PART 3: Setting up the MailChimp Subscribe form on your Website

ATTENTION:  GOOGLE IS PUTTING FEEDBURNER INTO “MAINTENANCE MODE” JULY 2021.  THE INFORMATION IN THIS BLOG POST IS OUTDATED NOW.  PLEASE SEE THE UPDATED BLOG POST FOR MOVING FEEDBURNER TO MAILCHIMP.


 

This is Part 3 of a 3 part blog series:  How to Move from Feedburner to Mailchimp: Full Guide

The final part and perhaps the most important is adding the blog signup form to your site.  This is pretty easy but you must consider more than just adding the form.  Think about what the subscription email will look like when asked to confirm.  You can and should brand those emails.  Here is how to complete that whole process in Mailchimp:

STEP 4: Setting up your Subscription Confirmation Emails

 

  1. After signing into your Mailchimp, Click Lists:
    4.1
  2. Then click the Settings wheel next to your list then Forms
    4.2
  3. Next you will land here and make sure you have Signup Form selected for the Forms & Response Emails.  We will start with that one.    Most of the time (for just these blog emails) you don’t need anything more than just the email address so delete the First Name and Last Name fields by clicking them and selecting the minus/delete button.  However if you want to use your subscriber list to send future offers or newsletters to  and want to personalize those you can keep the First Name and Last Name fields.  Just keep in mind that potential subscribers may not want to enter that information in so an email field really will get you the most subscribers quicker.
    4.3
  4. You will get this warning.  Yes we are sure!  Type “DELETE” and then Delete Field button.
    4.3
  5. Now lets brand this form by using your logo as the image instead of the title text.  You can also add a welcome message to your new subscribers here as well.
    4.5
  6. After you have uploaded and inserted your logo, select Signup Thank You Page from the Form dropdown.
    4.6
  7. This is the page subscribers will see after they signup. There are a few options here.  You can take your subscribers to a different page other than this if you want, you can change the message and you can even click “Design It” and change the Color Themes of the page but I usually leave this as is. In fact, web design should speak directly to your audience and this is the way to prove it (learn more from this site).
    4.7
  8. The next form to look at is the Opt-in Confirmation Email that the subscribers will receive to CONFIRM their subscription.  A very important final step for them.  If they do not click the “Yes subscribe me to this list” button they will not receive your blog emails.  Yes this double Opt-in is a bit annoying but it is a way to keep your list clean with people who really do want to read your blog instead of just random spam emails.  You can change this email if you want but make sure you make that Subscribe button noticeable.
    4.8
  9. The next is the Confirmation ‘Thank You” Page.  You can leave this alone but you could also use this to offer a gift or a free download for signing up – a motivation (that you tell them about) for completing the double opt-in process.
    4.9
  10. Finally the last form to look at is the Final “Welcome” Email.  For me enough with the forms and emails.  Luckily this one you can uncheck for your subscribers to receive.  They probably have received enough from you for now.
    4.10
  11. Don’t forget to Save & Exit:
    4.11

 

STEP 5:  Setup the Signup Form on your Website…finally

Mailchimp will generate a code for your signup form for you to paste into the sidebar or anywhere else on your site.  If you have a WordPress website then you can always download a plugin to do this – plenty of them out there but I find taking the code straight from Mailchimp the easiest method – don’t have to mess with/set up any API keys.

  1. Once again select Forms in the settings wheel of your list:
    5.1
  2. This time you are going to select from the top – For Your Website – Signup Form Embed Code:
    5.2
  3. There are 3 forms to choose from, but I usually select the top, the Super Slim Form.  If you want to change the title of your form, which I suggest, click the options tab and change the title to something that makes sense – letting your readers know they can sign up to receive blog posts in their email…I like:  “Sign up to receive new blog posts delivered fresh to your inbox”.  Click Create Embed code – blue button – to save that title and regenerate the code. Then copy the code and paste to your site – usually the sidebar:
    5.3

 

