Introduction
Want to grow your audience or collect leads from your website? One of the easiest ways to get started is by adding an email signup form—and Mailchimp makes it beginner-friendly and free.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:
- Create an email list in Mailchimp
- Design a simple signup form
- Embed it into your website using HTML
Perfect for developers, creators, and small business owners who want to build an email list without coding a full backend.
🛠️ What You’ll Need
- A Mailchimp account (free to start)
- A basic website (or just a test HTML file)
- A few minutes to set up and customize
✍️ Step 1: Create a Mailchimp Audience (List)
- Log into your Mailchimp account: mailchimp.com
- Go to Audience > Audience dashboard
- If you don't have one, Mailchimp will prompt you to create a new audience
- Fill in the audience name, from name, and email address
- Save your audience
This is where your subscribers will be stored.
🧰 Step 2: Generate a Signup Form
- Go to Audience > Signup forms
- Choose Embedded forms
- Select the "Classic" style (or any style you like)
- Customize the title, labels, and button
- Copy the HTML code Mailchimp gives you
You’ll see something like:
<!-- Begin Mailchimp Signup Form -->
<form action="https://example.usX.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=xyz&id=abc" method="post" target="_blank">
<input type="email" name="EMAIL" placeholder="Enter your email" required>
<input type="submit" value="Subscribe">
</form>
<!-- End Mailchimp Signup Form -->
✅ Keep your
actionURL intact. It includes your audience ID and account prefix.
💻 Step 3: Add the Form to Your Website
Paste the form code into your website’s HTML wherever you want it to appear. For example:
<!-- index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Subscribe to Our Newsletter</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Join Our Email List</h2>
<form action="https://example.usX.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=xyz&id=abc" method="post" target="_blank">
<input type="email" name="EMAIL" placeholder="Enter your email" required>
<input type="submit" value="Subscribe">
</form>
</body>
</html>
Open this in your browser to see your working form.
🎨 Step 4: Style the Form (Optional)
Customize the form with CSS to make it fit your brand.
form {
max-width: 400px;
margin: 20px auto;
}
input[type="email"] {
padding: 10px;
width: 100%;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
input[type="submit"] {
background: #ff6b6b;
color: white;
border: none;
padding: 10px;
width: 100%;
cursor: pointer;
}
✅ Step 5: Test the Form
- Open your HTML file in the browser
- Enter an email and click Subscribe
- Check your Mailchimp audience to see if the address appears
🧪 Pro tip: Use a secondary email to test the signup process before going live.
🔒 Bonus: Add GDPR Consent (Optional but Recommended)
Mailchimp provides form versions with GDPR checkboxes and privacy consent text.
- Go to Audience > Signup forms > Form builder
- Add GDPR fields under Settings > GDPR fields
- Use this if you have visitors from the EU
💡 Best Practices
- Give your users a reason to subscribe (“Get tips, tools, and tutorials!”)
- Send a welcome email to new subscribers
- Don’t spam! Stick to value-based, permission-based emails
- Place forms in high-visibility areas (homepage, footer, blog sidebar)
🌐 SEO & Marketing Tie-In
A signup form helps convert website traffic into subscribers, which is crucial for email marketing, retargeting, and relationship-building. Growing your list = building your audience = long-term traffic + revenue.
🎯 Conclusion
You just created a working Mailchimp signup form for your website 🎉
It’s a simple but powerful way to build a connection with your visitors—and it takes less than 30 minutes to set up.
Next? Try automating welcome emails, segmenting your list, or embedding forms in blog posts and landing pages.
👉 For more beginner-friendly marketing tips, check out our Digital Marketing guides.
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