Adding an email subscription to WordPress is a practical approach to inbound marketing. It helps you convert website visitors into qualified leads.
Email subscription forms help you capture the details of your web visitors. You can use this information for segmenting and targeting specific email content to audiences. But what is the process of inserting an email subscription form to your website?
We have stated a step-by-step procedure for adding an email subscription pop-up to your WordPress site. Apply this technique and get your email campaign up and running in no time.
Why Should You Add an Email Subscription to WordPress?
Email is one of the most reliable and easy ways to communicate with your audience. If you gather email addresses of every unique website visitor, you can send them insights and updates. With this approach, you encourage them to visit your site more often.
Adding an email subscription form to your website helps you build an email list. This list is a collection of information regarding your audiences’ name and email address.
Email subscription form asks permission from website visitors to provide their information. Once they fill-up the form and approve, you can send them regular notification daily, weekly, or monthly.
Email marketing is highly effective in terms of conversion rate, targeted marketing, and others. It provides higher conversion rates than social media marketing.
Besides, there were around 3.9 billion active email addresses globally in 2019. That is why smart companies are spending a fortune in gathering as many email addresses as possible. Therefore, you need to know how to add an email subscription to WordPress.
Add an Email Subscription to WordPress Using Convertful and MailChimp
We will use two online tools to create subscription forms for your site. The first one is the Convertful WordPress plugin, which lets you display subscription forms to your website. On the other hand, MailChimp helps you send emails to your subscribers.
Let us start by creating an account in Convertful. Go to its official website and click on the “Get Started For Free” button.
You enter the pricing page of this marketing tool. Convertful provides four pricing plans based on the number of web visitors and other features. Select the Free package by clicking on the Get Started button shown below.
You get to a page where Convertful requires you to enter your email address. Click on the Create Free Account button after inserting your email ID. Just remember to agree to their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy by clicking on this button.
The next step is to insert the verification code sent by Convertful to your inbox. Verify your account, and you will reach the Complete the Account page. Enter your first name, username, and password in the text boxes and click on the Continue button.
Congratulations! You now have an account in Convertful. This tool requires you to add your website. Provide your site URL in the first text box and the site platform/CMS in the second one. You can also mention your site’s category in the third box.
Click on the Add Site button to proceed further.
It has added your website into the Convertful account. You need to connect this account to your WordPress dashboard using either a plugin or Google tag manager. In this demonstration, we are going to install a plugin for building connections.
Login to your WordPress dashboard. Now click on the Add New button inside the Plugins option. Enter the keyword “Convertful” in the text box, and you can see plenty of results. Install and activate the first plugin, as shown in the image below.
After activating this plugin, you’ll see a message that urges you to connect a website to Convertful. Click at the Connect to Convertful button at the bottom. Again, you’ll get an approval message. Click on the Approve button to proceed.
After connecting your site to this online tool, you’ll get to the Convertful dashboard. It’s time to create an email subscription form for your WordPress site. Click on the Create Widget button on the right side of the page.
Now, you’ll get to a page that allows you to choose from various email templates. There are multiple categories of widgets that you can add, like Pop-ups, Scroll Boxes, Floating Bars, etc.
Let us create a Pop-up form for your website. Click on the Pop-ups button on the left sidebar and select any of the templates you see. We picked the first option from the list of Simple Subscription Pop-ups.
You’ll get to an editing interface where you can make changes to every element in that email template. Let’s change the text of this layout. We clicked and edited the content in the Text Settings menu.
You can even change the font setting and color of your text.
Convertful also allows you to customize the template’s image, background, form fields, and others.
Now, it’s time to choose when you want the form to show up on your website. Click on the Display Rules button on the header bar. You can see several options regarding its display condition.
We selected the option where the form shows up after a visitor scrolls more than 40% of a webpage. Click on the Save Changes button after adjusting your settings. Also, change the icon to Active at the right side of the header bar.
Visit your website to see whether the form shows up or not.
The above image displays a pop-up subscription form on our website. We even entered a demo name and email address here to check its performance. After clicking on the subscribe button, we went back to the Convertful dashboard.
Click on the Subscribers button on the header bar. You can see the list of everyone that signed up for your newsletter. Since we mentioned our email address just a while ago, it shows only one subscriber.
The procedure you saw until now was only to display a newsletter form on your website. You can only gather the list of subscribers with Convertful. This tool does not allow you to send regular emails.
That’s when MailChimp comes to the rescue!
MailChimp is a smart marketing tool for building brands and connecting with a more extensive audience base. You get various features with this online email service. You can benefit from its services for free if you have less than 2000 subscribers.
Let us create an account in MailChimp to continue our process. Go to the official website of MailChimp and click on the Sign Up Free button on its homepage.
You’ll reach its Signup page, which has three text boxes. Fill in the details mentioned for each respective box, which are email, username, and password. Click on the Signup button after entering the information.
You’ll then get a confirmation mail in your email address. After activating the account, MailChimp redirects you to its pricing page. Select the Free plan and then click on the Complete button shown below.
Now, you have to provide a few details, like your first name, business name, address, etc. Provide these details and click on Continue after each step. You even get the option to skip a few steps.
