Building an email list for any blog is one of the most difficult tasks for the blogger. Many bloggers specially optimize the newsletter, subscribe and sign up forms on their wordpress very closely. To build the quality email list they focus in every detailing of the signup form including the font style, form color, call to action, right keywords and other important metrics.
If you are also a blogger and want to build quality email list then this is the complete guide for you. This guide will help you to create email list, set up newsletter form on wordpress site and also how to send email updates to subscribers after publishing new blog posts.
MailChimp is one of the most popular and leading email service providers allows users to build email list, set up and integrate forms with WordPress and also provides email templates to send mail updates to subscribers.
Importance of Building an Email List
Building an email list should be the priority for any blog, service provider website or even an ecommerce site. As per research around 70% users never comes back to your site. Email marketing is one of the best medium to build genuine and targeted audience for your ecommerce site or blog.
Conversions from email marketing audience is much higher compared to other mediums so, if you are an ecommerce platform then building an email list is the perfect marketing strategy for the business. If you are service provider business or even running any tech blog then you can send regular new blog, tech news and even gadget deals update to your email list.
What is MailChimp? Why Use MailChimp for WordPress?
MailChimp is one of the best and easiest Email Marketing service and has plenty of wordpress integrations as well. Bloggers community prefers using MailChimp because it’s absolutely easy to use and integrate with WordPress.
One of the most important benefit of using MailChimp is it’s free. Yes, for beginners MailChimp provides “Free” plan in which blogger can build email list for 2000 subscribers and can send 10000 mails in a month. So, if you are beginner or intermediate blogger then you should definitely use MailChimp email service.
MailChimp also has the 3 other paid plans so, once your subscribers count hits the 2000 mark then you can upgrade to other plans as well according to your requirement.
Apart from that MailChimp has plenty of other important features including Setup RSS to email subscription, several email templates, set up signup forms, integrate newsletter form to wordpress, set up auto-responders and can also monitor the email campaigns performance.
If your blog is quite popular and having thousands or millions of subscribers list then don’t worry security of Mailchimp is very good. On MailChimp you can also set up two-factor authentication to secure the account and email list.
How to Set Up MailChimp Account?
So, we hope you get the clear about what is MailChimp and why to use MailChimp with WordPress. So, here we will first create the account on MailChimp.
Step 1 – Visit MailChimp website and click on “SignUp for Free” button to create the account
Step 2 – Enter Email ID, Username and Password to signup the account
Step 3 – Visit your Mail Box and activate MailChimp account from which you created the account
Step 4 – Set up your account by entering important details including First Name, Last Name, Business Name and website
Step 5 – Enter your Address details (MailChimp required these details to comply with International Anti-Spam laws)
Step 6 – Add contact details
If you click on Yes then they will ask you the list of subscribers
If you click no then they will help you to find contacts
Step 7 – Select your business or blog niche you offers
Step 8 – Select your preferred plan – “Free” plan recommended if you are beginner
Step 9 – Click on Complete button and confirm the Sign Up
How to Create an Email List in MailChimp?
Once you signup to MailChimp then it will redirect you to MailChimp dashboard from which you can directly design the email and send to your existing audience list (If you imported already) or you can create the fresh email list.
Before creating or managing audience list or email list, remember in Free Plan MailChimp allows you to create only 1 audience / Email List. To create or add new audience you need to upgrade your MailChimp plan.
Once you SignUp to MailChimp account then you will get pre-define audience list. You can easily manage that email list.
Step 1 – Click on “Audience” option from Menu
Step 2 – Select “Audience Dashboard” from dropdown menu
Step 3 – Now select “View Audiences” from dropdown option
Step 4 – Now click on Audience name to see all the contacts
If you want to delete this Email List then kindly select the audience name and click on delete button. To create new email list follow below steps
Step 1 – Click on “Create Audience” button
Step 2 – Add audience details and other important settings
Step 3 – Click on Save button
After creating the new audience blogger can add subscriber details manually or import the contact details to existing email list. We will try to publish complete guide of How to import contacts to MailChimp email list later on our blog.
How to Add Email SignUp Form or Newsletter Form on WordPress?
Once you set up the Email List that means you are all set to create SignUp forms to integrate with your wordpress site or blog.
MailChimp do have one big drawback as per other bloggers experience. MailChimp doesn’t provide good SignUp forms templates to integrate with WordPress site. Here, users need to design basic forms to integrate with their site.
Here is the detailed guide about How to Create and add Email SignUp form on WordPress
Step 1 – Select “SignUp forms” option from Audience menu
Step 2 – Here you can select different SignUp Forms option to integrate with WordPress
Form Builder – Users can design their own SignUp forms and response emails
Embedded Forms – Users can easily Embed SignUp forms to their wordpress site or blog
Subscriber Pop-Ups – Bloggers can design Pop-Up subscribe form and integrate with site
Form Integrations – Create SignUp form with MailChimp integration platform
Step 3 – Select Embedded Forms to add in WordPress site
Step 4 – Design Subscribe Form according to your requirement
Step 5 – Copy Embedded Code of the Subscribe Form
Step 6 – Now open WordPress Dashboard of your blog
Step 7 – Go to “Appearance” and Select “Widgets”
Step 8 – Add “Text” widget to sidebar and paste embedded code in it and click on Save button
Step 9 – Now open website and check SignUp form in sidebar
After adding SignUp form successfully on your wordpress site, make sure you test it by adding one Email Address to see if it’s adding in our email list or not.
Bloggers can either add Subscribe form on wordpress site by embedding the code in widget to appear on Sidebar or footer or they can embed in the post by following above guide.
How to Add MailChimp Pop-Up Newsletter Subscribe Form on WordPress?
Many bloggers either embeds the Subscribe form code on website or they prefer to add pop-up subscribe form on wordpress site. Yes, Pop-Up Signup form can give good CTR compared to Embedding it in Sidebar or in any post.
Here is the step by step guide to Add MailChimp Pop-Up Newsletter SignUp form on WordPress.
Step 1 – Select “SignUp forms” option from Audience menu
Step 2 – Select “Subscriber Pop-Up option”
Step 3 – Now design form according to your choice
Step 4 – Now Click on “Connect Site” option to integrate with your site
Step 5 – Enter website URL and click on Get Started button
Step 6 – Now copy the code from the window
Step 7 – Now open WordPress Dashboard -> Go to Appearance -> Select “Theme Editor” or “Editor”
Step 8 – Find Header.php file or the file having <head> tag of your website
Step 9 – Paste the code just after <head> tag and click on Update file
Step 10 – Open your MailChimp setting page and click on “Check Connection” button and enable the button for Site
Step 11 – Open your blog and test the Pop-Up SignUp form
It won’t be visible immediately after successful connection so, you need to wait for some minutes here.
