How to Use MailerLite: Email Marketing Guide for Bloggers

If you have recently started a new blog or online business venture, you might be considering adding an email marketing provider to your digital toolset.

I’m sure you’ve heard about the power of email marketing and its revenue-generating potential. If you’re ready to start building an email list, you’ve come to the right place!

In this post, I’ll show you how to use MailerLite and walk you through my entire setup process so that you get it all done in no time.

To make this tutorial as easy to follow as possible, I have started a new account using my personal email address on MailerLite’s free plan. This is only a test account that I have used to walk you through the exact process of getting started with MailerLite from scratch, and I’ll be closing it after the post is ready. 

My goal was to come up with a step-by-step guide and be able to recreate exactly what you’ll find as you follow along. I hope that makes it simpler for you. Let’s get started!

This post contains affiliate links, and I may earn a small commission (at no cost to you) if you make a purchase after clicking one of those. Read my full disclosure.

Why use MailerLite for your blog?

After playing with a few different email service providers, I believe that MailerLite is one of the best options for bloggers.

You can’t spend hours trying to figure out how things work on a bunch of platforms and end up with one that is difficult to use. You need to choose an easy tool that works for you so that you can stay focused on what matters most in your business.

To me, MailerLite is the most beginner-friendly and intuitive email marketing tool on the market. It can help you turn your blog into a profitable online business quickly! Not only that, but it offers the most important email marketing features and the best value for money.

Key benefits of MailerLite

MailerLite’s “forever free plan” 

MailerLite is free to use up until your list grows to over 1000 subscribers. That’s what makes it so attractive to new bloggers.

However, don’t assume that it won’t suit your needs as your business grows. 

MailerLite’s plans include everything you need for every step of the journey. And, as one of the most established email marketing companies, it integrates with most of the tools you may consider using in the future.

Essentially, it gives you all the perks as you start out, but it will continue to grow with you and meet your every need as you scale!

$20 credit to your MailerLite account

Although you’re starting for free (and no credit card is required), you can secure a $20 MailerLite credit and keep it on your account for when it’s time to upgrade. 

If you haven’t created an account yet, you go ahead and create one with my referral link below to receive this bonus that MailerLite is offering to my readers.

Click here to signup for MailerLite and get 20 dollars for free!

MailerLite is a solid solution with a generous free plan

MailerLite has been in business for a very long time. It is a solid email marketing solution, trusted by plenty of full-time bloggers and successful business owners.

While it’s beginner-friendly, I wouldn’t say it’s made for beginners. Their plans scale to match your needs, every step of the way.

Also, their free plan includes functionality that their competitors charge for, such as:

• Up to 10 landing pages on the free plan and unlimited after you upgrade
• Unlimited forms and pop-ups
• Subscriber management, segmentation and groups (or tags)
• Automated campaigns and sequences

Who’s this MailerLite guide for?

This tutorial is specifically tailored for new bloggers, content creators, and digital business owners getting started with email marketing.

I’ll show you how to set up your MailerLite account from scratch and make the most of the premium features they include in the 30-day trial period, by creating layouts that you can reuse in the future.

How to sign up to MailerLite

Getting started with a free MailerLite account 

To begin the sign-up process, head over to MailerLite and create your new account. 

Click here to claim a free 20-dollar credit on my invitation!

You’ll only need to enter your business or blog’s name, your own name, and your email address, and choose a password. Then you’ll get straight to your new MailerLite Dashboard.

No credit card is needed at this point, and you’ll be using the platform for free until you reach 1000 subscribers!

MailerLite Approval: here’s what you need to know

Most bloggers know that MailerLite offers a free plan. What many don’t know, however, is that all new accounts must undergo an approval process.

Having your website ready to showcase can be beneficial, as MailerLite’s team will quickly understand your business. 

While not having everything I’ll detail next may not be why your MailerLite’s account isn’t approved, these tips can help make the process easier and faster. 

Also, by following the steps below, you’ll be setting your website up for success and increasing your chances of approval for any other services and partnerships in the future.

