With social media feeds becoming more and more noisy, email marketing has become more instrumental in reaching your audience. But, setting it all up can be a little overwhelming when you’re just starting out. There are lots of options out there for email marketing, but this guide is going to walk you through setting up Mailchimp with your Squarespace account.
Newsletter Block
If you’re wanting people to subscribe to your emails, there are three easy ways you can get people to sign up: the Newsletter block, a Form block, and the Announcement Bar.
Within a page or post, you can insert the Newsletter or Form block. If you’re just wanting the person’s name and email address, the Newsletter block is what I recommend. Within the block, you can customize the header and text that is shown above the sign-up fields (as seen below).
Click on the Storage tab, in the upper-right hand corner of this pop-up box, and connect your Mailchimp account to the sign-up form.
Click on the Mailchimp box, and in the next pop-up, login to Mailchimp. Once it’s connected, the Mailchimp box in Squarespace will turn blue, and allow you to choose which list subscribers should be added to when they sign up.
The newsletter block looks like this, once completed:
Form block
If you wanted to collect additional information about subscribers, you can use the Form block. The set-up is similar to the Newsletter block, but you can collect additional info.
The advantage of the Form block: with the Form block, you can add a Hidden Field, which will help you track where people are finding you.
You can edit the Title of the Hidden field, but it is not necessary. For this example, I will just leave it as “Hidden.” But, since people can come to your site directly, and not from a source, you should change the Default Value within the Hidden field. It could read ‘no source’ or ‘direct visit’ — something that signifies they visited your site directly.
You will need to add custom text to the end of your URL, for the “hidden field” value to gather info. If you have a specific page that is just set-up to collect emails, you can edit the URL based on where you are sharing that page.
The URL will be set-up like this: /?SQF_(field-title)=(value). For instance, at the end of your domain, it might say /?SQF_HIDDEN=facebook for URLs you share on Facebook.
Important: The title must be the same word in the URL. As I said in the first paragraph, I left the title as Hidden, and that same title is in the URL. But, the “Facebook” part of the URL doesn’t matter. It will make more sense to label it appropriately for where you are sharing it, but if you know that “=purple” means Facebook or “=puppies” means Twitter, then go for it! If you share /?SQF_HIDDEN=purple, it will still record the source as Facebook.
If you have a paid account with Mailchimp, you can also send automated responses based on how the user subscribed to your list. Learn more about this here.
One other cool feature when using the Form block is that you can collapse the form, and just have a button for people to click. When they click the button, a form will pop-up on the screen for users to enter their information.
Announcement bar
The Announcement bar displays at the top of your website on every page. To enable the Announcement bar, navigate to the Design section in the Squarespace sidebar. Once enabled, you can change what you want the text to say, and link it to Mailchimp.
To grab your Mailchimp URL (the one you see above), you’ll need to login to Mailchimp. Navigate to the Lists page, click the drop-down arrow on the far right (next to where it says Stats) and select Signup Forms. You’ll next click on General Forms, which will lead you to the next page.
You’ll grab the link under “Signup form URL” and put that in the Announcement bar. When a user clicks on the Announcement bar, it will open a new tab, displaying your Mailchimp sign-up page.
Sending your freebie to subscribers
You’ve probably heard that you can get more subscribers if you give them a free download in return. This is often a PDF that has quick tips to _______, or a free checklist, etc. I’ve created a short video tutorial to show you how easy it is to send your new subscribers their freebie!
Hi Jess, this was really helpful for the Squarespace side. Do you have any articles to help with the MailChimp end?
Hi Diane! I don’t actually, as I’ve moved to ConvertKit. I do have a video though, that shows you how to send your subscribers a free download via Mailchimp! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1M-Tnt4uXs
By the way, love your intro video on your site 🙂
Thanks! My husband is a video producer so I get some perks 😉 I’ll definitely check out that video. The help section in Squarespace made it sound like a third party program was needed to send a download.
Yep, I used to use Dropbox to send the freebies, which is what the video tutorial will walk you through. You could also use Google Drive.
My husband is a video guy, too! 🙂
Hi! Do you have any insight on how to create a double opt-in using squarespace and mailchimp?
What do you mean by double opt-in? Where they have to confirm twice?
Thanks for the post! Do you know how to set the mail chimp pop up form to occur on a nav link that is clicked? I have a font awesome icon in the nav that I would like to act as the form block button essentially. Thanks!
Ohhh… I don’t know about that one. You would probably need to hire a developer!
Thanks for this article. I’m trying to embed testimonials with pictures into a mailchimp email but not sure the best way to do this. Any advice?
Hey Chad! I’d just do a text block next to an image block in the Mailchimp template 🙂
Hey Jessica. Great post. Do you know if it’s possible to automate Squarespace commerce with MailChimp (purchase to trigger an email/email sequence)?
I haven’t done it personally, but I’m pretty sure that would be do-able with the paid Automation feature in Mailchimp!
Hi Jess, Does the download have to be in Dropbox? Or can it be in a Squarespace library? If it is in dropbox, does the download just happen immediately after they click the link in their email? or does it take them to dropbox where they have to click another link? thanks!
You could definitely do it in Resource Library, I have a separate blog post about that 🙂 You can tweak the Dropbox link so it auto-downloads without even taking them to the Dropbox screen, just change the end number to 1 instead of 0.
Hi, great in depth article. Thanks so much. I followed the steps but my mail chimp box remains black once I select the list I want to use, does it have to be a paid account to turn blue?
No, it doesn’t have to be a paid account. If it says it is connected, just test it out by signing up for your own list. Maybe the "blue" box feature isn’t something that SS does in the newsletter block anymore 🙂
So I wrote a blog and stated they could get more info from subscribing. I only want to send the freebie with more info to the people who subscribed from the blog post. Do you know how I do that?
Yes, I have a tutorial for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1M-Tnt4uXs
When I click “click to connect” on my mailchimp box in the storage window, it has been stuck on “connecting” all weekend. I have tried various types of forms and logged in and out. Any ideas or tips?
I would try a different browser, or try doing it in an Incognito Window 🙂
I love your website, so useful for a mailchimp newbie like me! Do you know how I can set up a newsletter signup form on my squarespace site that directs people who sign up to a specific group on my mailing list?
I’ve seen this question asked a lot, and I don’t believe there is a way…
Jess,
Do you HAVE to have the business squarespace for $18/month?
For a business website? Nope! There are a few features that you will miss out on, but nothing too major.