Are you looking to build an email list? Want to send email updates to your subscribers when you publish a new blog post? MailChimp is one of the world’s leading email service provider, and it is extremely easy to use. In this guide, we will show you how to use MailChimp and WordPress to get more subscribers.
Why Build an Email List?
More than 70% of users who abandon your website will probably never come back unless they buy something from you, or you successfully get them to subscribe to your email list.
Email is private, personal, and by far the most direct form of communication on the internet. Most people check their inbox more than their social media streams. An email will stay in the inbox unless a user takes action on it. On social media, your message will get buried into user’s timeline.
See our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.
Why Use MailChimp with Your WordPress Site?
Over the years, we have found MailChimp to be one of the most beginner friendly email marketing service. Why? Because it’s very easy to use and has tons of WordPress integrations.
It is also by far the most affordable for beginners because it is free as long as you send less than 12000 emails per month or have less than 2000 subscribers. This means you can get started right away without paying anything.
Now as your subscribers grow (more than 2000), you will be asked to upgrade your account to paid plan.
Aside from just capturing and sending emails, some other cool features of MailChimp allows you to setup RSS to email subscriptions, design beautiful email templates, set up auto-responders, and monitor the performance of your email campaigns with comprehensive analytics reports.
Getting Started with MailChimp
To connect MailChimp to your WordPress site, the first thing you will need is a MailChimp account.
Visit the MailChimp website and click on the ‘Signup Free’ button.
Fill in your email and create a username / password for your account.
Once you are signed in, you will be redirected to your MailChimp dashboard.
Creating Your First Email List
The first thing you need to do in your MailChimp account is setup an email list. On your MailChimp dashboard, click on ‘Create A List’ button.
You will be asked to provide information like the name for your email list, an email address where users can reply to, a reminder for people how they got on your list, etc. Fill the form and click on the Save button.
That’s all, you have successfully created your first email list. Now you need to connect your email list to your WordPress, so your website visitors can subscribe.
Adding MailChimp Email Signup Forms in WordPress
MailChimp comes with a built-in basic subscription form. All you need to do is go to the Lists page in your MailChimp account. Next click on the downward arrow button next to your email list and select sign up forms.
On the next page, you will see some of the form types you can generate. You need to click on the select button next to Embedded Forms.
You will be taken to a settings page where you can choose what fields you want to show in your form, adjust form width and other options. When you are done, simply copy the embed code.
Now you need to visit your WordPress admin dashboard and click on Appearance » Widgets. Add a Text widget to a WordPress sidebar and paste the signup form code inside it.
That’s all. You can now visit your site and see the MailChimp signup form in action.
Adding Beautiful Signup Forms Using OptinMonster
While adding a basic MailChimp signup form in WordPress is quite easy, but getting people to join your email list is not. At WPBeginner, we use OptinMonster to build our email list. You can read all about it in this case study where we increased our email subscribers by 600% using OptinMonster.
OptinMonster (@optinmonster) allows you to add different kind of signup forms such as lightbox popup, floating footer bar, after post forms, sidebar forms, slide-in forms, and more.
You can do A/B testing, page-level targeting, choose from many different templates, and even use exit-intent.
We built OptinMonster because we needed a WordPress lead generation solution that is easy to use and deliver results.
OptinMonster works with all major email marketing providers including MailChimp.
Setting up WordPress RSS Feed Newsletter in MailChimp
Now that you have visitors subscribing to your email list, it is important that you send them regular updates.
You can always login to your MailChimp account and manually send an email to your subscribers, but with MailChimp you can also setup automated campaigns that send your latest blog posts via email. This is called a RSS newsletter. (See our guide on RSS Feeds in WordPress.)
If you have been using FeedBurner to send emails to your RSS subscribers, then you need to read why you should stop using FeedBurner and move to Feedburner alternatives. It also shows how to move your FeedBurner subscribers to MailChimp.
To setup an RSS to Email campaign, first you need to login to your MailChimp account and then click on Campaigns » Create Campaign.
