Mailchimp Tutorial for Beginners – Learn SMS Marketing in 2026

About this video

David, in a video partnered with Mailchimp, walks through setting up Mailchimp SMS to text customers about flash sales, new product releases, and event reminders. Because Mailchimp is an email platform first and SMS is an add-on, SMS requires at least the Essentials plan, and sending images requires the Standard plan or higher; both plans have free trials. SMS uses a credit system — David says you get 1,000 credits for $20 US per month, a plain text message costs one credit, and a message with images costs three credits. Registration requires choosing the countries you will send to, getting a sending number (or a five- to six-digit short code), providing a real business, website, address, tax ID and compliance contact info, and supplying a privacy policy and terms and conditions; approval took a few days in his experience. Subscribers are collected with a pop-up form on a website or, without a website, a landing page, and David edits the pop-up’s steps, colors, logo, text, buttons, and images in the mobile-first editor, then covers publishing settings and triggers. For a campaign he uses templates, shortened and tracked links, and merge tags for personalization such as first name, warns that the goal is to stay under 160 characters (an MMS with an image allows up to 1,600 characters but triples credit use), and notes you can send 15 test preview messages per day. He also explains quiet hours — in the US a message may be delayed until up to 11:00 a.m. Eastern — and reporting: sent count, delivery rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate, with no open rate for SMS, and data that can take up to 60 minutes to appear.

Key takeaways

• Mailchimp SMS is an add-on requiring at least the Essentials plan; sending images requires the Standard plan or higher, and both plans offer free trials.
• SMS runs on credits: David cites 1,000 credits for $20 US per month, one credit per plain text message and three credits for a message with images.
• Registration requires a real business, website, address, tax ID and compliance contacts, plus a privacy policy and terms and conditions, and approval took a few days in his experience.
• Collect subscribers with a website pop-up form or a landing page, and note SMS registration must be done separately for each audience.
• Keep SMS under 160 characters where possible, use shortened tracked links and merge tags, respect quiet hours, and judge campaigns by delivery, click, and unsubscribe rates since SMS has no open rate.

Episode details: published January 28, 2026 · 16:41 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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