Create a Mailchimp Audience

Build from scratch or import contacts to create your Mailchimp audience. One audience is ideal, but you can create multiple audiences for different groups. This helps with targeted reporting and performance tracking.

In this article, you'll learn how to create a new audience and organize an existing one.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• The number of audiences you can store in your account depends on your plan.
• As a best practice, we recommend that you have 1 primary audience in Mailchimp. Then, use tags and segments to organize and target your contacts.
• Make sure you're familiar with our anti-spam practices and audience rules before you begin this process.

A note on multiple audiences

It’s almost always best to manage 1 primary audience. Then, use tags and segments to organize and target your contacts. In some cases, you may need to manage multiple audiences. For example, you serve different customers, such as vendors and buyers. If you keep these audiences separate, you can use reporting to identify trends and performance for each.

If you manage multiple audiences, you can reorder them to prioritize the ones you work with the most. To reorder your audiences, click Audience, then click the Audience drop-down. Select Manage audiences, click the 6-dot icon next to the audience you want to reorder, and drag it to the new position. The updated order will appear in the Campaigns and Analytics tabs.

Mailchimp audiences don’t share data, so contacts who appear in multiple audiences increase your total contact count. For example, if freddie@address.com is in 2 of your audiences, we count that as 2 contacts. To learn more, check out About Duplicate Contacts.

After you create a Mailchimp account, we generate an audience for you with the details you provide. When you create a new audience, enter details such as your From email address and a message to remind your contacts who you are.

To create a new audience in your Mailchimp account, follow these steps.

1. Click Audience.
2. Click the Audience drop-down, then click Manage audiences.
3. Click Create audience.
4. In the Best practice pop-up modal, click Create audience.
5. Enter the details in the fields provided.
6. Review your Contact information for this audience and edit if needed.
7. In the Form settings section, choose the opt-in method for your audience.
   
   Check the box next to Enable double opt-in. We'll send an opt-in confirmation email when someone subscribes to your marketing. Or, leave it unchecked to use single opt-in and add subscribed contacts to your audience right away.
   
   Check the box next to Enable GDPR fields to collect consent and explain to contacts how and why you’re using their data.
8. In the Notifications section, review the email address you'd like to use to receive notifications about your audience, and edit if needed.
9. Select your notification preferences.
10. Click Create audience.

After you create your new audience, import contacts or create a signup form to collect new contacts.

Organize your audience

Whether you’re working with your new audience or an existing one, there are a few things you should know before you add contacts.

Review these audience management tools to help you decide how to best organize your contacts.

Tags

Tags are labels for your contacts that you can use to organize your audience. Create tags for sets of contacts based on data only you know about them, such as "Met in Atlanta." Tags are highly customizable, so you have total control over how you create and assign them. Send emails and text messages directly to tagged contacts, or use your tag data to create segments.

Getting Started with Tags
Manage Tags

Groups

Groups are a collection of contacts with shared interests or preferences. Unlike tags, which you assign, your Use signup forms to ask contacts canto tell you what they're interested in from your signup form. For example, a garden shop might ask their contacts which best describes them: a gardener, landscaper, or indoor plant lover. After contacts select their interests, create tags based on group data, or send emails to a segment with one group, a few groups, or all groups.

Getting Started with Groups

Segments

Segments are used to create targeted messages to contacts who share data. Build a segment of your contacts based on things like location, tag data, group members, signup source, email activity, and much more.

Send customized emails, text messages, or web pages to just the contacts in a segment. Custom content is smart marketing, and segments can help you get there. Create regular or advanced segments, or use one of our pre-built segments.

Getting Started with Segments
Segment an Audience by Purchase Activity
All the Segmenting Options

Audience fields

Audience fields, also known as merge tags, are where we keep your contacts’ basic data. Audience fields are like cells in a spreadsheet. They store emails, names, birthdays, group interests, addresses, and other information. You can use merge tags to pull audience data into emails, such as a first-name greeting.

Manage Audience and Signup Form Fields
Getting Started with Groups

Next steps

Now that you’ve created an audience and you know the basics of audience management, it’s time to import contacts. If you don’t have contacts yet, try a signup form or a landing page to invite people to join your audience.