Thinking about starting a newsletter for your WordPress website? Great move! Email newsletters are more relevant than ever before. On average, email marketing has the highest overall ROI in comparison to other marketing tactics, so with the right tools, you can really skyrocket your email revenue.
Luckily, we have the tools you need, so you can stop searching for a WordPress newsletter plugin. Whether you are looking to collect emails from your blog, promote your product or service, or stay in touch with potential customers via email, we are here to show you the easy way to create an email subscription form in WordPress!
Table of content
- 3 Things you need to add a newsletter to your WordPress website
- Create an Email Subscription Form in WordPress (step-by-step)
- Sign up contacts to different newsletter lists
- Customize your newsletter sign-up with our styling plugin
1. 3 things you need to add a newsletter to your WordPress website
Email marketing comes already with way too many challenges. You don’t need one when you are just starting! The good news is, that you can use our contact form to grow your email list in WordPress and you don’t need any coding skills or a developer. You’ll only need these 3 things to add subscription forms in WordPress:
- Free Ninja Forms core plugin (download here),
- Newsletter plugin from Ninja Forms
- An active account for your favorite email marketing software
Just install our contact form plugin and pick up one of our newsletter signup integrations (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Constant Contact, CleverReach, Campaign Monitor, etc.) to connect your WordPress forms with your favorite email software. Each of those newsletter plugins makes the connection between your WordPress forms and the email marketing software of your choice in minutes.
Let’s look at it closer how you can add an email subscription from building your sign-up form to sending your contacts over to your email account.
2. Create an Email Subscription Form in WordPress
Don’t worry, even if you’re completely new to newsletters, you can craft beautiful, brilliant signup forms that will grab your visitors’ attention without a big time and money investment. Here is your step-by-step guide on how to get started:
Step 1: Choose your email marketing service
Once you choose the email marketing service or if you already have one, go to that service’s website and create/login into your account. (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, Campaign Monitor, etc.)
Next step, install the Ninja Forms core plugin and the specific newsletter plugin you’ve chosen. For example, if you have an active Mailchimp account, you’ll want to get our Mailchimp add-on.
Each of our newsletter plugins has an in-depth documentation guide that will walk you through step-by-step how to connect your account with the specific email marketing plugin.
If you want to know what newsletter plugins we offer, here is a complete list: Mailchimp, Constant Contact, CleverReach, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, AWeber, MailPoet, Emma, and EmailOctopus.
Step 2: Build Your Signup Form!
From your WordPress Dashboard, navigate to Ninja Forms > Add New to access the form templates. You can choose our Blank template to start building your sign-up from scratch.
If you are specifically looking to create a Mailchimp signup form for your WordPress website, you can create a Mailchimp form in just seconds with our fully automated Mailchimp form template. With just a click of a button, convert your existing Mailchimp audience fields into a fully functioning email signup form! You can find out more about it in our article Connect Mailchimp to your WordPress Forms in Less than Five Minutes!
In our example, we put together a short signup form with a name, email, and submit field. It’s best to keep things simple; people are more opt to sign up if it’s quick and easy.
You can learn more tips about using newsletter sign-up in the following articles: How to Use A Newsletter Sign Up to Generate More Sales or Proven Ways to Get More Newsletter Signups.
Step 3: Connect your email marketing software with WordPress using our newsletter plugin
If you have your active email marketing account and you installed our Ninja Forms free core plugin along with the newsletter plugin, navigate to your form builder and click on the Emails and Actions tab. Select the newsletter plugin from the Installed window.
Once you add a new Mailchimp action, you’ll want to select the list you want to send contacts to. After you select the list, the List Field Mapping section will appear with available fields.
Here you map the fields in the forms to your Mailchimp account. As we created a simple form with email and name fields, we will only map these two fields using the Merge Tag option.
Your signup form and your newsletter service can now communicate! Anyone who submits your newsletter will have their information (name and email) sent to the service you selected. The only thing left to do is to add your newsletter sign-up to a specific place on your page.
Step 4: Add your WordPress newsletter signup form to a page
Now that you have finished building your email subscription form and linked it to your email marketing software, the final step is to add the WordPress form to your website. You can do this with either WordPress form shortcode, block or you can append Ninja Forms.
