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Integrating Gravity Forms with Mailchimp is a breeze with the Mailchimp add-on. This plugin streamlines the process of connecting your Mailchimp account and Gravity Forms, enabling you to collect new subscribers directly from your forms.
Gravity Forms Series
The add-on makes it easy to map form fields to Mailchimp fields, specify which lists to add subscribers to, and even set up double opt-in confirmation. By automating the process of adding new subscribers to your Mailchimp list, this integration saves you time and helps you keep track of your audience more effectively.
Does Mailchimp integrate with gravity forms?
Gravity Forms can be integrated with Mailchimp by using the Mailchimp add-on. The add-on integrates with Mailchimp tags, groups and fields.
Does Mailchimp offer a Free Plan?
Mailchimp does offer a free plan which is useful for testing and evaluating their product. Using their free plan you can send up to 1000 email per month.
Is Gravity Forms Free?
Gravity Forms does not offer a free version of their plugin. They offer three licenses; Basic, Pro and Elite.
New to Gravity Forms? Read our in-depth tutorial (+ 35 minute video) “Getting Started with Gravity Forms in WordPress”.
Getting Started with Gravity Forms Mailchimp Add-on
First, make sure you have a Mailchimp account. They do offer free accounts which is enough for testing.
And don’t forget to purchase Gravity Forms and have it set up on a WordPress site. The Mailchimp Add-on is available on the cheapest license so all licenses will have the add-on.
Download Mailchimp Add-on in Gravity Forms
1. Log into your WordPress site and click on Add-Ons in the admin sidebar below Forms.
2. Scroll down till you see Mailchimp Add-On and click on Install.
3. Then click on Activate Plugin.
Connect Gravity Forms to Mailchimp via API Integration
1. Go to Forms -> Settings and click on Mailchimp.
NOTE: If you can’t see Mailchimp make sure the plugin is activated.
2. Click on “Connect to Mailchimp”.
3. You’ll be redirected to MailChimp where you can enter your username and password.
Once you’ve entered in your username and password click on “Log In”.
NOTE: If you don’t have a MailChimp account click on “Create An Account” to register.
4. Then click on Allow to authorise the Gravity Forms MailChimp connector.
5. You should be redirected back to the MailChimp settings in Gravity Forms, with the message “Connected to Mailchimp as: username”.
At this point gravity forms is fully integrated with MailChimp.
Create Form using Gravity Forms
Let’s create a form which’ll be used to send submissions to Mailchimp.
NOTE: We won’t cover how to create a form in this tutorial. If you’re new to Gravity Forms then check out our “Getting Started with Gravity Forms in WordPress” tutorial.
1. Go to Forms in the admin sidebar and click on “Add New”.
If you’re using the latest version of Gravity Forms (2.7), you’ll see new form templates. We’ll use a template instead of creating one from scratch.
2. Hover on “Advanced Contact Form” and click on “Use Template”.
3. Add “Contact Us” into Form Title and click on “Use Template”.
Now that we have our form created let’s configure Mailchimp.
Mailchimp Audience
Go to Mailchimp and create a new audience or use an existing one.
You also want to make sure that your audience has the right fields. Because we want to map a few gravity form fields to the Mailchimp contact.
The following fields should be mapped across to Mailchimp:
- First name
- Last name
- Email address
- Preferred Method of Contact
Create Audience Field in Mailchimp
By default a MailChimp audience comes with “First name”, “Last name” and “Email address” so let’s create an audience field for the “Preferred Method of Contact”.
1. Edit the audience in Mailchimp and go to Settings -> “Audience fields and *|MERGE|* tags”.
You should see the following fields, or extra fields if you’re using an existing audience.
2. Click on “Add A Field”, then “Drop Down”.
3. Add “Preferred Method of Contact” as the Label, and add Email and Phone as the choices. Remove the “Third Choice” by clicking on the minus icon.
Then click on “Save Changes”.
Integrate Form with Mailchimp
At this point we have a form and we configured the Mailchimp audience so let’s now integrate everything together using a Mailchimp Feed.
1. Go to the form edit screen in WordPress, hover over Settings and click on Mailchimp.
NOTE: If you can’t see Mailchimp make sure the plugin is activated.
2. From the “Mailchimp Feeds” page, click on “Add new”.
3. Add “Contact us” into Name (you can use whichever name you want), and from “Mailchimp Audience” select the audience you want to use.
How to Map Fields between Gravity Forms and Mailchimp
Once you’ve selected your audience you should see the map fields section appear below.
