Creating a campaign in Mailchimp
- You will need a separate campaign for each category (e.g NSW – Business Conveyancing, NSW Employment etc)
- Try and keep names clear and consistent (it will save you headaches later on)
- There are a number of steps when creating a campaign, so I would advise having two windows open, one of which has our example running campaign open – it’s NSW – Business Conveyancing, so you can make sure to follow the same format. You will need to edit it (Pause and Edit).
Example campaign: NSW – Business Conveyancing
Step 1: Create new Campaign
- Log in to Mailchimp and go to Campaigns
- Click the gray Create Campaign button
Step 2: RSS Feed
- Fill out the RSS feed URL – This is the URL of the category page on the Obiter blog, with the word “/feed” on the end. You can find out what each category URL is by going to Categories in the blog, then Edit on a category, and copying the Slug. The remainder of the URL will be the same for all categories in the same state.
Example: http://obiter.bylawyers.com.au/category/publication-updates-2/new-south-wales/business-conveyancing-new-south-wales/feed/ . If you’re not sure, just copy the URL into a browser window and you should see an RSS page if it works. If you get a page not found error, it’s not correct. - *This RSS feed URL is the only link between the email and the Obiter blog – so if it is incorrect the emails won’t work. Also note that is you change a category name/url in Obiter you will need to go to Mailchimp and update it there too for the emails to continue sending.
- Set the time to send and how often. Note: That it will only pick up any new articles since the last time it was sent.
- Click on the Next button.
Step 3: Recipients
For this step, you are choosing which group of subscribers to send this email campaign to. For example: To send to “NSW – Business Conveyancing”, the setup would look like this:
- It’s important that once you’ve added the conditions you check the number of recipients… 1 in the screenshot above.. to make sure it looks right. If the number looks too big, double check your conditions. It’s also important that the first condition is set to “All” so that both conditions need to be true.
- Click Next
Step 4: Setup
- Give the Campaign a name – e.g NSW – Business Conveyancing (keep it consistent and matching to your categories in WordPress to make your life easier)
- Setup the fields like this, changing the campaign name:
- Click Next.
Step 5: Template
- Click Saved Templates and Choose RSS Template
- Click Next
Step 6: Design
- No need to change anything here. If you do want to customise the design, I suggest creating a template and saving it, then using it across all campaigns.
- Click Next
Step 7: Confirm
- Just check the RSS feed link looks correct – you can click it and visit the actual RSS page.
- Check the number of Recipients looks correct.
- Then click Start RSS