How To Start A Mailing List With Mailchimp
Again, back to my Seth Godin obsession. Seth starts his 3 Day Startup event talking about what you will encounter as an entrepreneur but at the very end he focuses in on a really important idea I want to reiterate: Building an online presence and a following is really important.
Why is that?
Say for whatever reason you created a mailing list. Now instead of having 2-3 friends’ opinions, you get 10,000. Sure, you can have facebook, but really… not everyone will go on facebook all the time. However, everyone will check their emails at least 5-10 times a day. GAURANTEED. And all it really takes is one click for them to go from their inbox to your message. Now you are in the realm of the “heard”. All you need to do is build your following.
Seth also highlights the importance of things being share-able but first only to a select niche. Because all you really need is a few people to like what you have to hear but more importantly feel compelled to share what you have to say. That small tiny group can then expand because they will self propagate your message {And really, it doesn’t matter what your message may be… as long as you make it feel share-able.)
Therefore I feel like I should tell you guys about Mailchimp.com.
mailchimp
AAAAAWWWWWWWW…. ISN’T HE CUUUUUUTE? Mailchimp. The cousin of Curious George who is employed by USPS. I made that up.
Anywho.
Mailchimp makes it super easy to create your mailing list – for free! (up to the first 2,000 contacts/12,000 sends).
Mailing-List-Kimpossibledang
I have 15 subscribers to my mailing list. I created the mailing list long before I started marketing it. But 15 is a bit on the low end. HOWEVER, it is a start. And with a mailing list – you are in it for the long haul. You are in it for the rest of your life. So when you are nearing your deceasing years – you will have millions of followers.
That is my goal. Humble, no?
Before a mailing list I had my own mailing list. It’s called “SPAM BY KIM”. I emailed a small group of friends every week about almost everything I stumbled upon and had an opinion about. I’d even take screenshots of ebooks I was reading for the time being and share ideas about a particular page. Surprisingly this became very useful as friends started writing back and giving me feedback which did something weird: It made changes in the course of my life.
For example, I one day decided that Splenda is awesome and normal sugar will give me diabetes. I am pretty sure some of you might have decided certain directions of your life with no feedback whatsoever and you were too lazy to ask a group of people whether small decisions you’ve made were good or bad. I’m pretty sure of this. I sent out a mass email declaring my love for splenda. A friend who happens to be studying nursing shot back telling me Splenda will make my body think I am low on real sugar and will make me crave more food which might lead to obesity later on in life. She said the solution is just do an average intake of real sugar. I wouldn’t have had this valuable feedback otherwise.
That was just a simple example but I hope you get my point.
No matter what you are doing or where you are going in life – feedback is invaluable. Feedback for every aspect of life doesn’t come when you are lazy – you have to seek it out by asking around. However, asking around becomes less of a chore and more of a fun activity when you have your own little tiny following.
What you will most commonly use/seek out when you are trying mailchimp – GETTING THAT CODE.
Below you will see screenshots that will help you get there. Read the captions for the instructions.
1) Click on the dropdown besides STATS and click on “Sign Up Forms”