That’s it – You are set!  Thanks for reading this 3 part guide.  Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments below and let me know of your successes.  Love to hear if this works better for you than Feedburner.  It sure has for me 😉

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45 Comments

  1. Jorge Reis on February 17, 2013 at 12:20 am

    GREAT !!!! Very useful. Thanks.
    Only one question:
    How can I edit my RSS-Driven campaign in order emails should send just after the I publish of a new post ?
    Sorry bad english

    • Ann Marie on February 17, 2013 at 3:25 pm

      Good question Jorge. Mailchimp does not have that feature yet but maybe in their next update..I am hoping. They have an autoresponder that updates within the hour so I am hoping that gets added to the RSS schedule as well. I do know that the subscription widget in Jetpack plugin does send posts right away but I don’t think you can move subscribers over from Feedburner. I’ll keep you posted when Mailchimp has added that new schedule.

  2. Mandy on February 19, 2013 at 10:12 pm

    Thank you SO much for this wonderful tutorial! I just moved domains and lost nearly all my subscribers by making the mistake of using Jetpack on the old site. I took those subscribers I could and set everything up on Mail Chimp using this tutorial! I appreciate this so much as it was very easy to read and follow and understand!

    • Ann Marie on February 19, 2013 at 11:13 pm

      Thanks Mandy, you made my day. So happy the guide helped you.

  3. Tanya on February 22, 2013 at 6:13 am

    Hi,
    your three part series have been so helpful as I have been thining of making the move from feedburner, but didn’t know how! And you Step by step guide has been just wonderful! Thankyou!

    I have one problem though – I’m not sure where to put the code in my website. I am on blogger. I have tried it in various places in the HTML and elsewere but not sure what I am doing wrong: please help! I removed the origional feedburner subscribe box – was I supposed to?

    Thank you!

    • Ann Marie on February 22, 2013 at 8:03 am

      Great Tanya. So happy it helped. Its a long guide but I wanted to make it thorough. For Blogger you will want to add a gadget in the sidebar, select HTML/Javascript option and paste your Mailchimp form code there. That’s it. Then you are in business.

      • Tanya on February 23, 2013 at 11:44 pm

        Thankyou! I figured it out!

      • Carl L Scheider on April 26, 2021 at 9:20 pm

        This is old now, but that is what I needed. Getting too old for this stuff. Many thanks for all of the help. And STAY SAFE. ExCTO

  4. Alison on March 6, 2013 at 7:39 pm

    How do I have it so that someone has a choice on a widget to subscribe to my “blog posts only” or subscribe to “both blog posts and official newsletters” or just for “official newsletters” if they are 2 separate lists on mailchimp?

    • Ann Marie on March 6, 2013 at 8:32 pm

      I wish I had an easy answer for you Alison. I too wanted this feature at one point but Mailchimp does not offer an easy solution but the explain why here. They have one form for each list. I suggest having a Newsletter signup in your sidebar or in a bar on top (try Hello Bar) and a Blog post signup at the bottom of each post (try Magic Action Box). What Mailchimp suggests is to segment your list – so one list but organized into different sub groups. I have done this before for clients but takes a little bit of coding work when setting up the forms. You can read more about it here.

  5. Beth at Equalizing Strength on May 28, 2013 at 8:20 pm

    I was really struggling with my new MailChimp account and this information really helped. Thank you!

    • Ann Marie on May 28, 2013 at 9:11 pm

      So glad to hear that, Beth. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment.

  6. Charley on June 6, 2013 at 10:18 am

    Hi Ann Marie,
    Really great articles. I followed them through and am really pleased with mail chimp. Thank you!
    I have noticed that there is some text left from my Feedburner email campaign in the my mailchimp email campaign. Do you know how I can fix this?
    Thank you!

    • Ann Marie on June 6, 2013 at 12:55 pm

      Charley, I signed up for your blog posts but haven’t seen anything come through yet. You are welcome to email me directly at amgill@cascadevalleydesigns.com and give me specifics of what that leftover text looks like.

  7. Look At This on June 6, 2013 at 9:01 pm

    I love the content on your website. Kudos!

