Transcripts
1. Intro Video: Hey, guys. My name is Kelly Parker Smith. And welcome to my first skill share glass. I am a little nervous. I'm not gonna lie. This is probably, like take 30 now. 50 intro video. Um, I am a podcaster artist and shop owner who was really used to being behind the microphone. So being on video is a little new. I'm doing my best to get over it, but here I am. And I'm happy you're here, too, because in this course, we're gonna talk about creative male jump templates. I'm here to show you a simple way to set up a email template using mail check and adobe illustrator that you can use to communicate with your customers in different ways So you could take this one template that we're gonna create its course and change it for multiple purposes. And I'm gonna show you how so we're gonna use Adobe Illustrator, which we love already as artists of makers and designers and never nears mail chimp, which is kind of scary, but I'm gonna show you that it could be super easy. And so, for this course, you don't need toe have this amazing understanding of illustrator Okay, I'm gonna walk. If your step by step all the buttons and tools that you need to create your email template , it's gonna be easy. And then when we go to mail chimp, all you need is a free account for male trip. Uh, if you have a list of under 2000 subscribers, you can get a free email account through matchup, which is what I have. I have the free version and super easy to use. So you you just need those two things. And then you also might want tohave available. Some graphics, some of your artwork, some of your part photos, those types of things ready to go and everything else. I'm gonna teach you how to do so. Let's get started with creative mail. Chimp doublet.
2. Class Project Overview: Okay, so let's talk about the class project. So the last project, it's actually pretty simple. I had just would love to see the templates that you're working on. So in the class Project section, you can upload either template graphics that we make. You can do a screenshot of your entire template. You can upload your sketches that we're gonna be working on anything that I can see and other people can see for inspiration to get through the process of making a template. So at the end, I would also love for you to send me an email with your new template. I would love to see it. You can send it, Teoh. Hello. At a little world paper hope dot com and I will respond to each and every one of you. I really want to see how you put these temples together. I'm very excited. And also get me questions or need help. Your stock please utilize the discussion section of this class and I will make sure to be active in there. And I hope that other people will be able to comment and answer questions and get feedback as well. So super excited to see your projects
3. Don't Overthink It: Okay, So a few things to keep in mind when you were creating your email template and mail chimp and I First thing is, it doesn't matter if you don't have a list or you're listed super small or a list of super big or whatever it is in between. People signed up because they want hear from you. So it's time to start talking to them. It's time to get over it and start sending an email. And there are three things that you want to do when you send an email marketing campaign. Uh, when you get started with evil, you want to be consistent. So choose once a month. I dio Ah, monthly update. Hello. Mail is what I call it, and we do that on the first of every month. So if you want to sign up for our newsletter, the link will be in the about section. I have some links there, some really helpful links and PDS and stuff you can grab the gold along with, of course, so first thing, as you want to be consistent, so choose something manageable for you. So it's once a month. If it's every other month, it's every other week, once a week, whatever it is, pick something and stick with it, I said, just starting with once a month or every other month just to kind of get your feet wet and get going. Okay. And what I like to do is I choose a day in the month before to kind of get on my thoughts together and everything done. And now that I've been doing this process for a while, it used to take me a really long time to draft an email like and embarrassing a lot of time . But since I started doing this template now it takes me up 30 minutes to get the email done and sent and set up and ready to go on male tramp. And so that's from start to finish every month. And I like the change. Write emails up every month to highlight different parts of my businesses, and you'll get very comfortable with it extremely comfortable. And then you can still use that template. Just send about maybe some promotional emails at random times throughout the month, Or, if you do like a semi annual sale or something like that, you can still do those things. But I want you to get consistent in the beginning to kind of get in the habit. So being consistent is very important. And then I'm going to be creative. So number to be creative because that's what we are. We're creative beings. We want to showcase our artwork and we want to showcase, you know, products that we're working on our courses that we have going on. Maybe you have a watercolor course or you're creating a new line of note pads or whatever it is you got going on. We're creative people, and our emails need to show it. So showcase your artwork, showcase your photography, showcase your products, whatever it is. Think beautiful, beautiful pictures. You're your emails need to be picture heavy, and I'm gonna show you how to do that and make it look really good and really on grand and really seamless. And the third thing I want to remember we're doing this is keep it simple. You do not need to tell people your entire life story in every single email that you're going to keep it short and sweet. So if you're doing, if you want to talk to your audience, if you would have some sense kind of note. Like I write a little note to my describe er's every month and it's literally like this like it's super short, just kind of Hey, this is what we got going on. You know, the family and I did this and, you know, you want to get personal just a little bit, just a little bit, but you don't need to write a book if you want to link to maybe a long post, maybe have a section of your email that says this month on the log or this week on the wog and have that photo that you're gonna make or that graphic image be link herbal. So I'm gonna show you how to do that male champ. You're gonna have the link graphics and photos, so that's what you want to do. So you want to keep it consistent. You want to keep it creative, and you want to keep it simple. That's what's going to stand you apart and make it easier for you. This is all about it being easier for you so you can communicate with people who spoiler they already want to hear from you, so stop being silent. Uh, this was a big deal for me. I had an email list for a long time, and I just kind of let it sit there. I didn't really do anything with it. And then I started communicating. And now every time I send emails, I get sales. So that's what we want. And once that consistency kicks in, you're going to see a big difference. And so we're gonna get started in the next video. Get ready.
4. Finding Inspiration: So in this video, we're gonna talk about finding inspiration. Inspiration for email is pretty easy. Um, what? I did what I subscribed, Teoh Literally every small business or product company or artists that I thought, you know, I just love their work. And I looked up to them and I admire them. And so I wanted to see how they're even marketing was going and what they were doing for that. And so when you look at e mails that you receive, you can look at elements that you like. Um, for example, this is one of my friends businesses. This is candles. There are candle business. This is one of the emails that they sent just two days ago. So they've got this header is always there. That's very consistent. So you know Hey, it's coming from them. It's always there. And then they usually have photos and some text and some bars that will there clickable and you can click them. And then they, you know, tell you how you could be featured on instagram and all these different things. So for this one, I like the color palette. I'm a big fan of black. Why? I like to keep things simple. Um, as artists and makers and product designers, we you know, we play with color all the time, So you want to play with colored emails or not, or you can keep it simple and let your photos have all the color in them and kind of let everything else fade. And so I love their bright photos, and I love how they have all the information and especially take note of what people put at the bottom. Most of this stuff will be put in automatically by mail. Chimp in your footer. Um, and then you know, So it'll have your address and all that stuff there if you have a brick and mortar shop if you don't have a brick and mortar shop. If you're an artist or like me, you work from home. Even though we sell products. Ah, highly recommend getting a post office box or getting a like, um, we have, like a mom and pop like shipping place where I go on it. Mine is an actual street address, so I have an actual street address instead of a P o box. But it's just like you know, the street address, and then it's number 13. So it's kind SAT makes it sound like an apartment, but it's literally just a box in their store. So I would recommend that because you don't want your home address at the bottom of your email, just a little side note there. So this is a great example. Some things you might want to consider when you're doing when you're sketching your template, which we're going to do in the next video. And so another one that I really like is my friend Julie over at UNB, blushing. So she does products she does mainly greeting cards and other like pouches and fun stuff. Um, so her stuff is very cheeky, and I really like it. So she does a little note at the top, talking about she has a BLAWG post, and so then she wants you to click there to keep going to her website. The idea is with email is to continually drive your customers to your website so that they can either purchase from you or check out your portfolio or whatever is the end game. Where do you want them to land? So you have to be thinking about that when you're setting up your template. And then she has a couple, you know, things that you can purchase and a shop now button. She makes us very simple. She's going to be in an event, so she's putting that in there. So these are just some examples of things that you can put in your emails. See, she has appeal back. She's not directing people to her house. I cannot stress this how important this is. Do not drug people to your house. Another one I want to show you is letter folk. Oh, that's actually the whole night. A second letter folk. Um, this is a letter board company and they've expanded into other things. They do notebooks and all kinds of cool stuff, and they actually have a Jeff up here, so that's pretty cool. You can incorporate video and mail chimp if you didn't know that, and then they there's is all graphics, which is why I want to show you this. You don't have to write a paragraph you don't have to write anything to your subscribers is that's not what you want to communicate in this email. There may be emails where you want to communicate more about what's going on in your personal life or whatever it may be. And then you may want to write something, but this is a great example of they made these graphics, which we're gonna be making an illustrator and they just plugged in the graphics, and each one of them is clickable. So each one has a link that takes you somewhere on their website. And so this keeps it super simple. And then they have this at the bottom which may or may not change out. This may be in their template, and they may or may not change out thes, but they probably made these in something like illustrator or Camba or in design. So we're gonna be using illustrator in the class. But if you are more comfortable with Can Von, you wanna make your graphics there? That's fine to the whole point is just to be able to make these graphics and save those images and save those templates that you can switch about. And so I'm gonna show you how to make something just like this, um, and how to utilize your own product photography and overlay text and those are the things we're talking about. But how simple is this? But how much impact doesn't make? I mean, it's amazing. It makes you want to go buy all of it. And then the last one I'm going to show you is mine. Um, so this was our February newsletter that went out? Um, I sent it on February 1st newsletter, but, you know, I sent it to herself from February 29. 