What is MailChimp ?
MailChimp is a tool that is used to send newsletters to its subscribers. It allows you to collect emails from readers in order to build a network. Today, it is an indispensable marketing tool on the web and one of the most used. It is free for up to 2,000 subscribers or 12,000 emails per month.
My blog GirlKnowsTech is available in French and English. So I naturally decided to set up a newsletter in French and another in English. I use qTranslateX as plugin to write my blog in both languages. This tutorial is going to use this plugin. But I think you can pretty much do the equivalent with other plugins like WPML.
Create your lists
Create your two forms of MailChimp. For me, one is in French and one in English. This will allow you to clearly separate your users. They will receive their emails in the language they have chosen!
Installation of your MailChimp lists on your multilingual WordPress
The problem with the plugin
From the beginning, I installed the plugin below because I thought it was the plugin MailChimp the most downloaded and this would probably be much easier and faster. Very quickly, I hit a wall: we can only have one form (thus only one language), unless you have the premium version.
When possible, I prefer to keep my money and see if other solutions are possible. For 1 month, I thought this was not the case until I realized that the MailChimp website already offers everything necessary to set up a form, a pop-up, and all that we need without having to use a plugin.
The solution without a plugin (and free)
To have a registration module in sidebar
You will have to create a form to integrate directly into your WordPress. Follow these steps:
- Go to MailChimp, then select “Lists” in the navigation menu.
- Against the list for which you want to create a form, click the arrow and “Signup Forms”
- Select this option
- Create the form that you want depending on the options offered by MailChimp. Then copy the code in a text field like this:
- Go back to your WordPress dashboard. Go to Appearance > Widgets.
- Add a text widget where you want to put the subscription form:
- In the content of the Widget, paste the HTML code you copied at step 4.
Repeat all the steps below with your second form in the other language.
Instead of copying the code in the same widget, select the 2nd language (here English) and copy the code you just created.
That’s it for the widget in sidebar! And you managed to do it for free and without plugin!
For a registration pop-up by the language of the user
If you want a pop-up as shown above, follow these steps:
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 of the last section.
- Instead of selecting “Embedded Forms” in the third step, select “Subscriber popup” :
- Design your form as you wish
- When you’re done, click on « Publish »
- Then click “View Code” to obtain the necessary code – copy (CTRL + C).
- In your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance > Widget.
- Add a widget in the language you just created the popup.
- Paste the code in the content of the widget.
Repeat these steps and paste the code in the widget corresponding to the missing language. With QTranslateX, just change the language tab.
It is good to know that for the pop-up, you can change them via the editor on MailChimp, publish, and your changes will be automatically taken into account without updating the code in the widget content.
Any questions?
If you have questions, feel free to leave me a comment or email me at marie@girlknowstech.com.
4 comments
Hello! I loved your post, it helped me a lot but I have another doubt about this subject. I also have a bilingual blog, in english and spanish. What happens with our Wordpress followers (as usually they don’t provide any email? I don’t want they get a notification for BOTH languages, is there any way to solve this? Thanks in advance
Hi Zoe!
Are you talking about the WordPress followers that subscribed to your blog via Jetpack and automatically receive an email when you publish new blog posts? If you use a plugin like Q-TranslateX like I used to, I think those followers receive the blog post in both languages.
But if you read the section
“Create your lists
Create your two forms of MailChimp. For me, one is in French and one in English. This will allow you to clearly separate your users. They will receive their emails in the language they have chosen!”
you can see that I actually created 2 lists on Mailchimp, and I use a form according to the list language on my blog, it’s written in the blog post that you need to add the code for both languages for both lists…
I feel like what I’m writing is confusing, let me know if you don’t understand.
Marie
Hello Marie 🙂
I tried to add the pop-up form as shown in my widget, but it’s not working. Did you tried? I think Javascript is conflicting with WP…
Thanks for your help 😉
Hi!
Maybe a problem with your theme? I have no idea, I did follow the steps listed in my tutorial to show a popup when I had one back in the days!
Did you figure it out?
Marie