Do you need to send newsletters, announcements, sales alerts and more? Don’t have a content management system?  Check out MailChimp.  MailChimp allows you to create and send beautiful emails easily.  I recently signed up.  My main website is not based on a CMS.  I wanted a solution I could easily implement on the site without installing a CMS.  I found MailChimp to be the perfect solution.

With MailChimp you have several account options, including a FREE option.  Everyone loves free.  The free option allows you to have up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3000 emails per month.  This is a great option for small businesses who may not have more than 500 subscribers.  If you need more subscribers or emails you can always signup for one of the other options.  They start at $30/mo.  Still an affordable option if you are currently sending snail mail to everyone.

MailChimp allows you to create and save newsletters.  If you have a newsletter format, you can create one template and port it into each newsletter.  If you do not have a newsletter template, they offer a variety of basic layouts, photos and color options to get you started.  The templates are easy to setup and edit.

Once you create your template, you can easily add and edit different textual sections through a popup text editor.  If you are familiar with Microsoft Word or any other WYSIWYG editor, then you will have no problem navigating the interface.  The interface allows for saving, drafts, deletion… all of the basic edit functions you would expect to need.

Some very useful features are within the sending functions.  You can send test emails to a variety of addresses.  MailChimp also offers advice on how to test the layout of your email for maximum compatibility with email clients.  If you are worried about the emails being marked as spam, worry no longer.  MailChimp can run tests on your newsletters, alerts… and determine if there is “spammy stuff” (technical terms) in your email.

How do you get your signup lists into the system?  To start, you can either create forms using the MailChimp interface or have a developer create a signup form and post it on your website.  The form creator is very customizable.  If you would rather have a developer create the form, there are tons of resources on how to send the parameters to your MailChimp account.  As a developer, I just created a form in MailChimp, copied the code and made some modifications that I wanted to see.  Very quick and easy.  If you already have a list, you can import different file types to automatically create your lists.  You can also directly enter each account.  Direct entry may be a bit of a pain if you have a large subscriber list.

If you are interested in MailChimp, I suggest taking a look at it.  Here are a few other features that make it a great online program.

• Create lists of subscribers.
• Create options for subscribers.  Options may consists of news, alerts, sales announcements, etc.  This helps subscribers receive information on the items they are interested in.
• Schedule campaigns.  Create your campaign and schedule it to automatically send out at a certain time and date.  If you are like me, then you write at night.  The best times to send campaigns are Tues-Thurs 10am-3pm.  This is when users are most likely to read your emails.
• Archive campaigns for viewing at a later date.
• The monkey’s mail bag is full of sticks and stones that assemble into many more useful tools.