp, click on "Audience" in the left hand menu. Next click the Current audience drop-down and choose “View audiences.” Then click the “Create Audience” button. In the confirmation box, click “Create Audience” again.
On the Audience Details page, you'll have a few fields to edit:
For Audience name, give a descriptive name such as "Italian Department Graduates."
We recommend for the Default From email address and Default From name you either use your own @humnet.ucla.edu email address and name, or a general department email account.
For Remind people how they signed up to your list, enter something like "You are receiving this email because you are a graduate in the Italian department." This will appear at the bottom of your emails.
Under Form Settings, make sure that none of the options are checked.
If you'd like to offer people the ability to sign up to this mailing list themselves, then you might want to check some of the options under Notifications to alert you of when someone has subscribed or unsubscribed to your list.
Click "Save" when you're done filling out the fields on this page.
Importing a Google Mailing List
If you already have a mailing list in Google, it is possible to import it into Mailchimp. Before starting, make sure you have administrative rights for the Google Group. Once you have exported the list from Google Groups, you can also follow the steps Import Contacts to MailChimp page.
Visit the Google Groups.
On the left hand side, click on My Groups. You should see the Google Group mailing list you want to export. If you don't, you may need to click a link next to Switch organization view to.
Click on "Manage" under the mailing list you want to export. You should then see a list of all of your members.
At the top of the page, click on "Export Members" and save the .csv file to your computer.
Back in MailChimp, log in and go to your Audience page.
Click on the drop down under Current Audience and choose the audience you'd like to import people into. If you need to create a new list you can refer to the steps above for creating a mailing list.
Click on the “Manage Audience“ dropdown at the top of the screen, and then click on "Import Contacts."
Ensure that Upload file is selected and then click "Continue to Upload."
Click on "Browse" and then select the .csv file you exported from Google Groups. Then, click "Continue to Organize."
Use the Select an audience drop-down to confirm the audience you want to import to, and ensure that Select a status is set to subscribed. Then, click “Continue to Tag.”
Tags can be used to help organize your list, for example, you could use tags like “undergraduate,” “graduate,” and “faculty.” For the purpose of these steps, let’s skip ahead though and click “Continue to Match.”
Here you can match columns the list you exported with fields in MailChimp. If you’ve exported from Google Groups then there should be no changes needed.
Click Finalize Import to review your import settings, and if all looks good then click Complete Import.
How to Send Emails
For each email you want to send, you'll need to create a campaign. MailChimp has provided steps on how to create a campaign in their support documentation, but I've summarized it below as well.
Creating a Campaign
When logged in to MailChimp, click on "Campaigns" in the left hand menu. Then, click on "Create Campaign" in the upper right hand corner.
In the popup that appears, click on "Email."
Name your email something that will make it easy for you to refer to it in the future. This name will not appear anywhere in the email. Click "Begin" once you've entered a name.
Email Setup
Emails are sent to mailing lists, which I covered in the previous section. To choose which mailing list you'll be emailing, click on the "Add Recipients" button, choose a list from the drop down, and press "Save."
Click "Add From" to enter which email address and name users the email will be sent from. I recommend using your full name (ex. Joe Bruin) or the name of your department (ex. Department of Linguistics). Press "Save" once this is done.
Click "Add Subject" to enter the subject line of your email. Optionally you can choose to add preview text. Preview text is what might show up in a preview of an email in tools like Outlook and Gmail, but not in the actual email. Press "Save" when you're done.
Email Design
Continuing from the previous step, in the Content section of the Campaign Builder, click "Design Email."
Navigate to "Saved Templates" and click on the pre-made template from HumTech that you'd like to use.
From here, you can add, remove, and edit as needed to create the email you want to send.
On the right hand side, you'll see a variety of content blocks you can use by clicking and dragging it to the place you'd like to use it. You will most frequently need to use the following: Text, Divider, Image, and Button.
On the left hand side you'll see blocks of content that are added by default as part of the template. Hovering over each block will give you the option to Edit, Duplicate, and Delete as shown by icons on the right hand side. Delete content blocks you don't need from the template, and duplicate those you need more of. Also when hovering, you'll see on the left an icon which you can click and drag to reorder blocks of content.
When editing text blocks, you'll see a familiar editor that functions as you'd imagine. Adding links, bolding text, and creating list are available if you click the corresponding icons in the editor. And if you want to add subheadings, use the "Styles" dropdown.
Between each announcement, consider adding a "Divider" (horizontal line) to help break up content.
When you're happy with your email, click on the blue "Save & Close" button in the lower right hand corner.
Finalizing & Sending Email
After clicking on "Save & Close" in the previous step, you should be taken back to the Email Setup screen. A check-mark should be next to the To, From, Subject, and Content sections.
Before sending your email out, you'll want to make sure it looks good in an email client (such as Gmail and Outlook). Click on "Send a Test Email" and add one or more email address before clicking the "Send Test" button. The email should be received in minutes. If everything looks good, you're ready to send the email.
Scroll up and click the blue "Send" button. On the popup, make sure that the mailing list displayed is correct before clicking the "Send Now" button. Now you're done.