What will we be learning?

We will be learning how to add Mailchimp to WordPress, using the Mailchimp For WordPress Lite Plugin. This Plugin will allow us to create a email newsletter widget, as well as a subscribe by comments option in the comments section.

Why is having a newsletter important? How can I benefit from Mailchimp for WordPress Lite Plugin?

Building an email newsletter is still the #1 way to increase viewership and to grow your online website. Whether you run a WordPress blog, website, or portfolio, building a solid email newsletter is sure to increase website traffic. Mailchimp makes it easy to manage your email newsletter and the Mailchimp for WordPress Lite Plugin allows us to easily integrate WordPress with Mailchimp, without the use of any code.

[box]Video Title: How to integrate mailchimp with WordPress
Video URL: http://youtu.be/ltVSOL_4W4M
Accompanying Course: Beginner’s Guide to WordPress – Web Design Course[/box]

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Transcript: 

So if you are using our course, this is just going to be another one of those videos where I talk about specific plugin. And these are going to be one of the 8 plugins that I installed previously that I said were the top 8 plugins that every new wordpress website should install.

And we talked about them very briefly. But I ran out of time and I wanted to talk about some of the more time intensive ones in more detail. And so we already talked previously about ithemes security, jetpack and I believe ninja forms.

So in this one, we are going to be talking about mailchimp for wordpress lite. And so in our course, we are also going to double this ass, how do you. Since we are already talking about it, how do you add a email newsletter service?

And so right after that, I think you can already that the email newsletter service we are going to be using is mailchimp. And the reason why we are going to be utilising this is simply because, it’s free for the first 2000 emails. I think that functionally or functionality wise, it’s great already. When you compare to things like aweber, pretty much the same.

The only thing is aweber charges straight after that versus mailchimp, it allows you to have 2000 emails for free. And I think that for a lot of websites, that will be enough. Eventually once you get past that threshold, well then you kind of have to think of other options of what will be the best for you, which one will be the most economical.

Because after you pass 2000, it does jump up quite high. It goes to all the way to, I think 50-60$. So for use, we sue mailchimp and what we are going to do is, we are going to. All I did is created a new list. And we are just going to list, add new.

Fill, all you have to fill is the email and kind of the message that it says. So now we have this test wpforalltv mailchimp. And so, now that we have signed up. So we sign up for mailchimp and we just made one list. That’s all we did. Very simple. I don’t want to, you know kind of waste time explaining what it is.

All we are going to do is get your API key here. So it’s going to give us some type of API key and we are just going to paste it back into that place. And I already went ahead and did that. But I just want to show you very quickly, where is this API key and you know, what is it all about.

So your API keys. You have a bunch of them. You can disable them. You can create a new key and things like that. You just copy and paste it back into this mailchimp API key. And so once you have saved the change, it should refresh and show the list that you have.

And you should only have one. And probably it’s just going to say zero subscribers. It’s going to say, you know, email, first name and last name, done. That’s it. And so what we are going to do now is, we are going to go into our check boxes.

We are going to go into checkboxes. And so that already all we need to do. That’s all we need to do for the settings, you know. It’s already done for us. And so when we go into the mailchimp settings for checkboxes, this is what I mentioned before, is that we provide this added functionality.

And this is on the website, this sample website that we have been making a period of time. It has this option, sign me up for the newsletter. Since I am already logged in, it doesn’t show that you have the name, email, forms or fields that you need to fill out because I am already logged in.

So after log out, you will be able to see that. And so the benefit of this in my opinion is that, you know, when an individual signs up or he’s going to comment. They already have filled out the email, might as well ask them, do you want to sign up for the newsletter.

And might just as well ask them and have that checkbox right there for them. And it’s very quick for them. So that’s one thing that I really like about this specific plugin. So that’s why I have had you guys install. Because there are many different mailchimp or email newsletters that I would say, not too many mailchimp, but yeah, email newsletters.

Double opt in, just all that is it, when they do click that they, yes they want up sign up for your newsletter, well now it will ask them, you know. It will send them an email and say, do you really want to sign up and just confirm your email address.

And so it is recommended to do that. And it will just cut back on the individuals who don’t really care about signing up for your newsletter. So you can add the checkbox to wherever you want, either in the comment form or registration form.

I just put it in the comment form for now. You can out in the registration as well. And you just sign them up for the newsletter and you can pre check or don’t pre check it and you just save the changes.

And let’s check in the forms. I can’t tell offhand if there is actually some extra settings that we need to change here. Ok yeah, so we have to list that the form subscribes to, is your test. The form for you guys, you just have one.

But I was testing out with another list that I had. And you are just going to click email address. Because that’s all we really need. We don’t need anything more than that. We just need the email address for the field to be set. That’s all we really need. We just need the, the email. That’s the only thing that’s important for us.

And so the next thing that we are going to do is, we are going to go into our widgets, right. Because ultimately we want. So when we go onto our website, we will see that the checkboxes would take care of this form thing right there.

But ultimately we want probably we are going to be wanting our newsletter to show up as a widget somewhere, right. Probably right in our sidebar. So we are just going to go into widgets and we will see that there is this mailchimp sign up form.

We are just going to drag it and drop it in here. And there is really no options. You are just going to save it. And so once you save it, you should see that, when you refresh the website, you should see that the newsletter will show up.

And you have a couple of different options. Well you have one option actually. You just say what the title is, what do you want them to say? Do you want them to say, you know, you get a special deal, you get an eBook or something like that. You can say it right there.

Just stay, stay updated. Something like that. So as you can see, it’s quite useful, it’s quite useful. It automatically updates everything for you which I do really like. I really like that option that it has. And so they do have a pro version. I am not entirely sure offhand what was in that pro version.

But probably just additional functionalities. But what I did want to show you is this right here. So this is short code. So it’s a short code. So you can imagine that most of these sign up forms or widgets only are found on widgets. Its right, they are only found in this widget section.

But let’s say we wanted to put it right in here. And you could imagine that why would you ever want to put a sign up form right in the middle of a post. Well you can think of one place that would be very useful, is your about page, right.

If you have an about page and you are describing yourself and you, eventually at the end of it, you want to say, if you want to stay updated with me, then you can sign up for the email list-serve, right. They can go ahead and do that, right. And so, yeah you could have it in the side bar as well. But having it as well, you know somewhere on the page would also be useful.

Alright, so all we are going to do is, once this loads, we are just going to add this short code right here. So I copied it and we are just going to paste it. Remember though, don’t paste it in text because sometimes. Sometime, not always, it doesn’t show up the exact same way.

Because these brackets are kind of unique. So we are just going to update it and we are going to see what our website looks like after it’s loaded, right. So we should see, sign up for the newsletter option for them to kind of. Exactly what is, sign up for the newsletter.

But it will be on the actual post. And if it’s in the widget yeah that’s fine. But it would actually be within the post. So you can put whatever text you want above it, stay up to date with me. And then they can just sign up right there.

And that’s one thing that makes this plugin very unique is that, most of these plugins, you have to, you know put the actual embed code. It doesn’t generally look that nice. It doesn’t kind of match everything. Or you have to add another plugin to put widgets on pages and things like that.

So in my opinion that’s what makes this a very unique one. It makes it very beneficial.