25th of this. This is our static header. So you don't have to necessarily use your logo at the top. A lot of people user logo at the top, But you can use whatever you want. I made a special graphic for our newsletter that goes out once a month, and so that way it's recognizable. I think it's really important for the top of your email to be similar, especially if you're doing like a monthly or bi monthly or bi weekly newsletter. If you're gonna, like, launch a new product than you could, you know, obviously change up the heading to make it stand out from your regular emails. But if we're all just getting started an email, which is what this classes for I would highly suggest starting with some sort of newsletter that even switch out content. So we had, um I have my little hydrographic I really like to do. Ah, very, you know, bold fun, bright graphic of the top, and then this. I've been having a lot of stuff going on at work, so I, like, wrote a few things. I was super happy that, you know, January and December were over. And then I have little blocks that I switch out every month, so we always have a secret sale. I always give some sort of happy home tip because our brand is all about the home and homebodies and just loving being at home. And then I sometimes we'll do a download, Ah, free art print. Or, you know, I made I might do, like, maybe some little cards for your kid's lunchbox or something, you know, any some sort of graphic download that people can use. And then this was just reminding everyone that we give back. We're building a school for kids in need, And so with every purchase we give back and it's just a little reminder about what we do and who we are. And then down here I have some graphic blocks that I made an illustrator and then these links here. So this links to different things in our shop. You could also use pictures. I could have put a picture of address, stamp a picture of our cutting boards, a picture of, you know, local stance, whatever. So there are so many different things that you can do. And then I have our social media share buttons and links and stuff here and then see, there's my that's not my real address. That's not an apartment. Um, and that's at the bottom. A male chip puts in a lot of this stuff automatically for you, but you'll see that when we make the template. So then I switch this out every month. So then I go into a I and I switch out what I did to Dio, and it's super simple, and I'm going to show you how to do it. But I just want to give you a little inspiration before we start the sketching process. And before you go and get ready for the next video, I want you to go. There's a section in the class in the about section where I have a link and I have done kind of a checklist and a little, um, a little checklist of what you should have in every email and then kind of a list of things that you could include to give you a little inspiration before you start sketching. So go ahead and grab that, and then I'll see you in the next video.
5. Sketch Out Your Template: Okay, so now that we found some inspiration and your inspiration can come from anywhere, and I just want to encourage you to make your email your own, take the inspiration, soak it up, and then spit it out with your own spit on it. And so, as makers and shop owners and artists, you know, inspiration is all around us. But we want to make sure that when we actually apply that inspiration into our work, that we make it our own. And so a couple things that you want to remember when starting to sketch out your template is that this is very loose. Everything will be done perfectly. An illustrator and male trip don't stress too much about the sketch. I'm doing it on adobe dropped on the iPad. You can do it on pen and paper. You can do it however you would like. And then the other thing is I put a little pdf for you to help you brainstorming get started. And that is you can grab that through the link in the about section of this class. So if you haven't grabbed that are ready, I was suggest pause in this video and going to grab it because once we get going, you're gonna want ideas about what to put in the different sections of your email, and I gave you something to help you up. I'm going to go ahead and start with my header. You want your header to be consistent if you're sending out a regular email, Siri's so if it's once a month or bi weekly or whatever it is, so I'm just gonna kind of sketch really terrible rectangle of the top of my page. But again, it's loose where I'm fun on. So this is where you're gonna want to either put your logo or a static image that you create like the one I showed you on mine so you can create a graphic image for your newsletter. It doesn't have to be your logo. It could have your local in it. But for example, you know my emails called Hello male. And so I have a different image than just my logo at the top. You can even put in you know, your artwork, graphics, whatever it is you want to put at the top. You can have details wherever you want, cause guess what we're going to create this in a I we're gonna create an AI, and we're in export to male trip and set it up. So this is what where the fun begins. So you've got your local your static image at the top. So everyone knows it comes from you and they're used to getting it, and they're happy when they get it. So you want something that's gonna invoke happiness so that they are more inclined to read the rest of your email. So under the static image, I like to have a graphic image that captures attention. You can put whatever you want here. If you want to put, maybe you want to put a quote, it goes like across here. So maybe you want to like an inspirational quote every month. Ease air some of the unique things that you can infuse into your emails so you could do an inspirational quote. I do a happy home tips. So I always talk about something that you could do for free at home. That's just fun. Um, so you can do different things that relate to your brand and what you've got going on and then under that you might want to dio, you know, a graphic image. Maybe it's like an image of your office or something, and it says, like maybe you're doing an April email. So it says, like, Hello, forget Hello, right, hello, April or whatever it is you want to put their and then you can promote products or artwork or whatever it is, I said, just having the most important stuff at the top after your static images. So after the thing that you want to always have at the top of your email, make sure you get the important stuff in their first. That's gonna grab your reader's attention. So as makers, artists and shop owners, we want our emails to be very graphic heavy. We don't want to send out, you know, um, une email with a ton of text because if people subscribe to your email as a maker, an artist or shop owner, they love your work. They love the visuals that you provide. Your visuals bring them joy so they want to see those. So let's highlight your visuals. Maybe you've got a couple boxes here that we're gonna work on, and one of them is going to be. Maybe you're you've got some events coming up. So if people really love to see you in person, you're gonna want to highlight those. This month, you also could put new products new products that are in your shop or new artwork. New products are artwork in their shop. You could if you're teaching a course, maybe you're teaching a workshop on watercolor or you're gonna be in a craft show. You know, those could go on our events, but you could also highlight your workshop here. You could Also, this box could direct link to the check out page where they buy their ticket to the workshop. There are so many things that you're gonna be able to do. You guys are about to blow your mind seriously. And so then underneath, where you're highlighting your new things, Maybe you do want to give a little personal note. Not too. Not too much short and sweet. So maybe you're going to give a personal note here. Just kind of what you've been doing this month. What's coming up? How are you been? What are you reading? Like things like that. People like to know those things. Another great thing for artists, illustrators, shop owners, makers to have their emails. You could also another thing. You could highlight another business. So, for example, if you are a jewelry designer and but every day in your office, you get inspired because you're burning your favorite candle from your friend who wants a candle company. Highlight that, friend. Okay, so maybe here, you're gonna highlight the candle company this month, or you're gonna highlight somebody else. And then maybe you could do a few words about that company there. So, you know, that's a way to foster community on what you're doing. And then at the bottom, You just want to make sure that your social media buttons air here. Mail chimp will insert those for you once you set them up, and I'm gonna show you how to do that. And then this is where you want to make sure you have repeal box all that stuff because all that's gonna be in your footer at the bottom from male Jim. Now, a great thing to do once you have kind of a layout of what you want to talk about. Uh, remember that you don't have to talk about everything every month. That would be pretty overwhelming. So, you know, also, you could make a list of things that you want to talk about and with that pdf that I'm giving you that's gonna help you come up with some ideas. And then maybe, you know, say you're doing your April list, you're gonna talk about three of the things on your list, and then in May, you're still gonna talk about this one. But then maybe we'll talk about this one in this one, so don't get overwhelmed. But I would have a really good brainstorm, a really good list. I would say, you know, 30 to 50 things that you can talk about. An email I got you started with the pdf. But there are things that are unique to you unique to you that you dio you know, maybe your friend, um, it's having a course in your affiliate for that course. Maybe it's a acrylic course. And so your friend is rayon acrylic painting course. And you're an affiliate for her course. And you want to put that someone your email, Will you get stick it right here or here and now you're not doing the candles this month. You're going to do the you know, you're gonna highlight your friend who's painting, and then you're gonna talk a little bit about your friend. And so this is e mails are unlimited, and I'm gonna show you have a set of the template. So it's easy to switch these things in and out every month. And I am so excited for you because this is just the beginning, So let's start diving into a I.
