What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is online marketing software that allows you to send campaign emails and newsletters to target lists. It is easy to create a marketing list from Retailer and import it straight into Mail Chimp to send to clients. If you send to less than 500 clients and less than 2,500 emails a month MailChimp is completely free. It is easy to create a professional marketing material in no time.

Retailer isn't able to bulk send marketing or general emails to customers, so they are best handed off to MailChimp.

Create a Customer List Through Marketing Tools

1. On the top menu bar of Retailer, click on Marketing -> Marketing Tools.
2. Add a new template or modify an existing template.
   
   

   For more information about creating marketing templates, click HERE.
3. Click on Create List at the bottom of the screen.
4. You may add and delete customers on this list to modify it as much as you like.
5. When you have all of the customers you want in the list, click on Create CSV at the top.
6. Retailer will process the list and then notify you with the location and name of the file. Note these down.
7. Click OK.

Importing into MailChimp

1. Go to www.mailchimp.com and sign in. If you do not already have an account you will need to create one. More information can be found HERE.
2. Click on Lists on the left and select Create List at the top.
3. Fill out the details for your list. At minimum you will need a name for the list, a from name for who any emails will come from (this should be the name of your business or a contact person at your business) and a default from email (who reciepients will recieve marketing emails from. Click Save.
4. You will now see your list has been created. Click on the drop down arrow next to the box labelled stats and select Import. Select the option to upload from CSV or TXT file.
5. Click Browse and navigate to where you saved the file from Retailer (step 4 in creating a customer list above). This will generally be saved in C:\Tower\Retailer\Outray. Click Upload List.
6. Use the drop down menu above each column to match the fields to existing ones on your list, or create a new column. If you have unnamed columns, you can select a different field from the drop down.
7. If you want to add a new field select -- New Column Name -- from the drop down to name the column and select the type for this field.
8. Click Ok to move to the next field or Skip if you don't want to add the field to the list. Generally you will only need to add First Name, Last Name and Email Address.
9. Once you've matched all your columns, click the Import button to upload the subscribers.
10. It may take some time to upload but you can navigate away from this window while it works. Once the upload is complete you can create your campaign and start setting. For more information on creating a campaign, please read this ARTICLE from MailChimp.