How to use Mailerlite:
Purpose & Introduction
If you’re confused about how a landing page works and how it integrates with email, this article will show you. From the user’s point of view, the sequence and flow provided here is fairly applicable regardless of specific product implementation.
Basic Mailerlite examples for setup are included for those wishing to accomplish these tasks. Mailerlite integrates landing pages, email subscriptions, email campaigns, reports, and associated tasks. It provides its full suite of functionality even in its free option, which differs from most or all other emailer products. You can use Mailerlite for free if your number of subscribers doesn’t exceed 1,000.
When I began this process, I was a novice. This article is prompted by others I’ve seen who also are confused about the landing page use and setup. It is written at a basic level, with basic functionality, to help other confused souls get started. J
If you want to see the flow first, skip ahead to the How to Test section. This will help you understand what the landing page does, and how it can be used.
Preconditions for Mailerlite setup examples:
- You have created an account with Mailerlite.
- You have logged in to your Mailerlite account.
- You have added subscribers (this one may be optional).
- You have created at least one group.
Setup:
A Landing Page integrated with email subscription and giveaway option includes the following, in the order encountered by a subscriber:
- Landing Page
- Success Page
- Confirmation Email
- Confirmation Thank You Page
- Optional location for a giveaway
We’ll show you how to create these in Mailerlite, then test by running through the sequence to be used by potential customers.
Select the Forms menu option in the green band at the top.
Landing Page
Either select one of your forms to edit, or Click on Create Landing Page.
For most of this example, I’ll be Editing FreeDoc1.
If you select Create Landing Page, this is displayed. We’ll run through the first few – unique to the Create page process – screens for a new landing page we’ll name Connections. Then we’ll swing back to the edit screens for FreeDoc1, which don’t significantly differ from those in the rest of the Create process.
As shown in the screen shot, the Landing Page Name is for your internal use, and you may change it later if you choose. In my edit, FreeDoc1 is the Landing Page Name.
We’ll create a new landing page called Connections to show you how the Create Landing Page works in areas where it differs from editing an existing landing page.
Click the “Save and continue” button.
When creating a new landing page, this takes us to Select Subscriber Groups. You can select one of your existing groups, or click the “Add new group” button toward the top right. We’re going to select an existing group. This determines the group or groups to which your landing page subscribers will be automatically added when they sign up. If this is not set, your email sign-up will not work!
Click the “Save and continue” button when finished.
This takes us to the Choose Template section. I’ve been using the Ebook template. Hovering over a template offers “Preview” and “Select” options. I’ll select Ebook.
Here it is in its original form:
At this point, the Create and Edit flows become pretty much the same.
Hover over the area you want to edit, which will display a box around the area you’re selecting. Small circles display the actions to be taken. Click on the circle with the image that looks like a pencil and paper.
To the right, there is a “Blocks” area and a “Design” area. You can add blocks to your form for the items you want to include. To specify the detail within the blocks, click on Design.
Note that the form edit includes both a “Landing page” and a “Success page” in the black bar at the top above the form. It begins by default with the Landing Page, which is what we’ve been creating or editing.
Note the scroll bar to the right of the form display. There may be an additional scroll bar to the right of the Blocks or Design display.
When you’re finished designing your Landing Page, make sure you click above for the Success Page. You may Preview either page, but DON’T click the “Next” button in the upper right until you have completed both pages, or you’ll want to come back and edit them to suit your needs later.
Success Page
The Success Page is the page that will be displayed to the user immediately upon clicking the Landing Page button after entering their information. This page is NOT where the user will be directed to whatever freebie you may be providing, assuming you’re using a double opt-in with signup verification via confirmation email (which you should do). You don’t need to provide a freebie – that’s an option, and we’ll get to it.
Your Success page should direct the user to check their email for a verification or confirmation message. Again, use the Blocks and Design areas to the right to complete your edit.
In your editing process, when you’ve completed the look and feel design of both the Landing page and Success page, click the “Next” button at the top right. (You’re not done yet.) “Next” will take you to an area where you complete your Page Settings.
Double opt-in should be showing ON in green to the right (if not, then set it).
Then you set the Page Settings.
The landing page URL – and this example does NOT use a Custom URL – initially will be something like https://www.subscribepage.com/<aListOfCharacters>. Since I have not used a custom URL, I have set only the portion to the right of the last slash character.
Set your Page Title, Keywords, and Description.
Below the Page Settings are the Facebook Share settings. Set the Title, Description, and upload an Image. When finished, click the “Save and continue” button at the bottom.
Then, if you haven’t already, select or edit Subscriber group or groups. This is the group (or groups) to which a subscriber will be added automatically when they sign up with their email information. This is a critical setting because if you don’t select a subscriber group, the email signup can’t work. If you set this when you created your Landing Page, you don’t need to edit it here. Just make sure it’s set as desired.