6. Your First AI Template Part 1: So we're getting ready to set up our first template using AI, and the first thing I want to show you is mine. And so what I've done here is it's all about manipulating art boards. Art boards and AI are the basis for all your graphics. And so I have on our board up of the top that has my standard Koetter, which has my little Hello mail graphic and, um, my business name. And that stays the same on every monthly email that I said Mind go on the first of the month. That way people notes for me, and they expect that that it's from me so they recognize it, which is what you want. And then I always have, like, a pretty graphic of the top. And then I do boxes. And then once we get in a male chip, I'll show you how I add a little note from me and different things. And then I have my little dividers down here where a tubal shop online and then I have all my links under it, which will add a male trip and then the connect and give back section, which has links under it which will also add a male Jim. I also drew myself some icons. You can draw your own. I comes or you couldn't buy some from somewhere like creative Market. Uh, or, you know, maybe a friend who's an illustrator. And they can help you make some fun icons which will make your email stand out because they'll be just yours. And so I switched these boxes out every month. Let me go in a little closer and show you. So here's my Happy Home Temps tips. So every month I talk about things to do around your house to make your home, um, or inviting and relaxing place. And then I have a secret sale each month in my shop. I also do a free download, and then I have events which I call housekeeping. And so I have different events and where will be and what's happening on those days. And then this was my downloadable graphic this month so people could download that printed out for in the kitchen, the bedroom. Wherever I'm gonna show you how to upload those so you can upload files two mail chimp that you can make an AI and you can upload your files. Two mail milk. So let's get started on your template. So if you've never used a I before, take note of rewind as many times as you need, Teoh, I'm gonna do my very best to pretend that I'm teaching someone who doesn't know Ai. However, I am very familiar with a I So if I go a little faster at times, I'm really sorry. Just rewind a little bit or email me with any questions you have. Or put the questions in the discussion section because I'm sure that other people will have questions, too. If you're pretty versed in AI, this will be pretty good. Easy for you. If you're intermediate or advanced in AI, this is gonna be a breeze. So the first thing we're gonna want to dio is make a new file. So we're going to go to file and we're gonna go to new and then I'm gonna title it email template and then, you know you can tile it. Whatever you were like. I'm also gonna put s s behind it for skill share. So that doesn't get confused with my actual email template from my business for email templates. I like to set the pixels with toe 800 pixels. That's what mail chimp uses. They use pixels when they're when you're uploading images and so their images can range from 800 to 1200 pixels. I like to start with 800 just because I don't I want to do a ton of re sizing. I don't want to lose too much when I re size. So if I go into large and I size down too far, then there could be some quality loss. So I like to start at about 800 pixels. And so the haIf, though, doesn't really matter when you're just starting your template, because in male chimp, your you can go on forever. So don't worry too much about the heights. I have it set at 2 50 pixels just because we're going to start with our static header or a logo. And so you don't want that to be a square of the top or like this huge image of the top. You just want to kind of be simple and live up there. Word stands out. It's recognizable, but it doesn't overtake the inbox. And so I'm going to start with that and go ahead and click Create everything else is very standard. So don't stress too much about all of these bells and whistles. And what am I supposed to click all that stuff? Just pretty standard we're gonna export in a certain way which will make everything look great. So 800 pixels across is what I like to start with. So let's go ahead and create. Okay, So here's our first box. So when we're designer template, I want you to think in boxes and sections and however you need to like, kind of compartmentalize your emails. And so at the top of your email is gonna be where you're going to put your logo. You can import artwork. So, for example, I'm going to go ahead and just I will grab my logo so we'll let me go back. I gotta remember. Hey, I remember, um, so file open and I'm gonna go ahead and grab my logo, so hwp see logo so you can go grab your logo. So I haven't outlined version, so I'm gonna go ahead and click that, and then I'm gonna click open and then hear different versions of my logo. I would prefer to have one. That's a rectangle. A square logo works if you want to keep it small at the top. So I would not suggest I'm going to large. So I would do some white space on the sides. If you want to do a square logo, few local square circular or you could just type out your name in your brand fun. So I'm gonna go ahead and a command seed to copy this and I'm gonna bring it over here. So, command V, and then I'm going to just click and drag it into the spot here. So here is my logo to make sure that your logo it's centered inside the art board because all of this will be exported when you export your graphic, even the white space. All of this is exactly what's going to be put into male, Jim. So you're going to go up to this little align toe art board box. So you're gonna click on it and you say a line toe art board. So that means it's going to put it in the middle of the art board for you automatically. Eso you can go here this is horizontal alliance. So I'm gonna click that and make sure that it's a line towards, actually, And if you notice it, skipped over a little bit and then I'm going to click this button, which is a vertical line. So I'm gonna go ahead and click that and then that will vertically aligned my graphic. So now that that's all aligned, you can also add color. You can add images. You can add all kinds of things to this art board. Now I'm gonna show you something that trips a lot of people up, especially views to working a photo shop. Okay, so I am going to go ahead and open up a graphic image. So a photo. So I'm gonna go to open. I use hot stock photography. They have a membership site, which I will link in the about section of this course. They have a membership site that gives you like stock photos. Eso I'm going to go ahead and grab one. They have some for business owners and, you know Oh, my gosh, artists, a stationary designers, everybody. So I'm gonna go on open this graphic in a I and I'm going to click on it, and I'm gonna copy it. Command C, and then I'm gonna go back to my email template, and I'm gonna hit command the and this is the one. This is the one that I want underneath. Okay, so but I'm gonna have to dio another art board because I want thes exported separately. So this is an art board, this white area here, and I want another one, so I'm going to go toe documents set up. I'm gonna click on this button, and I'm gonna goto edit art boards. So if I goto edit art boards, I can create another art board. So if you notice when I drag over, that purple line is they're letting me know I'm lined up with the one on top and I'm gonna click and drag to create a new art board. Okay, Until that purple magenta line on the other side is debated, and then I'm gonna release. So now I have another art board. Now, if I want to change the dimension so see how this is a lot longer If I want to keep that I couldn't go up here and I'll tell me this art board is 800 PX by 2 22 I can also click and drag, So if I wanted to take this, I can click and drag this art board down and at then now I can click on the picture and bring it over to the art board. Now the only thing that's going to export is if you see these black lines, is what is actually within the art board. Everything that hangs off the side will not be exported out when we go to mail chimp. So just make sure that anything you want to put in your email and on your art boards is within that line. And then you can overlay text. So, for example, if you have an announcement, you can click on the text tool, which is over here in your tools panel. You can click on the type tool, and then you can click. I like to click outside in this gray area. First someone a click outside in the gray area, and then some text appears, and then you can start typing, so maybe you haven't event coming up, so maybe it is the vintage market days, and it is March 22nd through 24th is an actual event I'm going to. So I thought of that. So here, if you go over and you grab the selection tool, so you click on that, it's and then you if you click on your words there, highlighted, and then you can hold shift down, grab the corner and drag it to make it bigger. And then you can click on these words and dragged them on top of the photo you dragged on top of the photo. Now you can change the farm, so if you have a brand font that you use, So, for example, we have two different branding funds that we use in our business. But if you have one in your business, you can use it here, or you can use a different fun. So I'm gonna go up and I'm probably gonna grab our brand funt, and it's too big. So I'm gonna hold shift, grab the corner and reduce it down. So now I've got this year vintage market days. Now I can also change the color. So if I want to change the color of this text, I can click on the text. I can go up to the top left hand corner. Here are the color boxes and I can click on the fill color and change it toe white. If I wanted Teoh, I think that looks nice. So then when we export this to mail chimp, you can make this graphic where if they if you're if the recipient of the email collects on it, it gives them more information about this event. So this could be maybe this is the most important thing that's happening this month. So you want that at the top? Then I'm going to show you how to make the little boxes that I make. So now we need some more art boards because we want these to be individual J pegs. We want them to be individual graphics that we can interchange. And so I'm gonna go back to my documents set up. I'm going to go back to edit art boards and I'm going to create some more here. So I'm gonna go back letting that Magenta guide tell me where I am, and I'm gonna go ahead and create a box again as long as I wanted to be. It could be a zoo long as I want. I'm gonna go about that length and then