After providing these details, MailChimp takes you to its dashboard. Now you have a MailChimp account ready for action. Connect it with Convertful for sending emails to your subscribers.
Go back to Convertful’s dashboard and click on the Integrations button. It shows that you haven’t integrated any tools yet. Click on the Add Integration button on the upper right side of the page.
The following page provides plenty of email marketing platforms. Locate MailChimp among the list and click on it. You’ll get the option to choose either Account Login or API Key. Select the first option and click on Connect.
It’ll open up a new browser for you to log in to the MailChimp account. Fill in your account information and click on the Login button. You’ll see a message for authorizing Convertful to access the dashboard.
Click on Allow and continue.
You built a connection between Convertful and MailChimp. Let’s go back to MailChimp and click on the Create option and select the Email button’s drop-down menu. We need to design an email template for sending it to our audience.
MailChimp requires you to set a name for your campaign. Enter your desired name and click on the Begin button. You reach an editing interface for email campaigns. There are options for adding recipients, sender details, subject, and designing the content.
Enter inside each of these topics and customize the email campaign the way you like. Let us look at how to design email templates using MailChimp. Click on the Design Email button and proceed.
MailChimp will take you to its template collection. It’ll allow you to select any templates, ranging from basic to modern. Featured options are great for first-time users. Select the second template for now and proceed.
You can see the editing interface for your selected email layout. Makes changes to your design using the content blocks, styles, and comments on the right side. Click on the Template button on the menu bar and select “Save this design as a template.”
You need to click on the Send button on the upper right side of the campaign dashboard. You can now send regular emails to all your newsletter subscribers with MailChimp.
Add an Email Subscription to WordPress Using Other Services
WordPress allows you to create and manage email subscription forms with plenty of other tools as well. Let us discuss three online tools that are common among email marketing experts.
1. AWeber
AWeber is a powerfully-simple tool for automating your email marketing approach. It provides a vast range of pre-designed email templates. Besides, you can also create mobile responsive signup forms using its drag-and-drop design interface.
You can easily integrate AWeber to your WordPress account. It saves the details of every email subscriber on your website. AWeber supports other systems as well, like Shopify, Facebook, PayPal, Etsy, etc.
Additionally, AWeber lets you track the performance of your subscription form. You can also segment the email list and send targeted emails. This email marketing tool can even automate the creation of email content for your newsletter.
2. GetResponse
GetResponse provides a complete marketing solution for turning website visitors into email subscribers. It helps you create newsletter subscription forms quickly. You can either choose from its pre-built templates or create a new one using HTML.
With this email marketing tool, you can integrate the signup form to WordPress, Facebook, and other platforms. It lets you embed forms at the sidebar, top bar, and other places of your website. GetResponse supports pop-up forms as well.
The GetResponse for WordPress plugin allows you to customize its settings directly from the WordPress dashboard. Also, you can quickly add the GetResponse landing page with this extension.
3. ConvertKit
ConvertKit lets you create unlimited email signup forms for free. It helps in collecting custom data from audiences for segmenting and sending targeted emails. You get three types of signup forms with this tool, Inline, Pop Up, and Slide-In.
ConvertKit makes the email editing process simple. You don’t need to learn HTML to change the color, font, alignment, and other content formats. It even provides tons of email templates that render correctly on all screen sizes.
You can integrate the signup form built with ConvertKit to several website building platforms. Some of them are WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace. It even provides a WordPress plugin to make email marketing quick and easy.
4. OptinMonster
OptinMonster helps you increase the website visitors and convert them into leads. You can even send targetted, informative, and engaging emails to your prospects to boost sales. More than a million website owners use this service to promote their business.
It lets you create mobile-friendly email capture forms using a drag-and-drop builder. You can add several campaign types with the OptinMonster tool. Some of that includes Lightbox Popup, Fullscreen Welcome Mat, Slide-in Scroll Box, Floating Bar, etc.
OptinMonster features Behavior Automation that helps you customize the display rules based on their behavior. You also get the dynamic text replacement with this functionality. OptinMonster has a WordPress plugin as well.
5. Sumo (List Builder)
The List Builder app from Sumo provides excellent features for converting a random, one-time visitor into email subscribers. You can later educate and solve their problems with email marketing campaigns.
You can set a certain timing for when to display the email subscription form. Sumo’s List Builder also lets you display this form when your visitors decide to leave your site. Besides, you can show customized forms based on visitors’ segmentation.
The List Builder App from Sumo allows you to change your subscription form’s background color, text color, and other settings. This feature helps you match the appearance of the form with that of your brands’.
There are still many plugins that you can use on your site but we have listed the best wordpress plugins for blogs. We recommend you to check it once.
Wrapping Up!
Create your first email campaign with any of these helpful tools. Please start with a free plan and upgrade later if you fall in love with its functionality. We recommend you to set up a Convertful account and integrate other platforms to get robust features.
Did you find the step-by-step process to add an email subscription to WordPress helpful? You can also add pop-ups for user convenience. Here is How to add Pop-Ups in WordPress. We have also listed 10 Best plugins to add a popup to the Wordpress, you can check it out.
Please mention in the comment section if you face any related issues.
