Based on our research Mailchimp are the most used email service provider, it’s not surprising because it has so many features such as social media plugins, automation workflows, custom rules etc. And our favorite features on mailchimp is template language so it is possible for us to make an editable email template inside their app, with this features there are no need to learn HTML coding to edit an email template.
“Design matters”. We all agree that email design is very crucial to achieve our email marketing goals, a well designed email template will make a good impact to your customers. In order to get a well designed email template you will need to make some customization on it.
Importing new template to Mailchimp
In this case I’m assuming that you already have the template file called index.html which completely compatible with Mailchimp.
1. Inside your Mailchimp account click on Brands > Templates.
2. Press Create Template.
3. Make sure you’re at Code your own tab, there are three different ways on getting started : Paste in code, Import HTML and Import ZIP. In this case we will getting started with Import HTML.
4. Now enter your template name and locate your HTML file then press Upload
5. Once it successfully loaded you will see bunch of codes at the right side of your screen, in case your template has a template background you can change it now. Unfortunately this template don’t have one so we’ll go to the next step press Save and Exit now you have successfully import your template.
Changing image background on Mailchimp
In order to make an email design look more proper sometimes it is necessary to put an image background. Some of our email templates has that too. In case your template has an image background this tutorial will got you cover. If your template don’t have it you can skip this one. In this tutorial I’m assuming that you already have your image background saved online and you have copied the link.
1. Inside your Mailchimp account click on Brand > Templates then choose which template you want to change it’s background image. Once you decide just click the template name or click on Edit.
Then the template will load, now you have to locate the location of the image background link, in this tutorial we will change the image background which has the size of 640×350 since our email template uses placeholder.com to make an image placeholder, so you have to locate this link http://via.placeholder.com/widthxheight the size of the image depends on your email template. It may looks too complicated but we have a way to make it easier to do.
First you have to scroll down the code field until you find http://via.placeholder.com/640×350
2. Please note that find tool won’t work to find the image link so you have to locate it manually. Hope Mailchimp will have this kinda features in the future. The right link looks like below there are two links which you have to replace with your own hosted image links.
While you replacing the link you have to be patient it’ll take few seconds to load depends on your internet connection once you are done and the image has been successfully changed now click Save > Save and Exit.
Customizing email template on Mailchimp
Once you’ve successfully saved your template, you need to customize your template. Mailchimp has a very intuitive editing features such as drag and drop, changing text and image, removing unwanted sections etc. it also has limitations such as changing colors and image background it has to be done by editing the code.
1. Inside your Mailchimp account press on Campaign, you can choose either Create Campaign or choose from existing Campaign, in this case we’re going to create a new campaign so press Create Campaign.
2. Press on Email.
3. Enter your Campaign Name then press on Begin.
4. After that you’ll see your email campaign information press on Design Email because we’ll design our email first.
5. After a new page appears press on Saved templates tab then choose your saved template to begin working with.
6. Now it’s time to edit our new template, if it’is only showing one section or blank don’t panic it is completely normal you just have to choose which sections you want to include inside your email template. Press on the plus (+) icon to add more sections press on minus (-) to remove section, you have to be patient it has some glitch sometimes. After a while I’m pretty sure you’ll get used to it.
Once you’re done with the design you can try to send an email test by Pressing on Preview > Send a test email if you’re not quite ready to sending the campaign you can save your edited template as a new template by pressing Template > Save this design as a template. If you are ready to send the email to your customers now it’s time to press Continue.
If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this article, please feel free to contact us via our contact page or comment section.