This is a guest post from Steph Wells at Formidable Forms.
If you own a website, you need an email list. Whether you have a small business website or you’re running a blog, an email list will allow you to generate new leads, increase engagement, and even boost sales.
In fact, according to statistics, when it comes to purchases made as a result of receiving a marketing message, email has the highest conversion rate (66%), when compared to social, direct mail, and more.
But how do you get people to sign up for your email list?
In this post, we’ll share with you how you can capture emails through your very own website using Formidable Forms and Campaign Monitor.
How to grow your email list with Formidable Forms
One of the easiest ways to grow your email list is by adding a signup form to your website. A signup form placed in a high-traffic area of your website will let all of your website visitors know that you have an email list they can join.
Users can sign up for your email list by simply providing their name, email address, and other necessary information.
With Formidable Forms, creating a signup form for your email list is easy with the drag-and-drop builder; there’s no need to have any previous knowledge, and you don’t have to touch a line of code.
Just drag the form field you want over to the form, rearrange them, and create custom labels in order to build a form that fits your exact needs.
You can create signup forms, contact forms, payment forms, calculators, and more.
Aside from being able to create beautiful forms in an instant, Formidable Forms also allows you to easily manage your form entries by performing tasks such as:
- Send unlimited email notifications
- Access all entries from the dashboard
- Approve or reject entries
- Export and import entries
- And much more
You can also track and analyze the data you receive from form entries so that you can see what part of your strategy is working best and what needs to be improved.
Aside from ease of use and features, when choosing a form builder tool, it’s important to choose one that works with your favorite email marketing service. Luckily, Formidable Forms integrates seamlessly with Campaign Monitor.
How to get more email signups
When trying to grow your email list, you can’t expect people to give up their email address for no reason. Instead, you need to show them the benefits of signing up for your email list.
So, to get more signup form entries, consider the following tips:
1. Provide valuable content.
First and foremost, you need to provide users with engaging, helpful content. When you create blog posts that solve the needs of your target audience, you become an expert in your industry.
Your readers will turn to you any time they need advice. In fact, blogs have been rated as the fifth most trusted source for accurate online information.
Once consumers build that trust with you and your company, they’ll be more likely to become email subscribers.
But they can read your blog posts without becoming a subscriber, so you need to offer something extra.
For instance, you could offer email subscribers the ability to get your newest blog posts delivered straight to their inbox or provide a weekly newsletter with the latest updates.
2. Offer a discount.
If you have an ecommerce website, a good way to encourage site visitors to become subscribers is by offering a discount.
Offering a small discount, such as 10% off their first order, will encourage online shoppers to sign up for your email list.
According to Statista, 53.8% of internet users ranging between the ages of 18 to 29 years stated that discounts and coupons were a very important feature in the overall digital purchasing decision.
With this tactic, you can gain a new subscriber and convert them into a customer simultaneously.
See how millennials and Gen Z compare in our new guide.
3. Provide a content upgrade.
People love getting free gifts; many users would happily provide their email address in exchange for something special from you. So consider offering a content upgrade to encourage your website visitors to become subscribers.
A content upgrade is basically a freebie that relates to a particular post, page, or topic of your website. A content upgrade can be an eBook, a PDF guide, templates, checklist, calendar, and so on.
For instance, in the lead generation popup example below, the content upgrade is an eBook that teaches subscribers how to grow their traffic.
Just be sure to create a content upgrade that’s relevant to your niche and one that your subscribers will be interested in.
A good tip is to look at your most popular blog post and create a content upgrade related to it. That way, you know it’ll be something that catches the attention of your audience.
Learn about three lead generation tactics here.
Now that you know some tips to help you grow your email list, let’s get started with how to create a Campaign Monitor signup form in WordPress using Formidable Forms.
Step 1: Install and activate Formidable Forms.
First, install the Formidable Forms WordPress form builder plugin on your WordPress site.
After signing up with Formidable Forms, head to your Account page and download Formidable Forms. Then, go to Plugins >> Add New in your WordPress Admin.
Click Upload Plugin and upload the Formidable Forms zip file that you downloaded and then click Install Now.
Step 2: Install the Campaign Monitor plugin for Formidable Forms.
When Formidable Forms has been installed, activated, and all set up, you can then install the Formidable Campaign Monitor WordPress plugin.
To do this, go to Formidable in your WordPress dashboard and click on Add-Ons. Then, find the Campaign Monitor WordPress plugin and click Install.
Step 3: Set up the Campaign Monitor integration with API key.
Next, you need to set up the Campaign Monitor integration with your API key. Once the Campaign Monitor add-on is installed, go to Formidable Forms >> Global Settings >> Campaign Monitor.
Here, you’ll see a field to add your API Key. To find your API key, go to your Campaign Monitor account. After you log in, click on your profile image in the corner and click on it. A dropdown menu will appear, click on Account Settings >> API keys.
Click on the link Show API key. If you haven’t generated an API key yet, you’ll have to click on the Generate API Key button first.
Copy the API key as well as your Client ID, and head back to Formidable. Paste your API key and Client ID into the relevant fields in order to connect Formidable Forms and your Campaign Monitor account.
Now that Formidable Forms and Campaign Monitor are linked together, it’s time to create a Campaign Monitor signup form.
Step 4: Create a Campaign Monitor signup form.
Click on Create a New Form to start building your signup form. Alternatively, if you’ve already created a form you want to use with Campaign Monitor, you can simply open an existing signup form.
In the form Settings, head to Actions & Notifications. Click on the form action for Campaign Monitor.
Here, you can give the action an Action Name for easy reference—for instance, “Campaign Monitor” (this is only visible on the backend). Next, you’ll also need to select the Campaign Monitor list you want to use.
The fields in your Campaign Monitor signup form will need to relate with those in your Campaign Monitor list.
For instance, the Campaign Monitor Email Address field should be mapped with your Formidable Forms Email field and the Campaign Monitor Name should match with the Formidable Form Name field.
Any custom fields you previously created in Campaign Monitor will also show here.
After you’ve configured the settings properly, save the form.
Step 5: Start collecting email addresses.
Insert the form into a post or a page on your website by copying and pasting the shortcode. Formidable Forms is also optimized for WordPress Gutenberg, so you can also insert the Formidable Forms block to the editor to embed the form.
Finally, it’s time to start collecting email addresses. Each time a user submits the form, a new subscriber will be created in your Campaign Monitor account, including their name and email address.
Everything is done automatically, which makes managing your email list much easier.
Wrap up
With Campaign Monitor and Formidable Forms together, growing your email list, managing contacts, and creating a solid email marketing strategy will be simple, even for complete beginners.
There’s no need to manually add new subscribers to Campaign Monitor; Formidable Forms will do it automatically for you. Plus, you’ll be able to grow your list more quickly by adding a signup form to your website.
When you can automate the process of collecting emails like this by combining Campaign Monitor and Formidable Forms, you can spend more time working on turning leads into customers.
In fact, 80% of marketers use automation software to generate more leads, and 77% of them are able to convert more of those leads. It’s time for you to join them.
Steph Wells is the founder of Formidable Forms, a drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress that empowers freelancers to create form-based solutions.