  8. Chikako on June 9, 2013 at 5:26 pm

    Hi, When I use this feature, can I make all the forms appear in a different language (the language that the person is using on his/her computer)? Thank you.

    • Ann Marie on June 12, 2013 at 1:16 am

      Chikako, Thanks for stopping by my blog. Unfortunately I don’t think the Feedburner form can be autotranslated. However, Mailchimp does that here . If that is an important feature for you, I would consider moving your subscribers over there – Its free.

      • Chikako on June 12, 2013 at 7:35 am

        Hi Ann Marie, Thank you very much for the tip!

  9. Sevenofone on August 10, 2013 at 2:06 am

    Going to move from feed burner to mail chimp later today. Very very useful set of articles, thank you.

    • Ann Marie on August 10, 2013 at 12:19 pm

      Wonderful. You will be very happy you moved to Mailchimp!

  10. Beth on December 3, 2013 at 6:09 am

    Thanks for the advice Ann Marie – your 3 part guide was extremely useful!

    Any ideas why the ‘subscribe’ button isn’t showing underneath the name and email fields in the widget on my page http://www.enjoythejourney.org.uk/ It works by pressing enter but obviously most people wouldn’t know to do this!

    Thanks again for the help!

  11. Dawn on December 6, 2013 at 7:54 am

    Thank you for this thorough information. If I decide to switch I’ll definitely come back for your info. I do have a question about Bloglovin, which a lot of my readers use to follow me. If I turn off Feedburner would that affect my feed going out for Bloglovin? I still don’t have a good grasp of the difference b/t RSS and email, obviously…. Thanks -Dawn

  12. AShley on December 11, 2013 at 9:20 pm

    Thank you so much for posting this ever so helpful 3 part series! Took me awhile but I got through it! Thanks so much for taking the time…..

  13. jen on June 16, 2014 at 11:48 am

    Hi there, I know this is an older post but it was def. helpful for me. I have a question. Once I’ve moved everything over to mailchimp should I delete my feedburner account? Seems as though some are receiving emails from feedburner still while others are getting it from mailchimp. I’m afraid if i delete the feedburner my subscribers won’t get anything but wondering if once I delete feedburner those people will start getting from mailchimp. Thanks

    • Ann Marie on June 17, 2014 at 8:15 am

      If you have ;your Feedburner AND your Mailchimp turned on then your readers are probably receiving your posts from both! If you moved all your feedburner subscribers over to Mailchimp then there is no need to have Feedburner on anymore. You can deactivate by going to Publicize > Email Subscription and clicking the small little Deactivate in the bottom right. That will keep your Feedburner account open and all your emails just stop the posts from being emailed through Feedburner. After a while you can delete the account entirely if Mailchimp is working fine for you. Thanks for stopping by

  14. ev @ shades of cinnamon on July 13, 2014 at 12:30 pm

    Thanks so much for this 3 part tutorial. Without it I could never have set my Mail chimp up

    • Ann Marie on July 16, 2014 at 7:18 am

      What a nice comment. Thank you! Very glad it helped you.

  15. Francesco on February 10, 2015 at 2:36 am

    Do you happen to know how to prevent or at least moderate new members?

    I have a newsletter reserved to some people I choose and I don’t want to allow new subscribers through an online form.

    I’ve searched a lot the internet but I couldn’t find a way to turn off the subscription form….

    Thanks
    Francesco

    • Ann Marie on July 31, 2015 at 10:05 am

      Ww I guess I missed this message to reply to. My apologies. You dont have to have a subscription form on your site at all. Just remove the form or widget from your site.

  16. Khit Mandeville on April 24, 2015 at 8:59 am

    I stumbled upon your post in Pinterest. Thank you very for making it so easy to follow and understand!

    • Ann Marie on July 31, 2015 at 10:05 am

      Thanks for reading and leaving a comment Khit. Glad it was helpful.

