MailPoet for WordPress is a great little plugin to use for sending out newsletters and receiving subscribers from your website.
Read this tutorial to set up MailPoet for WordPress
- Go to the Plugins panel
- Click on Add New
- Go to Search and type in “MailPoet Newsletters” By MailPoet
- Click on Install Now > OK
- Click on Activate Plugin
Set up MailPoet
- Go to MailPoet panel
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Thanks! Now take me to MailPoet”
Set up the sign up form for website
- Click on Settings
- Type the following details:
- Your company’s address
- Email notifications
- Sender of notifications
- Leave all the default settings
- Save Settings
The Form
- Click on the Form tab
- Hover over the default form and click Edit
- This is just a basic form with an Email field and Subscribe button
- Re-write the After submit… text if you wish
- Save
- Click back on the List of forms
- Click on Signup Confirmation
- Re-write any of the default information
- Save Settings
- Click on Advanced
- Re-write any of the default information
- Save Settings
Subscribers
- Click on> Subscribers in the left panel under MailPoet
- You will see a default list
- Click on Edit Lists
- Scroll over My first list > Click Delete
- Let’s re-name of the default list to “website subscribers”
- You can delete the description or re-write it to what ever you like
- This just explains what the list is about
- Click Update list
Manually add a Subscriber
- Click on Add Subscriber (under the subscribers section)
- Add the users details
- Click Add Subscriber
Add the signup form to the website
- Go to Appearance > Widgets
- Open the sidebar widget area
- Drag and drop the MailPoet Subscription Form widget to the sidebar
- Re-name the Title of the widget if you wish
- Save
Test the Signup Form
- Make sure you test the signup form to see if it works
- You should receive an email to confirm the subscription
- You can also check in the MailPoet plugin
- Go to the Subscribers section to see the new user
Creating a Newsletter
- Go the MailPoet panel in your admin
- Click on Newsletters
- Scroll over the > 5 Minute User Guide
- Click Edit
- Use this as a guide or test to set up your first newsletter
- As you can see the guide gives you basic instructions on how to set up the newsletter
- You can scroll over each section to:
- Edit
- Drag and drop to re-position the box or
- Delete the box
Themes
This plugin gives you some free themes to choose from for your newsletter.
- Go the tabs on the right hand side
- Click on Themes
- Click Add more themes
- Download several themes to see which one suits you
- Click on the theme to choose it
Social Media
- Social Media – to add the URLs for your Social Media
- Delete the box and re-add the Social Media box from tabs
Images
To add images, you need to add the images first.
- Go the tabs on the right hand side
- Click on Images
- Add images
- Make your images the right dimensions and reduce the file size before uploading
- This will allow the newsletter to load quicker for its viewers
Styles
This section lets you change the fonts and font colours.
Send out Newsletter
Once you have set up your newsletter, make sure you send out a test email first before sending it to your subscribers.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- Click Send preview
- You should receive the test email in a few minutes
- Check your email and then click Next step if you are ready to send out
- Fill out the details for the final step
- Make sure you type an appropriate Subject line
- Short and sweet and straight to the point
- Click your list – “website subscribers”
- Re-write any information or leave the default settings
- Schedule or Send out immediately
If you are not ready > then click Save as draft and close
MailPoet is a fantastic plugin for newsletters. If you need a more powerful plugin, once your business grows, you can swap to Mailchimp.
Mailchimp is very powerful and integrates easily with WordPress.
Written by Jodi Allbon 2015. All original content.
