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Constant Contact* Switchers Guide

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Welcome to MailChimp.

Welcome to MailChimp. Getting started is easy—this guide will help you make a seamless transition in just a few simple steps. We’ll explain how to set up your lists, create beautiful campaigns and view your reports in MailChimp. We’ll also go over the differences in using MailChimp and Constant Contact*. If you have any questions that aren’t addressed here, feel free to contact our support staff at mailchimp.com/support. We’ll be happy to assist you.

Quick Start Guide

If you don’t have much time, here’s the 30-second tutorial on how to import your list, set up a template and create a signup form in MailChimp. When you have a few extra minutes, read the rest of the guide to get your bearings.

1. Import your list

To import your existing General Interest list, click the Lists tab > Import link, and under your import options you’ll see an Upload list from Constant Contact button.

2. Set up a template

You’ll choose your template and design your campaigns using our inline content editor on Step 3 of the Campaign Builder. You can use one of our pre-designed templates if you don’t want to design your own do a lot of customization. If you like customizing designs or want to make your campaign match your website’s look and feel, try our start-from-scratch templates. We leave the header/body and footer and columns open for the most customization possible.

Our Design Genius will walk you through the styling process and help you make your campaigns match your brand’s look and feel.

Here’s where you can find our template options and Design Genius. You can always go back and change your template, so feel free to try several options that might work for you.

3. Create a signup form

Your signup form is automatically set up for you when you create a list. You can modify the design and add fields in the Lists tab > Forms.

Those three steps should get you off on the right foot. But if you have a few minutes to learn some of the details about moving your list over to MailChimp, please read through the rest of this guide.

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Learn Your Way Around MailChimpIn this section we’ll go through some of the differences you’ll encounter when you switch to MailChimp. We’ll remind you how you performed a particular task in Constant Contact*, and explain what you’ll do in MailChimp. Let’s get started.

Account Settings

In Constant Contact*, you would change your account settings under My Settings.

In MailChimp, you’ll find all your account settings like username, pass-word, contact info, time zone and other account defaults under the Account button. It’s in the upper left corner on every page of the app.

Lists

In Constant Contact*, you would manage your lists under the Contacts heading.

In Constant Contact*, you would go through a wizard to import or copy/paste your contacts file.

In Constant Contact*, you would only have one list in the account. All contacts fall under this General Interest category. New lists are subsets of General Interest, so some subscribers may only be in General Interest and other subscribers may be in General Interest plus other lists.

You would have a global suppression/unsubscribe/bounce list across the whole account through the General Interest (default) list.

In Constant Contact*, you would edit the default list fields and your custom list fields in separate areas.

In MailChimp, you’ll manage your subscribers and contacts under the Lists tab.

In MailChimp, you can easily import your existing General Interest list. Click the Lists tab > Import link, and under your import options choose Upload list from Constant Contact (see the Quick Start Guide on pg. 1.)

In MailChimp, you’ll treat each new list you create like your Constant Contact* General Interest list. Each new list will have its own set of con-tent tags (called merge tags), unsubscribes and bounce lists. Duplicates will only be removed from each list, not across the whole account. Keep in mind that every list in your new account is an independent list and doesn’t talk to the other lists, so there isn’t a global suppression list.

You’ll use Groups to create sublists and segments. Groups are the equivalent of your former New Lists. We’ll set up these groups for you based on your sublists when you use the import from Constant Contact* option.

Avoid deleting and uploading new lists or just uploading the same recipients into a new list when you want to update your list.

In MailChimp, you’ll edit and export your contacts under Lists > View list > View all.

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Importing Your List From Your Old ESP

Now that you know the basics about lists in MailChimp, it’s time to move over your existing lists and segments. Here’s how:

First, export your list from Constant Contact*, selecting all the fields you want to move over to MailChimp plus the ones we require.

