Mailchimp is an email management system that allows you to collect email addresses and send newsletters to your buyers. Email campaigns like this can help build your brand and bring existing buyers back to your website.
If you have an active website through Pattern, you can connect it to Mailchimp from your dashboard. Once you do that, anyone who visits your site can subscribe to receive these emails from you.
Users must willingly subscribe to your newsletters and you cannot add them to your mailing list without their consent. Please see Etsy’s Seller Policy for more information.
How to connect your Mailchimp account to Pattern
If you already have a Mailchimp account and want to connect it to your Pattern site:
- Sign in to Etsy.com and go to Shop Manager
- Go to Your Pattern shop name (under Sales Channels).
- Go to Marketing.
- Select Connect Mailchimp to activate a newsletter signup field on your Pattern site. This will prompt you to sign in to Mailchimp to connect your account to your site.
- After you sign in, you'll see a message from Mailchimp confirming that you successfully connected.
What if I don’t have a Mailchimp account?
If you don’t have a Mailchimp account, you can create a basic account for free on Mailchimp.com. You can also create an account by selecting Create one under the Connect button of the Pattern Dashboard.
Mailchimp strongly recommends that you have a professional email address and use it to send emails from your Mailchimp account. This is because many common email providers have strict policies to prevent spam and spoof emails. Learn how to set up a custom email address for your domain.
Why did I see an error when trying to connect Mailchimp to my site?
Mailchimp allows for one audience list (mail distribution list) with a free account.
When you first sign up for Mailchimp, an audience is created by default. This means that you may need to log into your Mailchimp account to delete the default audience or upgrade your account to a higher level that allows for multiple audiences. You should then have the ability to successfully log into your Mailchimp in your Pattern Dashboard.
You can find more information in Mailchimp’s knowledge base.
How your buyers will see your newsletter signup
Buyers will see a newsletter signup field at the bottom of every page on your Pattern site. They'll also see this on the confirmation page after completing a purchase. Once a buyer enters their email address, they'll see a “Thanks for signing up!” message to confirm they successfully subscribed.
After a buyer successfully subscribes, they receive an email with an extra confirmation step verifying that they have opted into receiving marketing emails. This extra step provides a more compliant method for collecting buyer email addresses, including under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for people in the European Union. See this Mailchimp help article about GDPR for more information.
How to manage your Pattern newsletter
The Manage Pattern email list button in the Pattern Dashboard takes you directly to your Pattern site list on Mailchimp. Here you can manage your subscriber list and view your list data.
How to disconnect Mailchimp from your Pattern site
- From your Pattern Dashboard, select Disconnect Mailchimp from Pattern.
- Confirm your changes by clicking Disconnect from Mailchimp in the pop-up window.
You can reconnect to Mailchimp at any time by selecting Connect.
Your Pattern subscriber email list will remain in Mailchimp and you can continue to use it after disconnecting.