How to Create a game-changing Custom Form for Mailchimp

More than 12 million users have used Mailchimp for their email marketing campaigns. But no campaign can ever turn out successful without a proper mailing list. And that’s when a custom form can become the turning point for capturing quality leads.

No wonder why Mailchimp is so popular. It enables anyone or any business to grow their audience by providing easy and affordable access to key marketing tools.

Considering that nowadays a customer database is the most valuable asset of a company (think tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon), then an affordable service that allows you to grow one is indispensable.

Mailchimp is one of the many options of form integrations available on FormBuilder through Zapier. The result is a seamless integration that combines powerful automated custom forms into a savvy email marketing campaign.

Maybe you haven’t used Mailchimp yet. But most certainly you have received an email message with a signup request powered by Mailchimp after making any purchase online.

And you must have noticed how those types of messages have evolved over the years. Instead of pushy, loud, and generic emails, we now receive personalized and informative messages fostering customer relationships. Almost too irresistible to not take a peek.

Yep. That’s exactly the goal of this article. To guide you on creating a game-changing custom form that perfectly blends in and enhances your Mailchimp marketing initiative.

What is Mailchimp?

For those avid Mailchimp users, no introduction is needed. But if you’re not familiar with it, there’s a reason why this software company grew so much over the last two decades and why it is part of FormBuilder's integrations.

Mailchimp initially started out as a simple email marketing service, but it has since become a full-blown all-in-one integrated marketing platform for small businesses.

You can start your business online from zero, develop a website with built-in marketing tools, collect audience data, manage marketing channels, and overview insights all from the Mailchimp platform.

From home-based businesses, personal instructors, e-commerce shops to big companies like New Belgium Brewery, Vimeo e TED, Mailchimp empowers any kind of business to build their brand.

The formula of offering its users the smart marketing technology, resources, award-winning support, and inspiring content, as stated by Mailchimp, help them to reach and engage their audience.

And helping other businesses to grow has definitely paid off for Mailchimp. With $700 million in annual revenue reported in 2019, Mailchimp is the poster child for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and startups dreaming to make it big.

How big is Mailchimp?

Here are some mind-blowing Mailchimp facts:

• 12 million customers
• 60.51% of market share
• 1 BILLION emails sent daily
• Users in 200 countries
• 1.25 million e-commerce orders daily

With the founder’s mission to “empower the underdog”, Mailchimp offers the strategic resources for users to build a successful customer journey for their businesses.

Social posting digital ads, marketing CRM tools, landing pages, email templates, postcards, automated functionalities, etc., are all available for Mailchimp users.

But none of it is useful without customer contact. Ahem, that’s a cue to FormBuilder to come in and tackle the problem with a fully responsive, automated, custom form.

Why add a custom form on Mailchimp?

I’m sure if you’re just starting your own business - congrats and best of luck by the way - you’re excited to wow your prospects. You’re eager to introduce your brand as appealing as possible and Mailchimp easily gets you covered.

But do not overlook the backbone of the entire marketing campaign: the signup form.

Just slapping a generic fillable form on your landing page is like having a Ferrari being pulled by a horse wagon. It might get you somewhere, but definitely not up to its full potential.

Mailchimp offers a simple form builder from their audience dashboard to get you quickly started collecting customer contacts as part of their resources package, which is fine to just get a list of email addresses.

Since the purpose of Mailchimp Form Builder is to just get a signup form done so your audience can subscribe to a mailing list, the form options are limited.

You can edit background color, font, and graphics and set up subscribe and unsubscribe fields. But if you need to update or edit any field, later on, you will lose any data gathered from that specific field.

But if the Mailchimp Form Builder doesn’t suit your needs or you want to level up your form game, then FormBuilder can take you beyond.

5 Features For Creating a Game-Changing Custom Form

So, your email marketing campaign is fully developed with each step of the customer journey well designed and you are ready to launch it on Mailchimp.

There’s no reason why your contact form or signup form can’t be just as great, automated, and customized. Better yet, packed with smart features and functionalities.

Do not settle for just collecting email addresses with a generic form

A custom form can bring you more and better results. It can be just as strategic as your product offer or unique as your website content on Mailchimp.

Check out these five features and functionalities offered by FormBuilder that you can unlock now for a total custom form makeover:

1. Custom Design & Branding

If we’re talking about custom forms, then design and branding must be the top priority. FormBuilder understand that highly appealing and professional-looking custom forms can greatly impact your email marketing campaign on Mailchimp.

Forget limited customization or spammy-looking forms. FormBuilder enables you to fully customize every element of your form to make it your own.

You can start from scratch or from one of our templates selection and then edit any color, field, font, and background. Resize and reposition any field. Add images, videos, and maps for a dynamic custom form.

You can create a theme that matches your Mailchimp email design, making the final result stand out from the inbox of your audience.

You can even incorporate your own brand identity to your FormBuilder custom form, increasing brand awareness and trustworthiness. Simply add your business color scheme, logo, and image to distinguish your brand in your custom form.