Save the files directly onto your computer as either a .csv or a text file. In your new MailChimp account click Lists > import, and under your import options select Upload list from Constant Contact*. Upload the file you’ve exported from Constant Contact*. If you need to make edits to your list, you can export the file you just uploaded, make the necessary changes, and re-import later.

Keeping Your Sublists In Separate Groups

Constant Contact* lets you export either your whole list (Active contacts) or various individual lists. We can import any of them, but if you want us to keep your sublists in separate Groups (see the following section), then Active contacts and Show list must be selected when you export.

Groups

Say you had three lists in Constant Contact*: a General Interest list, a Puppies list and a Kitties list. We’ll import all three lists as one list, and then General Interest, Puppies and Kitties will become Groups. Notice that under Your Interests, all your recipients are in the General Interest group, and some of them are in the Puppies and Kitties groups.

So if you only want to send to people who are in the Puppies group, you would choose that segment on Step 1 of the Campaign Builder. We’ll explain how to do that in the Campaigns section.

Deleting lists

It’s better to use the auto-update option and add new members or member information to your existing list than delete a list then re-import.

Deleting and uploading new lists with the same recipients on a regular ba-sis tends to cause abuse complaints. When you delete a list, the entire list history is lost (including unsubscribes, abuse complaints and bounces), and people who already asked to be removed can be added back to your list. Because all lists in MailChimp are independent and share no informa-tion, there’s no overall account suppression list.

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Signup Forms

In Constant Contact*, you would set up and activate your signup form under Contacts > Join my mailing list.

In Constant Contact*, you would go through wizards to customize your forms and get the HTML code for use on your own site.

In Constant Contact*, you would customize forms and confirmation emails in separate areas.

In Constant Contact*, you would have only one signup form per account and text fields only on that form.

In MailChimp, your signup form is automatically set up for you when you create a list. You can design and tweak under Lists > forms.

In MailChimp, you can do all your editing for each form and confirma-tion page in the signup process under Lists > Forms. Choose Build it to tweak your field types, hide fields and set default field values. Choose Design to set your fonts, colors and style. You can edit your text in either mode.

In MailChimp, you’ll toggle to the different parts of the process by us-ing the Forms & response emails drop-down menu.

In MailChimp, you’ll have the option to provide text fields, and also create number fields, drop down menus and multiple-choice fields.

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Campaigns

In Constant Contact*, you would create campaigns under Email Market-ing > Create.

In Constant Contact*, you would go through a wizard to set up your campaign—choosing some of what will be displayed in your campaign design without seeing where it will go in your campaign. You would design your campaigns using the provided content blocks, or have the option to provide your own code.

In Constant Contact*, you would need to verify email addresses in your account to use as a from or reply-to address.

In Constant Contact*, you would click Anti-Spam check for a quick look at possible junk folder issues using Spam Assassin and proprietary content matching.

In Constant Contact*, you would edit the plain-text version of emails under Advanced features in the Edit email area.

In Constant Contact*, you would choose styles, colors and fonts under Global fonts and colors.

In Constant Contact*, you would select the list you want to send to on the last step of the campaign building process.

In Constant Contact*, you would edit a campaign that’s scheduled to send, by going back to the My Emails link, clicking the title of the cam-paign and resetting the campaign to draft mode.

In MailChimp, you’ll use the orange Create campaign button from the Dashboard or the Campaigns tab.

In MailChimp, you’ll choose your template and design your campaigns using our inline content editor on Step 3 of the Campaign Builder. You can use our pre-designed templates if you don’t want to do a lot of customization or design on your own. If you like customizing designs or want to make your campaign match your website’s look and feel, try our start-from-scratch templates and Design Genius. Our templates auto-matically include your permission reminder, a link to view the campaign in a browser, and your forward to a friend link. You can add a subscribe link to your campaign by adding the tag *|SUBSCRIBE|* into the body (just like you would add text).

In MailChimp, you’ll use only a from name and reply-to address. When setting a from Name, it’s best to use your company or real name. NEVER an email address. That’s a spam-filter trigger. They might think you’re trying to confuse them by using two emails in the from and feply-to fields.

