Etsy's MailChimp Myth - Brittany's Best
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Etsy’s MailChimp Myth

20 Jan Etsy’s MailChimp Myth

Posted at 08:00h in Etsy Tips by

Etsy sellers are in a state of confusion after Tuesday’s Seller Handbook blog post. In a featured comment, Tara implied that sellers could use MailChimp, an email marketing service, to add an ‘opt-in’ during checkout and contact buyers after the sale to follow up. Sadly, this tip is misleading at best.

While this would be a great feature, there’s no way to add a newsletter ‘opt-in’ checkbox to the Etsy sales process with MailChimp or any other service. The best you can do is provide a MailChimp newsletter sign-up link in the ‘Message to Buyers’ section under your shop’s Info & Appearance; the link will appear in the purchase confirmation email, but it won’t even be clickable – it’ll show up as normal text that the buyer must copy and paste into the address bar.

That being said, MailChimp is a great service that can benefit any seller running their own website or blog. Their free account can send up to 12,000 emails a month to 2,000 subscribers – if you’re above that quota, contact me about my Etsy Tycoon series! MailChimp makes it easy to set up an email newsletter for your site and add a sign-up form, with easy integration for Facebook, Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogspot. The email list sign-up on this very site is powered by MailChimp.

MailChimp has published a wonderful getting started guide that will step you through creating a mailing list and campaign (newsletter). Where MailChimp really shines for Etsy sellers is their Etsy integration. When creating your first campaign, you’ll need to set up a template for the email; MailChimp offers an auto-connect template that will pull information from your Etsy shop to make it painless.

Email newsletters are a great way for fans to keep in touch with your site, but it’s only one piece of the marketing puzzle. What other tools have you found to help stay in touch with customers?

[flickr]Cover image by Jimmy Emerson on Flickr.[/flickr]

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3 Comments
  • Simona
    Posted at 18:30h, 22 April Reply

    I am under the impression that collecting email addresses even from buyers is strictly against etsy terms of use. Where does this fit in?

    • Brittany
      Posted at 20:07h, 27 April Reply

      Simona – adding a MailChimp newsletter sign up link in the ‘Message to Buyers’ section allows customers to sign themselves up, rather than collecting their email address without their consent. It’s no different than providing a Facebook link so a customer can like your page.

  • Jelene Britten Designs
    Posted at 20:10h, 29 January Reply

    Thanks for the clarification! I saw that comment on Etsy and wondered how it worked (or doesn’t work as the case is).

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