Set up your website before verifying your account with MailerLite

I recommend that your blog, website, or any platform you’ve chosen is ready before getting started since this will be beneficial to your MailerLite approval.

I once rushed into signing up with them for a website I had years ago, and I got it all wrong! That account wasn’t approved at first because my website wasn’t ready. Simple as that.

I should have waited until I had my platform in order. In all honesty, I still have no idea why I was so tempted to get started with email marketing!

I guess I decided to do that first because I was lazy. I had so many things to do (as we all do when we first start a blog), and I prioritized the easy tasks.

The result? My account wasn’t approved. Re-applying for verification went right back to the bottom of my to-do list… What a waste of time!

So to avoid going through the same, you can either request confirmation without a website (if you’ll be delivering content in a different way) – in which case you’ll simply provide additional information about your intended use of the platform – or prepare your website before submitting your request.

Note: If you don’t have a website, you can still register with MailerLite. Skip this section and continue with the next.

Since most of my readers are bloggers, I have listed a few important things you can do to get your website ready, before you move onto other steps.

1. Easy navigation

UX matters so much these days! Making it easy for users to navigate your blog and understand the relationship between pages is important to both your future readers and any third parties you may want to have some kind of relationship with.

Yes, this includes MailerLite too! While it may not be a dealbreaker, I recommend that you organize those header menus and footer links and make sure that all the essential pages are at easy reach.

2. Website Pages

Have your website’s main pages ready: home, blog archive, about, and contact.

By “ready” I just mean linked to your website’s main navigation areas, and fully written (using real words, not lorem ipsum).

This will help MailerLite’s team understand the types of content you’ll be sharing with your followers, and will support the answers you provide on their registration form.

3. Legal Setup

Link your legal pages to the website’s footer so that they appear in all pages, and set up a cookie banner (if that’s applicable to you).

If your website or blog isn’t compliant with the law, chances are that most companies won’t want to work with you.

Before signing up for MailerLite, I recommend that you get your legal setup in order!

First, take this free training to understand what’s needed and how it all works.

Then, get some templates to create all of your legal documents quickly. Many bloggers use templates, and I’ve done the same.

4. Quality Content

Having a few blog posts already published can also help MailerLite’s team understand the type of content you produce.

One of their requirements is that you explain the type of content you plan to send to your audience. Your existing work will strengthen your answer and speak for itself.

Verify your Account with MailerLite

Once you’ve tackled your blog’s design and setup, you’re ready to verify your MailerLite account.

After completing the signup process, you should have received an email in your inbox. This is quick and easy! Simply click the “Verify email address” button.

Complete your Profile and Confirm your Account

From MailerLite’s Dashboard, click “Complete profile” to finalize the setup of your account.

MailerLite will ask for some more information about your business and how you intend to use their tools.

You must confirm your account to start sending email campaigns and embed forms on your website. To do so, click “complete” and follow the instructions to continue.

As you go through this process, I recommend that you fill out all the boxes and give them as much information as you can.

You can still start an email list if you don’t have a website. Simply choose “other” under the “Personal website” section and fill out the details with a description of your business and the URLs to any social media accounts you have. 

In this case, your answers will be manually reviewed rather than run through MailerLite’s algorithms, so make sure to be as detailed as you can.

How to use MailerLite: Essential Features

When you’re done with the above, your account will be on a free trial of MailerLite’s premium plan for 30 days. This means that for one month, you’ll actually see more options and get access to more tools than the ones included in the free plan. 

Please keep in mind that the tutorial below is for the free account. I assume that’s what most of my readers will choose to begin with, so I won’t be considering the premium capabilities of MailerLite at this time.

MailerLite Dashboard

The dashboard is where you’ll find an overview of your performance and details about your email subscribers, campaigns, automations, forms, and sites.

On the left-hand side of the screen, you have quick access buttons to navigate to each of these areas.

You can create campaigns, design forms, build landing pages (sites), email automation sequences, and templates.