I'm going to give it a look. And then I'm going to copy this Art Borg's I Want to right next to each other, because that's what I did on my sketch eso When I want to copy and art board, I want to make sure the art board is highlighted. If your art four does not look like this, go back to the selection tool and then go to documents set up and go to edit art boards. And now that our borders highlighted, if it's not, say this one's highlighted, all you have to do is click on them to select a different one. And now that I have that art board selected, I'm going to press the option or Ault Key and then I'm going to click and drag, and that will make an exact copy now. And once I let my mouse button go, it'll be there. So now I have two identical art boards that I can put graphics into or information. So we're gonna dio just a colored box, and so I'm going to grab my rectangle tool the rectangle tools right here I'm going to click on the rectangle tool. I'm going to click on the corner of the box, and I'm going to drag to the other corner of the box, and you can put any color you want. You can go from this color palette. You could go up in the top, right our top left hand corner and click down and grab any of these colors. There are also other color palettes that you confined, so if you go and you click here, you can find, um, other color other color palettes in the Swatch library. If you wanted to look for different things, you can also use the color picker tool. So if you have your rectangle or circle or whatever it is, you want a color. If you have that highlighted. So if it's not highlighted, then click in the gray area. Our I'm sorry, click the selection tool and then click in the gray area and then come over and click that box. Once that box is highlighted and selected, then you can go and there's a little eyedropper tool. It's called the Eyedropper tool, so you can click the eyedropper tool and hover over maybe you want to hover over this picture and click one of these green areas or brown areas, or even this year? That's really pretty. So you could click any of these areas, and it will turn that to the color that you want. So that way, maybe if you have a really striking graphic of the top that you want to pull colors from, you could do that so that your email is cohesive for the month. And then, if you wanted to do the same over here, you could again click the rectangle tool, start in the top right hand corner, click and drag and all the way down, and then you automatically do the last color. You did what you could do the color picker tool, and you could come up and choose a different color. And then once you have those set up, you can overlay text. You can overlay graphics if you wanted to put your artwork here, So, for example, let's do let's do a pattern. So I'm gonna go and I'm gonna open a pattern that I've been working with lately. We'll open up some patterns I've been working with lately, and I'll grab one. Okay, so Well, let's grab a smaller one. That will be huge on there. So I'm gonna grab this yellow one, for example, on go back to my email template. So I grabbed a pattern. Now I can highlight. Select this rectangle, go to my eyedropper tool. And then if I click on the pattern with the eyedropper tool that will change that to a pattern. Okay, then once you have that pattern on there, you can go back to your rectangle tool, and you can add different elements to this box so I could add erect Englanders clicking and dragging to make this rectangle. I'm just clicking and dragging. And maybe I wanted to be white, so I clicked white. And then I go out to the selection tool so I can move this around. Now, if I just click and drag, click and drag. So I would like it kind of hanging off the page, and then maybe this this we could put text over so that I'm gonna get my type tool, and I'm going to make some text that might say click for new artwork. Okay. And then I'm gonna put that right on top of here, and I make it a little bigger, some increasing the font size. And I can also zoom in by doing command plus sign. So I'm gonna zoom in on this box and then click for artwork for new artwork. I can also change the color of the text by using the eyedropper tool or going back to my color swatch palette. So for this, I might want to do this green over here, or I might want to go grab. Maybe I want to grab a dark green from this plant. So I went and grabbed that dark green, and now that text is dark green. So there are so many different ways that you can set up your template. I encourage you to really play around with this, Um, and the last thing I'm gonna show you, and actually creating your templates and illustrator is I'm gonna show you how to do the bar graphics. So I'm gonna go back to documents set up, and I'm going to go back to add it, art boards and I'm going to make an art board that is 800 pixels wide and about 100 Well, maybe 50 to 100 pixels tall, depending on what kind of texture going to put in there. So I'm going to go ahead and click and drag and get my you can kind of eyeball how tall you think it might need to be. So I think we're go 75. So I've got this. Now I'm gonna go up and check my dimension. So 875.82 So I'm gonna go ahead and make that just 75 and then I'm gonna go ahead and drive it up. Now, the spacing on this doesn't really matter where you put your art boards. I just like seeing them how they're actually gonna be in the email. So I like to see that laid out. And so when you're gonna do a divider graphic for your emails, they're really important. Just like when I showed you in the example Inspirations. How letter folk called the bottom of the email that had, like, I don't know, six or seven different bar graphics that directed you to different places on their website . It's really important to have those and so I'm gonna show you how to make one real quick So when you have your bar graphic here, you can again do any colors. You want anything that you would like, But we're gonna do a simple one with an outline. So I'm gonna go ahead and click my rectangle tool again and I'm going to go ahead and get inside. Let me zoom in so you can see it better. I'm gonna go ahead and set and get inside my art board And I'm going to click and drag to create a rectangle on the inside of my art board and I'm gonna release it now It's green because the last color that we did with the color dropper was green. But we can change that. And so for this one, I want outlined. I want the inside to be clear, and I want the outline to be a different color. So I'm gonna go into my swatches tab, which is here, and I'm going says green. But this box, the white box with a red line through it, is the no fill box. I'm gonna click that which changed that to nothing and then I'm going to click on This is the stroke box. Click on the stroke blocks box and I'm gonna make that who? I think I like a nice gray. So I'm gonna make that great. And now, if you could have used a selection to one click off it, you'll see that you have a grey box around it. Now we want to make sure that that box is centered. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on the green box and I'm going to do my alignment again. So I'm going to click to ensure its horizontally aligned, and then I'm going to click to make sure it's a vertically aligned. So now I know that that box is completely centered in my are poured and then whatever text I want, So we're gonna do we're going to say, view my portfolio. So we're gonna put view my portfolio in here so we just types and text using the text tool . So I'm gonna type the text, I'm moving it up and I want to increase it. Eso I'm going to increase the font size because it's selected. I could do that. And then we can use the same concept to center or text. So we're gonna go to Horizontal Line center. We're going to go to a vertical line center, and we're gonna make sure that that centered here. We can also change the color. So if you want it to be grey matching the outside, you just go ahead and click that same color that you used for the outline, making sure that you're not on the stroke box like I am. So go ahead and undo that and then go to the fill box and go all the way back and click on the gray color, and then you have a nice box that will help you kind of separate your email. Or it will help people get directed to places they want to go within your email. So here is another great tool that you have to use for email. So those were just kind of some basic basics on setting up a template. Now, the reason why we're doing this in a I and not just going straight to male trim and doing it is because you want to set these things up so that every month you can come into this template and change things around. So next month I might want to change this photo out I don't want to the same photo every month. Now the top again. We talked about consistency. You want the top to be the same, so it's recognizable. But these things you don't want to give the same information every month. And that's what I think makes people like running around like crazy people. Email is that they're trying to create something new and beautiful male jump every month. And male chip is not graphic design software. And so when you use something like a I or Kambara Photoshopped, you can set this up the way that you want with graphics that you want. And then every month you can export them to mail chimp, and then I'll show you how easy it is to switch out the template there. So this is the hardest part. So congratulations, you're done with the hardest part eso. Now I want you to go and set up your email template in a I And then in the next video, I'm gonna show you how to export it so that we can easily use it in male Jim
7. Your First AI Template Part 2:
