The Joomla Chick

I used to use a GetResponse module to allow the visitors to The Joomla Chick to sign up for my mailing list.  Yes it worked but it wasn’t a great signing up experience nor did it allow you to tailor the visitors experience or add some internet marketing techniques to fully monetise your list.

Today I changed it!

GetResponse needs you to set up a few pages when you set it up.  You can use their default pages but why advertise GetResponse when you can advertise your own business?  However, it isn’t as simple as using a search engine friendly url like html websites.  Joomla works a little bit differently, as if you didn’t know!

The extra piece of information that you need to make the link to

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=xx&Itemid=yy

Where the xx is the article id, each article you create in Joomla is given a unique id.  The yy is the menu id, again each item that you attach to a menu is given a unique id.  When you put each of these unique numbers together in the xx and yy space you get a unique page that you can create for your GetResponse autoresponder.

Importantly, as don’t want your GetResponse pages to show up on the search engines, you need to create a hidden menu.  All you do is create a new menu and call it “hidden”, mainly so you can easily find the menu and add any other hidden items to it.  DON’T enable the hidden menu as a module.

You will need to create an article and a menu item for 3 pages:

1.   The page that your signup is directed to initially after entering their details but before they have confirmed their details.

2.   The page that your signup is directed to after they have confirmed their email address.  On this page you can have any incentives that you used to encourage your visitors to sign up to your mailing list.

3.   An error page incase there is any type of error in the signup process.  The easiest thing is just to ask your signup to use their browsers back button and try again.

If you really want to see it in action you can always sign up for The Joomla Chick Tips Newsletter!

I’ll be creating a how to video and accompanying workbook to show you step by step how to do it so watch this space for details.