How to create a stunning opt-in landing page in MailerLite

Email newsletters and email ads are powerful tools when it comes to marketing your products and services. And you don’t need much to get started:

  • a stunning opt-in landing page (or an opt-in form),
  • a free offer that catches the attention of your ideal clients,
  • an email marketing service to manage your subscribers and your campaigns.

 

You can start building your email list even before you launch your website. Just set-up an eye-catching Coming Soon or Launching Soon page to collect email addresses while you work on your website.

Creating an opt-in landing page in MailerLite step by step

Once you have created your lead magnet, the next step is to set-up a subscriber form or a landing page to make it available for your audience.

MailerLite makes this process really easy.

Stay tuned as I create a landing page step by step. It takes about 30 minutes. Assuming of course that you have already

  • registered for a MailerLite account (free or paid),
  • written the landing page copy, and
  • prepared the visuals (graphics and images) you want to use.

 

If you’re on the fence why to use MailerLite. I admit I’ve started first with MailChimp but switched over to MailerLite and never looked back. I love that you can set up automated email series even on their free plan. Not to mention the intuitive drag and drop functionalities.

Now let’s design a landing page with MailerLite!

#1 Login and Choose an opt-in form

Login to your MailerLite account. Or register an account for free. It’s only a few steps and then you’re ready to go.

Once you’re logged in, click on the Forms main menu option.

It will bring you to the Forms page where you have to decide how you would like to collect email addresses of your subscribers.

You can select from:

Popups: Choose this if you want to collect subscriber emails via pop-up forms. You can customize when the popup will appear on the screen, like after X seconds, when scrolled to X% of the page, on exit intent.

Bear in mind though, that popups are among the most annoying website flaws. Before you decide to set up one, consider whether it would hinder your visitors reaching their primary goal on your page. Also don’t overuse popups on all your pages. If you use them, use them strategically. And always test if they bring in the expected results.

Landing Pages: You can use the pre-made templates or build a custom landing page for your subscriber offer with the drag & drop editor.

Embedded Forms: This option lets you design a form or a button that you can embed into your own website or blog to collect signups.

Promotions: It’s a special type of popup that you can use to deliver important messages on your web page. Like Mystery Sale pop-up, Client Survey, Count-down pop-up and some more. This is only available for paid plans though.

#2 Select Landing Pages and Name your Landing Page

I want to create a Landing page with MailerLite that would promote my free Improve your Website email course.

create landing page option in MailerLite

I click on the Landing Pages option, then on the Create Landing Page button.

On the next screen it asks you to name your New Landing Page. This is for internal use only, and you can change this later as well. Add a name that helps you remember to which offer or opt-in your Landing Page will be linked to.

define landing page name in MailerLite

#3 Select the relevant Subscriber group

I already have several groups in my list, so I just need to select the relevant group where subscribers will be added to, once they sign up via the Landing Page. 

If you don’t have a group for it yet, you can create one with the Add new group button on the top right.

select subscriber groups option in MailerLite

#4 Choose a Landing Page template

The following screen let’s you choose from 8 eight different templates. You can preview each of them before you make your final selection. After you have chosen your template you’re directed to the Landing Page editor screen.

Note: Even if you don’t like any of the pre-designed templates, you still need to pick one of them to get to the Landing Page editor.

Then just simply delete the dummy structure and start from scratch.

#5 Edit the selected Landing Page template

I have selected the below template as a starting point for my free Improve your Website email course landing page.

landing page template in MailerLite

No, it’s absolutely not how I want my landing page to look like.

So I delete almost everything and drag and drop the building Blocks elements I need. Then I replace the dummy placeholder images with my own graphics. Last but not least I adjust the style, background and main colours, fonts by clicking on the Design panel.

Take your time and play around.

Design your Landing Page according to your needs. The best is always to have a draft of the page layout at hand. You can simply use a hand drawn sketch to give you a general idea of the structure that you want to rebuild in the Landing Page editor.

#6 Preview the Landing Page on Desktop and Mobile screens

Any time you wish to see how your design renders on desktop or mobile screens, hit the Preview button in the top right corner.

After playing around with the above template and replacing almost everything I ended up with the below landing page design – previewed on a mobile screen.

Much better now!

landing page preview on mobile screen

#7 Design the Success Page

When you finished designing your Landing Page, click on the Success Page button. This is where your subscriber will be redirected once they hit the button on your live Landing Page.

