Using Gravity Forms and MailChimp to give my readers more choice

mailchimp

You should listen to Mark…

If you've spent time in the WordPress community, then you know who Mark Jaquith is. When Mark speaks (or writes), people listen.

Except me. At least not right away.

Back in September, I complained that someone had unsubscribed from my daily email newsletter because there were too many emails coming. I joked that I needed to do a better job defining “daily”.

https://twitter.com/markjaquith/status/378566798267801600

Mark's response was a great idea but one that I didn't know how to implement just yet. Part of it was figuring out how to actually do it. Part of it was figuring out how to clean up the mess I'd made in MailChimp.

Mess?

Yes, I had created lists for everything. And suddenly things were getting complicated. So I started doing some research. But just as I found segments, I discovered they wouldn't do what I wanted.

Then, in the midst of a call with Syed Balkhi, he introduced me to MailChimp groups. And things started getting better immediately.

Introduction to MailChimp Groups

Here's my introduction to MailChimp groups – in video (watch in 720p for best resolution).

Here are snapshots of the inside of my MailChimp account.
[envira-gallery id="5014"]

Getting Gravity Forms and MailChimp to work together

The final result, the entire objective, is to do exactly what Mark was suggesting – to give my readers an option (daily or weekly).

To do that, you'd first have to activate the MailChimp add-on for Gravity Forms.

GravityFormsMailChimpAddon

Step two is creating the form to collect subscribers. Since I already had one, I needed to add a field (a drop down) to give people the choice.

AddGFField

This is the field I'll use when I create the integration between Gravity Forms and Mailchimp. In step three, you do that by heading to Forms > MailChimp and adding a feed.

SigningUpForGroupsAnd the final result is a form that gives the user a choice when they subscribe.

SignUpFormThe final result was that after I sent an email today (a weekend day) letting subscribers know they could switch to weekly, I had 66 folks immediately make the call.

So once again, Mark was right on the money! Thanks!