Recently, I’ve been more of focusing on building traffic for this blog. And as you may know; it has never been easy. The perfect strategy that simply works is to help others with what they may struggle for. Today, I will show you how to create an inline form with Bloom Email Optin plugin.
A few days ago, I published the ultimate beginner’s SEO checklist. I received many appreciations about it that I decided to share more knowledge about SEO in upcoming posts.
One of the comments on this post came from Jatin Zalavadiya asking about customising inline email optin form and how to embed an inline form in the header section.
In response to this inquiry, I’m sharing my experience on how to setup email opt-in forms in different parts of your blog including those inline forms embedded into your WordPress theme code.
Why Email Optin Forms?
Before getting our hands dirty with the technical instructions, I wanted to give you a brief about what do I mean by an email opt-in form and why it’s important to grow a mailing list:
Email Opt-In Form: In simple words, it means forms embedded into your website where your visitors can enter their name and email address to get subscribed to you blog mailing list. I’m positive that you’ve seen similar examples many times in different blogs. Now, you got to know what to call these forms!
Why it’s important to grow a mailing list: It’s crucial to maintain and grow a mailing list from day one on your website. Basically, those subscribers on your mailing list are your everytime audience. They will always care about you and what you do on your site. Enough to say that many bloggers regret not starting and maintaining one from day one blogging!
For further information and insights about mailing lists, I would recommend that you read my article how to grow an email list from zero. Make sure you check it out.
Let’s Get Started:
With all of the above in mind, we can proceed further with getting our hands dirty. I will show you how to embed and add email Opt-In forms into different parts of your website.
I assume that you’re using WordPress for your blog. There are many basic free and advanced premium plugins to help you with setting the forms up. Some of these plugins also allow setting a sync with your email marketing software. These plugins are called Lead Capture tools.
I used to use OpinCat plugin and synced it with MailChimp. So when a visitor subscribes, The plugin exports his name and email address to my MailChimp list. It worked like a charm for me, until recently when I discovered Bloom Email Optin plugin from ElegantThemes.
Why Bloom Email Optin Plugin?
And yes, I made the shift from using the very limited free version of OptinCat plugin to use the premium advanced Bloom Email Optin plugin instead. This has been one of my best decisions for this blog. Clearly, Bloom leveraged my email marketing strategy. It allowed me to setup beautiful highly-converting email opt-in forms.
Furthermore, I will give you a few reasons why I use and strongly recommend Bloom Email Optin plugin as your lead capture tool:
- Many ready-made templates: You still can do customize your own opt-in form if you wanted to, however; if you’re in a hurry or wanted to set it up in a matter of seconds, these ready-made templates got you covered.
- Six types of opt-in forms: This is so brilliant as with no any coding skills you can integrate inline email optin form, widget, below post, popup, locked content, fly in forms with a click of a button.
- Split testing available: I haven’t used this feature yet, however; I should do very soon when it’s time to setup two different forms and see which one behaves better. Very soon!
- Email Marketing Integrations: This is crucial when you decide which lead capture plugin fits better for you. The first thing you need to check is whether this plugin works with your email marketing software. Bloom Email Optin plugin got you covered here as it allows integrations with many providers such as: Aweber, MailChimp, InfusionSoft, OntraPort, GetResponse, and more.
DISCLAIMER: Some of these links are affiliates which mean I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost for you) if you purchase through my links. Thanks for your support!
How to Create an Inline Email Optin Form with Bloom?
- After installing the plugin and activating it on your WordPress dashboard, Head to Bloom tab on the left sidebar and click Email Accounts.
- Click NEW ACCOUNT and fill in the details as shown below then hit AUTHORIZE.
- Now, You should have synced Bloom Email Optin plugin with your Email Marketing software. Head back to Bloom > Optin Forms and let’s set up your first opt-in form. On the page below, click “NEW OPTIN” and choose “INLINE” from the six available types.
- Here, It will ask you to name the form and integrate it with the email marketing software.
- It’s time to choose from many available highly-converting templates for your inline opt-in form. Make your choice and click Next: Customise.
- Here, It gives you the option to further customise your form the way you want. You can only do add your text for TITLE and MESSAGE if you wanted to. And you still can revamp the whole form and adjust fonts, colors, styles, images, ..etc. Give it a play and get to understand how it works, then click SAVE & EXIT.
- Head back to Bloom > Optin Forms and copy the shortcode for that inline Opt-In form.
- It’s time to embed this shortcode into wherever you want to add it. I would say let’s add in the header section below the navigation menu as requested. Check the screenshot below to see where I mean.
- Navigate to Appearance > Editor then choose to edit Header.php file.
- Add the following line of code at the very bottom of the Header.php file then click save. Make sure to change optin_3 according to the generated shortcode for your form as shown above.
<?php echo do_shortcode('[et_bloom_inline optin_id="optin_3"]'); ?>
- That’s it.
Open your site and hit refresh and here you go.
Bloom Email Optin Plugin:
Bloom Email Optin Plugin is coded by ElegantThemes and ships as a part of their packages with many other awesome WordPress themes and plugins. This plugin is only available to be downloaded via ElegantThemes developer package along with other great items.
I see that as a very convenient investment for bloggers. For only $89 you will get access to 87 premium WordPress Themes (including Divi), and 6 premium WordPress plugins (including Bloom). This is seriously awesome, isn’t it?
Conclusion:
Congratulations! You’ve just completed creating an inline email Optin form in the header section. This part of your site also called above the fold. I mentioned earlier why it’s so important to implement inline email Optin form in different parts of your site. Check my article here how to grow your email list from zero to find out more.
Using the same instructions above you can integrate other forms in different parts of your site, However for below post, sidebar, and popup forms you won’t need to play with the shortcode since it can be added with a click of a button.
Thanks for reading and following the article instructions. I would love to hear back from you in the comments section below. Let me know shall you have got questions or need further assistance. Please don’t forget to share the article with your friends on social media.