8. Exporting & Organizing Your Graphics: added a couple more things to this template. If you wanna watch that time lapse video, you can't. I added it into the class. So if you want to watch me finish this up, you told again. But in this video, we're gonna work on exporting our graphics so that they're ready to be put into a minute male Jim template. So when we're exporting graphics from A I, we want to make sure that we do j pegs. And unless you want a transparent background, then you're gonna use P and G's. I personally like J pegs. Um, that's just the way I work. But some people love P and G's, so you can use whichever one you would like to export your graphics. Now you can export them as is, and mail chimp will convince them down the files just cannot be over 10 megabytes. And so, um, these in this particular template should not be over 10 megabytes. However, if you wanted to do just one large graphic, maybe it was like this big and put all of your information in it. And this literally be the email that you send. You can do that, But then I would recommend exporting for screens to reduce the file size of the export of the J Peg or PNG. And so we're gonna go ahead and export thes And when we export them, if you notice there are some parts of the graphic that are hanging off the art board. So even in this new one that I did in the time lapse video there are some things hanging off the art board. This is totally fine. Um, we're going to click a button when we export them. That will Onley do the image that is within the art board within these black lines. Here, Soto export all of these graphics. We're gonna go to file, and we're gonna goto export. Now you can export for screens or you can export as or you can say, for Web, which is an older version. I'm going to go ahead and export for screens because it's just the safest bet that way, especially if you're using high resolution photos from, say, a stock photography Web site, those can get pretty large. And so I'm gonna go ahead and export for screens. So when you hit export for screens, it also automatically select all of the art boards that you have set up. So every single one of these graphics has an art board. So you want to make sure I showed you how to set up art boards in the tutorial about first setting up your graphics. And so you want to make sure every graphic that you want has an art board underneath it who automatically select them all. And then you need Teoh. So it'll say range all. If you only want a few of them, you can just un select these boxes super easy, and then if you want to put in a certain place so this is going to my skill share folder right now, which is fine, but I'm gonna show you how to change it. So you were just click on the file button. Okay, so you want to go to like your Dropbox or wherever it is you house all your files and let's make a new folder? Well, here's our mail template folder that we made earlier. Actually, let's use that. So I got mail templates and there were April 2019 which is what we decided this would be, even though I put March dates in it, but just roll with it. So you're gonna want to make your folder. So we're ready made once I'm just going to stick in there. So you select the folder where you want them to go. Um, I highly recommend organizing them. Well, maybe better than me. So you want to organize them based on, um, the date that this email is going to go out? So we're gonna pretend April 2019. So April 2019 and then you're gonna choose this folder by clicking on the choose button in the bottom right hand corner. So choose. And so then you can check here. It's his mail. Dropbox male template. You can even tab over to make sure it's going to the right spot. And then I don't change any of this, So I always do the j peg 80. Um, to be honest, I'm not really for sure what that means, but it works well. And so I choose that one. If you are super smart with J pegs and you know what all of these mean? Maybe drop that into the discussion box. I'm assuming it means a J. Peck at 80% of the original. That's what I'm thinking. Um, but you could do a PNG even own svg. PdF, but we're gonna dio the PNG are the J peg 80. That's just the one I've used before. And then we're gonna go on export all the art board so they will all be exported and ready for us to put in mail, Jim. So go ahead and export, and then they'll go into your file your April 2019 file as one X. So then you're just gonna go ahead, and there they all are. You can see them all. And so whatever. Whatever graphics you want to make for this month's particular newsletter or if it's bi weekly or every other month, whatever it is I'm just using months is isn't as an example, you do with it what you will, but you can at keep adding to this folder if you make different things, so this will suffice for purposes. So all of these graphics, or what we're gonna use, and in the next video, we're gonna finally get to that mail chimp template, and it's gonna seriously make your life so much easier. So I can't wait to show you
9. Setting Up A New Email List: eyes for everyone. Hoods either not started an email list or don't know how to start an email list and mail chimp or just got mail chimp yesterday because you wanted to take this course you heard it was free or whatever the case may be, you're here, and you don't even know how to start a list. And this may be a block for you, and I want that to go away. And so, um, first thing to do is want to start a list. Now, I have multiple lists for multiple, different reasons. Um, and so this is Oh, my God. I feel like I'm sure you guys inside of my closet, but it's gonna be fine. So go. This is your dashboard. So when you first saw gonna mail chimp, it's gonna look like this and you go to lists, and then once you're enlist, you guys won't have all this. But, um, eventually, you will eventually you'll get it. So go to create list. Don't worry about this right now. We'll learn about tags, maybe in a different course. But for right now, we're just gonna create a list. So let's name Now your subscribers will see this, So make it simple. Make it something that they will understand, and you will understand. So, like, mine is like newsletter and coupon email list or something. Um, so just name your list. Whatever. Whatever your motivation is for collecting the people on the list, so is it that you want to sell to them? So maybe they're your hello, mail peeps. Or maybe they're your, you know, jewelry, tribe or their your, um, year. Um, pleasant. Potter's. If you do pottery like, you could name it, whatever you want, it doesn't have to be newsletter. It doesn't have to be that so, um, you could name it Happy mail for, um, quarters, whatever it is. OK, so we'll go with that. That's fine. Um, and then you need your from email address, So I'm gonna put in my in law address. You'll put in your email address, and then you want the name. So you wanted to come from you or the your business name. So that's what you're gonna want to put their either your name or your business name because you want it to be recognizable. And especially people have converse with your business or interacted with you in the past, then hopefully Gmail won't, you know, send you to spam. Okay, so, um, now, here you want to remind people how they signed up for your list, so you can use, um once you have other list, you can reuse a reminder, or you just write a short response. So, for example, if you are seeing this email you signed up to receive more information at the Happy Craft show last April, maybe that's the only place that this list that correct my spelling. Maybe this is the only place that people could sign up for this particular list. Or maybe it's, um if you are getting our e mails, you signed up through our website or so offs in person and find up. Whatever it is ours are. People can sign up on our website. People can sign up on Etsy. People couldn't sign up. Um, Omar, it shows. So you just want to remind people like you actually sign up for this? I didn't just add you. You can't do that. You can't. It's illegal to add someone to an email list with other permission. So you want to remind them how they signed up, Um, so they gave you, like, an example here on. And then, if you want more information on why it's necessary, you can click here when you set up your list form settings. If you want to enable double opt ins, that means that they would once I sign up for your list than they get an email that says, Did you actually sign up for this list and to make sure they're not robots? And so yes, then they would have I recommend the double opt in with all the new email laws. I recommend the double opt in. It's not a big deal. Someone wants to be on your list. They're going to make it happen. And those are the people you actually want on your list. I could go on and on about how it's not how many you people you have on your list. It's how engaged they are. So go ahead and click this double opt in box, and in some countries a double opt in is required, so you want to make sure that you're covering all your bases. This, it says, enabled GDP our fields. You absolutely want to do that, um, GDP are was passed. Oh, it's almost been a year over year in May, um, in the UK and other European countries, and it is eventually going to filter through through the U. S. And other countries worldwide. And essentially, it is a privacy protection for people who sign up for email lists, and it it allows them to unsubscribed whenever they want. It allows them to ask you, you know what kind of information you're collecting, and also that gives them mawr preferences of how they want you to contact them. So definitely do this mail chimp is really great about helping you with these new law changes. So click this box very important notification. So do you want to know every time someone signs up for your list? Or do you just want, like, the summary, or do you not want to know it all? If you don't want to know it all and you're just gonna going to email, check yourself. That's fine. Don't click anything if you want a daily summary of subscribes and unsubscribed, which I highly, I don't recommend. You'll drive yourself insane. Don't click this box doesn't matter, or you can get a one by one subscribe notification when they happen, so you could get an email that says, like a so and so's described your list. Now that one's kind of fun. So it just tells you when people subscribe. But I would not recommend getting the unsubscribe notifications. You'll drive yourself crazy. It's just like people who get all you know into the how many people unsubscribe from two like unfollowed them on Instagram. Let's not get caught up in that people, okay, What counts is who's on your list right now. Honestly, I welcome unsubscribed from my list. Last year I did a big cleaning out of all my analyst. I used to have over 3000 people on my email list, and I cleaned out over half of them of people who are on the list. But they weren't engaging with me. They weren't opening emails. They weren't buying things for me. The I clearly had gone to their spam or their unroll me or something, and they weren't concerned with me anymore. And that's okay. You're not gonna be for everybody. So just choose this one you want and just move forward, and really Well, I want you to Onley care about the people that are on your list right now and what you want to communicate to them. So I'm not gonna choose any of these again. The only one I would say if you wanted to, you could do the one by one. Subscribe so and then save. Okay, so you're happy meal for quilters list is set up right now. There's no one on it, though. So you have no contacts. It sets. So we're gonna want Teoh do a sign up form. So you're gonna go here to your sign up form and then you're gonna goto form builder you're gonna select. And then here form builder. You can keep it