Whatever your offer, you will need to create a page which will ‘capture’ your prospects attention & entice them to supply their email address in return for your give-away. This might be a link from social media which goes straight to your offer (landing page) or it may be attached to an article you have read which leads into your offer.

When you are first starting to build your list of prospects you may not have the budget to commit to lead generation software such as Leadpages which starts at over  • $100USD per quarter, unbounce  which starts at • $49USD per month or optin monster starting at  • $49USD per year.

But if you have a wordpress site & you are a member of  elegant themes, you will, by default, have access to the BLOOM Plugin.

how to use bloom

So let’s have a look at how we use Bloom to make an opt-in. Once you’ve made your ♥ purchased & set up your Elegant Themes account, log-in & click on the themes link at the top left of the main content window. The second link down is ♥ Bloom. You have 3 options – the download, preview & documentation. I suggest you click into the preview & have a look at the different types of forms to you can decide which ones you use.

Go back & download your ♥ Bloom plugin. Login to  your wordpress site & install & activate Bloom. If you’re unsure how to do this just watch our video tute.

The BLOOM plugin has 6 different display types …

decide which form(s) you will use

Okay so now it’s time to decide which style of optin you want to set up …

• I have a number on forms on this site &, although it is important that I capture my potential tribe members email addresses, I don’t want to annoy returning users so I tend to tread a bit softly. I have a pop-up on my first page but I’ve set it so it only comes up once per session. I want my peeps to see my forms & take action – that action is not to leave my site because I’ve driven them crazy with distracting pop-ups.
• Because I’m building my article base, I have added below content opt-ins to the bottom of each post, on the basis that peeps will find the content so useful they will want to know when I put new posts up. On very long posts I’ve also got inline opt-ins.
• Finally I use unlock forms where I am offering content in exchange for their email addresses.

step 1: connect your email account

1. In the navigation tools (left side of the screen), find the Bloom fly-out & click on email accounts
2. Click on the big green button <NEW ACCOUNT>
3. Choose your email provider from one of the many options
   • Mail Chimp
   • Aweber
   • Constant Contact
   • Campaign Monitor
   • Mad Mimi
   • iContact
   • GetResponse
   • Sendinblue
   • Mailpoet (a great newsletter plugin which I use)
   • Ontraport
   • Feedblitz
   • infusionsoft
   • Hubspot
   • SalesForce
   • Active Campaign
   • Emma

4. Depending on what email provider you use, you will need to fill in other details such as your account name & API key. If you are using give you account a name & Mailpoet it will pick up the lists you have already set up. Then you just need to click on authorise.

5. Save & Exit

make your first form …

Now comes the fun part … be sure to have your style manual with you so you can match your optin to your branding.

1. Back in the navigation pane, look for opt-in forms (just above the email accounts button).
2. Click the big green button <NEW OPTIN>
3. Lets work on a popup form which can be on the main page of your site, select pop up.
4. Give your optin a name – I like to be very logical in my naming the style of the optin then the location, so I’ll call my optin popup_home
5. Select your form integration
6. Click on NEXT: DESIGN YOUR OPTIN
7. Choose a template out of the 80 or so suggestions
8. Click NEXT: CUSTOMISE
9. Time to configure the content, layout & styling. You can go crazy here but keep in mind the purpose of your form & make sure you work with the fonts, imagery, voice or language & colours of your branding. Click on the little blue eye icon to view your form at any stage.
10. Click NEXT: DISPLAY SETTINGS
11. This is where you will define when & where the optin will display. When making these decisions remember to keep your prospect in mind. Don’t annoy them or you may loose them from your site rather than having them sign-up. THere are lots of options, personally I like the more subtle ones like fade in animation rather than bounce or tada, but that is the way I want to be perceived – not too pushy! Think about when you want the popup to activate – when the user first gets to your site, after a time deal (how long is reasonable) trigger at the end of a post? You can also decide where to dispaly it or to display on certain categories. When your done, check the preview one final time (the blue eye icon) &
12. Click SAVE & EXIT.
13. You’re done, keep an eye on your statistics for your optin, you may want to change & add your display options.
14. If you are planning on having a number of optin forms on a single site, I strongly suggest you document each optin, the type & the triggers so you don’t end up with a merry circus.
15. Have fun, if you find any errors in this tutorial, please comment below. I have tried to be as clear as possible but, well, I’m only human after all!

• Any prices quoted are current at time article was written.