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Four automations cover 80% of the email revenue most lists ever generate: Welcome, Birthday, Anniversary, and Re-engagement. Each takes 30-60 minutes to build right. Skip them and you're sending the same campaign to everyone like it's 2009.
Who this is forMailchimp account holders with a working audience and at least 500 subscribers. Below 500, the data is too thin for birthday/anniversary automations to fire meaningfully. Welcome and re-engagement work at any size.
What you'll need
Step 1
Automations → Customer Journey → starting point: Signup → audience. 4 emails: Day 0, Day 2, Day 5, Day 9.
Mailchimp → Automations → Customer Journeys → Create journey → Build from scratch. Name: "Welcome — Newsletter."
Starting point: "Signup" → choose your primary audience → "Anyone in this audience."
Audience filter: Marketing permissions = Subscribed; Has not made a purchase before (excludes existing customers who happen to subscribe).
Email 1 (delay 0): the welcome + offer. Hero image, brand intro, discount code (if applicable), CTA.
Email 2 (delay 2 days): social proof — customer photos, testimonials.
Email 3 (delay 3 days, so Day 5 total): objection handling — shipping, returns, sizing, ingredients.
Email 4 (delay 4 days, so Day 9 total): soft urgency — your welcome code expires soon.
Goal: "Made a purchase" → Exit on goal completion.
Activate.
Step 2
Customer Journey → starting point: Date-based → "Birthday" merge field. Sends annually on the contact's birthday.
Prerequisite: your audience needs a "Birthday" (or similarly-named) Date merge field, populated for at least 50% of contacts. Add this field at signup or via re-permission campaign.
Mailchimp → Automations → Customer Journeys → Create journey → Build from scratch. Name: "Birthday — Annual."
Starting point: "Date-based event" → choose "Birthday" merge field → "Send on contact's birthday" or "X days before birthday."
Recommended: send 3 days BEFORE birthday so customers have time to redeem any offer.
Email 1 (delay 0 — fires 3 days before birthday): "Your birthday gift is here." Personal subject line. Hero with celebration imagery. Discount code or free gift offer (10-15% off, or "free shipping on us"). Code expires on/after birthday.
Optional Email 2 (delay 5 days — fires 2 days after birthday): "Did you grab your birthday gift?" Reminder if they haven't redeemed.
Goal: "Made a purchase" → Exit on goal completion.
Activate.
Step 3
Customer Journey → starting point: Date-based → "Date subscribed" → "Anniversary." Fires annually on signup date.
Mailchimp → Automations → Customer Journeys → Create journey → Build from scratch. Name: "Anniversary — Signup."
Starting point: "Date-based event" → choose "Signup date" → "Send on yearly anniversary."
This auto-fires every year on the contact's signup anniversary. No merge field needed — Mailchimp uses the system Date Subscribed field.
Email 1: "It's been [X year(s)] — thanks for sticking with us." Acknowledge the relationship. Anniversary offer (10% off, free shipping, or content-only with no offer).
For e-commerce: highlight customer's favorite products or top-rated new arrivals since their last purchase.
For content/SaaS: highlight your best content from the past year, or upgrade options.
Goal: optional. Most anniversary emails are appreciation, not conversion-focused.
Activate.
Step 4
Customer Journey → starting point: Tag added "inactive-90d" (you'll auto-apply this via a separate automation).
First, build the trigger: Mailchimp doesn't have native "inactive X days" triggers, so you need a workaround.
Option A (manual): create a segment "Has not opened in 90 days AND has not clicked in 90 days." Once a month, export this segment and apply a tag "inactive-90d" via bulk action.
Option B (automated, Standard+): use a Customer Journey with a "Send + Wait" pattern that applies tags based on inactivity.
Now build the re-engagement journey: Customer Journeys → Create → starting point "Tag added" → "inactive-90d."
Email 1 (Day 0): "We miss you." Soft, no discount. Highlight what they're missing — new arrivals, popular content.
Email 2 (Day 7): "Still here? Here's 15% off." First discount offer.
Email 3 (Day 14): "Last chance — would you like to keep hearing from us?" Two clear buttons: "Keep me subscribed" and "Unsubscribe." Yes, you give them the option to leave — better than damaging deliverability.
Subscribers who don't click anything in 30 days after Email 3 should be auto-tagged "sunset" and excluded from future regular campaigns to protect sender reputation.
Step 5
On each email in each automation, enable Mailchimp's send-time-optimization or Smart Sending equivalent.
On each email in your Welcome, Birthday, Anniversary, and Re-engagement automations, configure send-time-optimization (Standard+ feature) or 'best send time' suggestion.
Mailchimp learns each contact's typical open time and delays the send to that window. Lifts open rate 10-20% typically.
For automations that have time-sensitive offers (birthday code that expires on birthday), DISABLE send-time optimization — you want predictable delivery, not optimized.
On the journey level: enable conversion tracking → "Made a purchase" for e-com automations.
Step 6
For each automation, set the conversion goal and decide whether subscribers exit on conversion.
Welcome: Goal = Made a purchase. Exit on goal = YES (don't send post-welcome emails to someone who already bought).
Birthday: Goal = Made a purchase. Exit on goal = YES (don't send Email 2 reminder if they redeemed on Email 1).