simple. Simple, simple, simple. You can add graphics. You could do it. Everyone. For the purposes of this, I'm going to keep it simple because this is not with this class is about. I just wanted to get you started. So right now this analyst is collecting your email. Your first name, your last name? This is the GDP are thing that that I was talking about That the new law that passed where people can make permission, select the permissions that they want for you to contact them. So it's emailed direct mail and customized online advertising. I highly recommend leaving this in if you don't play on sending anyone direct mail or anyone. You don't play on ever doing online advertising that is related to your email list. For example, Facebook ads. Then you can go ahead and get rid of those. So if you would like Teoh, you could just click on this box. And then you come over here on the right hand side and you can literally just get rid of it . So if you don't plan on ever sending anyone direct mail or ever doing a Facebook ad where you use your email list to target people, then you can just keep emails and option. I would require it because in that way you have protected yourself. And now they know that, and everyone knows that they have agreed for you to send them emails so I would go ahead and make that required. The other thing I would make required is obviously even address, which is already required. Good job mail, chimp and then, if you want their first near their last name in male chimp. And when you get more advanced in the mail chimp, you can actually do ah form field that will talk to your, um subscribers and use their first name so you could inject a little piece of code that every time that little code is there, it gives says their first names. So if you've ever gotten an email that says like, Good morning, Kelly or you know, we're so happy to hear from you, Diane, then that's how they're doing that. Eso I always require first name, just in case I ever want to get personal But I I don't usually require a last name. So then everything is good there. And then here, right here under Ord says Form builder, Sign up. Form the sign up form. You are Alice here. This is the link. This is the magic link. This is the link you wanna put everywhere. You can also use a website like bit Lee to make your link Pretty can also use a website like bit lead and make your link pretty. You can also create your own links on your website if using Squarespace or using wordpress even take this link and make the link. Something like mine is. Hello, world paper co dot com slash join. So you could do that in more advanced versions. But this is your magic link. If you would like to put that on your website, if you want to put that in, say you have linked tree for Instagram, you could stick that in there. This is the link that people will go to to sign up for this list. So you want to copy and paste that and put that everywhere. And that's a little tutorial about getting your first list started The O The last thing that you want to do, though, so that we can send test emails. And that sort of thing is you're gonna want to add at least one contact. So why would just add myself okay to get started. So I'm gonna add contacts. I'm gonna add a subscriber. You can also import contacts like if you have a spreadsheet of, um, contacts that you talked to. So I'm gonna go ahead and add a subscriber. I'm going to use my personal email. I probably have Oh, my gosh. I don't know how many emails. Um, first name Kelly last name for Christmas, and then I'm not going to fill any of that in and don't again. We're not dealing with tax today. I'm just showing your simple, simple, simple. If you are adding someone manually, you have to check. This person gave me permission to email them. This would be very useful if you collected emails, say on a sign up sheet at a craft fair. Something like that. Then you would click that box when you're manually adding everyone and then you would click Subscribe. And so now that they're subscribed and we go, we have one subscriber. See Happy Meal for Coulter's one subscriber who's excited and so you'll see that number grow. And again, I cannot stress enough, even if the number is 1 10 100,000 These people signed for your list because they want to hear from you. So let's get over ourselves. Let's stop being scared of male chimp and let's dive in and let's get that template made
10. Set Up & Save Your Email Template: friends. We have created our templates. We have all of our ideas ready, and we're ready to jump into male chimp. Now, if you skipped the last video about setting up a list and mail chimp, that's what I already know how to do it. But I created a new list, and so we're gonna use that one to make this email template. This is your dashboard in Belgium, and the first thing we do is just We are going to go to the create campaign button. You can also use this button up here, but I will show you a ton of different options. So right now we just want to create campaign campaigns are what e mails are in Belgium. So if you're gonna send a campaign and means you're sending and email to your subscribers, so I'm gonna go ahead and click create campaign. Okay, So there are different types of campaigns and things that you can make. We want to make an email, so we're gonna click on email, and this is gonna be we're just gonna do a regular email. So we're going to call this April 2019 news. We'll just say you can call it whatever you want. The campaign name is not seen by your subscribers. So your campaign name can be a reference to you, whatever you need it to be. So where is gonna go April 2019? News and begin. The next step is deciding where your mails gonna go, What it's doing, what you're going, Teoh. The first thing is, God, Who are you sending it to? Some gonna add recipients and you can choose one of your lists. So you're going to choose the list. And I made the happy mail for quilters list and I want all subscribers on the list again. This is a more advanced segmenting and tagging, which you can get in later. But let's just get the basics down first, let's not overwhelm ourselves. I don't really do much in segmenting and tagging yet. I'm just trying to get on a schedule of being consistent and creative and keeping it simple . And then I'm gonna save The Frahm is coming from me that gets set up in settings. You can change it if you want it to go toe from a different email and then we're gonna add a subject and subjects I mean, there's so much out there on the Web about what makes a good subject line. This is for an April newsletter or so I'm right, and you could changes every month. This is not the template yet. This is just showing you how to actually send an email with the subject. Could be something like April showers. Bring new products. I mean, get cheesy, be basic. Whatever you want to dio preview Texas optional You could do like a snippet of what's inside. You could say like new pencils and pouches have hit the shop or something like our new art line for your mom is here. Like get ready for Mother's Day. Safe content. This is where the nitty gritty happened. So this is where our template, everything that we've done so far is gonna really start taking truth. You're going to click on design email. I think this is where people get a little scared at first, but you already have it done. Your emails already designed your at this point, and you pretty much have it done here. They have all these different layouts, okay? And this, I think, also gets super overwhelming. There's all these different layouts. There's all these different themes. We're just gonna go and we're just gonna pick the basic one column theme. We're just gonna go pick basic. You can also do so you can start with whatever because, honestly, we're gonna delete most of it because we've set up our own template. I'm just gonna pick the one column. Here it is. It's all loaded up. And then if you notice on the right hand side, there's all these different things that you can drag and drop into your email and then you can look at the design. The design will be like the head or the body. All this type of stuff, a couple of things that you want to look at is especially in the body. You want to make sure that you have, like, thought that you want, so the standard is Ariel. But if you wanted to change it, there's a drop down. You can use different funds. However, the beauty of designing it in a I is that you can use your own branded thoughts in your graphics. So this will literally just be for body text. So if you wanted to put in a little note. You can play with the different design elements here and see what it will look like and how will change it. But I'm gonna show you how to drag and drop what we've done in a I into here into male chimp and then how to save it. This gives you kind of like a basic. It just says, Here's where you want to put your logo And here's where you want to write something for this logo box. We can go ahead and replace it with the one that we exported. We're just gonna go and click, replace, and then you're gonna see some of the stuff that I've done recently, and then we're gonna go to well, to keep everything organized. I like to use the folders and mail chimp. If you are stupid organized like meat, you'll want to do that. So I like to create a new folder first, So out a folder. And so this would be April 2019 and I'm gonna put test after it. So I don't get it confused with my own 20 April 2019 stuff when I do it. So then you just hit enter and It'll add that for you and you can going to collect. You select April 2019 and it gives you big goose egg because there's no photos in there yet , but we're gonna upload some. So let's upload our April 2019. Here's April 2019. So there's the one x folder that we talked about and here's all of our stuff that we exported earlier. Someone is going to select them all, and then I'm just going to click open, and now they're all gonna populate into this folder. Once all your files have finished uploading, you can go ahead and click on your local or hydrographic and then click insert of the top right hand corner. It's going Teoh, Insert that there and then you can save that. So then the next thing if we refer, you want to refer back to your templates. The next thing we wanted to put in was this large graphic here. If we go to mail chimp and we're gonna go hover over this image box on the right and we're literally going to click and drag it over to the template worry wanted to go and then release. So this is where that image is going to go and we're going to go browse and find it. So we've already uploaded it. It's right here. We're just going to select it and insert it. And so then it inserted it here, and that looks great. And then we're gonna save that, and I'm gonna come back and show you how