The WordPress plugin Magic Action Box is a powerful lead generation (opt-in) tool for websites. You can ask for email addresses and first names, for example, in a professional looking manner. It could be placed in your footer or in a sidebar. You can also use MailChimp with this tool.

Wikipedia says this of “Call to Action”:

In web design, a CTA is a banner, button, or some type of graphic or text on a website meant to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel. It is an essential part of inbound marketing as well as permission marketing in that it actively strives to convert a user into a lead and later into a customer.

Magic Action Box

Once you install and activate Magic Action Box plugin you will see a new links on your left Dashboard sidebar called Magic Action Box. Action Box has built-in support for SendReach, Aweber, MailChimp and MailPoet (Wysija).
Magic Action Box automatically connects with MailPoet, Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms when you install their respective plugins.

MailChimp is a free service. Just add email, username and password. Next, check your email to check for a MailChimp email. Click on activate your account. Also enter the captcha.

You now need to set up a new list in MailChimp. Create a list name. The next thing to do is to get an API key from MailChimp. Put you API key into the appropriate box in the Magic Action Box – Main Settings. In Main Settings, go to the Accounts and Integration tab at the top. Copy in your code in the MailChimp API Key box. Click Save Changes.

The next step is to Styles and Button of Magic Action Box. Create a new style to create a custom style. For now just save the new style. Come back to it later to adjust the colours.

Next you need to create a new Action Box. Add New. Choose the Optin Form. Enter a name for the form (such as signup). Choose User Styles. A new drop down box appears and you can choose the style you just saved. Scroll down to the Opt In Form Settings. Choose MailChimp. Click Update List. Choose the list that you created. Add text for your submit button. Scroll down to Opt In Copy. Add a Main Heading. Write something like “Get Our Updates” or “Get our Newsletter”. Scroll up to the top to Save it.

Next we need to add the form to the website. In the main menu of the Dashboard, choose Appearance, Widgets. In your available Widgets section you should have a Magic Action Box Widget. Drag the widget to a widget area on the right side. It might be a sidebar area for example. All you need is to type in a title and pick your box. The picture on the left shows where we are at so far.

Now we need to do some colour formatting. We don’t want the grey background. It should be white. The black button colour is not matching our site colour scheme either. Go to the Dashboard, Magic Action Box Settings, Styles and Buttons. Go to the General tab and change the first setting, Background to six f’s to represent white. Go to Form Elements tab to work with the Submit button. Scroll down to the Submit button and set the first four colour settings and save it. You will likely want to change the size of the button. Try changing the padding of the button: top, bottom, right and left.

You can add your opt-in box to an individual blog post if you want. Under each post is the setting for Magic Action Box. Select an action box and a placement. Save it. That’s it.