How to Add Email Subscription to WordPress

They say that money is in the list. That is why you need to start building an email list on your website. Since you are using WordPress, you can do it quickly by using a plugin.

There are several free and premium plugins to add email subscriptions to your WordPress site. As the free plugins provide only the basic features, I will use a premium plugin – Bloom from Elegant Themes. It offers a complete solution to set up and manage email subscriptions on your WordPress site.

Without further ado, let’s find out how to add email subscriptions to your WordPress site with Bloom.

Setting up Your Email Account

You have to use an email service provider to store and manage your email list. Bloom supports all the popular email services including MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse, MadMimi, ActiveCampaign, ConstantContact, and so on.

Go to Bloom > Email Accounts and click the “New Account” button to set up your email account.

This will take you to the account set-up page that looks like the following –

In the “New Account Settings” section, choose your email provider. Depending on the provider, you have to provide additional details like the account name, API key, ID, access token, authorization code, etc.

In case you are confused about any of these details, click the tooltip icon right next to the field to get help.

Once you have provided the necessary details, click “Authorize.” This will connect to your email service provider, verify your account, and show account details.

It is possible to add multiple accounts from various email services. You just have to click the “New Account” and repeat the steps described above.

Creating an Optin Form

Now that you have connected your email account, the next step is to create an optin form.

To do that, go to Bloom > Optin Forms. Click the “New Optin” button. This will open the optin types section.

Bloom supports six types of optin forms –

1. Pop-up: This will create a lightbox containing your optin form.
2. Fly-in: This type will slide up your optin from the bottom corner of the page.
3. Below Post: As you can guess, this type will display the optin form at the bottom of the post or page.
4. Inline: This type allows you to add the optin form inside the content.
5. Locked Content: You can use this optin type to lock the content and require the visitors to provide their email address to unlock the content.
6. Widget: This type will put the optin form inside a widget that can be placed in any widgetized location.

Click on your desired optin type, and you will be taken to the setup page.

Provide a name for your optin. In the “Form Integration” field, choose your email service provider, account, and the email list. Then, click “Next: Design Your Optin.” This will take you to the next step where you can customize the form.

Customizing the Optin Form

At this point, you will see a page like the following –

As you can see, there are lots of customization options. First of all, you will find two textareas for providing the optin title and message. You can add images and determine their orientation, animation, etc.

“Optin Styling” enables you to choose the background color, header font, body font, text color, border, and corner styles.

In “Form Setup,” you can manage the name, email fields, and the submit button. “Form Styling” includes various options to choose the form field orientation, form text color, background color, button color, button text color, and so on.

The other options in this section allow you to select the form edge style, customize the form footer text, success message, and provide custom CSS.

Click “Next: Display Settings” to proceed to the next step. This will take you to a page like this –

In this page, you can define where and how you want to display the optin. First of all, in the “Load-in Settings” section, you can select the intro animation, enable various triggers like a specific amount of time delay, after a pre-defined inactivity period, reaching the bottom of the post, after commenting, scrolling, purchasing, on click, etc.

Below, you will find the display options. The checkboxes enable you to display the optin on everything, the home page, blog page, archives, categories, tags, post, page, etc. It is also possible to select which categories should display the optin.

The last three fields allow you to define particular posts or pages where the optin should be displayed. These rules will override the above settings.

Once you have made the necessary changes, click the “Next: Success Action” button to proceed to the final stage.

As you can see, there’s only a single option here – choose the success action type. You have two options – show the success message you configured a while ago, or redirect the visitor to an URL.

Choose your desired success action and click “Save & Exit” to save the changes.

If you have completed the steps described above, you have successfully created an optin to collect email address from the visitors. You also have configured where and how to show the optin.

Statistics and Other Options

Head towards Bloom > Statistics to check out the performance details of your optin forms. The Overview section will display the overall conversion rate, total number of subscribers, and the growth of subscribers per week.

In “My Optins” section, you will find the total number of impressions, conversions, and the conversion rate for each of your optins.

You will find a new sign-up graph at the bottom of the page. The graph can be customized to show the last 30-days or the last 12-months data for your lists.

There is also an “Import/Export” section. This section enables you to import Bloom settings options from other websites or export your settings to other sites.

Final Words

The email list is a lifelong asset that you can monetize in different ways repeatedly. That is why you should seriously consider creating an email list from your website. This tutorial introduced you to the necessary steps of adding and creating email subscription on WordPress.

So, are you going to use Bloom to collect email addresses on your WordPress site from now on? Let me know in the comments below.