to a link where you want things to go. Later, she wanna go ahead and say that next. If we refer back to what we had set up, we want to put these two graphics there, so that would be an image group. So you can do image groups when you want to have multiple boxes next to each other. So I'm going to go ahead and click and drag the image group button over, and we're gonna drop the block there, and it starts with two. But if you notice this button here, you can add up to five images per image group. And if you need more than that, so you want to do eight will then do an image your before and then do another image group before under it. So now I'm gonna browse my images and I'm going to select this one first. And this one says it's the proportions of this image. Differ from the one next to it. That's okay for right now, because I haven't put the other image in. So I'm gonna go ahead and browse, and I'm going to grab the other one, and I'm going to insert it. Okay, so it's gonna take a minute for them to figure out that they're actually the same because we exported the same. So maybe try saving and closing and then going back and see. Now, you noticed that that error messages gone because we set these up to be exactly the same in a I. So we don't have to worry about that. I said I'm gonna save and close, so see how nice that's looking already. Next, let's go refer back to this. Now we have our boxes at the bottom where we want people to be directed to our website to do another image group for that one. Well, actually, no. I'm sorry. I don't want to do an energy group for that one. I just want to do an image because it in case I want to move them around. I want to do each of them individually. So I wanna go ahead and browse. And which one do I want to first view my portfolio and I'm going to insert that. Save that I'm gonna do another box. Browse. Um Well, do shop online, insert, save, and then we'll do another one throws and connect with me. Hey, save. And then we're gonna do the last one which we have was following an instagram. You can do so many different things with these sorts of boxes. It's anything you want, any place you want people to be directed to. We just did these in is an example and then to add links. Okay, so this is another great thing that you can do in your emails to get more engagement and more interaction and drive more people to your website or your portfolio or your shop or wherever you want them to go, especially the logo. I would go ahead and link that to your website. I will put in my website and insert so you can go ahead and do that. So now that's linked to my website. If I wanted toe link to this event, I would just hit Link and I could linked to the event. You can also link to an email address, an anchor link or a file so you can actually upload a file to male gym and make that file downloadable for your subscribers. If you wanted to give them a free art print or you wanted to get them a desktop background , or if you wanted to give them a sticker downloadable sticker sheet, you could do all that by adding a file like just saving as a PdF. And then you can add that there. And then here you will want to click on the image group, and you can link each one individually so you could link this one to direct to like I have . The Brooklyn fabric is here, so that would direct to my Brooklyn fabric. And then this one would direct to new artwork that I have listed so you could link that. Obviously, this would be linked to your portfolio. This would be linked to the online website connecting with me. You could link that to your email. You could also link that to sign up of some sort or your blawg anything like that you could also make one of these that says, Come see our blogger or come read in my bog. You could do a follow me on instagram Leeward Links to your instagram account. This I'm going to delete for now. We don't need this. That was just in the template. So I'm gonna go ahead and believe that. But the other thing this is the social follow buttons. So the social follow buttons you can add your different social media accounts. I'm gonna go into style first of all, and then I'm going to look and make sure that all that is good and then settings is where you can choose. This is the colorful ones. I like things to be simple. So I'm gonna change them to black and white. You can also change them and make them larger. You can make them smaller and up and down, or they can go horizontally. You can make them white. I like my black. And then I like my black and I will make them. Yeah, that size. What's good and then content. So you'll want to add. So, like, whatever your twitter handle is your Facebook, I want to add your website. You can add other services as well. So if you click here, you can add your email address click again and you can add linked in you to Pinterest, Google instagram all these different things. I really like having my Pinterest on there, and I really like having my instagram on there. Now if you notice it just when you first set it up, it just does the website, so you. Then you'll have to add whatever it is so like. You have to add slash. Hello, World paper go like that. So then save and close. So that set up the other thing that this really good that I like to include I e mails is what's called the social share. So a social share if you slide it over. This is for other people to share this email on social media or ford it to a friend. If they Ford to a friend and that friend, consign it for email list. So you definitely want to make sure this is on there. They can also share it on Facebook or Twitter. Now, if for some reason you wouldn't want people sharing your email, make sure that you leave this off if you include it in your template. And then here's that footer I was telling you about the automatically populate your email address. They also automatically populate. If you want to update your preferences, click here. So if the scribe, er subscriber, maybe they're changing emails and they need to update it update that they're gonna click there and do it. And also unsubscribe from this list has to be in every email. So just leave the footer as is, Unless you wanna add something to it and make it. You know, if you want to add anything and make it a little cheeky somewhere or, you know, maybe you're a rebel and you want to put some other kinds of wording in there like please don't leave us or something, then feel free to get as creative as you want with that. So the other great thing about male trip, I want to point out is that it? Auto saves after every 20 seconds. I love this feature because I'll get so caught up in what I'm doing that I first. So that's a good little feature that they have. Once you have your template kind of set up. Oh, before we go any further, I want to show you what happens if you put in an image that's too big. I'm going to go ahead and replace this one. It does look better, but then we have to fix it because it's too big. It's too wide, but mail Chimp will give you kind of an alert like, Yo, uh, this is too big. You're gonna, like, totally obliterate people's boxes. So it'll say, Let's fix it And this is super easy to do, So you're just gonna click on Let's fix it and it takes you to the editing page, and then it automatically sets it to 1200 so 1200 is the max. With that, you can dio so are medically will set it to 1200 then you can click save if it doesn't automatically set it. Just you can change this by highlighting it and putting in whatever with you want and then hit save but even tells you 800 to 1200. I like to do minus 800. If you want to up yours to 1200 go for it. See, now it's back to being the right size and your error messages gone. The last thing I want to show you is the preview and test part so you can preview this in different ways. You can prove you it how it would look on a phone. You can preview it. How? Look on desktop, you can prevue how it looks on on a iPad. You can also send a test email to yourself, which I highly recommend, so you can click here to send a test email, and then you can check all your links. Make sure your photos look good. All that stuff. You can also push it to your phone. If you get the mail chimp app on your phone, you can push this evil to your phone and no come up right on your phone and show you what this email will look like on everyone's phone. When it goes out, you can do a link checker who will go through each link in your email. Ah, one by one to make sure that your links air working social cards that will show you how this email will look if you share it on Facebook or Twitter. But the thing that we're concerned about. Now that our template is set up, we want to save it. So let's save this template. We're gonna name our template. Mm. Were name or template Hello. Mail for quilters? Because that's what I have my list as template. So you can name it. Whatever you want. It doesn't matter what you name it. Totally. Your call. Whatever you want to name your template, no one's ever going to see it and then hit Save, and then you can return to campaign. So now your template is saved and I'm gonna show you where it's at and how to manipulate that template form or e mails in the next video. But let's finish this email. So I want to show you how to actually send it. Yes, this class is not all about male chimp and how male chimp works. But I figure if I'm showing you how to set a template, I need to show you how to send the email. Right. Let's saving close right here. So it takes you back to this. It gives you a little preview, and then you could either schedule your template, schedule your email or you consent it. So if you hit schedule, then you can actually pick a time and a day that you want this email to be sent, which is a great feature if you want. This evening will be sent at six oclock on a Monday morning, but you get up at seven. It can already be gone and done when you get up. And I love this feature so you can schedule all your emails. You get schedule it there or you conclude, simply hit the send button. This is one of the magic happens. So you hit the send button and this monkeys like, Come on, you can do it and he starts sweating. It's actually I'm always sending it to one subscriber. I can totally do this. And I'm actually standing into myself setting out high five High five. You did it. You just sent an email and it was really pretty and cute, too. So the monkey gives you high five. Sometimes I actually high fived the screen, which is great. So that's I said an email. Now, in the next video, I'm gonna show you how to take that template that we saved it didn't You can't It's not that like we used it once and we can never use it again. So we say that template, and I'm gonna show you how you can pull that temple back up and switch things out to make your next email.