You’ll also be able to edit your account’s settings, connect MailerLite with other tools and apps from the integrations panel, and manage your files.

The templates tab, however, won’t be of use for as long as you are on MailerLite’s free plan, since ready-to-use templates are only accessible to paid users.

Account Settings

I recommend that you start by reviewing and editing your MailerLite account’s settings from the “Account Settings” tab.

• You can review and change any of the information you’ve initially provided;
• Change your sender details;
• Display the recipient’s name in the “To” field of the emails you send out;
• Upload your logo so that it will be used by default when you get into the builder;
• Add your social links.

Then, head to “domains”.

Here’s a helpful video I’ve followed myself, that demonstrates what you need to do to authenticate your own domain name and improve email deliverability:

After verifying and authenticating your custom domain, you can also set up domain alignment, which will add a level of trust to your domain and make your campaigns less likely to end up in your subscribers’ spam folders.

And last, tracking options: if you use Google Analytics, you can grab an UTM code from “Link Tracking”. This is a piece of code that you can add to the end of URLs to track the performance of your content inside each campaign.

Segments and Groups

Segmenting your audience is an essential part of a well-structured and results-driven email marketing strategy. 

With MailerLite you can create “groups” and “segments” – which are the equivalent to “tags” and “segments” in other platforms like ConvertKit.

These are all different ways of organizing your subscribers so that you can send targeted email campaigns to those who will benefit from them most.

Another reason to segment your audience is that you may want to send out certain emails that wouldn’t make sense for some of your subscribers to receive. 

For example, if subscriber A has purchased a product but subscriber B hasn’t, you won’t want subscriber A to receive your promotional emails about that product in the future. So you need to separate subscribers A and B to control who’s receiving your sales pitch or not.

The main difference between a “group” and a “segment” is that segments must follow certain rules. You will choose those rules when you create a segment, and then MailerLite automates the entire process for you based on each subscriber’s behavior.

For example:

• If you want to know which subscribers have received your free e-book, you’ll create a “group” that is connected to the e-book’s subscription form.
• But if you wanted to send a follow-up email about a certain topic only to the subscribers who have read your last newsletter, then you’d create a “segment” with the rule “Campaigns” > “Was opened”.

In summary, segments are used to send out campaigns (which are one-off, regular email newsletters) to certain subscribers. You will also use segments when you want certain things to happen automatically based on a subscriber’s behavior (or, in other words, their actions).

Subscriber groups are used to connect subscribers to a specific form on your website and for automated email sequences. You can, however, filter subscribers by group when sending one-off campaigns as well.

To create your first MailerLite group, click on “Subscribers” from the left panel, then “Groups” and then click the green button that reads “Create Group”. All you have to do for now is give it a name and click on “Create”.

You can create an unlimited number of groups, so feel free to “tag” your subscribers as you please!

Learn more about the difference between groups and segments on this page. 

Campaigns

Email campaigns are the most basic form of email marketing – and also the most powerful! 

In fact, nurturing an email list is all about sending out regular and engaging campaigns.

In simple terms, a campaign is a single email that you send out to your existing mailing list.

It’s not automated nor connected to a form – although, since you’ve segmented your audience, you can choose which subscribers each campaign is sent out to.

An email campaign can be a regular text-only email, a list of your latest blog posts, or an elaborate collection of offers presented in a complex design.

How do you save email layouts as templates in MailerLite?

As mentioned earlier in this tutorial, MailerLite’s free plan doesn’t give you access to templates. That includes your own!

However, there are a couple of workarounds to consider if you want to set up a library of designs to use for all of your campaigns and automations in the future.

Having a branded template has several benefits. For me, these are the main reasons why I always recommend creating one (or a few) pre-set designs:

Branding: If you use the same template consistently, your audience will recognize your emails every time and become familiar with your visuals. This can establish trust and increase brand awareness.

Quick setup: Once you create an email that you are happy with, you can use it as a base and never have to worry about customization again. This will speed up your workflow every time you want to email your subscribers.

