WordPress Mailchimp Ready Newsletter

The newsletter feature allows you to create email newsletters that look and feel like your website. The newsletter give you the option to customize a page in wordpress, add your posts and projects and then outputs a code you can copy and paste right into your email service whether it’s Mailchimp, Constant Contact or any other. But, because I am a bit of a Mailchimp fan, the theme also has a Mailchimp RSS feature. The RSS Feature allows you to create a template that automatically pulls your posts based on whatever intervals you set and sends your emails out without a need to do anything on your end but write blog posts. With this template you can chose daily, weekly or monthly emails that check the number of posts that month/week/day and collects them to send out your emails

Check out the video on the Newsletter Feature using Mailchimp

1. Login into WordPress backend.
2. Create Your Page Template By:
   • Click on Pages -> Add New
   • Create Your Newsletter Heading Title
   • Add any content and imagery in the content area.
   • On the right hand side, choose the page template: “Newsletter Template
   • Publish
3. On the left, click “Beta Options
4. Click “Email Newsletter Options”
5. Select Your Greeting at the top of the page (default uses Mailchimp’s Merge Tag for Name
6. Choose your options:
   • Show Page Template as Heading – You have the option to display the page content from the Template Page or keep it blank
   • Show Recent Projects. Will place your most recent 3 projects into the newsletter
   • Show Blog Posts. Will add your blog posts to the newsletter
   • Number of Blog Posts. Will determine the number of blog posts on the newsletter
7. Save all changes
8. Go back to “Email Newsletter Options”
9. Under Email Newsletter Code, Preview Your Email>
10. Go back and copy the block of code under Email Newsletter Code for your newsletter to paste into Mailchimp or any other email service.

** if you are using Mailchimp***

11. Go to Mailchimp.com and login to your dashboard.
12. On the left, click “Create Campaign”.
13. Choose “Regular Ol’ Campaign
14. Choose or create a list that will receive your newsletter and click NEXT
15. Name Your campaign, subject line, reply email and add any additional tracking and social networking options you would like and click NEXT
16. Under Design, choose “Code Your Own”
17. Select all and paste your code into the template builder
18. Save and name your new template
19. Now, under Design, select “My Templates” and choose the template you just created
20. Preview and Test
21. If everything looks good, click NEXT
22. Under Plain Text, click “Copy Text From HTML” and then click next.
23. You can now schedule your email for delivery.
24. Awww yeah!

Mailchimp RSS Feature

Check out the video on the RSS Feature using Mailchimp

1. Login into WordPress backend.
2. Create Your Page Template By:
   • Click on Pages -> Add New
   • Create Your RSS Newsletter Heading Title
   • Add any content and imagery in the content area.
   • On the right hand side, choose the page template: “Mailchimp RSS Template
   • Publish
3. On the left, click “Beta Options
4. Click “Email Newsletter Options”
5. Select Your Greeting at the top of the page (default uses Mailchimp’s Merge Tag for Name
6. Choose your options:
   • Show Page Template as Heading – You have the option to display the page content from the Template Page or keep it blank
7. Save all changes
8. Go back to “Email Newsletter Options”
9. Under the Mailchimp RSS Email Newsletter Code, Preview Your Email>
10. Go back and copy the block of code under Mailchimp RSS Email Newsletter Code for your newsletter to paste into Mailchimp’s RSS Service.

** if you are using Mailchimp***

11. Go to Mailchimp.com and login to your dashboard.
12. On the left, click “Create Campaign”.
13. Choose “RSS Driven’ Campaign
14. Add your feed url, which is most likely http://yourdomain.com/feed/ or http://yourdomain.com/?feed=feed (if you have not set a permalink structure)
15. Choose your time intervals for publication and click NEXT
16. Choose or create a list that will receive your newsletter and click NEXT
17. Name Your campaign, subject line, reply email and add any additional tracking and social networking options you would like and click NEXT
18. Under Design, choose “Code Your Own”
19. Select all and paste your code into the template builder
20. Save and name your new template
21. Now, under Design, select “My Templates” and choose the template you just created
22. Preview and Test
23. If everything looks good, click NEXT
24. Under Plain Text, click “Copy Text From HTML” and then click next.
25. You can now schedule your email for delivery.
26. You da man!