How to set up an automated welcome email in Mailchimp

Follow a step by step guide on how to set up the automated welcome email in Mailchimp and include a unique discount code from Personal Discount.

Personal Discount creates unique coupon codes for your email subscribers. However, to send out the discount codes you'll need to set up an automated welcome email in Mailchimp.

Personal Discount Settings

Navigate to Personal Discount. Click on Add automation and connect the app with your Mailchimp account if it has not already been connected.

Personal Discount: create new automation and connect to the Mailchimp account

In the next step, provide the automation name and select the audience. Then pick the New Subscriber trigger. You can also decide whether to add new customers who accept marketing (for example at the Shopify checkout) to the Mailchimp list.

Personal Discount setting for welcome automation with Mailchimp

Now you can set up details of your automation such as a discount value, usage limit, or expiration date. Learn more from this article on how to configure your discount.

Edit an existing welcome email automation

If you're creating the welcome email from scratch then move to the next section. Otherwise, if you already have a running welcome email, navigate to the Automations section, and click on All Journeys. Locate the automated welcome email, show the drop-down menu next to View Report and click on View Journey. Then hit Pause & Edit, click on Send email point → Edit Email Content.

Edit Mailchimp Journey

At this point you can skip to the section on how to include discount code in your welcome automation.

Create an automated welcome email in Mailchimp

Log in to your Mailchimp account and click on Automations from the left-hand sidebar. Then hit Build from scratch and type a name of your new automation.

Add new Customer Journey in Mailchimp

Choose a staring point, for us it is Signing up. You can also decide whether to include imported contacts.

Choose a starting point for Mailchimp welcome automation

Select the action that will be taken when a customer enters the journey. In our case the action is Send email. Then design your welcome message. You can choose one of pre-designed themes for this.

Add an email as journey point in Mailchimp welcome automation

Include discount code merge tag

While preparing the email template, insert Shopify Discount Code merge tag into one of the merge text elements. It can be modified in the same way as other text. Save & Close the text element and if your template is ready, hit Save and Return to Journey.

Insert Personal Discount code into Mailchimp welcome email template

In an actual email, the merge tag will be replaced with a unique discount code.

Ensure discount code is not blank

At this point, you could start the automation and it would work most of the times. However, there may be instances where Mailchimp is faster with sending the welcome email than Personal Discount is at creating the discount code and pushing it to Mailchimp. In such case, the email would be sent out without a discount code. See the article below for more details.

Discount codes are not appearing in the emails sent by Mailchimp

Activate Mailchimp Journey

When the automation is ready, it's high time to activate it. Hit Continue and Turn On. Then the Journey will appear on the automations list with the status Active.

Activate Mailchimp welcome automation

From now on, your customers will receive a welcome message with a discount code when they sign up to your newsletter.

Mailchimp welcome email with Personal Discount code for Shopify