On the next page, MailChimp will show you different type of campaigns you can create. You need to choose RSS-Driven Campaign.
Enter your RSS feed URL and select when you want to send the automated email. You can send daily, weekly, or even monthly emails. You can also choose the time for your email. When you have picked your settings, click on the Next button at the bottom right corner of the screen to continue.
MailChimp will now ask you to select a list. Select your list and click on the next button to continue to the campaign info.
First you need to provide a name for your campaign. After that you will notice that MailChimp has automatically filled in most of the fields for you. These default settings would work for most websites. However feel free to customize it to fit your needs. Click on the Next button to continue.
In the next step, you will need to choose a template for your email. MailChimp comes with many different options for that. Choose the one that best suits you by clicking on the select button next to it.
MailChimp will allow you to fine-tune your email design. You can add your logo, a header image, change the text to your own site’s requirements. Mainly you need to add RSS Header and RSS Items box to your email template.
Click on the next button when you are done. Lastly click on Save and exit at the top right corner of the screen.
That’s all you have successfully created your WordPress RSS Feed Newsletter with MailChimp.
We hope this article helped you learn how to use MailChimp with WordPress. Now that you have started building your email list, you may want to take a look at our guide on how to grow your email list.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m really struggling with this tutorial. The “Adding MailChimp Email Signup Forms in WordPress” section looks like nothing I can find. There is nothing called, “lists page” anywhere.
MailChimp changed lists to audience as well as a few other updates, we will be sure to look into updating this article when we are able.
I was struggling to integrate email subscription list with my blog.
This guide helped me complete from start till end.
Thank you
Is this information updated? I am on mailchimp right now trying to follow this post and I am not seeing the same information. Thank you.
What about, MailChimp forms created in wordpress section of mailchimp, i used that form, but can’t get the email
Thanks! I was finally able to hook this up and design a welcome letter! Your information was very easy to understand, and setting it up with a cinch! I’ve been avoiding this because I thought it would be hard but this was simple
thank you so much for the help!
I don’t see a widget option anywhere. Just Customize, Menus, Header, Background, Theme FAQ, and Editor. Any ideas how I can get this to work?
There’s a MailChimp Sign-Up Form widget. Why do you recommend using a text widget?
My MailChimp Sign Up Form isn’t working; do you recommend the text widget instead?
hello, my rss feed is sending only one post. How can i send all post of a day in one email?
Hello,
I am running a blog on wordpress.com with Rowling theme.
I tried to add newsletter signup using Mailchimp following this guide, but once I put the copied Mailchimp’s standard (also superslim or naked) signup form code to WordPress.com Sidebar text widget – half of the code comes up as text. Moreover, the subscribe button does not work and fields that should be filled up do not show up (only their “titles/description”.
I consulted the previous comments, but none of the solutions seem to be working.
HELP!
I had the same issue at first. Then I found out I pasted the MailChimp’s standard text in the ‘Visual’ box instead of ‘text’ box. It’s a simple fix for me – just click ‘text’ and past the content in ‘text’ instead of visual.
Amazing Article. This is probably my favorite site on the internet, right behind Google. I’m doing so much with WordPress and I admire how much hard work you put into it. Thanks a lot brother
Can I only install plugins if I have a wordpress business plan? I have a personal plan and when I paste the code provided by mailchimp into a text widget on my blog sidebar, it just appears like code text on my sidebar instead of an email subscribe form. I don’t know why it’s happening, please help me.
Hello,
If you are talking about WordPress.com, then yes you’ll need a Business Plan to install plugins. For self-hosted WordPress.org website, you just go a head and install any plugin you need. For details see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.
So I created my first email campaign for blog updates with mailchimp. I sent out a test update and it looks great. However, I am still receiving the old automated blog updates and I dont know how to delete them, so now everytime theres a new blog, people are getting 2 update emails about the same post. How do I delete the old blog identification? I don’t have anything other then mail chimp installed for this and I don’t see any other campaign for blog updates there that I can delete. please help.
