Everything You need to Know to Set up a Newsletter in Squarespace
It’s always exciting when you start getting traffic to your new Squarespace website! But what comes next?
Right away, you should start building your email list and sending a newsletter to your subscribers! Email marketing has an extremely high ROI, and is so effective that about 79% of B2B marketers choose email as their most successful content distribution channel.
That’s because the people who sign up for your emails either…
find value in your content
are interested in buying from you
or both!
How do you nurture those subscribers and increase sales? By sending value-packed newsletters!
You can create a newsletter sign-up form, automate email marketing campaigns, schedule newsletters, offer freebies, and more…all in Squarespace.
How to add a newsletter block
(If you’ve already added the newsletter opt-in form on your site, click here to skip ahead to setting up Squarespace Email Campaigns.)
Adding a newsletter block in Squarespace is very similar to adding a form. Hover over the section you want to add the block to, and click “Edit.” Then add a new block, and select “Newsletter.”
Inside the Fluid Engine editor it’s easy to resize the block by dragging the borders to the dimensions you want. Then you can start customizing the design and text!
Hover over the newsletter block and click the edit icon. Start by naming your newsletter form something simple, like ‘Newsletter sign-up.’
Next, edit your form title and description. Put some thought into the text! You’ll want to use strong copy that will inspire your website visitors to take action and sign up.
After the title and description, customize the disclaimer and the button CTA. The more personal your CTA, the better. For example, instead of saying “Sign up” you can say “Yes, I want to receive your weekly stories.”
Write a post-submit message. (This is what people will see after they finish submitting their email address, so I recommend writing a brief message of thanks.) You can also opt to redirect new subscribers to a thank you page with freebies, helpful links, or other info.
Finally, make the finishing tweaks to your newsletter block design. For example, you can change the background color and alignment, and make the block floating or stacked.
Where should you put a newsletter block?
I usually recommend putting a newsletter block in the website footer. That way, it’s automatically embedded on every page on your website (except for landing pages.)
If you don’t like having a sign-up form in the footer, I suggest adding a newsletter block to your home page and to each of your blog posts. You can always duplicate an old blog post every time you write a new one, and that will save you the trouble of adding a newsletter block every time you write a new blog post.
How to set up Squarespace Email Campaigns
Once your form is done, you will need to set up Squarespace Email Campaigns to actually collect the email addresses and send out your newsletter.
(If you don’t plan on using Squarespace email campaigns to run your newsletter, click here to skip ahead to alternative newsletter integrations.)
Squarespace Email Campaigns is Squarespace’s built-in email marketing system. Is it the best email marketing platform out there? Definitely not! But it’s the best choice if you want to keep your business centralized in Squarespace instead of using another email software.
To get Squarespace Email Campaigns set up for your business, the first thing you should do is create a mailing list.
Email Campaigns dashboard
Click the ‘Marketing’ tab in your Squarespace dashboard
Select ‘Email Campaigns’
Select ‘Mailing Lists’
Click ‘Add’
Create a new mailing list and name it ‘Newsletter’ (or something similar)
Finally, you can go back to the newsletter block you just added to your website. Edit the block, and click on ‘Storage.’ After selecting ‘Squarespace,’ select the new mailing list ‘Newsletter’ that you just created.
From now on, when someone signs up through your newsletter block, their email address will automatically be added to the ‘Newsletter’ mailing list.
Creating a welcome automation in Squarespace
Now you can actually get to designing and writing your emails in Squarespace! Creating your welcome automation should be at the top of your list.
Squarespace Email Campaigns makes it easy to automate emails - meaning they go out once a certain event is triggered. In this case, the ‘trigger’ is when someone signs up through your newsletter block.
First, make sure you fill out your sender details (name, address, etc.) and verify your email address. Otherwise, your emails won’t go out.
Before writing any emails, I suggest looking through Squarespace’s default email templates. Once you select a template, you can customize it using your brand colors and fonts. You will need at least three email templates: a welcome email template, newsletter template, and sales email template. You can always come back and create more templates later!
Finally, select ‘Automations’ under the Email Campaigns dashboard, and click ‘Add.’ You can now create a new automation and create a new email. Choose your welcome email template, and write a casual and engaging message for your new subscribers!
When you’re done, make sure to add the welcome email to the automation and activate the automation. To activate the automation you will need to choose the trigger…which is signing up through the newsletter block.
Unlike the welcome email, you won’t want to your automate your newsletter. Instead, you can write your newsletters in Squarespace ahead of time, and schedule them to go out at certain dates.
Top alternative newsletter integrations for Squarespace
Squarespace Email Campaigns is pretty basic, so you may want to use a different email provider. Fortunately, there are lots of other newsletter integrations that will work with Squarespace.
MailerLite - This is my top suggestion for newbies building an email list for the first time. MailerLite is easy to use and is free for the first 1,000 subscribers, making it a great option for websites just getting started.
Mailchimp - Mailchimp is one of the top email marketing platforms because it offers the most options for customizing your emails and forms. But the learning curve is a bit steep, and it’s definitely not the most user-friendly platform.
ConvertKit - This is probably the most popular email integration for bloggers. ConvertKit is very simple to use, and while the designs are not as customizable, there are a lot of templates to choose from.
ActiveCampaign - Although I’ve never used Active Campaign, this is another popular email marketing system, and includes a lot of e-commerce integrations.
Kartra (this is an affiliate link) - Kartra is a lot more than just an email marketing system! You can build entire sales funnels with Kartra, as well as online membership courses. So if you’re just looking for a Squarespace newsletter integration, you won’t need a system as comprehensive as Kartra. But if you have a membership site or offer online courses, I recommend Kartra for both your email marketing and course, since it’s not easy to offer an online course/membership site on Squarespace.
Depending on which email platform you choose, there are a few different ways to integrate with Squarespace.
MailerLite + Squarespace integration
MailerLite actually uses Google Drive to integrate with Squarespace! When you set up your account with MailerLite, you will get a piece of code that you can paste into your Squarespace header or footer. (You will need a Squarespace business plan to do this.)
When you set the storage settings for your newsletter block, select ‘Other Storage Options.’ Then choose ‘Googe Drive’ as your storage option. MailerLite will actually use the code to pull the email addresses from your Google Drive. Click here for the full MailerLite integration tutorial.
Mailchimp + Squarespace integration
MailChimp has a built-in Squarespace integration, making it the easiest to connect with Squarespace. Under ‘Other Storage Options’ just click ‘Mailchimp’ and make sure it’s connected to your account!
ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Kartra + Squarespace
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to integrate ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Kartra with Squarespace. You have to use Zapier for the newsletter integration.
But, as a workaround, you can create your newsletter form inside the email platform and embed the sign-up form onto your Squarespace website! This will save you the trouble of having to connect your Squarespace block with another email system.
There are a lot of email platforms out there, so take your time and find the system that works best for you! You can always switch to a different system later. If you’re not sure where to start, you can always begin with Squarespace Email Campaigns and move to another newsletter integration after your business starts growing at a faster rate.
