A step-by-step guide to creating forms in Mailerlite

Now that you created your blog, you need to attract people and get them to visit you. Of course, you need to be active on social media and post regularly on your blog, but the work doesn’t end there. Now, you need to tackle the email marketing aspect and start growing your email list. How does that work? Well, I present you Mailerlite!

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What is Mailerlite?

Mailerlite is an email marketing solution created to give you the tools for, you guessed it, email marketing. Many other companies offer these services, such as MailChimp, ConvertKit, and FloDesk, but I chose Mailerlite for its user-friendly interface that requires next to no knowledge in this.

If you’re interested in joining Mailerlite, you can join here.

Getting subscribers

Getting started with Mailerlite is easy, but I needed some help (huge shout out to the sweet and lovely Rebekah from Inspiring Joyful Living). This is exactly why I put together this step-by-step guide.

First, to start gathering subscribers, you need to have a form somewhere for people to subscribe to your newsletter.

You have 3 options: landing page, embedded form, or pop-up. I won’t address the landing page right now because I haven’t tried it. However, I will talk about the embedded forms and pop-ups, which will definitely help you grow your mailing list and bring traffic to your website in the long run.

Before we get started, install the Mailerlite plugin on WordPress. This is the easiest way to integrate sign-up forms in your blog.

Let’s get to the technical part of Mailerlite!

Creating a group

To start gathering email addresses, Mailerlite needs to know where these subscribers belong. You need to create a group. This part is pretty easy.

When you log in to your Mailerlite account, you will be taken to your dashboard. Click on Subscribers in the top menu.

Then, click on Group.

On the top right part, click on the orange button Create Group.

Enter the group name. For example, I have one group for regular subscribers, that I named A Grammar Nerd, and a section one for people who filled out the form to get access to my resource library, that I named Free blog post template. You can name them how you want, and you can always change this later. Once you’re done, hit Create. Voilà! You have your first group.

Creating a pop-up form

A pop-up is a small window that will be displayed on your blog to invite your readers to subscribe to your newsletter. I’ll be honest, most people will automatically close that pop-up the second it appears, but you might also get subscribers through it and it takes little effort to create one. Why not do it?

To create a pop-up form, click on Forms in the top menu, then on Pop-ups.

Click on Create pop-up.

Name your pop-up. Again, you will be able to change it later, but try to name it to something easy to figure out, like General pop-up. Once you’ve named it, click on Save and continue.

Select the group of subscribers.

Select a template. I chose the Design shop.

You will then be taken to a drag-and-drop editor. You can change and customize EVERYTHING, from the text to the image, including the colors.

In the top bar, you can see the pop-up or the success message. This will show you what your subscriber will see.

I strongly recommend going in the Settings tab, in the right menu, and add a confirmation checkbox.

Once you are done with the fun part of designing your pop-up, click on Next in the top right corner.

You will be taken to the Behavior page. These are the default settings I had, and I strongly recommend them. Once you’re done, click on Save and continue at the bottom of the page.

This page will show up. I don’t know enough about JavaScript to know what to do with that. Click Next.

Make sure to activate the pop-up.

Now, click on the down arrow next to your profile picture at the top right corner. In the drop-down menu, choose Integration.

Click on the button Use next to Developer API.

Copy the API key.

Now, go to your WordPress dashboard. In the left menu, go to the Mailerlite settings.

Paste the API key in there, then hit the Save button. Make sure to enable the pop-ups.

There you go! Your pop-up is live! If you visit your blog, the pop-up should show up. If you can’t see it, try going on your website through another browser.

Creating an embedded form

This is the form that you will add at the end of every single blog post you create so that your readers can find easily how to subscribe to your mailing list if they feel like it. You definitely should add it at the bottom of every blog post so that you don’t miss an opportunity of getting new subscribers.

To create your embedded form, go to your Mailerlite dashboard. Click on Forms.

Click on Embedded forms, then click on Create embedded form at the top right corner.

Name your form.

Select the subscribers group, then click on Save and continue.

Just like for the pop-up form, you will be able to fully customize your form. I like to add a picture for the background, but make sure your text is still clearly visible.

You can also customize the Success message.

Now, head back to your WordPress dashboard. Click on Signup forms under the Mailerlite plugin.

To import your form, click on Add New at the top of the page.

Select Forms created in Mailerlite, then click on Create form.

Select your form in the drop-down menu.

Once you’ve selected the form, it should show up. To integrate it into a blog post, copy the shortcode right under the name of the form.

Go to your post, then scroll to the bottom of it. Add a new paragraph block. Now, go to the Code editor. Scroll down to the bottom of your post, and paste the shortcode between the tags <p> and </p>.

When your blog post is ready, publish it. The form will show up at the bottom of your blog post.

You are now ready to get your readers to subscribe to your newsletter! In the next blog post, I will show you how to create and send a welcome email and a newsletter. Stay tuned!

Do you have any questions? Feel free to reach out to me via email at valerie@agrammarnerd.com or on Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest!