How to build a newsletter referral program with Mailchimp

Since we announced The Newsletter Referral—our latest referral marketing template designed specifically for newsletters, we never stopped improving it.

Recently we announced two new platforms that you can integrate with The Newsletter Referral:

• AWeber.
• Revue.

Today, we announce the integration of Mailchimp with The Newsletter Referral.

We already had an integration with Mailchimp, which our users could use to send automated campaigns, instead of using our own email builder/sender.

This announcement/tutorial doesn’t refer to that.

By connecting your Mailchimp lists with The Newsletter Referral, you can:

• Build referral programs that run entirely from inside your newsletter emails without any coding skills.
• Create beautiful referral widgets for your emails.
• Automatically reward your most loyal readers.
• Generate unique referral links for your subscribers.
• Use merge tags for personalized email marketing campaigns.
• Keep your Mailchimp lists in sync with your referral programs.

In this article, you’ll learn how to connect your Mailchimp lists with The Newsletter Referral template and build your newsletter referral programs.

⚡Do you want your campaign to be successful?
Read our actionable guide on newsletter referral programs.

If you don’t have time to read the tutorial, you can always watch the video version:

Building a newsletter referral program with Mailchimp and The Newsletter Referral.

Integrating your Mailchimp account with Viral Loops and building a referral marketing program that works directly from inside your newsletter takes only four steps:

1. Create a campaign in Viral Loops using The Newsletter Referral template.
2. Connect your Mailchimp list with Viral Loops.
3. Add a referral widget inside your newsletters.
4. Sync your Mailchimp subscribers with your newsletter referral campaign.

Creating your newsletter referral program.

1. Create a Viral Loops campaign using The Newsletter Referral template.
2. Select Mailchimp and then click on the “Continue” button.

3. Name to your campaign.
4. Set up the number of milestones and the corresponding rewards.

5. Edit and customize your widgets.

Here’s an example of how your “Email Widget” could look like.

Connecting your Mailchimp list with your referral program.

After customizing your campaign, you’ll need to connect Viral Loops with your Mailchimp list.

1. Click ‘Connect’
2. Log in to your Mailchimp account.
3. Once connected, select the list of your preference.

Syncing your list’s existing subscribers with your referral program.

If you want your existing subscribers to get assigned a unique referral URL:

1. Go to your Mailchimp account.
2. Open the audience tab, and export the user segment of your choice.
3. Go back to your campaigns’ dashboard, and click on ‘Import’ In the ‘Participants’ section to upload the Mailchimp contacts you exported.

Add a referral widget inside your newsletters.

To add a referral widget inside your newsletters:

1. Click the ‘Show me how’ button next to the ‘Add referrals in your emails’ option.
2. Click ‘Copy to clipboard’ to copy the script.
3. Go to your Mailchimp account.
4. Create a new campaign.
5. While editing your email in Mailchimp, drag a ‘Code’ block from the toolbar to your email editor and paste the Email Widget’s embed code from Viral Loops.

Before you go.

That was it!

Starting today, you can have a referral program that runs directly from inside your newsletter emails sent via Mailchimp and reward your most loyal readers.

It’s really easy, and it takes only a few minutes to get your campaign live.