[Picture Guide] How To Add MailChimp Optin-Box To Your WordPress Sidebar

With the new version of WordPress, adding HTML to a sidebar widget is easy. In this post, I will show you step by step instructions to put MailChimp form into your sidebar. You can do this with other email marketing services too. The key is to get the HTML code of your form.

The step by step guide

Step 1: Login to your account

First of all, please login to your MailChimp account

Here, I’m in my account dashboard. Now, look at the top menu, you will see a menu item called Lists. Click on that.

Step 2: Select your list

A list is a collection of your subscribers. For example, you are a sleep instructor. Your audience are interested in sleep training. However, instead of putting all the people in one big list, you can split them into multiple lists to make it easier to manage. Here, as you can see I have two lists: Time Management Tips and Software. I select the Time Management Tips list.

Now, notice that at the right side of each list, you will see a dropdown, click on that and select Signup forms.

Step 3: Get the HTML code of your form

Here, you will see the form editor. You can add or subtract the fields if you need to. Then, copy the part under the title Copy/Paste onto your site

Step 4: Go to your Widget area

You may go to this area before. It’s under Appearance->Widgets

Step 5: Add a custom HTML widget to your sidebar

Your theme could have one or more places for you to put the widgets. Those areas called sidebars (though sometimes you will see they appear at the footer). As you can see in my site here, I have one sidebar at the left and 4 areas in the footer.

I’m going to drag and drop a Custom HTML into the sidebar.

Step 6: Put the HTML code of your form into the widget

Now simply paste the HTML code into the Content box. You can give it a title (it will display as a h3 above your form). I don’t put anything this time.

Now click on Save and then Done.

Step 7: See your form

As you can see, the form is now on the left sidebar.