Hi Nat,
Please check your MailChimp settings or contact their support.
Hi I dont find the Rss button I have the automated button instead . I would like to know how to work on with that option .
How can I make it send emails to subscribers immediately I publish?
Thanks for the post!!
Quick question..
Is it possible to create a newsletter that dinamically takes my last 3 post? Or I should put them manually everytime?
This is a features the plugin “Newsletter” has native and it’s really useful.
Every helps is really appreciated
Francesco
Exactly what I needed!
Thank you so much! You are the best.
Great article. Need help! Installed mailchimp subscriber form on my blog. I am getting notification the confirmation email is sent for double opt. Yet am not receiving the link and no emails are being added to the mailchimp list. Beyond frustrated! Any help appreciated. Seems to be a issue on many help forums.
I have two different opt-in forms on my site, both connected to mail chimp. I have some subscribers going to mail chimp email list and some on wordpress. Any idea why this is happening?
This was exactly what I needed and walked me through the process so easily! Thank you!
The only reservation I have about switching from FeedBurner is that if someone unsubscribes from the RSS driving posts, but they still want to get the newsletter (or vice versa), then there is no way to accommodate that (that I can tell).
I would like my readers to have control over which content they get but not be completely committed to “all of the above” only.
Many Thanks! I just followed these instructions to create a free MailChimp account, create a Subscribe form for posts on my self hosted WordPress site, and start a “campaign” which will email my latest post to subscribers. This is exactly what I was looking for. Again, thanks, great article!
I followed all the instruction, but I am asked to register a custom email account with an organisation to be paid before I can continue. Where did I missed it?
I followed all of the instructions correctly but when I copy and paste the link into the text widget in the sidebar it comes up as a massive link on my website.
Please help!
in that above writeup I typed:
…Code button to add a “” at the beginning and a “” at end of the pasted link/block, SAVE, then remove the beginning and ending “” tags, SAVE again…
But the “code” tags I typed in the 1st reply got interpreted as actual HTML – you would actually see the code tags without all the spaces – hope that makes sense…
This editor keeps interpreting what I’m trying to type as actual code tags so I’ll just say:
If you follow the first reply – what I did was add a beginning and ending code tag to surround the pasted link – via the Code button, SAVE, then remove them, SAVE again, all was well.
Hi I followed these instructions and this morning I got the email but my latest blog post isn’t in it. It’s just the template but I though it would pull the latest blog posts into the email. Just curious if you have a resource that could help me on this. Mail chimp doesn’t seem to have anything on their website. Thanks!
Hi, and thanks for a great article. I’m currently using Mailpoet but thinking of moving to Mailchimp. I want to use the RSS campaign feature, but I also want to include evergreen articles that I occasionally update, but don’t appear as new in the RSS feed. Is there any way to do this with Mailchimp? Or at least drop them manually into a template? Many thanks in advance
Thank you so much for this! Exactly what I needed!
Hey Dylan,
Glad you found it useful. You should also check out our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials.
After pasting the Mailchimp signup code on WordPress ‘text’ widget, half of the text is showing And the form appears as a text, as in you cannot click anything and the space to enter your email address/name is invisible!..
I have a wordpress.com website with the Textbook theme.
I have this same problem! Do I have to have a premium account for this to work?
Hi,
When you paste the signup code, a part of it dictates the style of the form which might clash with the style of your page, is easy just omit/delete this part:
#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */
Hope it help,
Ella
Do you know of any plugins or methods to send the full post to MailChimp rather than the Excerpt. I have ‘Full Text’ rather than ‘Summary’ selected in Reading Settings, but it is still the excerpt that is going to MailChimp. Any ideas how to get the Full Post instead?
Were you able to find an answer or solution to this? I’m struggling with the same issue.
Yes – it is a setting inside the MailChimp newsletter builder.
I have copied and pasted my form code into the widget side bar etc and its not coming up on my website. help please!
i want my susbcriber to pay to my paypal before they subscribe
can i achieve this with mailchimp?
