Hello friends,

Email marketing is an extremely important channel to attract visitors and customers to your website. There are many solutions that will allow you to gain subscribers for your email lists. However one tool seems to stand out from the crowd as it has proven its functionality to a great amount of WordPress users.

This plugin is called MailChimp for WordPress and in this post I will make a review on its free version.

What is MailChimp?

If you are a beginner you may have never heard of MailChimp and that is OK. However all digital marketing veterans are quite familiar with what it does. MailChimp is an online solution that will allow you to achieve several actions.

First of all it will allow you to attract email subscribers. You will be able to organize them in lists and you will even be able to add an already created lists so that they can be used with MailChimp.

Second – you will be able to create stylish email newsletters. This is not only easy, but also extremely fun! All you have to do is drag&drop the components, adjust their settings a little and then save the newsletter.

Third – you will be able to send your newsletters to your email subscribers with just one click. But that’s not all, friends! You will also get statistics what has happened with the emails that you have sent.

MailChimp comes in several pricing plans, but there is also a free plan that is recommended for smaller audiences (below 2000 subscribers).

What is MailChimp for WordPress?

The name just says it all – this is the plugin that connects your WordPress website with your MailChimp account so that you can subscribe your visitors into your email marketing lists with ease and confidence.

With this plugin you can add various sign-up methods and gain more and more subscribers. MailChimp for WordPress allows you to add great looking opt-in forms to your website. What is more important is that you will be able to use this plugin with many other form solutions for WordPress. The integration with them is seamless. Currently MailChimp for WordPress supports:

• Contact Form 7 – the famous free solution for great looking contact forms;
• WooCommerce – the mighty plugin that transforms any WordPress website to a powerful e-commerce platform;
• Ninja Forms – another awesome form solution for WordPress;
• Easy Digital Downloads – the digital selling solution for WordPress;
• Events Manager;
• BuddyPress – the community plugin for WordPress;
• The default WordPress Comment and Registration forms;

Big list, right? These are the most commonly used plugins and tools (of this type) for WordPress and that is why this plugin supports them.

MailChimp for WordPress also supports various add-ons that will increase its power. For example you may add the premium version that will add multiple forms with AJAX, ecomerce360 integration support, email notifications, styling options for your forms, improved and detailed reports and statistics regarding your newsletter campaigns and many other features.

Another add-on for MailChimp for WordPress is the MailChimp top bar that adds an opt-in form in the top bar of your WordPress website. If you want to see the activity on your lists then you should install the MailChimp activity add-on. There is also an user sync solution, a captcha solution, box pop-up add-on and the third party tool WPBruiser which is a powerful anti-spam protection system.

MailChimp for WordPress comes with detailed documentation. The knowledge base of the plugin is updated daily so that you can find the answer to any question.

How to use MailChimp for WordPress?

First of all you need to install and activate the plugin. You can get it from the WordPress installer or download it from its WordPress.org page. Then you need to setup the checkbox settings for the plugin by selecting where to place it – i.e. whether or not to integrate it with the described above forms solutions. Then you have to define the label text for this checkbox. You should think of something catchy so that users will be willing to click on it. Then you have to choose whether or not you want it to be checked by default. This might be great for attracting new subscribers but it is also risky as some of the visitors might not detect the checkbox and might feel misleaded. I’d personally leave it unchecked but it’s up to you.

Also you can choose to load some default CSS or not.

You need to add your MailChimp API key as well in order to make the connection between your plugin and this service.

You can also add additional fields using the plugin’s form builder:

Then all you have to do is enjoy the increase of subscribers for your newsletter lists.

You can find out more about this plugin by watching the following video:

And that’s it friends. Would you give this plugin a try? Share your opinion on the matter in our comment form below. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this review in social media.

Thank you and see you soon!

*The images are embedded from the WordPress.org page of the plugin