Our WordPress themes come with a built-in email gatherer. In other WordPress themes, they force you to download bloated newsletter plugins or make you copy/paste Mailchimp code. With the Subscriber List widget, we provide a simple out-of-box functionality to collect emails from your visitors. That’s it. The email addresses can then be exported as a CSV file and be imported into your newsletter software of choice.
- To set it up, first go to Widgets under Appearance and add the widget to the appropriate widget area.
- Enter a title, text and save. (Note: These fields cannot be left empty.)
- Additional settings for this plugin can be found under Subscriber List Widget in your dashboard.
- Confirmation Page URL: When a visitor enters their email address, they will receive an email with a confirmation link. When they click it, they’ll be taken to whatever URL you enter in this field.
- After a subscriber is confirmed, they’ll receive a second email. The following four fields (email, name, subject, body) are for customizing that email. (Important: Make sure the FROM email address is from your domain and not a gmail/yahoo address.)
- Once the subscriber is confirmed, their email will be listed under Subscribers. Click Export List below it to create a CSV to use in software such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. This widget was built for small lists (less than 500 emails), so please download and delete this list often!
- Unconfirmed email addresses are stored in Temporary Email List. To comply with current anti-SPAM laws, you can’t view these emails. Delete them to save space.
- Delete Current List: Click this to delete all emails from both lists. This option can’t be undone, so make sure you have a backup of your CSV before clicking.
- Shortcode: To display a sign-up form in the body of a post or page, use the shortcode
[ little_subscriber_list_form ](without the spaces).
Note: The Subscriber List widget uses the default wp_mail(); function. If you’ve noticed your messages are always going into the spam folder or is taking hours to be delivered, we recommend installing an SMTP plugin. Sending your emails through SMTP is a lot more reliable/secure than WordPress’ default mail function. However, this is purely optional.