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. Click on the Sign Up button.
The next step will be choosing your plan. If you are just starting out and you have less than 500 contacts (email addresses), we recommend using the Free plan. If you have more than 500 contacts, you can choose any of the other plans that suit your number of contacts. For this tutorial, we’ll be using Mailchimp’s free plan
Enter your email into the Email and Username fields. We recommend using your own business email since you’ll be sending mass emails regarding your business.
Note:As highlighted in their >>article<<, beginning February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will require a custom authentication and a published Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) for anyone sending more than 5,000 emails to Gmail or Yahoo addresses in a 24-hour period. To prevent your emails from bouncing, we strongly recommend authenticating your email domain.Also, if you use a free email service like Gmail or Yahoo for your From email address, we strongly recommend you switch to an email address from a private domain, like the one you use for work or for your website.For more information about custom authentication and DMARC, check out About Email Domain Authentication.
For the purpose of this walkthrough, we’ll be using artbusinessvault@gmail.com as an example.
Please add a username of your choosing and a preferred password, then click on Sign Up.
The next step will be verifying your account. Mailchimp will send you an email with a verification link. This is to confirm that you own the email account used on signing up for your Mailchimp account. Once you receive the email, please click on Activate Account.
Once you click on the activation link, a new tab will appear asking for more information. Please add your name, business name and phone number then click on Next.
You’ll be redirected to another page asking for your Address information and click on Next. This is important information that will appear on your email footer.
After that, you’ll be taken through some optional additional details so that Mailchimp can curate the right information for you. Since these are optional, it’s up to you to divulge that information to Mailchimp.
The last step will be choosing your plan. As highlighted earlier, if you are just starting out and you have less than 500 contacts (email addresses), we recommend using the Free plan. If you have more than 500 contacts, you can choose any of the other plans that suit your number of contacts. For this tutorial, we’ll be using Mailchimp’s free plan
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:
Click on your Audience, which will have a drop-down. Please Choose All Contacts
Please find the Settings Drop Down menu and click on Audience name and defaults.
Here you'll find a couple of options. Please ensure that the "Send a final welcome email" option is 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.
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.