Shortcode Method
To add the form via shortcode, navigate to Ninja Forms > Dashboard. The dashboard is where you will find a list of all your forms. Locate the form, and copy the shortcode ( command + c / ctrl + c).
To apply the shortcode, open up the page or post you wish to add the form to and paste the shortcode into the text editor. You can add the shortcode to a shortcode block, but it’s not necessary our shortcode will work in the paragraph block just fine.
The form won’t be visible using the shortcode, so you need to update your page/post and preview to view the WordPress form.
Block Method
Within the page or post, click on the Block Inserter icon and search for Ninja Forms. Click on the Ninja Form icon and then choose your newsletter form from the Select Form dropdown. If you do it right, you will see a form preview. Update the page/post, and that’s it! You are ready to start collecting email addresses for your list.
Append a Ninja Form Method
If you want to include your newsletter signup at the bottom of your page or post, you can do that with our Append a Ninja Form meta-box. Select the form from the Append a Ninja Form dropdown and update your page or post. Since the form is being appended to the bottom of the page/post, a preview will not be visible until you view the page/post on the front end.
3. Sign up contacts to different newsletter lists
Need to signup new subscribers to different newsletter lists based on their selection on your form? What you’ll want is the Conditional Logic add-on! It will only take a few simple clicks, and your new signups and leads will be automatically categorized to the list or audience of your choice.
For every list you have in your email marketing software, you create an action and apply conditional logic telling it when to fire.
As an example, below we have two Mailchimp actions. We named it Mailchimp Product Updates and Mailchimp Promotions. These actions match up to two different email lists in Mailchimp account. If you install the Conditional Logic add-on, you’ll see the conditional logic section, where you set up the conditional triggers.
Besides subscribing contacts to different lists, Conditional Logic lets you send notification emails to only specific people, redirect to different pages, display different success messages, or show and hide form fields based on the user’s selection on their form. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to unleash the power of Conditional Logic on your forms!
4. Customize your newsletter sign-up with our styling plugin
The newsletters are an effective tool to acquire leads. But without a great design and layout of your sign-up forms, the chances to attract potential subscribers are low. You need a punchy design, that is a key driver. If your newsletter sign-up does not get seen, you can’t count on flowing contacts to your email list.
So, if you would like to style your newsletter sign-up form further and easily tweak the appearance of your signup without HTML or CSS, get your hands on our styling plugin!
The Layout & Styles add-on lets you adjust your form’s look and feel and improve the look of your form without the use of code or the help of a developer. You can change the font family, font size, and color, customize your CTA button, change the layout of your forms, create rows and columns, and more.
Want to learn more about how to use our styling plugin? Check our articles on How To Style Your WordPress Forms (Easy Examples), How to Customize WordPress Forms (Font Styling), or How to Make a Gradient Submit Button for your WordPress Form.
You’ve just learned how to create an email subscription form in WordPress!
Email is still the best channel to reach people ahead of other channels and now that you know how to set up a newsletter on your WordPress site, you can jumpstart your email marketing!
Your visitors will now be able to learn more about the topics that interest them and stay up to date with the latest content or products you offer. But having a regular newsletter does not only offer a benefit to your readers. Frequent email communication with your website’s visitors helps you build trust in your brand and turn them into potential customers.
Whatever it is you want to do, you have the power to do it all easily with Ninja Forms and our integrations. We offer multiple newsletter plugins including Mailchimp, Constant Contact, CleverReach, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, AWeber, MailPoet, Emma, and EmailOctopus.
Can’t find integration for your favorite email marketing software? Using our Zapier add-on and Zapier service, you can connect to Sendinblue and more than 4,000 services in a matter of minutes!
About Ninja Forms WordPress Form Builder
Did you know the Ninja Forms core plugin is free? Not just that. Even the free version comes packed with awesome free features such as calculations, unlimited submissions, submission management, spam protection, and much more. Check our features that come included in our Ninja Forms core plugin and enjoy them completely for free!
If free features are not enough for you, we offer over 40 integrations with your favorite software. Unlike our competitors, all our add-ons can be purchased individually for 1, 5, or 20 sites. The more add-ons you need, the better you are with our membership plans that give you additional discounts on even more add-ons!
Want to learn more about Ninja Forms? Check our frequently asked questions to get your answers right away!
