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MailChimp is a service for creating and sending mass emails. Unami Lodge often uses MailChimp for general newsletters, addressing large event attendee lists, and individual Chapter communication.
When sending email to more then a few people, it is critical that individual email addresses are not used. MailChimp is the only authorized source of mass UnamiLodge.org email, due to the way that spam filtering works. If individual people attempt to send mass email, messages will be silently filtered by other providers, and impact our entire organization's ability to communicate via email, both one on one and in large groups.
Please, help us keep @UnamiLodge.org email reliable. Don't just put that list of email addresses in your To: line!
MailChimp accounts are provided by request, so don't hesitate to ask! Account requests may be sent via email or posted on someone's behalf in the #Communications Slack channel.
Please note that enabling Two-Factor Authentication will be required, in an effort to best protect the large amounts of personal contact information contained within the lodge's contact lists.
Once you have an account and are logged in, feel free to click around. It's pretty hard to do any damage, as your account is unable to accidentally send a large email blast without specific approval.
MailChimp has some really great documentation on their product, including a detailed step by step guide to Creating a Regular Email Campaign. For constantly updated screenshots of every link, button, and feature, or for those who are completely to this mass email stuff - it's definitely worth checking out.
To supplement MailChimp's detailed "step by step" documentation, we've put together the following overview.
When you create a new campaign, be sure to pick a meaningful name. It's only for internal use, but, there's a lot of people sending mass email - so it's easy for things to get messy.
Once you've got the name squared away, there will be four major things to set up as you see fit:
Edit Recipients: The To: line will typically be a segment of the Lodge's full email list.
Use the Chapters group as pictured to select all members of a given chapter. For other list segmentation needs, feel free to apply one of more filters as you see fit. Alternatively, individual email addresses may be pasted in if desired.
No matter how you build your list, be sure to spot check your final list by clicking the the recipient count link (Ex. 104 recipients) once you hit save:
From Email: This can be any person or committee, and their associated @UnamiLodge.org email address. Good options include communications, your committee / chapter, or just yourself.
Subject: This one's pretty self explanatory, just like any other email:
Design Email: Now things get interesting!
Select Saved Templates and pick a Unami Lodge themed base for your email body:
If you're not sure which one to pick, General Lodge Emails without Button is generally a good place to start.
Then, you'll be taken to a "what you see is what you get" code editor. That means you can just click on any part of the email that you want to edit, type your content on on the right - and watch it appear nicely formatted on the left!
As you edit, the Preview drop down menu can be used to see exactly what your email will look like once it hits inboxes.
Once you're finished with content editing and click the Continue button, you'll be brought back to the first screen for final review.
Give everything one more check, and select Send. While that won't actually send your email, it'll drop a note to the #Communications team that your email is ready for review. When you do this, please try to give at least a day or two heads up, and let us know when you'd like to send the email. Telling us what day is the ideal amount of information, as MailChimp can help optimize the best time for the email to land in inboxes - netting the highest open rate.
If you run into any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to reach out!