Since you have just created a new MailerLite account, you have two options for getting started with templates:

Option 1: Create and save your templates during the first month

As we’ve seen, templates are only available on paid plans. This includes MailerLite’s designs as well as your own.

If you’re on a free account, you won’t have access to ready-to-use templates nor the ability to save the layouts you create.

However, during the first month after registration, you will be placed on a trial for all of MailerLite’s premium features. This means you will have access to templates for 30 days. 

I would strongly encourage you to make use of that special time and create one (or a few) layouts that you like.

Even if you don’t have any subscribers yet, those designs will be saved to your account, and you can use them forever. 

To do that, just start a regular campaign and plan the email structure as needed.

Before you finish, look at the mobile view to see how your newsletter design will display on smaller devices. And when you’re done, click the “Actions” button at the top and then “Save as template”.

Those layouts will still be there, even after the trial period ends, and you can use them as a starting point for your campaigns, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

Just be mindful that once the trial has ended, and from then onwards until you become a paid user, you won’t be able to save any new designs as templates or edit the templates that you’ve created during the trial.

Option 2: Create and save reusable blocks

Alternatively, you can create and save reusable blocks. This feature is accessible to all users and can be an excellent workaround.

Templates accelerate your process since you can set up the entire structure of your emails once and import them to any future campaign with a single click. 

Blocks, on the other hand, are bits and pieces that you put together for each email as you please. 

These content blocks are created, saved, and reused directly from inside MailerLite’s drag-and-drop editor.

If your premium trial has ended, and you need to save an email layout this way, all you have to do is save each block individually. You can give each block a name for easy access and find all of your saved blocks inside the email editor.

Check out the screenshot below, where I have highlighted where you can find your saved blocks, as well as the button you need to click when you want to save a new section to your blocks’ library.

Whether you use email layouts or saved blocks, the result is essentially the same.

But if you go with the blocks option, you must remember to add each of the individual sections you need whenever you start a new campaign from scratch. 

While it takes a few more clicks, it’s still great, and it allows you to mix and match blocks for different purposes. Also, this is a capability you will always have, even on the free plan.

To save your blocks from inside the drag and drop editor, click the “Template” button on the block’s toolbar and then give it a name to “Save block template”.

Note: You can either create a few layouts now so you have them ready to go, or leave this step for later, once we create your first sequence together!

Forms and Automations

MailerLite allows you to design multiple sign-up forms and create unique email sequences for each form. These make it super easy to welcome new subscribers into your world and deliver opt-in freebies on autopilot.

For my offers, for example, I have either created a simple welcome email or entire automations that new subscribers start receiving from the moment they sign up.

Some of my lead magnets are connected to a single email, where the main purpose is delivering the file. This is the case of my WordPress Website Maintenance Checklist, for example.

And, for others, I have set up more robust email automations that trigger a number of emails – that’s the case for my Blogging Checklist. 

The possibility of tagging subscribers based on the form they sign up for allows you to create highly targeted campaigns that appeal to the right people at the right time.

How do you create a form in MailerLite?

To the right of your MailerLite dashboard, you’ll find the “Forms” tab. That’s where you’ll begin.

As a free user, you’ll have access to pop-ups and embedded forms. These are perfectly enough!

I personally prefer embedded forms for my website. Select the tab you want to get started with and click on the green “Create form” button. Give it a name and continue to choose its group.

You can either choose to add all subscribers to a general master group or create several groups for different users. I recommend tagging your audience and creating a new group for each form you’ll embed on your website so that you know exactly what each subscriber is most interested in.

If you didn’t create a group in the previous step, you can “Add new group” now. Assign it to the form and click “Continue” to get into the form editor.

Using MailerLite’s simple builder, you can:

• edit your form’s contents (click over each of the elements on the form to access the editing panel for each field),
• add an image (under “Design” on the right panel, choose your form’s layout. You can add images to the form’s background or select the “Card” layout to include a featured image),
• tweak the colors to match your brand (explore the “Design” once again to change the color of each one of your forms’ elements),
• access settings (click the “Settings” tab, also from the panel on the right, to manage marketing permissions fields, add a link to your Privacy Policy, enable reCAPTCHA, and more).

