How To Get More Subscribers To Your Online Content Using MailChimp and Ninja Popups

Besides actually getting traffic to your website, the hardest part for any website owner is probably turning those unique visitors into loyal readers. Why do we want this?

Because consistent viewership boosts everything. It boosts shares on social media, page rank, authority and income if you sell personal or affiliate products.

The best and easiest way to get that kind of viewership is to offer the option to subscribe to your content. However, to really milk your email campaign for all it's worth, you'll need more than just a simple Subscription option on your site.

You need:

• To make it easy for them to sign up, no matter what page they're on
• To make the the area to sign up eye catching but also easy on the eyes

Using an email service like MailChimp in conjunction with the Ninja Popups plugin from Code Canyon on your WordPress website, is the perfect way to do both of these.

Why can I say that confidently? Well, check this out.

See that rise in sign ups? That was when 87 Studios started using Ninja Popups

Look at the difference between the November 2013 and  and January 2014. After implementing Ninja Popups, the subscriber count for 87 Studios more than doubled in less than 3 months!

That's not an edited picture. That's not some affiliate jargon to convince you. That is hard proof of the fact stated above, and you can duplicate that success with your own site by doing what 87 Studios has done.

Are you ready to start getting the most of your site's traffic? Then let's get to it!

Download Ninja Popups

Ninja Popups is a premium plugin by Arscode (an Elite Author) on CodeCanyon and for everything you get out of it, the price (only $22) isn't something people tend to argue with.

A great product at an even better price

Not only do you get amazing features, like:

• Easy email marketing integration (works with some of the most popular ones on the market today)
• Social media Integration (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest Support)
• Multiple eye catching themes that are easy to customize (no coding required)
• Responsive themes that look great on mobile devices

You also get:

• Free Lifetime updates
• Video Tutorials to help you get started
• 24 Hour Support to help you with any issues that may come up

For all the support and features that you get out of this plugin, playing a measly $22 bucks is a steal!

Get Ninja Popups

You can also pick up some extra popup themes here  if you want even for even more options that may match the theme of your site better.

On a side note, Arscode also offers another plugin called Ninja Widget Extra Add-on that allows you to create a subscription opt-in form within a post, page or sidebar.

This is a nice touch to add because you can creates some unification to your overall site. By this I mean, you can use the same opt-in box (or same style) in areas that you would like it to appear and thus add to the consistency of your brand.

This may seem like a little thing, but consistency in little things like this do have an impact on your viewers and creates a more pleasant user experience.

Unpack the .Zip File

After you've downloaded the .zip file, go to your WordPress Dashboard and upload the file to your Plugins area in your dashboard.

If you try this, and the install fails, chances are that you need to open the .zip file to access the real file, as you can see listed in the picture here:

Unzip file to access Ninja Popups plugin .zip file

Upload that second .zip file into your Plugins area, activate it and you're golden!

But before you rush to set up your popups, we need to get you set-up with MailChimp.

Sign Up and Set-Up MailChimp

There are plenty of options when it comes to setting up an email campaign, but one that has gained a lot of popularity is, MailChimp.

Not only does MailChimp have a pleasant interface, but it's also free to use for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 sends, which makes it perfect for people on a tight budget.

Setting things up with MailChimp though, can be a little tricky so I'm going to walk you though the simplest way to setup an account and connect it to your WordPress site.

First things first, you'll need to go to MailChimp and Sign Up.

Enter Your Information As Requested

Thankfully, setting up an account with MailChimp is pretty simple.

• Choose the email address that you want your account associated with
• Create a User Name
• Create a Password (try to create something unique as these accounts can be hacked as well)
• Click 'Create Account'

Once you've entered your information, you'll be sent an email asking to confirm your account. Click the confirmation button and you will be redirected back to your account.

Now that you're logged into your account, you'll need to do two things.

1. Create a List
2. Grab Your API Key

Now let's get into that first one.

1) Create a List in MailChimp

First, Create a List

Your List is where you will gather subscriptions from your site. In other words, when someone subscribes to your content, they will be added to your list.

You can create as many lists as you wish, but I suggest starting with only one. (If you have more than one List, you can get duplicate subscribers to your content.)

If you want to group certain subscribers together to receive specific content, than it's better to create a Group instead of multiple lists. For more information on how to do that, here is an article to get you goin':

• What Are Groups and How Can I Add Them To My Lists?

Once you click the 'Create List' button, you will be taken to this window:

Fill Out All Places and Save Your List

This is part is pretty self explanatory, but I'll still walk you through the process.

Simply give your List a Name (e.g. 87 Studios Weekly or Monthly Newsletter) and then, fill out the 'from' email and 'from' name areas.

It is also a good idea to put a short note in the area that says "Remind people how they got on your list", but if you're not sure what to say there just yet, clear the default content for now or that little excerpt will wind up in your newsletters.

Next, you'll see a box asking you for your contact information. You'll have to fill that information out if you want to create the list, so be sure to do that.

If you're wondering why you need to add contact information, there is a link entitled "Why is this necessary?" on the page that will help answer that question.

Lastly, click SAVE and you've created your list!

Now on to the second part.

2) Grab Your API key

Locate your API key in your Account settings

To find your API key, click the section in the sidebar that has your username (mine is just my name) and then, click on "Account Settings".

After that, you will be directed to the screen as shown above. Go over to the "Extras" option in the menu and select, "API keys".

To create your first API key, simply click "Create A Key", and give it a Label ,o that you know what you're using it for.

You're not going to be using the API just yet, but don't close out of that window. You'll need that key in a bit.

Setting Up Ninja Popups and Connecting MailChimp To Your Site

Okay, got that API ready? Time to head over to your WordPress Dashboard.

Scroll down to the Ninja Popups Tab in the sidebar, select "Settings" and click on "Mail List Manager".

Ninja Popups-->Settings-->Mail List Manager

Now that you're there:

• Select "MailChimp" from the Mail List Manager drop-down menu
• Paste your API Key into the box
• Choose the List that you just created in MailChimp
• Save your changes

With that all set-up, you're now ready to get your popups created and designed.

Creating a Popup

Go back over to your Sidebar in your dashboard and select "Add New PopUp".

• Give your Popup a name
• Choose a Theme for your Popup

For the sake of simplicity, I chose the first theme in the drop down menu and took a couple minutes to tweak the look of it.

Original Look and Feel Of Theme

My Popup After a Couple Minutes of Customization

This took me less than 5 minutes to style, but there are other customizations you can make to your popup as well.

Such as:

• Width/Height Adjustment
• Submit Button Color
• Overly Opacity
• Preview your Popup
• Popup Delay (how many seconds you want to wait until the popup is displayed)
• Custom CSS Option (if you can code and want to change up some stuff, its pretty simple

There are other more customizing options than the ones I've listed here, but this just gives you a good idea of what you can do with things as far as getting it to look the way you want.

Just play around with things until you're happy with the output and then, click Publish in the right top corner.

Display Your Popup

We've reached it. Your final step! (Go ahead and do your happy dance. I won't judge.) It's time to make your pop up live on your website.

Simply go to the page that you want this popup to display and scroll down to the section that says, "Ninja Popups".

Open the tab and choose the Popup you've just created. (I disabled the Exit Popup, but you can choose to do what you like for that.) 

Now just Update your page and repeat across all pages and posts that you want this popup to display, and that's it!

Your site is now equipped with Ninja Popups and connected to MailChimp.

Get Ninja Popups