Mailchimp Folders - 4 ways to use them
Mailchimp folders are incredibly helpful, but despite that are a very little-used function. After years of doing this, I could probably count on one hand the number of accounts I’ve worked on that had them set up. But I HAVE dealt with a lot of messes because they weren’t.
Just as you’d expect, they’re a way of categorising and locating things easily: your email campaigns, templates and images.
And when it comes to email campaigns, if you’re using any form of segmentation they can be really important in giving and restricting public access to all of your previous emails.
Like anything, the sooner you start doing it the less of a retrospective mess there will be to tidy up in a month / year / decade. This is not one to be putting off.
Here’s where to look out for them and how to use them:
/1. Campaigns
If you go into the campaign area of Mailchimp you’ll see several dropdown filters above the list, one of which is folders. You can create folders and add your past and future campaigns in them.
Why is this useful?
Easily find emails, surveys and landing pages relating to a particular marketing campaign or saved segment e.g. your monthly newsletter, promotions, announcements, Easter, clients vs prospects etc.
Once filtered, it also allows you to very easily skim high-level performance stats and look out for peaks and troughs to investigate further.
It also means if you want to replicate that perfect email series you did for a particular event last year, you can find it quickly and easily.
/2. Campaign archive
Your campaign archive is the library of past campaigns you’ve sent out to your audience. Each audience has its own archive. When someone clicks on the “view this email in your browser” / “no images click here” link at the top of any email you send, it gives them an option to view your campaign archive.
Why is this crucial when it comes to folders? If you send targeted emails to specific segments, unless you make use of folders to restrict access, contacts who were on that audience but not in that segment can still access those emails via the archive. This may not really matter, but it could open up a big can of worms depending on what you’re sending.
/3. Images
Your image store can get in a huge mess - the older your account, the more of a mess it’s probably in. It can be extremely difficult to find the image you want, meaning it’s probably faster to upload it again, exacerbating the problem. Folders help you avoid all that and mean you can easily find exactly what you want. Useful folders might include brand assets, product images, product hero images, banners, lifestyle, Christmas etc etc etc.
If you’ve not put them in folders yet, go for it, you’ll thank yourself.
/4. Templates
Again, templates can be put into folders to make them easier to find and locate when you need them. They might be e.g. newsletter / sale / clients only / Black Friday / old branding etc.
Need help to make them work for you?
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