How to Build Your Email List in WordPress with OptinMonster

Email marketing drives more sales and engagement than any other channel, but most WordPress site owners are missing out on this opportunity. At WPBeginner, we regularly hear from users who have thousands of daily visitors but struggle to maintain ongoing relationships with their audience because they haven’t built an email list.

The biggest hurdle isn’t understanding why email lists matter – it’s creating opt-in forms that actually work. Basic contact forms get ignored, and poorly timed popups annoy visitors instead of converting them. 

After testing countless solutions with our community over the years, we found that OptinMonster consistently delivers the best results for growing email lists on WordPress sites.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll show you step-by-step how to use OptinMonster to build your email list effectively. You’ll learn the same strategies we use to convert our own WPBeginner readers and visitors into engaged subscribers, helping you create a valuable communication channel that drives real business results.

What Is OptinMonster and Why Use It to Build Your Email List?

More than 70% of the people visiting your website will never return again. That’s why it’s important to build an email list so you can stay in touch with visitors and bring them back to your website.

But getting website visitors to sign up for your email list can be a challenge.

This is where OptinMonster comes.

OptinMonster is one of the best email capture plugins for WordPress used by over 1.2 million websites. It’s equipped with everything you need to turn website visitors into email subscribers.

OptinMonster lets website owners create email signup forms, including popups, floating bars, full-screen welcome mats, slide-in scroll boxes, inline personalized lead forms, gamified spin-to-win optins, and more.

It includes a library of 700+ high-converting templates you can fully customize with the drag-and-drop builder.

There are a lot of useful features like the Exit-Intent technology, which lets you show a popup at the exact moment when someone is about to leave your site. This helps convert your abandoning website visitors into email subscribers.

Plus, it’s incredibly beginner-friendly, so you can create high-converting optin forms to grow your email newsletter without writing any code.

Now, we have tested just about every WordPress popup plugin and lead generation plugin over the years. And we continue to use OptinMonster!

That’s because most other WordPress lead-generation plugins have two major flaws:

• Powerful features like A/B testing and page-level targeting do not work properly with WordPress caching plugins. However, if you don’t use caching at all then it’ll have a bit impact on your site’s performance.
• They slow down your website because, by design, they have to store analytics data in your website’s database. This is really resource-intensive and may even get your WordPress hosting account suspended.

It might seem like you have a difficult decision to make: either prioritize a faster website or focus on gaining more subscribers. However, with OptinMonster, you absolutely can have both! You no longer need to compromise between site speed and growing your audience.

That said, OptinMonster also started out as a standard WordPress plugin. It had these issues in the early days, too, but the team adapted and converted the plugin into a proper SaaS application in 2015.

Now, OptinMonster can work independently of WordPress, which means you can use it with any website builder. But more importantly, it has a robust code architecture that overcomes those performance issues, which no other WordPress plugin has been able to do.

OptinMonster also comes with powerful features like:

• Geo-Location Targeting – Imagine being able to personalize your optin forms based on where your visitors are located. This feature allows you to show region-specific offers, language-based promotions, localized shipping options, and more.
• MonsterLinks 2-Step Optins – Transform any image or link on your website into a compelling optin form.
• OnSite Retargeting – Ever wanted to give your returning visitors a special welcome? With OnSite Retargeting, you can craft unique offers and promotions specifically for people who have visited your site before. This helps you re-engage them, nudge them further down the conversion path, and build a stronger connection with your most interested audience members.
• Lead Verification – Keeping your email list clean and high-quality is essential. This feature makes it easy to verify email addresses as they come in, ensuring that your list is filled with genuine, active leads. This helps you avoid bounced emails, improve deliverability, and focus your efforts on people who are truly interested in what you offer.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can build your email list in WordPress using OptinMonster, step-by-step.

Building Your Email List in WordPress with OptinMonster

The first thing you need to do is head over to the OptinMonster website and click the ‘Get OptinMonster Now’ button.

This brings you to the pricing page, where you need to click the ‘Get Started’ button under the plan that’s best for your needs.

We recommend the Pro plan, which is the most popular and includes the ‘Exit Intent’ feature.

After that, you need to enter your payment details and complete your purchase.

Next, you need to install and activate the OptinMonster WordPress plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

This plugin connects your WordPress website to the OptinMonster software.

Once you’ve activated OptinMonster, the very first step is to connect your account. Just head over to OptinMonster » Settings directly from your WordPress admin panel.

From there, you’ll simply click the ‘Connect an Existing Account’ button. This will link your website to your OptinMonster account, getting you ready to create your first campaigns

If you want to create a free account to test out the software, then simply click the ‘Create a Free Account to Get Started’ button.

After that, you’ll see a popup asking you to enter your email address. Simply enter the email address you used to create your account and click the ‘Connect to WordPress’ button.

Next, there will be a series of on-screen prompts to finish connecting your website with OptinMonster.

Once you complete the steps, your WordPress site and OptinMonster will be connected, and you can create your first campaign.

Creating an Optin Form in WordPress With OptinMonster

To create your first campaign, go to OptinMonster » Campaigns in your WordPress dashboard. Then, click the ‘Create Your First Campaign’ button.

The next step is to choose your campaign type. There are various kinds of campaigns to choose from, including popups, full-screen welcome mats, inline optins, and more.

