Allowing your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter should be easy. See now in this article how to make a setup to integrate a free newsletter on your WordPress site with MailChimp a newsletter is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s arsenal — and here’s why:
- An email database is an on-demand traffic source — be it a new article, product announcement, or sponsored post, you’ll always have access to a community of people who are genuinely interested in your content. You can instantly reach out to thousands (or more) of subscribers with just a few clicks.
- Email newsletters easily trump social media: While a Facebook Page or Twitter handle is excellent, most folks aren’t alerted to social media posts. Furthermore, an email list is personalized and has much better reach and engagement.
- The larger and more targeted your email list, the better the authority you can demand in your niche. Put: It’s an asset no one can take away (not even Google!).
In the same way, countless marketers have stressed the importance of building an email list, and all of them have one thing in common: They only regret not building theirs sooner!
Today we will learn a setup to integrate a free newsletter in WordPress using MailChimp (without a doubt, one of the best email marketing systems available today).
Signing Up MailChimp Newsletter for Free
Signing up is a pretty straightforward process, head to MailChimp, click on Sign Up Free, and follow the on-screen instructions. You may get a simple image captcha as an anti-spam measure.
Firstly, you must enter your email, username, and a secure password. Enter your name. This will be used as the default sender name in your email marketing campaigns.
On the next page, fill in your business’s name and website. Don’t worry if you don’t have a website — you can use a Facebook or Twitter page.
In this step, you do need to add your business address to comply with some anti-spam laws. So if you’re a freelancer working from home, a co-working space, or even Starbucks, you need a physical address where MailChimp can send you letters.
The next step links MailChimp to your existing eCommerce platform. For this tutorial, we’ve kept it simple. You can always try this out if you have WooCommerce installed on your WordPress site. However, I’d recommend doing it after you’re familiar with MailChimp.
In the final step, you can link your Facebook/Twitter to your MailChimp account to share your newsletter subscriptions.
A newsletter subscription screen, where you can subscribe to MailChimp’s highly recommended newsletters, will also come up.
Free Mailing List
Now that we’ve signed up and configured our basic account in MailChimp, it’s time to start building a newsletter.
- First off, we need to create a list. Lists are where you store your contacts (we call them subscribers). You can also split a list into overlapping sub-lists or groups and set up different campaigns for each.
- Campaigns are the emails themselves. You design email(s) for a campaign to send to your list.
So after configuring the new account, you’ll be redirected to the MailChimp dashboard. Click on Create a List to proceed.
This is your Lists page — select Create List and start. There are a few points worth sharing:
- The sender’s name and the tone of the ’email subscription reminder’ copy play an important role in your brand’s image. Plan the copy accordingly. It’s always better to have a fun/casual tone (much like MailChimp’s branding), as this helps people relate to your brand.
- In the initial days of setting up a campaign, it’s always preferable to receive all subscription notifications.
Hit Save to create the mailing list. That’s it — congratulations on setting up your new mailing list!
MailChimp Newsletter Campaign
Now that you’ve created a list, it’s time to create your first campaign. Click on the Campaigns tab from the top menu. As you can see, the campaign did not run. Click on Create Campaign.
For the campaign type, let’s use a Regular Campaign for our tutorial.
In the next part, MailChimp asks you to select the campaign’s audience. In the beginning, you’ll want to send the email to a test group, so select the last option — Paste emails to build a segment — and type out a few test (working) email addresses. Click Next to proceed to the next step.
Under the Campaign info plan, the email subject and the sender’s name are careful. The subject plays a major role in brand identity and affects the open rate of your newsletter. You can also use merge tags to personalize your email.
For example, the *|FNAME|* merge tag is a placeholder that replaces the receiver’s actual name. If not set, it will revert to a default name.
- Suppose the subject line is: Hey *|FNAME|*, check out these End of Season Sale Items!
- The actual email will read Hey, Sourav! Check out these End of Season Sale Items!
- If the first name isn’t available for a particular email, it will read Hey, Buddy! Check out these End of Season Sale Items!
Template of Various Categorized Collections
You can customize the email using MailChimp’s awesome drag-and-drop newsletter design tool. All the designs are 100% responsive, so you don’t have to worry about how your email will look on a mobile device, and you can also get a live preview of your designs. by selecting the Preview and Test option on the top menu.
Once done, select Next to proceed to the confirmation screen. At this stage, ensure all items are set to green check marks. Pay attention to the yellow warnings and resolve them before sending the newsletter.
Once you’re doubly sure, hit Send Now to start the campaign.
How to Setup in WordPress Free Newsletter with MailChimp
So far, we’ve covered how to:
- create and configure a new MailChimp account from scratch
- create a new email list
- design and send out a newsletter campaign.
furthermore now, let’s see how to add a newsletter subscription or signup box in WordPress. There are two primary ways to do it.
- Method 1: The first way is very simple — you only have to copy a piece of code from MailChimp and paste it into a WordPress HTML/text widget. So you can place that widget anywhere, but most people place it in the sidebar, where you get the classic ‘newsletter subscription box in the sidebar.
- Method 2: The second method involves using an awesome plugin MailChimp for WordPress that has great features such as shortcode integration, comment and registration form integration, and much more.
MailChimp With WordPress
In the first place, log in to your MailChimp account, navigate to the Lists tab, and select Embedded Forms.
Launch your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets.
Drag and drop the Text widget to the widgetized area (the most common one being the sidebar) and paste the code in there. So now hit Save and open your WordPress site.
MailChimp WordPress Plugin
While MailChimp has a lot of WordPress-specific integrations available, this plugin is by far one of the best on the market — we’ll take a short tutorial to try out its various cool features. Installing the plugin is a breeze: Head over to WP Dashboard > Plugins > Add New, and you’re set.
- Click on Activate Plugin to get the ball rolling.
- As soon as you activate the plugin, a message asks you to add your MailChimp API key. This step grants the plugin access to your MailChimp account — all your lists, campaigns, and other settings will be imported without configuration.
- Follow the link to get your API key. (Open a new tab and ensure you’re logged in to your MailChimp account before you proceed.)
- You’ll be redirected to your MailChimp account. Select Create a Key.
- Copy and paste the API key into the plugin’s settings page, and hit Save Changes.
Signup Form
This plugin allows you to set up new subscription forms to attract new subscribers to your list. Furthermore, if you want to use this feature, please follow these steps:
- The first step is to click on MailChimp for WordPress Dashboard > Forms
- You should then select one or more lists to subscribe users to. You can customize the form and add additional fields at this stage.
- You can now add your newly created registration form to the associated web page. It would be best if you used this shortcut [mc4wp_form].
- For the custom, form integration to work properly, check your final settings by clicking WordPress Dashboard > MailChimp for WordPress > Integration > Custom Form Integration.
The free tier of MailChimp allows you to send 12,000 emails per month to a maximum of 2,000 subscribers, which is a pretty generous quota if you ask me. However, it is illegal to use affiliate emails for products or services that you do not directly sell.
Conclusion on Free Newsletter Integrate into WordPress with MailChimp
With a rock-solid infrastructure, a host of additional products, and an intuitive interface, MailChimp makes it easy for anyone to get started with new newsletter campaign minutes. Coupled with the power and simplicity of WordPress, MailChimp is a game-changer.
Building an email list from day one is important for any online venture. Equally important is ensuring you have a content marketing strategy for effective email marketing. So we hope this article on how to make a setup to integrate a free newsletter on your WordPress site with MailChimp has been of help to you!