2. Custom Domain

Sometimes a tiny detail can make a huge difference, especially if you’re trying to impress people. Often overlooked, the address of your form will not only make your custom form easily identifiable, but it makes you look like a pro.

Most form builders give your form a generic address on their own domain. FormBuilder's Pro plan lets you serve your form from a custom domain, so the link in your Mailchimp campaign is on your own brand's address, with the FormBuilder badge removed.

So why share your form’s URL in your Mailchimp email campaign looking like someone else's website when you can make it your own?

Custom forms by FormBuilder will carry your brand even in its URL address to strengthen your message or offer.

3. Thank-you Page & Notifications

A customer journey is all about guiding your audience down a purchase path. Mailchimp truly delivers the right marketing automation tools to build one. However, clear and engaging communication is key in every step.

Therefore, communication settings during the signup form step are crucial. A custom form must be efficient at letting your audience, your team, and yourself know all about the process.

FormBuilder allows you to set up a custom thank-you page after each submission, to thank your audience for filling out your custom form. You can even let them know of the next steps or redirect them to another page for further information. You can also send each new subscriber an automatic confirmation email with a custom subject and message, so they know their signup went through.

As to you or your team, you can set up email notifications to be sent after each submission, so you’re always in the loop. Stay ahead by being notified of a new order or request, or act quickly when notified of a customer issue.

4. Form Analytics

Since we’re talking about results, FormBuilder not only collects submitted forms, but it shows you how many people never finish as well.

An unfinished form might not necessarily mean a lost prospect. When you create a custom form with FormBuilder, form analytics show you how many people viewed the form, how many started it, and how many completed it, so you can inquire about it further.

This tells you your abandonment rate, so you can improve your form in order to reduce it. A common fix is to make the form a multi-page form with the email address on the first page.

Leave no prospect behind. Even if you’re left only with their email address, that’s all you need to nurture them back to your Mailchimp campaign.

5. Integrations

If combining the expertise from FormBuilder and Mailchimp produces a powerful email marketing campaign with a robust custom form, imagine how further can you go when you keep connecting it to other specialized platforms?

Need alternative submissions data storage? Send your contact list automatically to your Google Sheets account, or to Dropbox through Zapier.

Managing e-commerce? Your custom form can be embedded on your Shopify, BigCommerce or WooCommerce store, and connected to it through Zapier.

Do you want to include a payment method directly on your custom form so no time is wasted for the closing of a sale? FormBuilder offers a seamless connection with Stripe, so you can set up a versatile payment field straight from the builder toolbox.

How about managing all your sales orders? No problem, FormBuilder can connect your custom form to Pipedrive, the sales pipeline management.

A true custom form gives you the flexibility and freedom to combine, integrate, and connect your customer database to any platform you prefer. Spare no resources to make your Mailchimp email marketing campaign as successful as it can be.

How to create a custom form for Mailchimp

You can build your custom form with FormBuilder first and then incorporate it into your Mailchimp email marketing campaign afterward. Or plan your Mailchimp campaign first and then add a FormBuilder custom form.

Pro tip: You can embed a Choice Field in your Email campaigns to increase submission rates.

Either way, rest assured that any update made to your custom form on FormBuilder will be reflected seamlessly in your Mailchimp campaign. Also, any data collected previously from the update is safely kept.

The connection runs through Zapier, and our Mailchimp integration page has the details. You’ll see that the entire process takes place in three steps:

Step 1 – Create your Custom Form

Log in to FormBuilder. Create a new form from scratch, from a template, or by describing it to the AI form generator.

You can also select an existing form from your dashboard to have it connected to Mailchimp.

Just go ahead and customize your form as needed. Make sure you boost it by enabling our five game-changing features, as previously described.

Once you’re done designing your custom form, you can preview it for responsiveness on any device.

Step 2 – Connect to Mailchimp

Now it’s time to connect the best of both worlds. In Zapier, create a new Zap with FormBuilder as the trigger ("New Response") and pick the form you just built. Then choose Mailchimp as the action ("Add/Update Subscriber").

Log in to your Mailchimp account when Zapier asks (or follow the steps to create one) and allow the connection. Now your FormBuilder custom form and Mailchimp email marketing campaign are connected.

Step 3 – Define Settings

The last step is to map the fields. This step will ensure that all data submitted on your customized form will accurately fill in a customer account or profile on your final customer contact list. Match your form's email field to Mailchimp's Subscriber Email, and name fields to First Name and Last Name.

Choose the Audience to determine which list new contacts join. You can also select tags or a segment to be included in the campaign, if applicable.

Don’t forget to test the Zap and turn it on. You can also edit it anytime.

That’s it! You have now added a powerful custom form in your Mailchimp email marketing campaign in order to collect quality leads instead of loose email addresses.

Launching a successful Mailchimp email marketing campaign can be enhanced by custom forms by FormBuilder as your signup form. Explore all the potential of our features and functionalities. Get more and better leads to expand your mailing list.