MailChimp is our recommended email marketing service for sending emails to your email list. You can send newsletters, autoresponders, comply with anti-spam laws, track engagement, and more. MailChimp is free for up to 2,000 contacts on your email list.
Note: The email marketing services that are supported out of the box are: MailChimp, Drip, ActiveCampain, ConvertKit, GetResponse, and MailerLite. However, any email marketing service can be integrated using a few extra steps and form code you would get from your provider. We are going to use MailChimp in this tutorial.
(Side note: If you already have a MailChimp account specifically for your business, skip steps 1 & 2. If you have a MailChimp account for a different business, create a new MailChimp account for this one. You can then link them together so that you have one login linked to two separate accounts.)
If you are creating a NEW MailChimp account…
- Visit MailChimp and sign up for a new account. Use your domain-name email address when signing up because this will be the “from” email address that you send from. You will also need to create a username and password.
- Confirm your new account by checking your email address and clicking the “Activate Account” link.
- Visit your Audiences page at MailChimp and create a new audience.
If you already have a MailChimp account specifically for your business…
- Visit your Audiences page at MailChimp. You will be prompted to login to your account.
- Your audience name should be the name of your business. (If it’s not and you don’t want to change it, you should create a new account).
Verify & Authenticate your domain
Verification allows you to send emails from your domain-name email address. Authentication improves your email deliverability.
- Go to Manage Domains. (Profile icon at top right » Settings » Domains )
- Click “Verify Domain” and enter your domain-name email address. Check your email and click on the confirmation link.
- After you have verified your domain, you’ll be taken back to your Manage Domains page. Now, click “Authenticate” to the right of your domain. You’ll see a popup with the info you will need to put into Cloudflare. Do not close this box or leave this page.
- In a new tab/window, go to Cloudflare, select your domain, and click the DNS icon. Enter the values shown to you in the popup, and click the orange cloud to disable Proxy status for this entry. Your added entries should look exactly like this, except with your own domain name:
- Now, back at MailChimp, click “Authenticate Domain” on the popup. You will then see “Authenticated” next to your domain. If you get an error, just wait a couple of minutes and try again, but it’s usually very quick when you use Cloudflare.
That’s it for now! You should now be verified and authenticated to send emails.