Use this Success Page as a “Thank you” page and inform your subscribers on next steps and to whitelist your email address.

Additionally you can

  • promote here one of your up-sell or down-sell products, or
  • request to connect or follow you on social media.

 

Again don’t worry how the dummy Success Page looks like. You have the same design options as with the Landing page itself.

Success Page template:

success page template

Customized Success Page:

customized final success page design

#8 Adjust Landing Page Settings

Once both the Landing Page and Success Page is to your liking and you have saved your work, click on the green Next button in the top right corner.

This brings you to the Page Settings where you can amend information, like:

  • Landing Page URL,
  • SEO settings,
  • Facebook share settings.
page settings screen in MailerLite

I highly recommend filling out everything here. You want to use both the SEO and Facebook sharing options to your advantage.

Note: the meta keywords are less used by Google’s crawlers nowadays so you may leave that field empty if you wish.

Save and continue.

#9 Check the Landing Page Summary Dashboard

You have completed the Landing Page set up. What you see now is your summary dashboard.

Anything you want to change or update later you can access from here.

landing page settings and dashboard in MailerLite

Once you gained subscribers through this Landing page, the data will be populated on the Stats tab.

If you have set up an automated email sequence to nurture your subscribers, it will be shown under the Automation tab.

You can enable or disable the double Opt-in for your landing page. If you enable it, check also the default wording under the tabs Double Opt-in Email and Double Opt-in Thank You page. If needed you can adjust both the copy or the design.

#10 Test your Landing Page and Workflow

Before sharing the URL of the new landing page with your audience, it’s best to test how it renders in several browsers both on desktop and on mobile. I usually do it by copy-pasting the Landing Page URL to different browsers and open it up from a tablet or mobile, too.

I may be super cautious but as a final test I also use one of my email addresses to sign up. This way I can see the subscriber workflow as my audience would, and whether the email confirmation is delivered without any issues.

Last but not least I test whether the unsubscribe workflow works correctly.

Better to be safe than sorry.

I came across websites where after subscribing to an opt-in, I started to get email newsletters without any real value. And when I wanted to unsubscribe, it just displayed an error message.

I wasn’t pleased!

As both my sign-up test and my unsubscribe test went flawlessly, I’m confident that my Landing Page is fully operational.

It’s time to promote it.

Advertise your Landing Page

Having a stunning opt-in landing page is good, but almost useless for your business and list building efforts if no one knows about it. So don’t forget to promote it everywhere possible.

One place to start could be your Instagram account.

I don’t use third party services like LinkTree to add links to my Instagram bio. Instead I’ve created a unique web page under my own domain.

As next step I’m adding the new Landing Page link to my customized Instagram web page.

screenshot of ARRA design studio's Instagram bio and post feed

The advantage of using a page under your own domain is that when someone clicks on your bio link in Instagram they immediately land on your own website domain. And you can set up this page to be fully on brand with your logo, colours, fonts etc.

After logging in to WordPress I go to Pages and select my custom Instagram page for editing. I use the Elementor page builder and click on the Edit with Elementor option.

screenshot of WordPress dashboard with Pages screen

My custom Instagram page is clean and simple. I’ve decided to only show options that are important to reach my business goals and that are aligned to my business strategy.

Now that I’ve set up the MailerLite landing page for my free Improve Your Website email course, I want to add its URL to the button.

I also realized that I have a typo on the button text that I need to correct: my to your.

screenshot of Elementor page builder's page editing screen

Elementor is very straightforward to use. It has a drag and drop page building workflow just like you’ve seen it in MailerLite. You select the block and drop it to the main area. Then you can style it as you wish.

On the main screen I click on the button I want to update. This activates the editing options on the left of the screen. First I change the wording of the button text, then I update the link to the new URL.

As I don’t want to amend any other settings this time, I go ahead and click Update and exit back to the WordPress dashboard.

That’s it.

Conclusion

Using MailerLite for creating unique Landing Pages for your

  • lead magnets,
  • email courses,
  • freebies

is simple. You can integrate and link these subscriber forms and landing pages to your own domain.

I’m participating in MailerLite’s refer a friend program. That means if you decide to give it a try and sign up to MailerLite using my referral link within 30 days of your first visit, then you will even get a $20 credit.

If you end up upgrading to one of their other plans, only then will I also receive $20 credit. I only recommend products I know and trust.

Everybody wins!

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