Smart marketing pros and business owners understand that email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to acquire and convert customers. Of course, this means it is essential to build a robust email database, and one of the main ways this happens is through your company’s website.
If you use WordPress to power your website, there are countless plugins available to help with this function. Below are three popular and effective mailing list plugins for WordPress to make sure every visitor to your website has an opportunity to subscribe to your email newsletter.
4 Highly Useful WordPress Mailing List Plugins
1. Hello Bar 
Hello Bar is an attention-grabbing but otherwise unobtrusive notification bar that appears across the top of your website. This is a great lead-generation tool, but you can use it for a variety of functions – for example, invite users to view a new product, download a free e-book or sign up for a webinar.
To create your Hello Bar, go to hellobar.com and enter your website URL, then just follow the steps. You’ll be able to customize the wording, colors, fonts and other features of the bar. You’ll have to create an account, but it’s free and so is the plugin. Once you create your account, Hello Bar will offer choices of how to install – select the WordPress plugin option, then simply download and install the plugin on your site and your custom Hello Bar will start gaining you new mailing list subscribers.
Traditional popups have a reputation for being obnoxious and interrupting a user’s visit to a website. The idea behind Pippity is to offer popups that are less intrusive and flow better with the overall user experience. For instance, you can create an email opt-in form that only appears when a user reaches the end of an article, or after a certain number of page views.
Pippity is $49 per year for one website, or there are higher-level subscriptions for multiple sites. The plugin integrates with pretty much any major email service provider (see the full list here). You can choose from one of their 12 designs, plus customize the fonts, colors and images.
Gravity Forms is one of the most popular form-builder plugins available for WordPress. It is mainly used for contact forms and other types of web forms, but with a business license ($99 for one year, up to three websites), you can also get integration with your email service provider. Offered in the form of an add-on, Gravity Forms integrates with MailChimp, AWeber and Campaign Monitor to collect and add subscribers to your database.
Check out this article from WP Beginner for a nice overview of Gravity Forms’ various features and different ways you can use it on your site.
Test and Refine
You don’t need all four of the plugins listed above to achieve great results – choose one or more based on what fits best with your site design and budget. Assuming you have great, engaging, highly useful content on your site (of course you do!) and strong calls-to-action in whichever opt-in format you choose, you can now sit back and watch your enewsletter subscriptions grow! Oh, and be sure to use A/B testing (most of the above plugins include this feature) to find the most effective wording and design combination.
What are your favorite plugins or other tools for growing your mailing list? We’d love to hear your tips in the comments below, or connect with us on Twitter.
