Do you want to convert your website visitors into subscribers and send them regular updates? Well, you need an email service provider for this and Mailchimp is one of the biggest player.
Probably you know that already but don’t know how to integrate a mailchimp form in wordpress, in this post, I’ll show you exactly that.
Why you need an email list?
You might have heard this many times “you need to have an email list”, but why? When a visitor joins your email list they give you the permission to interact with them by providing their email address.
A personalized email is far more effective than a message on social media because your message will be quickly buried under other updates but emails will stay in the inbox unless it’s deleted.
So, whether you want to sell your products or others, be it physical or information you must build an email list to increase your revenue.
Why starting with mailchimp is a good idea?
There are many options available when it comes to choosing an email service provider, but when you are just starting out mailchimp is the best option to choose.
It’s not only simple to use and integrate but you can use it for free for up to 2000 subscribers. So you are getting to use a world class email service for free.
You can capture and send emails, analyze your campaign performance with detailed reports, set autoresponders, design beautiful email templates and send your RSS feed via email to your subscribers.
Starting with mailchimp
Now everything out of the way let’s see how you can use it, you need to create an account with mailchimp first.
Fill out the details and once signed up you will receive an activation e-mail, follow the steps and you will have your account set up.
Editing your email list
Once you are in your mailchimp dashboard go to lists.
You will notice a list is already created with your business name and if you wish to modify anything in that list click on Settings and make the changes.
Once you are happy with your list settings, now it’s time to connect it to your wordpress site.
Using mailchimp form with wordpress
In order to connect the list with wordpress you have to create the form first. Mailchimp has some basic forms built in.
Go to your list and click on the arrow beside Stats, then click on Signup forms.
It will take you to another page where you will see all the available forms, click on Form builder.
Customize and Brand your mailchimp form
You will find a built in form there already, you can use it as it is, but as you can see there are too many fields, optimize the sign up process by making the form concise and small.
To edit the form, click on any field you want to edit, you will see more options related to that particular field, click on the “–” button to delete the field.
You can add new fields too from Add a field section.
Let’s keep this form to email and name fields only. Keep in mind the form design you see here will not be implemented on your wordpress site, you are just setting the form fields here.
If you click on the dropdown menu above you will see more forms which will interact with your subscribers based on their actions, like for example when a visitor subscribes or unsubscribe different forms will work.
From here you can edit all of them.
You can also add your logo to give a personalize brand to these forms.
For logo, hover on the form title and click on use image button, a wysiwyg editor will open from there you can upload your logo.
Embedding the form to wordpress
You have the form ready, now let’s embedded it to your site, click on the Signup forms again and choose Embedded forms.
On the next page, you will see the form with some settings and raw html code.
There are different types of form you can choose from, like the Horizontal form, if you wish to place the newsletter form horizontally.
Feel free to check all the form options and settings but for now we will use the Classic form. Copy the html code from the code snippet.
Now go to the wordpress dashboard Appearance » Widgets, add a Custom html widget in the sidebar and paste the code.
With that you have just set up your mailchimp newsletter.
Styling the form
So far the form looks very basic but if you are comfortable with html and css you can customize it to fit your theme.
A word of caution before you make any edits- Do not touch the form action part of the mailchimp code.
For now, let’s add some styling to highlight the section.
#mc_embed_signup {
background: #3e3e3e !important;
color: #fff;
}
#mc_embed_signup h2, #mc_embed_signup .mc-field-group label {
color: #fff;
}
This is how it looks, a visitor can easily notice the form now.
Adding mailchimp form in a popup
If you are planning to use content upgrade to increase your subscriber, showing newsletter form in a popup can be really effective. You can use mailchimp’s subscriber popup option for this.
Go to Signup forms and select Subscriber pop-up option.
You will see the form setting page, play around with settings and once you are happy with the layout click on the Generate Code button to get the code.
Copy the code and add it to the footer section of your theme directly or through a plugin.
Now if you check the front end you should see a pop up appearing (based on your setting) with the signup form.
Integrating mailchimp with wordpress plugin
In case you want to use a plugin to integrate the form instead of manually adding it, you can do that too.
Disclosure: Some of the links here are referral/affiliate links that means if you decide to buy through those links I’ll earn a commission at no extra cost to you. This is how I keep Designtheway.com up and running.
Mailchimp for wordpress
This plugin makes it very easy to integrate a mailchimp form with wordpress, apart from that it also allows easy integration with other plugins like contact from7, memberpress, gravity form, woocommerce, buddypress etc.
Let’s see how to use it-
Once you install the plugin you need to connect it with your mailchimp account through an API key.
To get the API key go to your mailchimp dashboard.
Click on the down arrow beside the user name at the top and click on Account.
Click Extras > API keys, if you don’t see the Api key click on Create A Key button and copy the key.
Go to Dashboard > Mailchimp for WP settings page and paste the API key, then click on Save Changes button.
It will update the status and show your mailchimp list as well. You have successfully connected your mailchimp account with wordpress.
Now to create the form go to Mailchimp for WP > Form
You will see the form settings page with the following tabs
- Fields – It will allow you to set which fields you want in your newsletter form.
- Message – You can configure the form messages here.
- Settings – For mailchimp specific settings.
- Appearance – Here you can choose the form style.
Explore the settings to have a better understanding.
As stated earlier you can integrate other plugins with this to allow your visitors more subscription options.
Go to Mailchimp for WP > Integrations
It will show the list of plugins you can integrate, you need to have the plugins installed and activated in your site to be able to integrate with Mailchimp for WP.
Setting wordpress RSS feed newsletter with mailchimp
You have set up the form to add new subscribers but to keep them subscribed you need to engage them, one of the best ways to do that is to provide them with your regular blog post updates.
Mailchimp makes this really easy by allowing you to automatically send your subscribers regular post updates with RSS feed.
To set this up go to your mailchimp dashboard and click on Campaigns > Create Campaign.
A pop up will open, click on Create an Email.
On the next page you will see the different type of campaigns you can create, for now click on Automated > Share blog updates.
Next, add your campaign name and choose your list then click on Begin button.
Now you have to add your RSS feed url and select when you want to send your updates, once done click on the Next button at the bottom right of your screen.
On the next screen, you can choose which segment of your list you want to send updates to.
Next screen will show campaign info with most filed auto filled by mailchimp, these default settings will work fine in most cases but feel free to edit to fit your needs then click on Next button.
Now you need to choose the template for your email, click on the template which suits your need.
It will take you to template edit page where you can refine your template design and content even further, once you are happy with the design click on the Next button.
If everything is set up properly you will see a screen like this and a Start RSS button at the bottom of your screen, click on it with that you have successfully set up RSS feed newsletter with mailchimp and your subscribers will get your post updates automatically.
Conclusion
As you can see mailchimp is very easy to integrate with wordpress and it allows you to do a lot for free. We have just looked at very basic features, there is a lot to it feel free to explore and get the best out of it.
