Do you find it difficult to manage several different email list from one website? I found out the hard way until I decided to segment mailchimp signup with a hidden field.This is best option to manage your list and not to have duplicate emails on several list.

When you have too many different list of almost similar customer or potential customers, it becomes too much of a hassle. You may have to do multiple sends even though the email you plan to send is the same.

With a segmented list, you avoid having sending the same email to the same person who have signed up on 2 of your list.

Assuming you are using WordPress, and Mailchimp, here’s how you go about doing it.

Step 1 – Create a new hidden field in your Mailchimp list

After you login to MailChimp, click on Lists, then click on a list name to select a list. Next click on Signup Forms, and then General Forms.

The next step is to add a hidden field in your signup form. I used field label as “Sign Up” with the merge tag “SIGNUP”. You can use a different label, for example a field label “Source”, with a merge tag “SOURCE”.

Step 2 – Install Magic Action Box plugin

I use Magic Action Box plugin to have nicely style signup forms. This plugin also allows you to add a hidden merge tag when a visitor signs up for your mailing list.

Once you have log into your WordPress website, click on Plugins > Add New and search for Magic Action Box, MAB. The free version works fine.

Click Install. Next you need to key in your Mailchimp API key. You can locate your Mailchimp API key by clicking on Account, Extras and API Key.

Create a new API key in Mailchimp, then copy and paste this key into Magic Action Box under the Main Settings, Account and Integration.

Step 3 – Create an new Magic Action Box optin form

Click on new Action Box to create a new optin form.

Next click on Update List.

The Magic Action Box plugin will communicate with Mailchimp, and show you all the list in your Mailchimp account.

Select the list you want to use, then type in the merge tag that was created in Mailchimp above. In this example, I used the merge tag I which is SIGNUP. You have to use the right merge tag otherwise this won’t work.

For the tracking code, you can used anything to tell you where the visitor sign up on your website. For me I use DigitalMarketing code to tell me that the visitor signed up on my page titled Digital Marketing.

You can use any tracking code you want.

Once someone signs up for your mailing list on that particular embed form, the tracking code will show up next to his email address in your Mailchimp list as you can see below.

You can use other plugins that pass a merge tag to Mailchimp. If you choose not to use a plugin, you can add embed form manually. However, if you are using WordPress, then having a plugin makes it easier to embed signup forms on your site that looks nicely done.