Newbie Question: What Email Marketing Service Works With WP?

[NEB]

Hi,

I am trying, and failing, to get an opt-in email list building campaign going in Wordpress. Mailchimp was my first choice, but it doesn't work, the forms do not show up completely, code gets stripped, its a disaster. I don't really want to spend a year learning how to code around all these inadequacies when the DESIGNER of the (expletive here) product should figure that out for themselves. I tried to install Sendinblue, but found out that I need the Business Plan of WP to install plugins. Not that this in entirely unreasonable, but I don't want to spend a YEAR'S membership up front only to find out later that WP can't do, or reasonably easily do what I want. Billing me for a whole year up front is draconian.

So I am wondering if anyone has found a way to do the following in WP:
1. Send out an ad, Facebook, etc., with a link to my site's opt-in form (which doesn't exist yet for the above reasons).
2. Have auto-responder send an email to the person opting in with my offer.
3. Offer email has welcome message and some links to cool stuff, freebies, etc. in my area of focus.

Simple, yes? Not so far. If there's an email autoresponder that works in WP, that I don't have to drop $265 to upgrade WP just to use, I would be eternally grateful to learn about it.

Thanks!

 

[Rob Whisonant]

All the email autoresponder services should work fine. Check their FAQ sections as most have instructions on how to add the form to a Wordpress page, post or widget.

You can also just take the basic form code for the submit form and paste it in in "text" view. Don't try to paste it in "visual" view.

 

[NEB]

I pasted the code Mailchimp generated into the HTML editor (not the visual/WYSIWYG editor). A variety of things happen, sometimes it looks fine until I preview the site, then see that elements of the form are missing. In other cases when I go back to the HTML editor, some or all of the code is GONE! There are some plugins you can use that apparently fix this .. but again, its the upgrade cost that is holding me back (along with the very high probability of it not working without a struggle). It can change depending on the theme.

 

[Rob Whisonant]

Rob Whisonant

Use just the form code. Don't use the CSS. Basically use the elements to build your own form. It has worked every time for me.

 

[vishwa]

You can go with Optinbox. They have variety of predefined newsletter themes and you can create your own. You can also integrated the services like Mailchimp, Aweber, etc with Optinbox. Hope it will help you.

 

[NEB]

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a go.