# How to set up an automated welcome email in Mailchimp 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.

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.

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](https://docs.personaldiscount.io/personal-discount-for-shopify/configure-discount). #### Edit an existing welcome email automation If you're creating the welcome email from scratch then [move to the next section](#create-an-automated-welcome-email-in-mailchimp). 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**.

At this point you can [skip to the section on how to include discount code in your welcome automation](#include-discount-code-merge-tag). #### 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.

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

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.

#### 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**.

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](https://docs.personaldiscount.io/personal-discount-for-shopify/troubleshooting/discount-codes-are-not-appearing-in-the-emails-sent-by-mailchimp "mention") #### 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.

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