One of my goals this year is to really work on email marketing for my affiliate and niche product sites. I have somewhere around 20 of them that I manage/update/occasionally write content for, but none of them are using email optin lists to get potentially valuable email addresses.
While part of that was on purpose (it’s been 18 months for most of them), I am now going to give email marketing a go on all of those niche sites (and even here on my own to demonstrate my new plugin).
A simple (or so it seems) way of gathering email addresses for your list is to provide an option to do so when commenting. This adds an easy way for your users to subscribe without having to enter extra information to optin to your list. My search came up empty for something like this that integrated with MailChimp (which is what I use for all my email lists), so I decided to write my own plugin to do what I need. Enter: MailChimp Comment Optin.
MailChimp Comment Optin adds just the functionality you need to grab email addresses when you user comments on your posts. Commenters can check a box in order to optin to an email list of your choosing. The process is double optin, so users will receive an activation email before they are confirmed.
In order to access your account, you will need to enter in a MailChimp API key for your account (which you can find under your account settings in the API Keys & Authorized Apps area). Once your API key has been entered and successfully validated, you will be able to select the list commenters should be subscribed to as well as some other options for customization.
The plugin checks for 3 different criteria and will display a different message for each:
- ‘admin’ – if you are logged in as an administrator, a simple message is given to you instead of a checkbox (I’m guessing you don’t want to subscribe to your own list
) - ‘pending’ – this message is displayed if the commenter has subscribed but has not yet activated their account
- ‘subscribed’ – no checkbox is displayed but rather a message saying they are already subscribed to the blog
If none of these criteria are met, it is assumed that the current commenter is not subscribed to your list and thus a checkbox is displayed.
Below is a screenshot of the admin area (once you have entered your API key):
And if you want to see an example of what it looks like, well just look below my comment box to see. 
Hope you enjoy the plugin and may your email list explode because of it!
Clever, although I question how to get folks to fill out a more complex form (for example, I have folks decide if they want weekly RSS emails from the signup form…)
Nice idea. How does the plugin react to Disqus or Intense Debate?
Also, the links to the plugin page don’t work…
As long as Disqus and Intense Debate use the standard comment_form() function to process comments, this plugin will work fine with them.
The links should be fixed now as well.
Thanks for pointing it out!
I use Disqus, too. I can’t get it to work. My blog is linked above.
I do small business marketing and web dev… holy crap, I’d rock this plugin on tons of sites. If you could set it up for groups I’d pay money for that. (I often set up the RSS-to-email campaign as a group within the overall list for an org.)
I just looked into Disqus and it won’t work because Disqus queries the database itself to process comment information instead of using native WordPress functions like comment_form() and comment_post(). By “set it up for groups” do you mean being able to select a group in which the email would be subscribed to?
That’s exactly what I mean. So if they click that they’d like to join your list, they are joining the RSS segment of the list.
For instance, this is how I typically set up a small business:
Company List
- Group 1: General
- Group 2: Customer group
- Group 3: RSS subscribers
If I could get them into that segment so that they automatically start getting the RSS-to-email campaign that’d be golden.
That is an excellent idea. I’ll look into the API and see about adding that feature in an upcoming version.
That’s pretty cool. I didn’t realize that was an option with Mail Chimp. I will be using it for sure.
Sounds great! Be sure to send me some feedback
Awesome, thank you. Saw this advertised on the WP.org plugin homepage.
I have installed it on one of my sites, great idea!
NB: both links to WP plugin page are broken in the post above.
Sweet! Glad you like the plugin
I’ve found it to really boost subscriber rates on a few of my niche sites that I run.
I also fixed those links, thanks!
Awesome! Thank you for this little slice of genius. I saw this on twitter this morning and have just installed it. Easy installation and seems to be working perfectly. Only wish I’d discovered it a few days ago before I lauched a competition on our blog. Anyways, thanks again!
Thomas,
Good piece of work! Thanks – it is a nice plugin and if you can add the Groups selection to it, it will beat the pants off all the other plugins for Mailchimp.
That’s definitely a feature that will be added in a future version – thanks for the kind words!
Hi Thomas,
I’ve just installed this plugin into my website and I must say I’m looking forward to gaining a few more subscribers. Thank Alex of KolaKube for sharing this with me!
Jonny
I use MailChimp for some time now, what a great option! thanks!
Hi there,
I tried installing the plugin but seems not to work well with any sites using WooThemes, as seen here:
http://www.golden-gate-park.com/de-young-museum.html
Any ideas on how to fix. Only showing a checkbox and nothing else.
Thanks,
Ryan
Hey Ryan,
It’s because of this CSS that the label is not being displayed:
#commentform label { display: none; }
You need to change that in your CSS file and the label will display.
Hi Thomas,
I have added the plugin which is using Intense Debate, it seems that it is not working. Can You suggest if this plugin works with Intense Debate Commenting system or it only supports WordPress Commenting system.
Thanks
Dipak
Would this perchance work with Thesis as well?
Hi If I insert the API info from other autoresponders such as getresponse or imnica mail will it work?