Ever since Mailchimp hiked their prices, I’ve fallen in love with MailerLite.
It has all the features of Mailchimp for a fraction of the monthly subscription fee.
I’ve recently dabbled in connecting MailerLite with Elementor forms in WordPress to automate the delivery of whitepaper downloads for clients.
It’s quite simple, but there are a few tips and tricks I’d like to share.
This guide is made for WordPress-users
I love using WordPress for all my development projects. Easy to use, accessible, and scales depending on your contact list size. I always use Elementor page builder for my clients.
How to generate your API-key in MailerLite
- Log in to MailerLite
- Click on your profile picture in the upper right corner
- Click on integrations
- Click on Developer API
- Click copy next to the API key
How to connect MailerLite to Elementor page builder
Once you’ve installed Elementor, you want to head to ‘settings’ and then ‘integrations.’
Scroll down a bit, and MailerLite will be there. That’s where you enter your API key (you generated this above).
Click on validate API key, and you’re all set to automate your form entries.
How to connect an Elementor form to MailerLite
Open a page that has an Elementor form by clicking on ‘edit with Elementor’.
Right-click your form and click ‘edit form’. Pretty straightforward so far, right?
Then you want to hit the ‘Actions after submit’ button and select ‘MailerLite’.
A new tab will pop up that says ‘MailerLite’. Straight rocket science.
You will see the tab API Key will default to the key you inputted on the previous page.
You can then select a group to add the person to. If you want to push a whitepaper about digital marketing, I suggest creating a group in MailerLite that is named ‘Digital Marketing Whitepaper website’.
You can then select that group in Elementor. Use field mapping to link the correct fields to the corresponding MailerLite fields. When you’re done, hit ‘update’.
Test your form
Open an incognito browser window and test your form. I always suggest adding a ‘+’ to your email. For example info+mailerlitetest@oliverbeeck.com
That way, the confirmation mails will still hit your inbox, but you’re not overwriting yourself.
Check-in MailerLite if you got added to the list. If that worked, you’re ready for the next step.
Automating your whitepaper sequence
You now have a group in MailerLite that will automatically fill once someone completes the form on your website.
You want to head to MailerLite and click on ‘automation.’
Create a new workflow and setup ‘when a subscriber joins a group’ as your workflow trigger. Select the group you just made.
Now that you’ve set up the trigger, you can add emails that will auto-send.
I suggest adding an email that contains the download link to your whitepaper.
You can automate this further by sending a follow-up email. After you’ve added the download mail, click on the ‘+’ right below the mail and select ‘delay’.
I suggest using a delay of a couple of days to allow the lead to read your whitepaper first.
Then you can add another email that contains an upsell, for example. Get creative.
You can add multiple emails, and you can even branch out depending on if they read the previous one. The possibilities are endless!