11. Reusing Your Template + Extra Features: Welcome back. You just sent your first email. So good for you. Now we're gonna talk about what to do with that template now that we made it. It's awesome. It's gonna help our lives so much. But now what I do with it. So the first thing you can do when you're getting ready to send the next month's email, you're gonna go ahead and go to your AI template and you're gonna switch out the things that you need to switch out. So these will not change. Obviously, um, you may want to add one or two depending on what you want to talk about. This won't change. You're gonna want to change out thes boxes here or any other boxes that you have. That might be something that you want to change every month or things that need to be updated for example, on mine, like my secret sale is updated every month. However, this box remains the same so secret sales days. But I change what the code is or what the offer is based on the month My Happy Home tips. This stays the same, but I change the tip every month. My free spruce up. I'm changing the digital download every month. And housekeeping, obviously I change out the dates. This makes it super easy for me. So the only big change I have is the main picture graphic that I want to be different every month and I create my download. Other than that, it's just changing text so you can keep things. Ah, super simple like this. Or, you know, do however you want to do it. That's the beauty of this system is that it gives you lots of creative freedom in your emails. Okay, So, back to male chimps. So next time we create a new campaign, we can either go to create, campaign and select our template, or we can go straight to templates. So I'm gonna go straight to templates, and then here you can see all the templates that I've created. So this was the one that we did together. I've got my birthday template here. So we send a birthday email, automated birthday email to all of our subscribers on their birthday as long as they have given us their birthday and then every year had to change it because I changed the code every year we're gonna work with the template we've been working with. So would you go to templates? And then you go over here by the edit button and there's a drop down button, a hit create campaign. You can also preview it. You can also export it. You can share it. So when you're done and you want to go ahead and share your template with us in the class projects, that'd be awesome. I would love to see it, however, just so you know, if you share a template than someone else could use your set up. So if you want to share that with everyone and then they can make it their own, that's amazing. That's really great. If you don't want to share it, that's totally fine, too. You could just take a screenshot or just upload a couple of the graphics that you're using in your template. So we're gonna do create campaign, and it's going to send you right back to this what we've seen before. So right now it's an untitled campaign, but if you notice it populated our template, so that's already done for us. So this is now an untitled campaign, so we're gonna edit it, and I'm gonna just make it say May 2019 I'm gonna save it, and then I need to add my recipients again. So I'm gonna center to that same list that I made, and then I'm gonna save that. And then it populates who it's from, because that's what I put when I created my list. And then you're gonna add your subject line. So, you know, um, May is here. Let's celebrate. Yea for May. Whatever it is that you want to say in your subject line, you could play with those. But the main part is, here's our content. So this is the exact same thing we sent in April. So we're gonna wanna edit this design. So when you're editing an email template, there's a couple things that you want to remember. So as we talked about before, you're going Oh, no. Switch out most of these graphics. These you can leave here if you would like Ah, and then also, you probably want to leave your header unless you've decided on a new header than you can switch that out. But it's super easy to switch these out, so you would just click on it and then you were just hit. Replace so you can replace it and I'll go grab one from we'll go grab on from my black Friday email. It doesn't matter for our purposes, I'm just showing how you didn't switch it out. So we'll just switch it out with this one. So they're switched out. That and then check the link. The link from the last one won't be there anymore. So you need to re link wherever it is. You want it to go, and then if you want to switch these out So I'm gonna click on this and I can hit replace, and I'm just going to replace him with random boxes from the last sale. Tell me my proportions are different, but it won't tell you that once you replace the other one. So just replacing that and then these You probably just want to keep those. You can also rearrange them now, a couple things I want to show you a couple things I want to show you that you can add on to your template with, and then I'm gonna show you how to save it again. So if you decide down the road like, Hey, I really want to add something to this template. You absolutely can. So, underneath your main section, if you wanted to add So you want to add some text so you could click and drag the text over and then you could write a note to your to your people. Hello? I hope you are having a great months. This is what What's been going on around here? And then whatever has been going around here, X y z, you can write a note and it'll stay right there. And then you have your note There. You can also insert like a signature so you can insert pictures into this text box. So if you wanted to insert a picture, you could go picture, and then you can search files to. So I'm gonna see if my signature is readily available. No. So I have to go find it. That would be fun. Oh, you want to see all my pictures? I'm looking for my signature. There it is. So I'm gonna answer my signature and I'm gonna take it down pretty small. Yeah, it's blurry, but it won't look blurry on phones and all that good stuff. So then you can answer your signature so you might be chitchatting about something and then x o x o Kelly, or talk sooner or later, or whatever you want to put So you can write a nice note to your subscribers there, and then you can have some blocks here. And then here are your links. Now, if you wanted to set up Mawr links them like, for example, like what I have on mine. So underneath connect with me. You could do a text here, and then you can set up columns. This is kind of a little bit advanced, but I think it's kind of cool. You can set up columns in the settings you can do to columns. And so now the content you have column one and you have column to. So now you can say connect with me, and maybe there's different ways they can connect with you email view portfolio. Maybe gonna put that on one side, and then you can lengthy. So if you highlight, you can link and you can link to an email address. And here's my email address, and then you could even put in subject and body. If you wanted to, you don't have to and then email. So if they were clicked to click on that, then it would automatically go, and they would automatically be able to send you an email. You can also do your portfolio link. Then in column two you might want to put. Maybe you have a Kickstarter. Visit us in store. Maybe you have store, so then you would link all these. You can change color. You can change font size. You can change fonts, whatever it is you want to do. But if you want to do multiple links like that, then that's the way that you can do it. And you can also center them, which I recommend so you could go send her. And then on column one, you could center them, and then they look a little nicer there on the box so you could do that to also under shop online. You could add something that maybe says all the different things that you offer in your shop, and then they're all available there for everyone to click on. So these air different ways that you can spruce up your template and mail chimp. And then, if you like that and you like that look, then you can save it. You can say the template by going here, and then you were just name it the same and you would overwrite it. So now this would be your new template and then return to campaign. So now the next time you go pull this template, all of these would be in their Your little note would be in there that you could just switch out every month. That's a really nice feature that you can overwrite those templates so you don't have, like, template one template to Final One Final Final, final template. You know how we do when we save design files. You don't have to go through all that on the last thing I want to show you, and this is how to move things around. So if you hover over something and there's this box little dot box, you can just click and drag things around. So if you wanted shop online to come here and connect me up there, you can just click and drag, and then if you want to save it and then you can either finish later or schedule it. But once you have a subject, how subject yet so it's a matter me, but you can also finish later. So if you click finish later, maybe you're not done. May. You just wanted to add all your stuff they know will go on your campaign list as a draft, and then you can go ahead and edit it. And if you notice I sent that last email to myself and I have one open. So I 100% open rate for exciting. Um, yes. So that's how you reuse a template. Hope that you found that very helpful and understand that yes, the process of setting it up can be a bit tedious. But once it's done, it took me a while to set up the template. But look how fast it was for me to switch everything out. And so it will make your email life so much easier when you have a plan. I really appreciate you watching, and there's one more little video and that's it. Thanks
12. Recap & How To Share Your Template: All right, guys. Good job. And now you know how to set up an email template using adobe illustrator and mail chimp to make your email like, easier. I'm so proud of you. And I can't wait to see your projects in the class project section. You can go to templates, want your mail, chimp. And then I have created a special one here that I'm going to share with you. It's essentially what we did in the class, but I've added and taken out a couple things. So here is the project template and you just go here and you go to share. And there are two ways to share here. So one you could email to someone, For example, if you wanted to email it to me to check out I'm totally happy to look at it for you. You can also share by you are all so he would be the girl that you a copy and paste. Remember that if you share your templates via URL anyone who was male chimp can open that you are l and use your template. However, if you know you have a caveat that these images are copyrighted and please make sure that you replace the images. I would just throw that little sentence in there because the whole point of this classes to get layouts and templates and different options for male chimp and I think sharing our templates be a great way to share different options and spark creativity in each other. And so, if we had a whole bunch of templates in our back pocket, how amazing would that be? That we can go in and switch out our own graphics and product photos and artwork and all that great stuff? If you're not comfortable, share your template. That is totally fine. You can email to me and I'll check it out, but make sure that you at least upload a screenshot into the class project section so we can all check out your template and give you feedback. I cannot wait to see him. I plan on teaching more classes on skills here, and I would love if you would follow me on skill share so you know when they're available and if you have ideas that you would like to see more of, maybe you want more male chimp more ai. Let me know by sending me an email at hello at hello rope toxin by
Kelly Parker Smith, SHOP OWNER | ARTIST | HOMEBODY
