When you first decide to use internet marketing to promote yourself or your business, and realise the importance of getting business mailing lists of your own targeted customers, what can be done? You know you definitely need an autoresponder, but the trickier part is how essentially to link this up to your WordPress website for your potential customers’ emails to be automatically diverted to business mailing lists such as MailChimp, which gives you the ability to send 12,000 emails to 2,000 subscribers for free.
I will show you the exact steps that I use in integrating MailChimp with WordPress to collect email addresses, and of course, the purpose of this article is not to debate the pros and cons of MailChimp as compared to other autoresponders such as AWeber or GetResponse. It is just to help newbies start off without any extra costs, so that subsequently, they can move onto other autoresponders to collect business mailing lists if they like.
Easy Steps to Creating Business Mailing Lists
(1) Create a List
You should already have a MailChimp account. Just log in, and go to ‘Lists’ and then ‘Create List’. If they prompt you on whether to create a new list, or just to sub-divide an existing list with groups, just hit ‘Create List’.
(2) Fill in your Details
Next you will be brought to a page where you need to fill in your details such as List name, Default “from” email, Default “from” name, Remind people how they got on your list, etc. Fill in your details, save them, and your list will be created.
Now, check that it is under the ‘Lists’ category on the top bar when you click on it in MailChimp.
(3) Inserting the Text into the ‘Thank You’ Page Template
Click on ‘Signup Forms’, and then ‘General Forms’. Under ‘Forms and Response Emails’, select the ‘Confirmation ‘Thank You’ page’ (under ‘Subscribe’) under the dropdown menu.
You will be taken to an editable template. This is what your subscriber will see in their email after they opted into your list. So you should be including your free gift to them in this section. For instance, if you are giving away a free e-book, you should put down your link in this template. After this, save the template.
Example:
Your subscription to our list has been confirmed.
Please download your free <name of ebook> here.
Thank you for subscribing!
(4) Choosing the Form Template
In MailChimp, go to your newly created list under ‘Lists’. Click on ‘Signup Forms’ again, and this time, choose ‘Embedded Forms’. You will be given 4 choices – Classic, Super Slim, Naked and Advanced. For simplicity, let’s choose ‘Naked’.
(5) Choosing the Options You Want
Choose your form options on the left column, whether you want to show all fields, show only required fields, the width of the fields, and more.
(6) Copying the Code for the Form
After this, move to the ‘Copy/paste onto your site’ section, and just copy the entire code from the box below.
(7) Inserting the Code into Your WordPress Website
Now go to your WordPress website’s dashboard, under ‘Posts’, create a new post. Paste the code that you copied from MailChimp onto the post under ‘text’.
(8) Properly Format Your Page
Fill in any text you would like your potential subscribers to see, specifically the benefits of your free gift, so that they will be more willing to sign up for your list.
(9) Test, Test and Test!
Lastly, test that the list and integration works by signing up for your own list. If not, drop me a comment below and I will see what I can do.
Of course, you can also use a plugin to integrate MailChimp with your WordPress website, though I wouldn’t advise you to do it if you are not familiar with that plugin. Read all about the dangers of installing plugins here.
For those who are not familiar with WordPress as a website platform, you can join my WordPress 101 for Beginners or No-Nonsense Internet Marketing Facebook groups.
Contact us for a chat using the form below – we’ll be able to offer some tips on how to use mailing lists to increase your revenue.