The default MailChimp forms do not have a payment option. You should check out WPForms it comes with payment options like Stripe and PayPal and also supports MailChimp.
I am trying to get mailchimp and wp on the same page, so to speak. I can setup a form to have people sign up for my updates through mailchimp with no problem. I can get people to sign up for my forum with no problem.
Having people sign up for my site and add them to mailchimp at the same time, big problem. I just cannot seem to get that one down.
I really want to use one form so that my visitors do not have to fill out two forms, one to have access to my forums and one to get on my mailing list.
What am I missing? I have tried setting up the mailchimp for wp plugin with no success, I am using ultimate membership pro and have filled out the mailchimp info there with no success.
So at this point I am pulling my hair out so any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Jim
I have that exact problem as well! Just so need to get this sorted already :/ May we find our answers soon
I am having this issue as well. Have you already checked out the Mailchimp site?
Thanks a lot for this tutorial. I’m a mailchimp noob and this was very helpful.
I’m new to this RSS Feed concept, but upon setting it up I began to wonder if the wordpress site will still be emailing my subscribers when a new post is published. I don’t want my subscribers getting two emails on the same post. Is there a way to disable the wordpress post emails so I can just use Mail Chimp?
Another question I have is about the mail chimp campaign design. After adding the RSS Header and Items, I’m still left with a rather short description and excerpt of the post. Do I have to update the campaign with a photo from the particular blog post each time before it goes out (if I want photos in it)? I use a lot of photos in my blog post, so this RSS campaign will fall flat without the photo content. But what’s the point of this auto-sending feature if I have to go in and add the content again.
Anyways, thank you for the info. I hope to find the answers, especially about the first question.
Marisa,
Did you figure out how to stop WordPress from sending those automatic “new post” emails? I am having the same problem. Now that I have mailchimp, I don’t want my subscribers getting too emails.
Great article and i looooove your site as I set up my new blog. I am planning to sign up for MailChimp. And although i know you recommend OptinMonster, I saw that Mailchimp also has a optin plug-in for WordPress. Do you have any thoughts on it? I’m at the stage where I don’t want to have to pay for anything else and OptimMonster has a monthly fee. I see that as an upgrade opportunity.
I don’t remember many of the differences, but I ended up going with PopUp Ally which is a free wordpress plugin. I found it had more features than mail chimp was offering and, even though it had less than optin monster, it was free. Hope this helps! I think for us new bloggers, who don’t have thousands of hits a day, we shouldn’t worry about the “monster” plugins out there just yet unless we’re ready to pay for it.
Thank you so much! I’m looking for a free pop-up plugin too, so I’ll try the one you suggested first
Good Tutorial. I have one problem though:
I have the double opt-in option enabled but when clicking the opt in link in the email the subscription is not directly confirmed but the user has the prove he is human. How can I disable that?
Many Thanks.
I had this same problem. I don’t think you can change it or disable it (according to mail chimp). This is what I wrote two subscribers who complained about not being able to confirm: After trying the subscription myself on several browsers, laptops, and mobile devices, I found out that the trouble is really when using a mobile device. Were you using a mobile device when you had trouble subscribing? In the screen shot attached it shows you that I cannot edit the “robot” test, so i am stuck with it. But the other image I attached is to help explain a few ways you might be able to overcome the issue. When you are asked to select images to prove you’re not a robot, the images can be blurry, they can also reappear once you’ve already clicked them, and you have to continue to click the photos even if new ones appear. Then, once you’ve clicked all of the photos that reappear (as you can see explained at the top and bottom of my photo), you click “verify”. But if you click “verify” before letting the photos run their course, then you will have to try again. If you want to skip the photographs all together, then you can click the little headphone icon that is to the left of “Verify”, and you will be taken to a screen where you can listen to people speak a sequence of numbers that you have to type out and submit. It might be easier!
Great tutorial, as always!