1. Select the fields you want to map using the drop-down from the “Form Field column.
The “Map Fields” section should look as follows:
2. Check “Double Opt-In” and click on “Save Settings”.
Preview and Test Form
1. Click on Preview in the top-right corner.
2. Enter in a first, last name, email address, comment and click on Submit.
Because we’ve turned on “Double Opt-In” make sure you use a working email address. Mailchimp will send out a confirmation email before the contact appears.
Once you’ve confirmed your email address you should see the contact in the audience section. You also notice that the fields have been mapped across as well.
Conditionally Send Contacts to Mailchimp
Instead of sending all submissions to Mailchimp as we’re currently doing, let’s add a checkbox to the form that the user will need to check to subscribe.
We’ll add a new checkbox field to the form called “Subscribe to newsletter”, Gravity Forms will only send the submission to Mailchimp if the field is checked.
Create “Subscribe to Newsletter” Checkbox
1. Go edit the “Contact us” form.
2. To add a subscribe checkbox we can use two fields, the Checkboxes field or the advanced Consent field. Let’s use the Consent field for this example.
Click on “Advanced Fields” on the right and add the Consent field.
3. Add Newsletter into “Field Label” and “Subscribe to newsletter” in “Checkbox Label”.
If you want to hide the Newsletter label, you can do so by clicking Appearance and changing the “Field Label Visibility” option. But be aware hiding the field label can cause accessibility issues on the form.
We’ll keep the label visible.
4. Click Save Form.
Adjust Mailchimp Feed
1. Click on Settings -> Mailchimp and edit the active feed we created earlier.
2. Scroll to the bottom and check “Enable Condition”. Select Newsletter from the first drop-down, then “is” from the middle and Checked from the last one.
3. Then click on Save Settings.
Gravity forms will only send the submission to Mailchimp if the user checks “Subscribe to newsletter”.
Tag Mailchimp Contacts
Mailchimp has tagging functionality which can be used to organize your contacts. Gravity forms has the capability to tag contacts when a submission is sent to Mailchimp.
Let’s create a “Contact us” tag and have subscribers tagged automatically from Gravity Forms.
1. In Mailchimp, go to Audience and click on Tags.
2. Then click on Create Tag, enter “Contact us” in Tag name and click on Create.
3. Then go back into Gravity Forms and edit the Mailchimp feed. Scroll down to the Tags section and enter “Contact us”.
The next contact sent to Mailchimp should be tagged as “Contact us”.
Groups
Groups in Mailchimp is another way to categorize your subscribers and luckly the Mailchimp add-on supports it.
Create Group in Mailchimp
First we’ll need to create a group for our audience in Mailchimp.
1. Go to the Audience page and click on “Manage contacts”, Groups.
2. Click on “Create Groups” in the right corner.
3. Select the type of form element you want to use, i.e., checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown or totally hidden.
We’ll select checkboxes for this example.
4. Enter your group options in the “Group category” section below.
You can add an extra item by clicking on “Add Group”, and you can reorder the list by clicking on the handle bar on the left.
Once everything has been added click on Save.
Integrate Group with Gravity Forms
Before we can integrate with the Mailchimp group, we’ll need to create a new checkboxes field on the form.
1. Edit the form and add a Checkboxes field to the form.
2. Add Tech into “Field Label”.
3. Click on “Edit Choices” and add the following:
4. Edit the Mailchimp feed by clicking on Settings, Mailchimp.
Then edit the existing feed.
5. You should see the Tech group in the Groups section. If you can’t see it check that it’s been created in Mailchimp.
6. To assign the subscriber to a group, select them and choose “If” instead of “Always”.
If you require a subscriber to be added to a group no matter what then select “Always”. If you want to conditionally add them to a group then select “If”.
Select Tech from the field dropdown and choose the matching option, i.e., Drupal = Drupal.
A subscriber will only be added to a group if they select an option from the Tech checkboxes.
7. Preview the form and select a few of the Tech options and submit it.
8. Then in Mailchimp you should see the selected group when viewing the subscriber.
Summary
The Mailchimp add-on for Gravity Forms on WordPress is a useful tool for integrating contact forms with Mailchimp audiences. It offers custom field mapping, multiple audience support, and an intuitive interface for easy setup. The add-on streamlines email marketing and improves lead generation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Mailchimp Add-on integrate with Tags?
Subscribers created from Gravity Forms can be tagged directly.
Does the Mailchimp Add-on integrate with Groups?
Subscribers can be added into Mailchimp groups.
