Create and Promote an SMS Marketing Signup Form

After your SMS Marketing program is approved, create an SMS signup form to share with your subscribed email contacts. After contacts sign up for your SMS marketing, you can send them marketing text messages.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create and promote an SMS signup form.

Before you start

Here are some things to know before you begin this process.

• This article covers how to create and promote an SMS signup form. To learn more about how SMS Marketing works, check out About SMS Marketing with Mailchimp.
• SMS Marketing is available as an add-on feature for customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada with the Essentials plan or higher.
• You must be an account Owner, Admin, or Manager to work with SMS Marketing. Learn more about the different user levels in Mailchimp.
• Before you can create and promote an SMS signup form, you need to submit an application and be approved.
• Before you can send marketing text messages, you need to obtain SMS marketing consent from your contacts. This is different from email marketing consent.
• SMS Marketing allows you to set up your program with a single Mailchimp audience.

How it works

The SMS signup form allows US, UK, AU, or CA contacts to opt in to your SMS marketing. After your SMS Marketing application is approved, you can access an auto-generated landing page that includes an SMS signup form with the required SMS phone number field. This is called the signup landing page. Customize the signup landing page, then share a link to the page in an email to collect SMS marketing consent from your subscribed email contacts.

You can only collect SMS signups from contacts who are from the country that’s associated with your SMS Marketing program. For example, if your SMS Marketing program’s sending country is the UK, contacts with a UK phone number can opt in for your SMS marketing with your signup landing page.

After a contact completes the form on your signup landing page, they’re added to your Mailchimp audience as a subscribed SMS contact. View the subscription status of your SMS contacts in the SMS Marketing column on the contact table for your audience. A contact’s SMS subscription status is also stored in their contact profile.

Your subscribed SMS contacts can reply to a text message with ‘help’ for more information or ‘stop,’ ‘cancel,’ ‘end,’ ‘quit,’ ‘unsubscribe,’ ‘optout,’ or ‘revoke’ to unsubscribe from future SMS marketing. SMS credits aren’t required to send compliance keywords.

If you want to use other Mailchimp signup forms to acquire SMS marketing consent from new contacts, enable the SMS phone number field on your embedded signup form, pop-up signup form, or hosted signup form. Then, add your signup form to your website or share a link to your form wherever you’d like.

Create a signup landing page

Create a signup landing page to obtain SMS consent from your contacts.

To create a signup landing page, follow these steps.

1. Click SMS, then click Overview.
   
2. In the SMS subscriber growth section, click Create signup landing page.
3. Customize your SMS signup form as needed. We automatically enable the required SMS Phone Number field.
4. When you’re ready, click Save & Publish.
5. To make changes to the signup landing page title, site icon, social share preview, URL, audience and tags, content, or settings and tracking, click Go to checklist. You can also click Edit page to make content and design changes.

Excellent! You’ve successfully created your signup landing page.

Promote your signup landing page in an email

After you create your signup landing page, promote it with an email to invite your subscribed email contacts to opt in to your SMS marketing. Promote your signup landing page to your subscribed email contacts who are in the same country as your SMS Marketing program’s sending country.

To promote your signup landing page in an email, follow these steps.

1. Click SMS, then click Overview.
   
2. In the SMS subscriber growth section, click Promote my program with email.
3. Customize your email as needed. A link to your signup landing page is added automatically.
4. When you’re ready, click Save and exit. If you want to preview your email before you send, click Preview.
5. Complete the To, From and Subject sections. Use a clear subject line that tells your subscribed email contacts the purpose of the email. For example, “Sign up for SMS.”
6. In the Send time section, click Add Send Time.
7. If you want to send your email immediately, click Send now, then click Save.
8. If you want to schedule your email for a future date, click Schedule a time. Enter a specific date and time, or schedule your email with Send Time Optimization, batch delivery, or Timewarp depending on your Marketing plan and user level. When you’re ready, click Save.
9. When all sections are complete and your email settings are set up like you want them, click Send or Schedule. If you want to send or schedule your email at a later date, click Finish later.

That’s it! You’ve successfully sent or scheduled an email to promote your SMS Marketing program. When a subscribed email contact completes the form on your signup landing page, they're automatically added to your Mailchimp audience as a subscribed SMS contact. After that, they can receive marketing text messages from you.

Next steps

Now that you’ve created and promoted your SMS signup form, here are some next steps you can take to optimize your SMS marketing.

• Customize Your Embedded Signup Form
  Learn how to enable the SMS phone number field on your embedded signup form to gain new SMS contacts.

• Add a Pop-Up Signup Form to Your Website
  Learn how to enable the SMS phone number field on your pop-up signup form to gain new SMS contacts.

• Create a Hosted Signup Form
  Learn how to enable the SMS phone number field on your hosted signup form to gain new SMS contacts.

• Create a Text to Join Customer Journey Map
  Learn how to invite new contacts to subscribe to your SMS marketing with a keyword.

• About SMS Marketing with Mailchimp
  Learn about rate limits, quiet hours, and more.

• About SMS Marketing Credits
  Learn how SMS credits work and how to calculate the right amount for your marketing.

• Create and Send a Marketing SMS
  Learn how to create and send marketing text messages to your subscribed SMS contacts.