Email marketing is a big part of many businesses. So if you’re wondering how you provide a place for people to sign up for your newsletter (for example) on WordPress.COM, you’ve come to the right guide!
There are two types of signup link I’ll show you. You can see them on the right hand side of these images.
1. Text link to your signup form:
2. Image link/button to your signup form
In this guide you’ll learn:
- where find your sign up form in Mailchimp
- how to add a text widget to a WordPress.com sidebar
- how to add a text link to your email signup form
- how to add an image link to your email signup form
What you’ll need:
- Mailchimp account with a list already created (it can be empty at this stage)
- your WordPress.com website with sidebar widgets
- image for signup button (optional)
Instructions:
First of all, the Mailchimp part:
Once you’ve got your mailing list all set up in Mailchimp, go to ‘Signup forms’
Select ‘General forms’
‘Signup form’ is the default form selected from the drop down. Leave it.
Scroll down and use the build it and design it tools to customise your signup form.
Once you’re done, you’ll need to copy the ‘Signup form URL’. You might like to paste it into a black document or similar for future reference.
Log in to your WordPress.com site (if you haven’t already)
Scroll down to the ‘Appearance’ tab in the sidebar. Either hover over or click and select ‘Widgets’
On the left there is a long list of ‘Available Widgets’. On the right are the places we can put our widgets.
In this theme, the ‘Main Sidebar’ is on the right of my website, which is where I want to put my signup form. Your theme may have a slightly different sidebar set up. Your main sidebar might be on the left, or your theme may not have one altogether. In which case, you won’t be able to follow this guide 100%. However, at the end, I’ll explain how briefly how you can add a signup form to other pages and posts on your site.
Scroll down through the ‘Available Widgets’ until you get to ‘Text’.
Click and drag the ‘Text Widget’ into the Sidebar
Click the down arrow to edit the Text Widget
Edit the Text Widget
Give it a title.
In the text field write <a href=”
Then paste in your Signup form URL (see above)
then write “ target=”_blank”>
Then write what you’d like the text link to be, for example: Sign up now
Then write </a>.
The entire piece of code should look like this:
<a href=”http://eepurl.com/jsfDonb” target=”_blank”>Sign up now</a>
(NOTE: your eepurl.com will have different letters/numbers after it because it is unique to your signup form)
Hit ‘Save’.
Now go to your website and test it by clicking on the link.
There you go! You just added a Mailchimp signup link to your WordPress.COM site!
Adding a fancy signup button
Use these instructions if you’d like to replace the sign up text link with a button like this:
First of all, you’ll need to create an image for your sign up button. You can use something like Canva.com to create a smallish button (300 x 150 px, might be a good starting size for your site).
Upload the image to your WordPress.COM site.
Go to Media > Add New
Upload your image
Once it’s uploaded, scroll down and hit ‘Edit’
Copy File URL.
Go to Appearance > Widgets and click on the ‘Text’ Widget that we were using above.
We’re going to edit the code to add in the image. Instead of the plain text where we had “Sign up for the newsletter!”, we’re going to add a link to the image like this:
<img src=”https://you.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/newsletter-signup.png ” alt=”Newsletter Sign Up”>
You will need to replace https://you.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/newsletter-signup.png with the File URL copied from the step above.
When you’re done, it should look something like this:
<a href=”http://eepurl.com/bdRoJv “>
<img src=”https://you.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/newsletter-signup.png ” alt=”Newsletter Sign Up “>
</a>
Adding signup form link to other places
You can add the signup form link (either text or image based) to other places on your site such as in pages or posts.
For text:
Simply use the hyperlink button to link to your Mailchimp list URL from earlier.
For an image based button:
Insert the image you’d like to use using the “Add Media” button.
Click on the image to bring up the image menu. Click the edit button (pen).
Under “display settings” select “link to custom URL”.
Copy in your Mailchimp list URL from earlier.
When you’re done editing and are ready, you can hit ‘Publish’
Now you’re done! Enjoy collecting emails!
Ribbit,
Lilac Frog