Anniversary: Goal = optional (appreciation-focused). Exit on goal = NO if you want subscribers to receive the full appreciation arc.
Re-engagement: Goal = Opened or Clicked an email. Exit on goal = YES (if they re-engaged, they're not inactive anymore).
These four settings often make the difference between annoying subscribers and respecting their state.
Step 7
Test each automation with your own email + a colleague. Activate. Check analytics at Day 30.
Welcome: subscribe yourself in incognito → verify all 4 emails arrive on schedule.
Birthday: temporarily set your birthday merge field to 3 days from today → verify the email fires.
Anniversary: temporarily set your signup date to one year ago today → verify the email fires.
Re-engagement: manually apply the "inactive-90d" tag to your test profile → verify the email fires.
Activate all four journeys.
After 30 days: Customer Journeys → analytics on each journey. Healthy benchmarks: Welcome Email 1 open rate 40%+, Birthday open rate 35%+, Anniversary open rate 30%+, Re-engagement Email 1 open rate 15%+ (lower expected — these are disengaged subscribers).
Common mistakes
Welcome automation with only one email
What goes wrong: Single-email welcome captures 50-60% of recoverable welcome revenue. Adding 3 more follow-ups lifts total welcome revenue 70-120%. Stopping at one email leaves 12-22% of total email revenue on the table monthly.
How to avoid: Build the 4-email welcome sequence. Time delays + Smart Sending make it set-and-forget.
No populated birthday merge field — birthday automation fires for 5% of list
What goes wrong: Birthday automation built but reaches almost no one. Time wasted on a low-leverage channel.
How to avoid: Either run a one-time re-permission campaign asking for birthdays (with a 15% incentive), or add birthday field to the signup form and accept that only NEW signups will have it.
Re-engagement automation that doesn't sunset non-responders
What goes wrong: Inactives who don't re-engage continue receiving regular campaigns. Disengagement keeps tanking deliverability. Open rate drops from 28% to 16% across the whole list over 6 months.
How to avoid: After re-engagement Email 3, automatically tag non-responders "sunset" and exclude that tag from regular campaign sends. Permanent exclusion is OK — better than damaging deliverability.
Exit-on-conversion enabled on Anniversary automation
What goes wrong: Subscriber buys mid-anniversary → journey exits → never gets the 'thank you for X years' appreciation message. Defeats the purpose of the journey.
How to avoid: For appreciation-focused journeys (anniversary, milestones), DO NOT enable exit-on-conversion. Different from welcome/cart — anniversary is relationship-building, not conversion-focused.
Birthday email scheduled FOR the birthday instead of 3 days before
What goes wrong: Birthday code valid only on birthday means subscribers have to redeem same-day. Many forget or are busy. Redemption rate stays under 5%.
How to avoid: Send 3-5 days BEFORE the birthday. Code valid for 7-10 days. Redemption rate typically lifts to 8-12%.
Same brand voice across all four automations
What goes wrong: Welcome should feel introductory. Birthday should feel celebratory. Anniversary should feel reflective. Re-engagement should feel direct. Using the same template + voice for all four makes the brand feel impersonal.
How to avoid: Build each automation with intentionally different tone, design, and structure. Welcome = high-energy onboarding. Birthday = playful celebration. Anniversary = warm gratitude. Re-engagement = honest + direct.
Recap
Done — what's next
How to build a Mailchimp Customer Journey with triggers, branches, and actions
Read the next tutorial
Hand it off
Four automations is the minimum stack for any active list. A specialist who's built 50+ Mailchimp automations will write the copy, set up the merge fields, and configure the exit logic in 4-6 hours. Typical engagement is $500-900 at $14-16/hr. Most accounts see automation revenue 2-3x within the first 60 days.
See specialist rates
Customer Journeys replaced Classic Automations on Standard+ plans. They're more capable — branching, conditional logic, multiple triggers. On Free/Essentials, you get Classic Automations (single-path). Either way, the FOUR core automations (Welcome, Birthday, Anniversary, Re-engagement) are buildable.
Minimum: 4 (Welcome, Birthday, Anniversary, Re-engagement). Most active accounts: 6-10 (add Abandoned Cart, Post-Purchase for e-com, plus 2-3 segmented welcome variants). Above 10, complexity outweighs benefit and overlap risk grows.
Monthly for the first 90 days, then quarterly. Pull each automation's analytics: open rate, click rate, conversion rate, revenue-per-recipient. Underperforming automations get refreshed (new subject lines, new hero images, copy update). Rarely need full rebuilds.
10-15% off or free shipping for most brands. Free gift (low-cost item) works well for high-AOV products. Keep the offer modest — birthday emails get 30%+ open rates and don't need a deep discount to convert.
Limited. Free plan has Classic Automations which don't support tag-triggered automations cleanly. You can still build segment-based re-engagement using manual sends to an 'inactive 90 days' segment. For automated tag-based re-engagement, you need Standard+.
No — sunset them. After your re-engagement automation gives them 3 chances over 14 days, anyone who hasn't opened or clicked should be tagged 'sunset' and excluded from regular campaigns. This protects deliverability. You can keep them in your audience for historical data but don't send to them.
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