Click here to follow MailerLite’s guide on how to create embedded forms.

Later, I’ll show you how to embed those on your WordPress website.

How do you create automations in MailerLite?

Once your first form is ready, click on “Done editing” and head over to the “Automation” tab next to “Overview” and “Analytics”. From here, you can create an automation workflow that is instantly connected to the form we’ve just created.

An automation is a series of emails automatically sent to your new subscribers once they have filled in that specific form.

Essentially, when you set up an automated email sequence, you’ll create several emails that your new subscribers will receive in the exact order and intervals you’ve chosen.

MailerLite makes it easy for you to define when each email will be delivered and edit each email individually.

And, again, because learning from the source is often best, here’s a thorough tutorial by MailerLite.

Automations (or workflows) are the beginning of a new subscriber’s journey, and you can set up different triggers that define which actions will fire the start of a new sequence:

• the subscriber joins a group (see “Segments and Groups” above);
• the subscriber completes a form;
• the subscriber clicks a link in any campaign or in another automation that you have previously sent;
• the subscriber updates a field within their subscription;
• every year on a specific date (great for birthdays, anniversaries, etc.);
• on an exact match date (such as the start of a free trial, subscription, etc.).

MailerLite to WordPress Integration 

Congratulations!

So far, you should have:

• set up a free account with and secured a $20 MailerLite credit
• designed a layout for your future newsletters from the “Campaigns” tab
• created your first subscriber group
• created a form to embed on your website
• automated the welcome sequence that your first subscribers will receive

Now, let’s integrate your MailerLite forms into your WordPress blog!

MailerLite makes it super easy to embed your opt-in forms on your blog, thanks to their official WordPress plugin!

When I first created an account with MailerLite years ago, I wasn’t aware of the plugin (maybe it didn’t even exist then!)… And I am so happy to have found it a few years later!

All that is left to do is search for the MailerLite plugin from the WordPress library and put it to work. If you are logged in to your website’s dashboard, let’s do it together, shall we?

Navigate to the plugins tab and click “Add new plugin”.

Type “MailerLite” in the search box and look for a plugin called “MailerLite – Signup forms (official)”. Then click “Install” and “Activate”.

The first thing you’ll need is your MailerLite API key. Don’t worry, that’s easy too!

Open your new MailerLite account in a separate tab and look for “Integrations” on the left-hand sidebar.

You’ll see that the first section at the top is called “MailerLite API”. Click “Use” and, in the next step, click the “Generate new token” button. 

I recommend that you save this data somewhere on your computer because once you close that popup, you’ll not be able to open it again.

If that happens, simply delete the token you’ve just created and start again. You only have to make sure that you update your plugin too by swapping the previously generated token with the new one.

Now, with your token copied to the clipboard, head back to WordPress and click to open MailerLite’s settings. That’s probably going to be one of the last plugins listed on your WordPress dashboard, towards the bottom of the screen.

Besides activating the API key, I’d also enable pop-up forms and double opt-in if you need them.

Once you have created new forms or popups, you’ll be given options to connect those to your WordPress website. 

Look for your newly created form inside MailerLite’s plugin by clicking “Sign up forms” and then “Add new”.

In the next step, choose “Forms created in MailerLite” and save the one you have just created, which will be listed in a dropdown menu.

To insert one of your saved forms on a new post or page, you’ll search for MailerLite’s block on Gutenberg, which is listed next to any of the other blocks you are already using.

It works the same as an image block or another. Just click the plus button inside the editor and search for MailerLite, as shown in the screenshot below.

The benefit of using MailerLite’s plugin instead of the code they provide is that all of your embedded forms will be automatically updated within your website any time you modify them from MailerLite’s interface.

That’s why I now prefer using the plugin instead of the code snippets provided for each form.

