Simple Email Marketing [Mailchimp and WPForms]

As we all know that WPForms plugin can be downloaded from the WordPress plugin repository directly, however, the Mailchimp add-on is only available in WPForms plus or higher plans. So consider subscribing or upgrading to any WPForms paid plans (excluding basic) according to your need.

After purchasing, download the plugin and upload it to the WordPress website. Install it and activate it.

Before integrating Mailchimp and WPForms together, first, you have to enable the Mailchimp Addon. For this open up the WordPress dashboard and navigate to the WPForms > Addons. Here, search Mailchimp and activate it.

To connect both tools, we require a Mailchimp API key. This key can be found on the Mailchimp website. So, open up the Mailchimp site and sign in. If you do not have a Mailchimp account, create a free account or consider its paid plans according to your requirements.

After signing in, navigate to your profile > extras > API keys. If you are a new user you won’t find any API key here. First, you have to generate it by tapping on the “create a key button”. Copy it and makes sure the API key is set to on.

Note: Create a new email list in Mailchimp if you are a new user. There should be at least one email list available in Mailchimp before you implement this method.

Go back to WordPress and again open up the WPForms addons dashboard. Find Mailchimp add-on and tap on it. Then click on add a new account button. This will open up the 2 additional fields: Mailchimp API key and account nickname. Paste the API key and insert your Mailchimp account nickname then hit the “connect to Mailchimp” button.

Note: You can add an unlimited number of Mailchimp accounts by tapping on the “add new button”.

If everything goes fine, you will see the green button that says connected. At this stage, the connection between Mailchimp and WPForms has been built successfully.

After activating the Mailchimp addon, it’s time to create a signup form. For this navigate to WPForms > Add new. Or if you want to edit existing WPForm, go to WPForms > All forms. For this tutorial, I am choosing a new form. So when you click on the add new, WPForms will ask you to choose a template form.

Now you have full freedom to either start with a blank form or go with predefined forms templates. Remember the Mailchimp integration can be applied to all WPForms regardless of their type.

Most users go with Newsletter forms because they can attract readers and convert into subscribers easily. By adding users to your newsletter list, you can let users know about new products, discounts, news, and much more.

For this tutorial, I am considering a Newsletter signup form template. So first give a form name (just for the label) and then tap on the desired template.

After choosing the Newsletter Signup form template, you can modify your form entries if you want. Different types of fields are available in the left panel. To add any additional form entry into the form template, simply drag it and drop it into the form. Similarly, you can also change the order of the form entries.

One entry you should add into your Mailchimp signup form is the GDPR Agreement field. By attaching this field to the form you can protect you or your website from the GDPR legal troubles. Basically, GDPR is the European data collection act that requires website owners to explicitly take user consent before collecting any personal data like email.

With WPForms you can create GDPR compliance forms easily. Before adding a GDPR agreement field to the form, first, you have to enable the GDPR module by navigating to the WPForms > Settings > GDPR. Here check on the GDPR enhancements option. You can also check on the disable user cookies and disable user details option. Finally, save the settings.

Then navigate to the Mailchimp signup form we are editing earlier. Just drag and drop the GDPR agreement field to the form area and you are good to go. If you want to customize the GDPR agreement text simply tap on the field and edit it. And finally, save the form.

Don’t close this page yet.

Now the last step is remaining to enable Mailchimp integration on our Mailchimp signup form. For this first, navigate to the Marketing tab and choose Mailchimp. Then tap on the add new connection. After that, a popup will appear asking you to enter a nickname for this connection. You can enter anything here, but we recommend entering the same name as available on the Mailchimp email list that you want to link with this form. Nickname will help you when you’re willing to connect this form to more than one mailing list. Finally hit the OK button.

After creating a connection, you need to configure few important fields:

Select Account: In this field, you have to select a Mailchimp account we have that you configured in step 3
Select Audience: Select the mailing list available in the selected Mailchimp account.
Action to perform: In this field, you have to specify the action which is going to happen when someone completes your signup form.

Now there are 5 actions available to choose from: (Image A)

Subscribe: Allows users to subscribe or add to your list
Unsubscribe: Allows users to unsubscribe from the list
Archive: Existing contact will be archived from your audience list
Permanently Delete: Remove an existing contact permanently from the audience list.
Record Event: Record an event for a particular contact after form completion

But as per our tutorial, we are creating a signup or subscription form and we are selecting “Subscribe” in this field.

As soon as you choose the “Subscribe” option in the action to perform field, few more options will appear. Let’s configure them (Image B):

Subscriber Email: Here select the email field where the user enters its email address on your form.

Select Tags: Apply any existed or add new tags to the incoming form submission (optional)

Note: Optional

Double Opt-in: Check this option when you want to ask the users to confirm their subscription through confirmation mail before finally adding them to the mailing list

Mark Subscriber as VIP: All form submissions will be marked as VIP in Mailchimp

Update the profile if this contact is already in an audience: Enable this option so that the existing subscriber profile will be updated in Mailchimp automatically.

These are the main settings you need to configure for the Mailchimp and WPForms connection.

Few more additional settings are available like custom field mapping and conditional logic.

The custom field mapping option is useful when you want to send any additional entry in Mailchimp. For this, you need to map your form field to the Mailchimp available fields.

Enable conditional logic when you want to set rules based on the user actions.

After configuring the settings, save the form. Now your Mailchimp enabled signup form has been fully configured.

After configuring the Mailchimp and WPForms connection settings, it’s time for setting up notifications. With WPForms notification settings you can enable an automated email that will be sent to you, your team members, or the site visitors each time the form submission will occur.

To configure form notifications, simply navigate to Settings (inside form) and tap on the notifications tab.

You can use smart tags to configure the recipient of the Email. We are not going to explain the WPForms notifications configuration for the sake of tutorial length.

Just below the notifications settings, you will find the Confirmation settings. With this, you can show users a confirmation message as soon as they complete the form submission.

There are 3 types of confirmations available:

Message: This allows you to set your own custom message
Show Page: This allows you to choose a custom confirmation page available on your website
Go to URL: This allows you to redirect users to a custom URL

Finally, the signup form configuration part has been done. It’s time to implement or add this form on the WordPress site. WPForms allows you to place your form in multiple locations including website post/pages, sidebar widget, etc.

To place the signup form, 3 methods are there:

By manually copy paste a WPForm shortcode to the preferred location in your website
Use an Embed button located at the top right of the form editor.
By “WPForms button” available in the WordPress post editor.

In the first method, navigate to WPForms > All forms. Here you will find shortcodes of all the available forms. Copy the shortcode of the signup form and paste it into your website.

In the second method click on the embed button located inside the form editor. When you click the embed button, it will give you 2 options: either place your signup form to the existing page/post of your site or create a new page.

The third method is simplest, navigate to the post/page (edit mode) where you want to place your signup form. I believe you are using the Gutenberg editor. Simply tap on the add button and search WPForms. Click on it and you will be asked to embed any WPForm. Select your Mailchimp signup form and finally publish the page to make your signup form live on your website.

So this is how you can create a signup form with Mailchimp and WPForms to grow your mailing list.