Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

3 Recent Mailchimp Updates That May Affect Your Business

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3 Recent Mailchimp Updates That May Affect Your BusinessThere have been a few changes with Mailchimp lately that I recently shared with my clients and now that we’re all squared away I wanted to pass this along to you as well!

  1. Mailchimp has changed (again) what you get with your FREE account. ARG. Any NEW account from this point forward will not be able to schedule a newsletter – they just have to hit send when it’s ready to go. I chatted with Mailchimp about this and they said this will also happen if you are inactive for 12 months. SO – don’t go a whole year without talking to your audience on Mailchimp! Let me know if you have questions on this.
  2. Change to User Setup – With the last round of changes free accounts can no longer add users to their account. HOWEVER – as a Mailchimp Partner I am setup as an agency so I can be added and it won’t count against your user count. Here’s instructions for how to get this setup if we work together OR if you have another service provider who qualifies as an agency.
  3. Squarespace users – (This is unique ONLY if you have a Squarespace account, if you don’t I only had 2 points for you) If you have a subscribe form on your website and have received any emails saying that the account no longer can connect to Mailchimp – that’s correct. First do follow the instructions in the email and attempt to fix the issue. That’s worked for a couple of clients. However, my recommended work around for clients still having an issue is to setup a Zap in Zapier. You can talk with your web developer about this – let me know if you have any questions.

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Like most software, change is the constant at Mailchimp. I still believe they are a great tool and resource for small business owners, AND they are a company who have mouths to feed and bills to pay. It’s a bummer that the free resources are increasingly limited, but hopefully you can work within the confines or upgrade to a paid account. Either way, I’m here to help if you need me!

5 Ethical Ways to Add Current Clients to Your List

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5 ethical ways to add clients to your list Recently a client reached out asking for some help with adding their current client base into their newsletter. They wanted to ask them to subscribe instead of automatically adding them to the list, which I understand. In some industries this is the right way to handle it (thanks HIPPA!)

I checked in with Mailchimp on some logistics and confirmed that Mailchimp is OK with you automatically adding your clients to your list, which is great. BUT sometimes you still want to politely invite them to join your list – or as I often suggest, let them know that your feelings won’t be hurt if they unsubscribe because you automatically added them in.

Here’s 4 suggestions I made…

  1. Send an email to all clients from your email directly – not through Mailchimp. This means batching it into 100 emails at a time and BCCing them – unless your client management system will let you send emails through their system.
    • I’d keep the email simple – “We have a monthly newsletter we’d love to have you signup for to stay in touch and get updates and additional resources to supplement your work with us.”
  2. Create a basic landing page in Mailchimp for them to sign up with. You can even create a tag to properly tag them as clients when you build the page.
  3. In your initial forms when you have a new client, I would suggest you add in a “subscribe to our newsletter” checkbox and then you can add people in from there moving forward instead of having to send an email afterwards.
  4. Add a subscribe form to your email signatures – it could pitch an optin offer if you have one or just a “stay up to date” kind of blurb. Short and simple.

Here’s what we ended up doing…

We’re going to setup an automated email so whenever new clients are added into the account they will get a welcome email that thanks them for being a patient and letting them know they’re going to receive the monthly newsletter but they’re welcome to unsubscribe at any time if it’s not for them.

Welcoming your clients to your newsletter is a nice thing to do, especially if your newsletter is newer than your client list. Remember that Mailchimp is okay with you automatically adding in clients. Giving them a quick heads up is just good business etiquette!

3 Marketing Updates You May Need to Check In On

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3-Marketing-Updates-You-May-Need-to-Check-In-OnThis morning I was thrilled (please note the dripping sarcasm) to see that Mailchimp has decided to completely restructure their billing and their plan offerings. The good news if you already have an account –  you’re safe. But if you need to move to a paid plan (which based on what your automation and list needs are, you might) you are going to probably pay more. I’ve seen a few changes to marketing technology lately and I wanted to share 3 marketing changes that you may want to check in on for your business.

  1. LinkedIn Showcase Pages – I was talking with a client today about how great the LinkedIn Showcase pages are as a compliment to your business page. Then I clicked on mine to show her and the page was in need of a major update. SO – if you’ve had a business page setup on LinkedIn and added featured pages for specific products – it’s time to jump over and make sure it still looks as good as you hoped!
  2. Google My Business – With Google+ gone what’s a small business owner to do to promote their content on Google? Luckily if you have a Google My Business Page setup (and if you don’t stop now and do that first) you can add a post to your account. With G+ you could schedule these out like other social media posts, but with Google My Business you have to manually go in to add in a post. However, I appreciate that GMB will alert you when your post is about to expire so you can go in and post something new. Which you should…
  3. Mailchimp’s Update – If you have Mailchimp take a look at the email they sent out today with their updated terms of use and their new snazzy pricing structure. Reminder – if you already have an account – you’re safe!

Software and marketing tools are constantly changing. These are 3 that just happened to be talking about TODAY that I thought I’d make sure you’re aware of. What software has changed recently that small business owners need to be aware of? Please share in the comments…