  17. Rosalind on July 22, 2015 at 5:10 am

    Great, very helpful.
    I don’t suppose you have any idea how to make the sidebar SUBSCRIBE BUTTON background darker, it’s come up pale grey with white writing, making it all but invisible 🙁
    http://www.rosewarnegardens.com

    • Ann Marie on July 31, 2015 at 10:11 am

      It looks like there is a conflict with Mailchimp style code and your theme’s style code. Can you find your CSS file for your theme (usually under Appearance > Editor and paste this code in?

      #mc_embed_signup .button {
      background-color: #fbaa23 !important;
      background-image: none;
      color: #FFFFFF;
      font-size: 12px;
      }

  18. Mithra Ballesteros on July 31, 2015 at 6:58 am

    A million thanks for a clearly written and comprehensive guide. Loved it and pinned it. One question: I have Feedburner subscription code embedded in old posts, so I don’t want to delete the account. Though it is deactivated, it looks like I’m still getting a couple of subscribers that way. And to get at those email addresses, I have to reactivate the feed on Feedburner. Any suggestions?

    • Ann Marie on July 31, 2015 at 10:17 am

      Thank you for the great feedback Mithra. I wrote this tutorial a while ago – so I am glad it still is helpful to people. You can still retrieve email accounts even though you deactivated the your feedburner. Deactivating only means that Feedburner will not be sending out emails to your subscribers but people can still sign up! Are you moving to Mailchimp? If so you should be able to replace your old Feedburner signup form with the Mailchimp subscribe form. By the way, you have a beautiful blog and website.

      • Mithra Ballesteros on August 3, 2015 at 5:28 am

        Thank you for the feedback on the shop, Ann Marie! BTW, I googled a very different question about Mailchimp and your series came up #2 in Google page rank. And your quick response to all the questions is just as impressive. 🙂

  19. Bhargav on October 14, 2015 at 9:02 pm

    Hello Ann,

    We have conform our email address but still it says,

    Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.

    This message comes when we sign up to newsletter from front end.

    Regards,
    Bhargav

    • Emily on August 16, 2016 at 12:59 pm

      Did you work this out Bhargav? I’m having the same problem.

      • Ann Marie on August 21, 2016 at 2:22 am

        Emily, Can I help you? I do not really understand where the problem stems from. Let me know some more details and i will see if I can help.

  20. KM on March 17, 2016 at 10:07 pm

    Is there a way to confirm someone on a list before they are added permanently? I’d like to go through the new subscribers to make sure they are clients before they automatically begin receiving our emails.

    • Ann Marie on March 19, 2016 at 4:26 pm

      This is an excellent question and one that I have been challenged with myself on a project. Unfortunately there is no easy way to approve addresses before they are dropped into your Mailchimp list. There are a couple workarounds. 1) Make sure you are notified in Mailchimp right away when people are dropped into your list. If you do not approve the address you can go into your list and remove them. However, its not perfect, because they still will have received the final confirmation message that they are in the list BEFORE you remove them. 2) The best way I can think of is use gravity form plugin to have them signup for your list. There is an approval addon to Gravity Forms so you are notified when a submission comes in, then you approve. There is also a Mailchimp addon for gravity forms and you can set up conditional logic that the email is pushed to your list when you approve the submission. Let me know if you need help setting this up if you choose to do it this way.

  21. Abhishek on September 9, 2016 at 10:53 am

    hello dear , i add this subscriber form on my site ,
    but i have one problem
    after click on subscribe button ,dont show any notice such as
    “”‘Almost Done….. We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.”””
    My Website is http://www.bestofearnmoney.com

  22. Nicole Stinson on July 26, 2017 at 5:27 am

    This is awesome! Thanks for all of the walkthroughs; your 3-part series is exactly what I’ve been looking for!

  23. Ruson on August 20, 2017 at 7:29 am

    Hello,
    what is the plugin Mailchimp for WordPress? Is that the same as Mailchimp, or was it developed by another company to make the setups easier for wordpress users?

  24. Malou on September 6, 2017 at 8:18 pm

    This guide was so incredibly useful, thank you!

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