How to Build a Course Email List Using Mailchimp

Go to mailchimp.com and sign up for the free plan. Mailchimp will ask you for a business name, website URL, and mailing address. The mailing address is required by the CAN-SPAM Act — if you work from home and prefer not to use your home address, a PO box or virtual mailbox works fine.

During setup, Mailchimp will create your first "audience." You only need one audience for now. Resist the urge to create multiple audiences for different segments; Mailchimp's tagging and grouping features handle segmentation within a single audience.

Under the Audience tab, find "Signup forms" and choose the embedded form option. Mailchimp generates an HTML snippet you can paste into your website. Keep the form simple: ask for an email address and, optionally, a first name.

For the form itself, give people a reason to subscribe. "Sign up for updates" isn't a reason. "Get a free lesson plan template when you subscribe" is a reason. Even something simple like "I send one email a week with practical teaching tips — join 250 other course creators" tells the visitor what they're signing up for.

Mailchimp includes a landing page builder on the free plan. Go to "Create" and select "Landing Page." Choose a template, add your headline and description, and connect it to your audience. The landing page gets its own Mailchimp-hosted URL that you can share on social media, in online communities, or anywhere you interact with potential students.

Landing pages work well when you don't have a website or when you want a dedicated page for a specific offer. The page has one job: convince the visitor to enter their email address. Keep the copy focused on what they'll receive.

A welcome email is the most important email you'll send. It goes out automatically when someone subscribes, and it gets the highest open rate of any email you'll ever write — typically two to three times higher than a regular campaign. In Mailchimp, go to "Automations," create a new automation, and select the "Welcome new subscribers" template.

Write a brief, personal email. Introduce yourself, tell the subscriber what to expect, and deliver whatever you promised on the signup form. The welcome email sets the tone for the entire relationship — make it feel like a person wrote it, not a marketing system.

On the free plan, Mailchimp limits you to a single-step automation. That means one welcome email, not a multi-email sequence. That's fine for getting started. A single well-written welcome email outperforms a sloppy five-email sequence every time.

If you already have contacts from a previous workshop, a coaching practice, or a spreadsheet of people who've expressed interest — import them. Go to "Audience," then "Import contacts," and upload a CSV or paste email addresses directly.

A word on permission: only import people who've explicitly agreed to receive email from you. Adding people who attended a free webinar three years ago but never opted in is a fast path to spam complaints. If you're unsure, send them a personal email first asking if they'd like to join your list.

Once your list has subscribers — even a handful — send your first campaign. Go to "Create," select "Email," and choose "Regular." Pick a template or start with a simple layout.

The content doesn't need to be elaborate. Share something useful: a teaching insight, a resource you recommend, a question you've been thinking about. The goal of the first few emails is to establish a rhythm and demonstrate that your emails are worth opening.

The most effective way to grow your list is to offer something your ideal student actually wants in exchange for their email address. A one-page checklist, a short video walkthrough, a sample lesson — something concrete and immediately useful. "Subscribe to my newsletter" converts at a fraction of the rate of "Download the 5-step lesson planning template."

Mailchimp lets you add tags to subscribers when they join. Create different signup forms or landing pages for different sources — one for your website, one for social media, one for a guest blog post — and tag each one. Over time, this tells you which channels are actually producing subscribers.

A list of 50 engaged subscribers who hear from you every week is more valuable than a list of 500 people who forgot they signed up. Pick a cadence you can sustain — weekly is ideal, biweekly is fine — and stick to it. When you eventually announce your course, those 50 people will be the ones who buy on day one because they already know you.

Mailchimp's free plan caps automation at a single step. You can send one welcome email automatically, but you can't build a multi-email nurture sequence without upgrading. The Standard plan ($20/month for 500 contacts) unlocks multi-step automations. If automated sequences are central to your launch strategy, a tool like Kit may be a better fit from the beginning.

Mailchimp is a general-purpose email marketing platform, not a creator-specific tool. It works for restaurants, retail shops, and nonprofits with the same feature set. That means it doesn't have creator-focused features like paid newsletters, digital product delivery, or integrated course sales. It's an email tool. It does email well. For everything else, you'll need other tools.

Pricing scales with your audience size, and it climbs quickly. Once you pass 500 contacts, you move to a paid plan. At 2,500 contacts, the Essentials plan costs around $45/month. At 10,000, you're looking at $100+/month. Keep an eye on your per-subscriber economics as your list scales.