In MailChimp, you can use our Delivery Doctor (paid accounts only) for a quick look at possible delivery issues, using information from ISPs and major spam filters.

In MailChimp, you’ll edit the plain-text version on a separate step after you’ve created the HTML version of your campaign. We’ll automatically create a plain-text email for you, using your HTML email content.

In MailChimp, you’ll choose styles, colors and fonts under Show style designer. You’ll pick those section by section, using the Header, Body and Footer tabs.

In MailChimp, You’ll select your list or segment on the first step of the Campaign Builder. If you want to send to the whole list click Send to entire list. If you want to send to one of the groups we talked about ear-lier, click Send to segment of list and set up the condition (for example: Is Interested in / one of / Puppies).

In MailChimp, you can edit a campaign that’s scheduled to send by clicking the campaign title. We’ll automatically pause it for you, al-lowing you to reschedule the send when you save it. If you’ve already clicked Send now, the campaign can no longer be edited.

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Footer

In Constant Contact*, you would find the forward to a friend options under My settings, and footer settings are not configurable.

In Constant Contact*, The Constant Contact* logo would be on every campaign you send.

In MailChimp, you’ll edit the footer directly in the campaign builder, where you can add or remove the Update profile link and customize.

If you have a paid account, you don’t have to include MailChimp’s logo in the footer of your emails— unless, of course, you want to.

Unsubscribing

In Constant Contact*, you would provide your subscribers with one unsubscribe form for the entire account. With this form, they can unsubscribe from all emails from you just unsubscribe from one of your smaller lists (again, our Groups).

In MailChimp, you’ll have a separate unsubscribe link and form for each separate list. When using Groups to segment your list: If you want your subscribers to be able to unsubscribe from only one segment, then you’ll use the Update profile tag to allow them to set their subscription preferences.

Archives

In Constant Contact*, you would pay for the use of campaign archives and manually select each campaigns you want on the archives under the Email marketing > Archives area.

In MailChimp, you’ll have a free automatic archive for all of your campaigns (including those you code yourself) that you can use or not, depending on you preferences. Move all campaigns that you’d like to show in the archive into an Archive folder that you create.Get a code snippet under Get archive code that will allow you to host your archives links on your own website.

Reports

In Constant Contact*, you would find your reports over time in your Con-tacts area and general reports in the Email marketing > Reports area.

You would see reports on bounces, spam reports, opt-outs, opens, clicks and forwards.

In MailChimp, You’ll see the number of opens, clicks, forwards and complaints—as well as a number of specialized reporting, including opens by location, domain performance, who tweeted and retweeted your campaign (eepurl stats), your list performance compared to your industry, and helpful performance advice.

You’ll also have access to Subscriber Activity Reports, which show you who clicked and who didn’t open, and let you segment your list based on this data to send very targeted emails.

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MailChimp Support

If you’ve read through this guide and still have questions, feel free to con-tact us. You can search our Knowledge Base anytime, or live chat with our support team between the hours of 9am and 5pm EST Monday through Friday, at mailchimp.com/support.

We also offer daily online training sessions—view the schedule at mailchimp.com/webinar.

And we’ve got a lot more guide where this one came from, at resources.mailchimp.com.

*Constant Contact is a registered trademark of Constant Contact, Inc. All Constant Contact products and services that we mention are property of Constant Contact, Inc. The content of this guide was created on 4/1/2010, so some of the products may have changed since then. We’re not affiliated in any way with Constant Contact, Inc.

How We Really Feel About Constant Contact: Constant Contact is a solid service that’s great for small businesses who are totally new to email marketing. Constant Contact has invested heavily in call centers and regional seminars to help people get started. They’ve done a lot for the email marketing eco-system in this way, and we thank them for that. We created this guide for people who are beyond the “beginner” stage, and who want to switch to MailChimp because they’re looking for a self-serve email-marketing application with more power features.