When it comes to email marketing providers, MailChimp stands out as one of the best and easiest tools. It integrates well with WordPress to create beautiful, branded emails that improve your reputation.
This guide shows you why you should use MailChimp to send new blog posts to users, how to integrate this email marketing platform into your WordPress site, and includes a bonus tip on sending new articles to members-only emails.
Getting started with MailChimp
There are 2 main steps to integrate MailChimp into WordPress. First, register a MailChimp account. Then, create a signup form on your site so that users can sign up and join your email list. After that, add this signup form to your WordPress blog.
Step 1 – Create a MailChimp account
You need a MailChimp account to integrate this email marketing tool into your WordPress site. Here’s how to create an account:
Visit the MailChimp website and click on the Sign Up Free button.
Fill out the form with your email address, username, and password, then click “Get Started”. Then, go to your inbox and activate your MailChimp account.
Step 2 – Create an audience
After you log in, you’ll be redirected to a dashboard. To add your email list, you need to do the following:
Go to Audience in the navigation menu at the top of the dashboard.
Click Import your contacts to import your subscriber data into MailChimp. The imported CSV file should contain 1 column for the subscribers’ email addresses, 1 column for their first name, and 1 column for their last name. You can also create another column for additional information.
If you want to add new contacts manually, select “Add contact”.
Once you’ve set up a free MailChimp account, it’s time to build your email list by adding a signup form to your website. This is where visitors can sign up, become your member, and receive new articles regularly.
Adding a MailChimp signup form to your WordPress blog
To get new website visitors and subscribers, you first need to create an attractive and eye-catching sign-up form.
A cluttered form with lots of fields is unlikely to encourage users to leave their contact information. It’s recommended to only ask for email addresses and probably first names.
You can add a MailChimp sign-up form to your WordPress blog without a plugin. However, this method takes a little longer and requires the URL of your RSS feed. We recommend that you install the MailChimp for WP plugin instead.
Step 1 – Connect your MailChimp account with the MailChimp for WP plugin
With a rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars and over 1 million active users, MailChimp for WP is the best opt-in form builder for your WordPress website.
This guide shows you how to install and use the plugin:
In your WordPress dashboard, go to Add New under Plugins.
Enter “mailchimp for WP” in the keyword field.
Install and activate the plugin.
Get your API key by going back to your MailChimp account → Tools → API key. Create a new API key if you don’t have one yet.
Copy your API key and paste it on the settings page for the MailChimp for WP plugin and save your changes
Step 2 – Create a subscription form
You can now create a subscription form and add it to your WordPress site:
Go to MC4WP → Forms in your WordPress dashboard and enter the title of the form.
Add fields to the form and save your changes.
Set additional settings such as the automatic messages and the forwarding URL in the Messages and Settings tabs.
Choose the design and format of the form by selecting Form style.
Step 3 – Add the subscription form to your blog
You can add the signup form to your WordPress website in various ways, from entering a shortcode to using the MailChimp widget:
Copy the shortcode from the Form section of your MailChimp for WordPress plugin (MC4WP).
Go to the desired post or page and paste it in the desired location For the second method, you need to:
Click Appearance → Widgets and drag and drop the widget into your sidebar or footer
Once you have created a subscription form and displayed it on your WordPress website, you can get users to sign up and receive your new blogs.
Automatically send blog posts to subscribers
With MailChimp’s RSS campaign, you can automatically inform subscribers about newly published articles.
Step 1 – Determine the URL of your RSS feed
WordPress automatically creates an RSS feed containing all your blog posts. It inserts the URL of the new article into the file each time it’s published. MailChimp transfers the content of new articles from the RSS feed to emails and then adds it to your mailing list.
The RSS feed of your website will be https://your-domain.com/feed/.
Step 2 – Create an email campaign
Click on Create campaign in your MailChimp campaign dashboard. On the campaign type screen, select Email and go to the Automated → Share blog updates section.
Enter the name of the campaign and select an audience to send the email to and click Begin.
Enter the URL of the RSS feed and the time for sending the email and click Next. Select the target group you want to send the email to. Fill in the Campaign info page with all the required information and keep clicking Next.
Switch to the Design tab and select a template.
Step 3 – Design your email
MailChimp will only send new articles to your subscribers if you insert the RSS header or RSS elements block into your email. Simply drag and drop this element from the Content tab into your email.
You can add more elements or customize your email on the Design page. Once you’re finished, you should preview and test the emails:
- Open the preview mode – See how your email looks on mobile and desktop screen.
- Send a test email – Send a test email to yourself.
Send password-protected content to your subscribers
You’ve created high-quality content and don’t want all visitors to access it, only your subscribers. Simply protect these posts with a password to prevent unauthorized people from opening them. You can then send passwords or bypass URLs to your subscribers to view these pages and posts.
The Password Protect WordPress Pro plugin and the Mailchimp integration extension prove to be the most powerful tools to support this task.
The way these 2 plugins work is pretty simple. As soon as a subscriber signs up to your email list, a new password is automatically created and stored in your MailChimp user list. You can embed this password in any of your email campaigns and send it to subscribers.
