Blog Setup – Part 5 – Autoresponder

Video Transcript

In this class, we’re going to connect an auto responder service to our WordPress site so that we can collect subscribers, contact information, you know, like their name and email address, and then add that information to a list so that we can then reconnect with the site visitors by sending them newsletters, updates, or just information on important offers.

Now the connection process will vary depending upon the service that you’re trying to connect. Some, like Aweber for example, might require you to provide permissions between your site and Aweber. Others like MailChimp might only require an API or secret key for the connection. Usually these types of connections are done with the help of a plugin, which I’m going to demonstrate for you here in a minute.

Before we do that, let’s assume that your service has no WordPress plugin to make this connection easy for us.

Then you can simply go to your autoresponder service and create your form like you normally would. Then just grab the html code of that form and paste it on your site wherever you want that form to display to your site visitors. So that’s where we’re going to do first. Then move on to the plugin method. So I’m using MailChimp for this demonstration. I’ve already logged into the Admin area here. So the first thing we want to do is create a form or at least ways get the html code to a form we’ve already created. So I’m going to start from scratch here and again, you are a service may have different steps. The main goal here is to grab the html code. So, um, one of the signup form, select the list, click on begin. And if I’m moving too fast now, I’m sorry about that.
Just pause or replay because again, the goal here is not a tutorial on MailChimp but simply how to add html code from your services form to your site. Some will leave all this stuff in the default settings, clicking the copy and paste onto your site box and then on my windows PC and we’re going to hold down the control key and select the letter a that’s going to select everything. I think it’s command a for a Mac. I’m not sure. I’m not a Mac user. And then control c to copy that info to my clipboard. Now we’re going to come on to our site. Select a post or page. Either way doesn’t matter. Processes the same for either one. Let’s go to an existing post. Try this one right here, Alice. Put the form, let’s say right, uh, right above this first bit of content, but below the title.
Let’s go ahead and click on this block. Add html. If I don’t see it, then just do a search for it here, but right here it is and paste that code in here that I copied to my clipboard. And if you know anything about CSS or html, you can do a little customizing here if you want, but I’m just gonna leave it as is. Click on update. And Vu, here’s our form. Simple Simon. And actually this might even be a better way to do things if you do not want to add a plugin. So I’ll just leave that up to you. But speaking of plugins, let’s go ahead and go to our add new plugins section or in our admin area and up here in the search plugins box. In our example we want to mail chimp plugin, so type it in MailChimp and there’s a lot to choose from here, but this is the one that we want MailChimp for WordPress.

Click on install now and activate and we’ve got an additional link over here in our admin sidebar so whenever you hover over that we want to go to MailChimp and right. Here’s where we need to add our API key and if you’re not familiar with where to get it for whatever service you’re using, most of the time there’ll be a link close by that will direct you to that location on that service and just do a little bit of looking around on that page because there’s probably going to be some links for tutorials or additional information on how to set things up.

I was going to go on back to MailChimp and to get my API key, I have to come on a period of my account stuff and then go to account. Then under extras, API keys and they don’t make it easy for you to find it and then scroll down a bit and I’ve already got one created.

Just going to click in here, it selects everything. Then again I’m going to hold the control key down on my PC and hit the letter c for copy so I’ve got that in my clipboard while I’m back here to our site and paste that API key right in there and click on save changes who are now connected. Yay. So now then we would go to form and there’s a lot more stuff you can do with this particular connection or we’re just going to keep it simple and this is the preview window here and again, if you know something about CSS or html or you can do some adjustments here as well.

I’m just going to leave things as is, but any changes you do, make sure that you come on down here and click on save changes. And here’s our short code, both here at the bottom of the form and up here at the top. Just going to click in there, which automatically selects everything. Copy of that to my clipboard. Again, control C or command C on a Mac. And then let’s go to our demonstration posts.

At least paste this above the existing form just to keep things simple. Now this is a short code, so we want to look for a short code block. There it is, and paste that right in there. Update view-post and there we have this particular form right above this particular form and let’s go ahead and give it a test. Thank you. Your signup request was successful. Please check your inbox for the confirmation link. Fantastic. Everything’s working perfectly, and that’s going to bring us to the end of this class on a couple of ways to connect your WordPress site to an email autoresponder service. Thanks for checking it out and you have a great day.