Adding a newsletter form to your blog allows your frequent visitors to have easier access to new updates from your blog. And as you let your visitors subscribe to your updates, you may also want to keep track of the lead-ins that your blog acquires, to determine if your blog is on the right growth path or not.
There are several ways on how your you can receive lead notifications for your blog using
ContactUs.com, before you configure where to deliver your form submissions, you need to create a form and embed it in blogger,
for instructions on embedding an e-mail signup form, click here,
for instructions on embedding a contact form in blogger, read this.
Enabling Lead-in Notifications To Your Newsletter Form
- The first thing you'll need to do, is to log in to your ContactUs.com account to access
- Once you're in “Form Settings”, select your e-mail signup form, then click on “Configure Form”. Doing this will bring up a pop-up menu, Once you're in the menu, select “Delivery Options”.
After clicking “Delivery Options”, select “3rd Party Integrations”. This will bring up a menu wherein you can select some of the most popular third-party e-mail marketing applications available. Of course, you'll need to have the appropriate account from each of these services to be able to use it.
NOTE: For Constant Contact Users, DO NOT use the v1 API anymore. Instead, use the v2 API.
- In order to connect your ContactUs.com account to your third-party e-mail marketing account, simply click the appropriate account to start receiving your leads from there. The requirements for this varies with each service, but usually, you'll need to input an API Key, or List Key, an Authorization Token, a Unique List ID, and so on. These credentials can usually be found on the “Settings” option or their equivalent on your e-mail marketing account. Once you have access to these credentials, simply copy-paste them in the required fields. Connecting your ContactUs.com account to your e-mail marketing account enables your signup form to send any lead-in notifications via e-mail.
- You may also want to enable “Double Opt-in” during the integration process. Double Opt-in requires anyone subscribing to your newsletter to not only fill out the required fields when they decide to subscribe, but they're also required to confirm their subscription by answering the appropriate confirmation e-mail automatically which is automatically generated by the system after the user finishes registering their details to the subscription.
Types Of Delivery Options
There are different types of delivery options that the blog owner can choose when receiving lead-in notifications. It's highly recommended to set-up at least one delivery setting for your lead-ins, though multiple options are permitted.
- E-mail – E-mail is the most used delivery option for lead-in notifications, and thus, it's selected as the default. It also enjoys the most support out of any delivery method available, evidenced by it's wide variety of settings tailored to the user, and also offers the most detailed data about your lead-ins, which is very useful for anyone who prefers the full details of all the lead-ins that your blog recieves.
- SMS – This option is preferable for blog owners who's always on the go, and thus unable to check their realtime lead-ins on the internet regularly. However, as of now, it isn't fully supported yet, plus the data that it gives to the blog owner only shows the relevant numbers, and not the full detail.
- Phone – Similar to SMS, this option's not fully supported as of yet, though it also delivers realtime lead-in data for anyone who doesn't regularly access the internet. It's also known to show more detailed data than SMS, though e-mail still gives the most amount of detail.
For power users, receiving lead notifications via e-mail gives the most amount of relevant data, and offers the most support out of any other methods, so this option is highly recommended. SMS and phone delivery should only be enabled when the user wants to get to know their leads in realtime, even when they're on the go. While few support this method of delivery, progress is still underway to make it more competitive with e-mail.
While having just one delivery option enabled is enough, multiple avenues of delivery is highly recommended, in order to keep yourself informed of all your lead-ins whenever you need them.