Years ago, whenever I did as much as change a word within a form, I’d need to find all the posts where the form was displayed and replace its code for each. Thankfully, this method is a lot faster and more practical too!

How to use MailerLite: Step-by-Step Instructions

At this point, you should have a good understanding of how to get started with MailerLite and how it works! Here’s what we have covered:

• How to start a new account on MailerLite for free and claim a $20 credit upon signing up;
• MailerLite’s most important features and functionality;
• MailerLite’s simple plugin for WordPress and how it helps you place forms anywhere on your blog.

With that settled, all you may need is a clear step-by-step process that you can follow to ensure that you do it all in the right order. So here are the exact steps I take for each new freebie or form I want to implement:

1. Open the MailerLite app, go to “Forms” and “create a form”.

2. Give that form a name (that’s internal, so choose something you will recognize later).

3. Create the “group” new subscribers will be added to when they complete the form.

4. Design your new embedded form (or a pop-up if you prefer).
I haven’t personally embedded many pop-ups on my website because I am not a fan of those as a user. However, some email marketing professionals recommend using them as they are efficient at grabbing users’ attention.
If you use popups, you may want to test their effectiveness for a while. Prioritize exit intent behaviors and avoid firing multiple popups on the same page.
Always keep UX in mind!

5. Create an automation to send out a welcome email (or a sequence of emails with several steps) whenever new people join your subscriber list using that specific form.
Remember, these emails will be delivered to any new subscribers at the times that you specify.
You can edit them later, but, of course, only new subscribers will see your revised emails.

6. Once you’re done with an automation, and have designed and saved each of the emails you wanted to include in that sequence, remember to activate it so it’s actually sent out.

7. Now, head onto your WordPress website.
Look for your newly created form inside MailerLite’s plugin by clicking “Sign up forms” > “Add new”.
Then click “Forms created in MailerLite” and save the one you just created. It will be listed as an option in the dropdown.
This will essentially make it “active” on your site so that you can grab it when you use MailerLite’s Gutenberg block.

8. Embed the form on your posts and pages by clicking the green MailerLite icon that has been added to Gutenberg’s blocks after the plugin was installed.
Simply click the “+” button inside Gutenberg’s editor (as you would do to add any other type of block) and search for MailerLite.

9. Once the MailerLite block has been added to your post or page, you need to choose the form you want to appear for each post or page.
Once again, there will be a drop-down menu with all of your forms. Pick the one you need and click “Select”.

10. You’re done! Preview the page to see how the form looks on your website’s front end and check whether you need to add spacing, for example.

This is all I do to add forms to my website and collect subscriptions on autopilot.

Of course, besides the automated email sequence you have set up for each form, the ideal scenario is that you get into the habit of actually emailing your list regularly.

For that, you can start a new campaign on MailerLite’s app itself. It’s unrelated to your website.

However, I do want to remind you that, since you’ve put your subscribers into groups by creating new groups for each form that you design, you can now take advantage of that.

As mentioned above in this post, email campaigns can be sent to your entire audience or to a portion of your list based on the segment or group they have been subscribed to.

Over to you!

You’re now ready to collect emails and start building your list.

This is a major milestone for many bloggers, so I appreciate you for letting me be a part of your journey.

Now, pat yourself on the back and grab a coffee or get out for a bit; you’ve earned it!

And if you have any questions that I can help answer, drop them in the comments below.

As always, I welcome your feedback too. Has this been easier than you expected?

Related post: How to Create a Freebie for Your Blog / 74 Proven Freebie Ideas

Useful Resources: Learn more about MailerLite

I hope this post has given you a good overview of how you can easily get started with MailerLite!

However, if you need more help or would like to follow a video tutorial instead, my blogging friend Lisa has put together an affordable and easy-to-follow MailerLite course for new bloggers. 

It will take you from the basics of email marketing to creating and delivering your first lead magnet with MailerLite.

Click here to see what’s included!

If you’re short on ideas and need to produce content fast, download this free newsletter planner that Kate has created for us. It will help you get started!