Click “Save and continue”. This will take you back to a summary page from which you can edit your work. This screen shot shows only the top third of the Edit options. We aren’t done yet!
Confirmation Page
When you are finished with those options, note the horizontal list of items below the Form name that you set for your Landing Page: “Landing Page Settings” (which we have just completed), “Stats” (we won’t use that yet), “Confirmation Email” (we’ll do this next), and “Confirmation Thank You page” (we’ll do that, too).
Confirmation Email
Click on “Confirmation Email”. This is the verification email message that will be sent to the user when they click the button on the Landing page where they have entered their email address.
Fill in the Subject and Sender fields.
Edit the email message using the Blocks and Settings options to the right.
See at the top of the message area where it says: Thank you {$name} for your interest in our newsletter!
This will automatically fill in the contents of the “name” field in the Subscriber record, when the message is sent.
Note: The Subscriber record has both a “name” and a “last name” field. When you first add the Subscriber manually, you see the “name” field displayed but not the “last name”. Click on the option for “more fields” to see where you can add last name, company, phone number, city, state, country. If you stick both first and last names in the “name” field, that’s what will display (in theory) in the email message. I try to remember to put only the first name in the “name” field, and put the last name in the “last name” field.
Similarly, in the text of the message, the {$email} will automatically fill in the user’s email address that they entered when they signed up. You probably won’t want to change much of the text there. (The “Confirm your email” button is integrated in Mailerlite to function as it should. You probably wouldn’t want to edit this, even if it’s possible to do so.)
When finished, click “Next” in the upper right. You’ll go back to a summary of what you’ve just completed, with options to Edit your work again.
Confirmation Thank You Page
When your work on the Confirmation Email is complete, click on the Confirmation Thank You page option. THIS is the page where you would consider the option to provide a link to a free file of some kind.
Set your message and text using the Blocks and Settings to the right. Continue reading below the screen shot to see how to set your link.
Here’s how you set up your link.
Hover over the area you want to edit, and click on the pencil.
When you click to edit the Button, you get this:
Set the text you want to appear on the button, over to the right under the BUTTON label. Beneath that, where the little chain image indicates a Link, enter the URL to which the user should be directed upon clicking the Button. (If that’s in Dropbox, Dropbox will provide the URL for you to use when you set up the document there. See the Dropbox section at the end of this document for further information.) For TARGET, there is the option to open that link in a new tab.
Click Save at the bottom.
Click Preview if you want.
Click Next.
You’ll go back to an editable summary of what you just completed.
I have not set my own landing page.
Click Save at the bottom left.
Take note of your Landing Page URL that you set. If you’ve forgotten it, click on that Landing page near the top, to find it.
Use your browser to check out and test your landing page.
How to Test
The process:
- We go to the Landing Page
- We enter our subscriber information and click on the subscribe/ signup button.
- The Success Page is automatically displayed. The message there directs us to check our email at the address we have just provided.
- We go to our email and check for new messages. We click the confirmation button in the email message.
- The Confirmation Thank You page is automatically displayed. Optionally, it may contain a button or other link to a “freebie” file.
- (Optional) Clicking on the link to the free file takes us to the location to view and/or download the file.
Let’s follow through with our example.
First, we go to our Landing Page URL in our browser.
Sign up…
You can keep testing with the same email address, but Mailerlite will add it to your Subscribers list only once. Avoiding duplicates is a nice feature!
We’re automatically shown our Success Page after clicking the button.
We go to our Confirmation Email:
Click on the “Confirm your email” button.
We’re taken automatically to the Confirmation Thank You Page.
Optional freebie file
Click on the button to receive our Guide.
We’re automatically taken to the URL we entered for the link to our document. In this case, it’s in Dropbox.
Ta-da!
J
Link to your landing page
If you want to provide a link to the landing page in your book…
Here’s the link in the book:
Clicking the blue link http://www.subscribepage.com/savoryourlife takes you to the Landing Page here,
where you enter your email address, your name, and confirm you are not a robot.
The rest is the same as what we did above to test our process.
Finis!
Dropbox documents
You may want to read the “How to use the Public folder.rtf” file in your Dropbox Public folder. This is displayed in the righthand preview section of the screenshot provided below.
You would copy your document to your Public folder in Dropbox.
Right click on the file you want to make accessible to your subscribers, and select the “Copy Dropbox link” option. You won’t see anything different, but you’ll be able to paste that URL into the area for your link in a Mailerlite form. (Note the Dropbox statement that this needs to use an actual file, not a folder.)
In our example, this link is used in the Button settings (link field) of the Confirmation Thank You page form.
Admittedly very basic, but also simple enough to get the concept and get started – I hope this article has been helpful!