I am the process of starting to use Mailchimp but was a little concerned that currently, my new blog posts are automatically sent out by Jetpack. Do I need to disable this to ensure there is no duplication?
This is a great tutorial, but I have a question it doesn’t answer. I am in the process of creating my account. MailChimp warns me against using a gmail account, and I understand why. However, I can’t figure out how to set up an email account associated with my wordpress site. Can anyone help?
Hi. I’m using Mailchimp to write a newsletter and I looked up how to embed a link to a website withtin text. But when I click on the text it doesn’t take me to the website in my code. Do you know what could be the problem?
Hi!
I used this article successfully to set up my RSS email campaign, but then it just stopped working. The feed URL appeared to be bad. I validated it using an RSS validator and it works, but Mail Chimp is still saying its not valid. Any ideas on why that might be? I checked for typos and syntax and just not finding the source of the issue.
We are not sure what could be causing this issue. Try disabling all your plugins and switching to a default theme. After that try to add your RSS in MailChimp. If the issue is revolved then this mean that a plugin or theme on your website is causing the issue. Alternately, you can also rechout to MailChimp support and see what they have to say.
Thanks for the tutorial
very helpful especially for me as a beginner blogger
regards
Hi Saeful, glad you found it helpful. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
I am following the instructions for setting up the embedded form but I’m not getting any kind of link to paste…I’ve tried several times using the set up as shown in the tutorial. What do I need to do to see this code to use on my WP site?
Is there way to send an RSS email from MailChimp that shows a partial post and the featured image?
Thanks!
Pat M
Hey, I have the same problem as Kate Armstrong and the suggested solutions did not work. I tried using a different form (slim/ naked) and also to disable Javaskript, still it only shows plain text or code, no subscribe button. Do you have any idea what the problem might be and how to solve it?
Thanks!
Sir i configure it as per your instructions , but post is not showing in the mail box , there are only facebook , twitter i cons are shown but Post is not , plz help what is the problem
This post was so helpful! I’d been sending out blank emails because I wasn’t sure how the actual RSS heading and text was supposed to go into my campaign (total newbie), and this step-by-step was just what I needed.
Hi! Thank you for such a helpful post! I have the mailchimp add-on and have made one form with it but now when i click through the tab (gravity forms: Mailchimp) it gives me the following error message:
You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.
I am logged on as administrator of the wordpress page. Is this something that is typical?
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us!
Emily
How to set up daily and weekly option to subscribers?
Hello,
Great post!! Thank you!!
I have a question before set it up. Will the email sent all the post are in the RSS feed or it will know which ones were sent before and it won’t send them?
I have the doubt about if mailchimp will know which post were sent already and it doesn’t have to add them in the mail.
Hope you can reply me.
Thank uou very much in advance,
Zaida
It will send the latest post.
I am just missing the text fields showing on the blog being able to enter the words in them. Every other step has worked. This for wordpress.com, running on the intergalactic theme. Anything that may need to be edited in the code? Thank you so much!
I have two different websites that I own and manage, and am thinking about creating two more.
Do I need a Mailchimp account for each one? Or will one account do? The two that I own a very niche content oriented, and don’t drive a lot of traffic, but I want to implement a consistent email campaign to change that, by not letting visitors leave the site without at least subscribing, and then keeping in touch with them on a weekly, or monthly basis.
So…Do I just need just one master account, and then separate my target recipients by website addresses? Or does each website need its own mailchimp account?
You can create multiple email lists under one MailChimp account.
Help! I am a total newbie trying to set up an e-mail responder via mailchimp with an RSS feed. I can follow your instructions until I get through the RSS info above. Then the instructions say to click NEXT in the bottom corner. There is no NEXT in any bottom corner. I have a “Save and Exit” drop down box at the right top of the screen, but the dropdown box takes me somewhere totally different than your tutorial. Can you please update your tutorial so I can follow it? Yours is the best tutorial I’ve found until this frustration & I’ve spent hours already trying to get past this step. Why is it what I see never matches the screen shots in tutorials?