Capturing leads is crucial for growing your business and one effective way to do this is by utilising the “core” form that Mailchimp gives you for every audience, which is known as the “hosted” form.

But what exactly is the Mailchimp hosted forms, and how can they benefit your marketing efforts? In this Quick tips blog post, we’ll explore the ins and outs of your Mailchimp hosted form, including how to find and use them, as well as the advantages and disadvantages they offer.

What is the Mailchimp Hosted Form?

The Mailchimp hosted form is a pre-designed web form that allow you to collect valuable contact information directly from your website visitors. The form is created and held within Mailchimp, eliminating the need for any technical expertise or web development skills.

You can easily customise the form’s appearance to match your brand and provide a link to it from your website, and start collecting leads effortlessly.

Finding Your Hosted Form in Mailchimp

To access your hosted form in Mailchimp, follow these simple steps:

Log in to your Mailchimp account.

Navigate to the “Audience” tab.

Click on the drop-down menu next to the audience you want to work with.

Select “Signup forms.”

Choose “Form builder.”

Use the drop down menu to select “Signup Form” – this is your “hosted” form

Using your Mailchimp Hosted Form:

Once you’ve accessed the form builder, you can begin customising your Mailchimp hosted form.

You can easily modify the form’s design and information contained, along with other key elements such as the confirmation page and thank you email (which you can access from the drop down)

After customising your form, you can share the signup form url (also know as the EEPURL) through your website and other channels (e.g. social media).

Advantages of Using the Mailchimp Hosted Form:

Ease of Use: Hosted forms are the easiest way to get data into your system automatically. You design it, get the link and share it. Simples!

Ease of Design: You don’t need any coding or design skills to create a professional-looking form that matches your website’s branding.

Tracking: Whenever someone completes the form, they get tracked within the account so you can identify anyone who has done so by using the source.

Mobile Responsiveness: Mailchimp hosted forms are mobile-friendly by default, ensuring a smooth and engaging experience for users accessing your website from their smartphones or tablets.

Another advantage of using Mailchimp hosted forms is that they’re fully incorporated into the Mailchimp ‘ecos-system’ so if you’ve got GDPR enabled, it’ll all work smoothly..

Disadvantages of Using the Mailchimp Hosted Form:

You are constrained by the “system”: Using a hosted form means you have to use Mailchimp’s system and don’t get any flexibility in the data captured. For example, you can’t add tags to track form completion. Also, it combines the elements of “capture” and “storage” in one process. Good forms allow you to capture the data, and then decide what to do with the data… you don’t have the option with the hosted form.

You get one form only: As it’s a hosted form, you just get the one, which means if you want to tailor forms for different groups, you can’t use it.

It’s Hosted: As the form is hosted in Mailchimp, you can’t embed it in your site (or anywhere else). This limits it’s potential and also requires people to take an extra action if the link is on your site to get to the form.

It’s set in stone: If you share the form in social media, and then at a point in the future, change the audience you use or move accounts, then that link is live and can’t be redirected.

There’s better alternatives: Although the hosted form is a great “first form”, there are numerous other options available which offer much more flexibility and customisation, and allow for “multiple” forms to be created and used, whether it be within the Mailchimp infrastructure (e.g. embedded forms, Landing pages) or external tools designed to work with your website’s set up more seamlessly.

Final Thoughts

The Mailchimp hosted form is a great “my first form” if you’re starting out with Mailchimp, It does the job, can be designed to be on brand, can be shared easily and allows you to capture the information you need automatically so it flows into Mailchimp into the appropriate fields.

However, chances are you’ll push up against its limitations very quickly and start to look for alternatives to give you more flexibility.

Forms are one of the most powerful tools you have, and releasing the potential for multiple forms, capturing lots of different data and getting creative with how you use that data is a big step in developing an extremely effective email marketing system.