Before you dive into creating a list, you have to decide on how to set up your list, or lists, to best meet your long term needs.

Are you managing one list, like a list of your customers? Or, you could be managing one list with multiple sub groups, like those who want to receive your emails daily and those who want to receive your emails monthly. Or are you managing multiple lists; perhaps you're an agency with several clients? We have options for all of these scenarios.

Groups address the 2nd scenario above. Rather than creating a separate independent list for each of your subscribers' interests or frequency requests (like one of your subscribers wants to get info about your sales, but not necessarily your new products), you can create one list that uses Groups to target these subscribers' interests. If you have a monthly plan, this will save you money by eliminating the need for duplicate subscribers across many lists. This will also cut down on abuse complaints that result from complicated multi-list management practices.

When you create groups, we'll add checkboxes, radio buttons or a select menu (your choice) to your signup form automatically so your subscribers can choose which group to be a part of. And you don't have to worry about that part of the process.

Groups may seem different if you're coming from another ESP to MailChimp. Some systems will force you into one big list and each of the "lists" you set up in the system is like a "group" or "segment" of that big list. We, however, let you set up as many lists as you need, so if you want to do targeted marketing to the same set of subscribers who may have multiple interests, groups is the best way to go. Using multiple lists is better, for example, if you have multiple clients you're working for in the same account (scenario 3 above).

See the related articles below for more information on set up and managing Groups in MailChimp.

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