For this tutorial, we’ll select the ‘Popup’ campaign type, which allows you to display a high-converting popup on your site. To choose a campaign type, simply click on it. 

You’ll then see a list of templates that will form the foundation for your popup campaign. You can choose any template you’d like. 

To choose a template, simply hover over it and click the ‘Use Template’ button.

Next, you’ll need to give your campaign a name. Don’t worry, this name won’t be visible on your website. It’s just for your own reference, helping you easily remember the purpose of each campaign.

Once you’ve entered the campaign name, go ahead and click the ’Start Building’ button.

This will launch the OptinMonster campaign builder. It instantly shows a live preview of your campaign in the right-hand panel, so you can see exactly how it looks as you build it.

You can simply point and click on any item in the preview section to make changes, move it, or delete it.

For this tutorial, we’ll keep the default design but change the text. So, click on any existing text and then make your changes directly in the popup preview.

The left-hand menu controls the font colors, spacing, and more. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of these features if needed.

You can also add new features to your popup using the included blocks.

Simply drag blocks from the left-hand ‘Blocks’ menu to your popup to add new features.

Once you’re finished customizing the popup, you might want to set the rules for how it will display.

If that’s the case, simply click on the ‘Display Rules’ tab located at the top of your screen. This is where you can establish the specific conditions for when your popup will be shown. The great thing is, you have complete control to tailor these display rules. This means you can show the right message, to the right person, at the right time.

For this tutorial, we’ll set up a straightforward display rule: your popup will appear after a visitor has spent a particular amount of time on your website. To achieve this, you’ll select ‘time on page’ and then simply enter the number of seconds you’d like to pass before the popup appears.

To display your popup on every page, make sure the ‘current URL path’ is set to ‘is any page’.

After that, you can click the ‘Next Step’ button.

This will bring you to the ‘Actions’ screen, where you can set what happens after the time has passed.

First, you’ll want to make sure ‘Optin’ is selected in the ‘show the campaign view’ box. Then, you can add effects and sound effects if you’d like.

Once you’ve done that, go ahead and click the ‘Next’ button.

On the next screen, you can review your display rules to make sure they’re correct.

When you’re done, simply click the ‘Save’ button to save your campaign.

Connecting Your WordPress Popup to an Email Marketing Service

Next, you can connect your popup to an email marketing service. This is really convenient because when a visitor types in their email address on your popup, they’ll get added to your email list automatically. This ensures you’re building your audience without any extra manual effort.

OptinMonster also includes a feature called ‘Monster Leads.’ This feature independently stores your leads, so you can always import them to your email marketing provider later.

If you don’t have an email marketing service yet, then we recommend using Constant Contact. It’s one of the world’s most popular email marketing services and offers great support for those just getting started.

You can check out our detailed Constant Contact review for a deep-dive into this service.

Some other great choices include Brevo, Drip, and ConvertKit.

To connect your email marketing provider to your popup, simply click the ‘Integrations’ tab at the top of the page.

Then, go ahead and choose ‘Add New Integration.’

Next, scroll down the screen until you find your email marketing provider. With that done, just give it a click.

OptinMonster will then guide you through the process of connecting your popup to your email service. For the majority of email marketing providers, the main action you’ll need to complete is copying over your unique API key.

Once that’s done, you’re ready to launch your campaign.

Launching Your OptinMonster Popup Campaign in WordPress

To make your campaign live, you’ll first need to click the ‘Publish’ button at the top of the page.

This brings you to a screen where you can review your campaign.

If you’re happy with how your campaign looks, you can switch the status in the ‘Publish Status’ box from ‘Draft’ to ‘Publish.’

Now, your campaign is running and live on your website. Just make sure you click the ‘Save’ button before leaving the page.

Next, you may also want to verify that your campaign is active by going to OptinMonster » Campaigns in your WordPress admin panel.

Then, simply ensure that your campaign is set to ‘Publish’ in the ‘Status’ column.

This screen is incredibly useful because it displays all the campaigns you’ve created. You can clearly see which ones are currently active on your website and which ones are paused. So, just come here if you ever need to quickly check on your campaigns or make adjustments.

A/B Split Testing For Optins in WordPress

Once your campaign has been running for a while and you’re growing your email list, you might want to improve it by doing A/B split testing.

A/B split testing involves making slight changes to the appearance, text, and even colors of your popup campaigns. These small tweaks can lead to huge improvements in conversions.

OptinMonster has an easy-to-use A/B split testing feature that completely eliminates the guesswork for you.

To start, you can go to OptinMonster » Campaigns, then click on the ‘Create Test’ link to create a new split test.

You’ll then see a popup window where you can add notes about the campaign.

Go ahead and click the ‘Create Split Test’ button.

This will open the same campaign builder screen, where you can make changes.

Once you’re finished editing, you can click the ‘Save’ button. Then, OptinMonster will automatically run the split test for you.

Over time, you’ll be able to see which campaign leads to a better conversion rate.

To view your campaign data, simply navigate back to OptinMonster » Campaigns. Then, locate the ‘Stats’ column to see your results over time.

There you have it! You’ve learned everything you need to know about building an email list using OptinMonster. Next, you might want to experiment with adding content upgrades or a simple yes/no campaign to increase your conversions and get even more email subscribers.

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