Stop Procrastinating And Start Your Email List With MailerLite

• I admit, I procrastinated. I thought starting and managing an email list would be way too much work with very little gain.

Boy, was I wrong!

Now confession time, I’ve been a little lax of late when it comes to managing my list but despite that, I will see the value in having one for your blog.

(This post includes affiliate links. Should you click an affiliate link and make a purchase I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.)

Why you need an email list

There are multiple reasons you should build a mailing list for your blog. All of which are beneficial to your blog’s growth.

• It’s a great way to grow your readership and ultimately drive consistent traffic to your blog
• You have control over when your emails are sent, the content that is in them, and who receives them
• It’s a great way to be more personal and engage with your readers and followers.
• If you sell a product or service it’s easier to get your subscribers to convert because they have a relationship with you.

Related read: 30 Free Resources For Blogging On A Budget

How to get your email list started

Now that I’ve convinced you to start building an email list, I’m going to share with you how you can start one. 

First, you need to figure out what email service you want to use. There are many out there with the main ones that bloggers gravitate to being Kit, MailerLite, and MailChimp.

In this article, though we’re going to focus on getting an email list started with MailerLite since that’s the email marketing service I use.

I dabbled with MailChimp in the past and didn’t like it and while Kit is the dream, I chose MailerLite because of the multiple features I’m able to get under their free plan. I have yet to find another email service that can rival MailerLite on free features which is key for me right now since the earnings from my blog are still very small. 

With MailerLite’s free plan, you get

• Up to 1,000 subscribers on your list
• Access to free mobile-friendly email templates
• Ability to set up multiple subscriber lists and send different emails to each one
• I can create automation workflows for each subscriber list to send them specific emails depending on the actions they do or don’t take
• Reporting is provided on each email campaign so I can see what’s working and what’s not
• I can create different types of subscription forms
• I can do subject-line testing

While you do get a lot with the free plan there are some features that can help content ceators be more efficient with creating email campaigns or even make money that only come with the paid plans

• Access to 100 pre-designed newsletter templates
• Creating your own newsletter template
• Ability to edit or fix broken links in sent emails
• RSS campaigns
• Access to the AI writing assistant
• Selling products such as newsletter subscriptions and digital products

How to get set up with MailerLite

1. Create an account

You'll need to provide your company name, email address, and password. If you would like to create an account now, you can use my affiliate link.

After setting up your account you’ll need to verify it.

Related read: 7 Tips For Starting The Blog You've Always Dreamed About

2. Get your account approved

Complete your profile telling MailerLite about your business or blog

You’ll also need to verify the domain for your blog and provide a custom or domain email.

In order to send any emails with MailerLite, you’ll need a customized email instead of a Gmail or Yahoo email account. This is basically to help keep your emails being blocked by your subscribers' email providers.

3. Start building your list

Once your account is approved by MailerLite it’s time to start building your list. There are a few features you'll need to use to do this.

Set up your Groups

This is your email list - the group of people who have opted to receive emails from you.

You can create as many Groups as you like to help you segment your subscribers. Or you can have one big group. It just depends on how you plan to communicate with your list.

I have two different Groups based on the type of communication that I send out. One group is for automatic emails when a new post goes live. The other is for a monthly newsletter that I send out with a recap of my monthly content, behind-the-scenes info, and other things that I want to share with my subscribers.

Design sign-up forms

There are three form types available in MailerLite

• Popups: I haven’t tried this type of form because I’m not a fan of pop-ups on the sites I frequent. So I couldn’t bring myself to do that to my readers.
• Embedded forms: I use the most type of form because I can place it anywhere on my blog. I have a form that shows up on my homepage and another one in my sidebar. You can see one of them below.
• Promotions: These don't have a subscription field and are to be used to deliver important and timely messages to your site visitors. These seem more like pop-up ads than anything else. I don't use them.

When designing your forms try and use your brand colors and fonts so that they integrate well into your blog. Also, make sure your forms are GDPR compliant. You can find out more about what this means on the MailerLite blog.

To add forms to your blog you can use plugins or manually add the code to each place you want your form to show up.

If you’re sharing on your social channels you can use a link to the form instead of the code.

4. Setup automation

Once you’ve captured subscribers you’ll want to welcome them to your list and give them more details on what they can expect from you and what help or information you’ll be providing in your newsletter.

MailerLite makes it easy to create an automated workflow.

• You’ll need to create and name your workflow
• Next, select a trigger. This is the action that needs to happen for the workflow to start. MailerLite provides lots of options such as joining a subscriber list, opening an email, and clicking a link.
• In addition to selecting the trigger, you can determine how quickly after that trigger happens the email is sent.
• After setting the initial trigger it’s time to create that first email.
• From there you can continue to build out the workflow with additional triggers and emails.

5. Create your newsletter

To begin designing and writing your newsletter emails go to the Campaign section. There you’ll find these four options

1. Regular campaign: A regular email newsletter.
2. A/B Split campaign: This option lets you test two different emails to see which one performs better. Elements that you can test in your emails are different subject lines, sender details, email content, or email design.
3. RSS campaign: An email that’s sent out every time you publish a new article on your blog.
4. Auto Resend: This automatically sends your email again to subscribers who didn’t perform the action you wanted them to take such as opening the email or clicking a specific link. You have the option of changing the email content or subject line of the resent email. This is only available for paid plans, not the free plan that I use.

Once you’ve selected your Campaign type you’ll need to build your email. You create your own email using the HTML editor, drag & drop editor, and rich text editor. Those with a paid plan have access to the MailerLite newsletter templates.

I prefer using the drag-and-drop editor because it’s easy to use and I can more easily customize my email with my own brand colors and images.

If you’d like to give MailerLite a try you can sign up here. Once you’ve signed up, come back and share in the comments below your MailerLite experience.

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