In email options, field names within square brackets can be used as placeholders which will be replaced when the form is submitted, ie: [email_address]. For more information check out our Form Placeholders doc.

Watch the Notifications section of the How To Use Avada Forms by clicking on the video below.

Or for a short step by step example of setting up an auto-reply notification, watch the Avada Short below.

Once you have set up your tags in Mailchimp, you can add them to your Avada Forms. In Avada Forms, specific tags are then selected for specific forms. For the Contact Form, you would add the ‘Lead’ tag, for the Newsletter Subscription Form, you would add the ‘Website Subscriber’ tag, and for the Register For Upcoming Events form, you would add the ‘Event Interest’ tag. In this way, anyone who submits one of those forms will get a tag added to their contact in Mailchimp.

The first step with this is to make sure Avada Forms is connected with your Mailchimp account. See the How To Integrate Mailchimp With Avada Forms document for more information on how to do that.

Once your account is connected, head to the Form Options tab of the form you are interested in. Here, under Submission, your will see an Actions option. Select Mailchimp from the dropdown list.

You should then see a Mailchimp option set below this. If you edit this options set, you will see a Mailchimp Action option. Click on Create / Update Contact to continue.

Now, select the Mailchimp list you want to connect to. There are options for Opt-In preferences, Form Consent, and Mailchimp Mapping, but the one we want for this document is in the Mailchimp Tags option.

Here you can select from any of the Tags you have added to your connected Mailchimp account. In the screenshot below, we have selected the Website Subscriber tag for those users who submit the Newsletter Form.

And that’s it! Now, when a user submits the form, they will have that specific tag added to their contact, enabling them to easily segment your list for specific marketing actions.

Once we have our fields added in Mailchimp, we can set up our Form and then map the custom data to Mailchimp.

In the screenshot below we have a standard contact form, and I have added two extra fields, a Text Field Element, and a Date Field Element. Now we can map them to our Mailchimp contacts. This is done in the Form Options > Submission tab, as seen below.

The first step here is to make sure Avada Forms is connected with your Mailchimp account. See the How To Integrate Mailchimp With Avada Forms document for more information on how to do that.

Once your account is connected, head to the Form Options tab. Here, under Submission, your will see an Actions option. Select Mailchimp from the dropdown list.

You should then see a Mailchimp option set below this. If you edit this options set, you will see a Mailchimp Action option. Click on Create / Update Contact to continue.

Now, select the Mailchimp list you want to connect to. There are options for Mailchimp Tags, Opt-In preferences, and Form Consent, but the ones we want for this document are in the Mailchimp Mapping section. Note how there is now a Pet’s Name field, and a Pet’s Birth Date field.

These are the two field elements we added to the form. Now we just have to click on the dropdown here, and select the custom Mailchimp fields we added to map them to.

So now you have a group set up in Mailchimp, you need to get information from your users to mark them as members of that group. Let’s start with the same group information in Avada Forms, so your users can select their preference, and then that can be mapped to the corresponding group in Mailchimp.

To do this, we can start by adding a Checkbox Field Element to a form with the corresponding group names as Checkbox options. In the example below, we have added a Gardening Experience Checkbox to a Newsletter Form. In this way, we could determine the user’s level and send them an appropriately curated Newsletter.

The first step is to make sure Avada Forms is connected with your Mailchimp account. See the How To Integrate Mailchimp With Avada Forms document for more information on how to do that.

Once your account is connected, head to the Form Options tab of the form you added your checklist to. Here, under Submission, your will see an Actions option. Select Mailchimp from the dropdown list.

You should then see a Mailchimp option set below this. If you edit this options set, you will see a Mailchimp Action option. Click on Create / Update Contact to continue.

Now, select the Mailchimp list you want to connect to. There are options for Mailchimp Tags, Opt-In preferences, and Form Consent, but the one we want for this document is in the Mailchimp Mapping section. Note how there is a Gardening Experience field. This is the Mailchimp Group we set up on Mailchimp. Click on the dropdown here, and select from the Group Category. In our example, there is onl one, Gardening Experience. This is the Checklist Field we added to the Form.

Now the Checklist on the form will map to the Mailchimp Group of the same name.

When making a multi-step form, the initial process is the same as for a normal form. Head to Avada > Forms and create your form, and start editing it in the Avada Builder. Add your initial Form Field Elements as usual. At the end of the every section of the form, you should add a Submit Button Element. This will be the trigger used to walk through the steps of the form.

As seen below, I have my initial content, and a Submit Button Element, which I have named Next Step. Now, it’s time to create the actual step in the form. In this example, I have simply split a form into two parts, but you can create as many steps as you like.

To add a form step, add a Container to the Builder directly after the container with your initial content, and navigate to the Special tab. Here, you see the Form Step Special Item. This adds the step to your Form. There is nothing to configure with this Special Item, just give it a title, and an icon if you wish. This is then used in the navigation (yes there can be navgation).

Now, it’s simply a matter of adding further form content. You can add as many form sections as you like, with whatever form of content you wish, with an additional Form Step between each one. In the screenshot below, you can see the Form Step Element at the very top.

You can then place a Submit Button Element at the bottom of each form section, which enables the user to continue to the next step. With a multi-step form, the Submit Button Element only works as a normal Submit button on the last step of the form. Alternatively, you can add buttons, icons or text labels, etc, and add dynamic content to them to act as Forward / Previous buttons. See the following section for more details on that option.

Your final form section should have a normal Submit button, and this is also where you would place the Notice Element.

If your form has many steps, you may wish to add further navigation. This might be in the form of Forward and Back arrows. This is possible with the addition of some dynamic content options.

In the example below, as this is only a two step form, I have added a Next Step icon in the first form section, and a Previous Step icon in the second section, above the content on each step of the form. Obviously, in a form with more steps, you could include both icons on any sections between the first and the last.

These icons link to the Previous and Next Step of the form. This is achieved by setting the link on the icons to Dynamic Content, and choosing Previous Step, or Next Step. You can add this dynamic content to any content which takes a link, such as buttons, icons, text, images etc.

Once you have completed the form contents, you can configure the form as you would normally, including the Step Progress. This is found under the Form Options tab. This configures a section above or below the form, where the user can see the progress of the form as they move through it. If required, this can be configured as a Timeline or a Progress Bar, with many styling options available.

Below is an example of a Progress Bar in a two step form. Click on the buttons below to see the initial options for both styles.

Once you have completed your multi-step form, it’s simply a matter of adding it to your page via the Avada Form Element, as with any Avada Form. Except here, only the first part of the form will be displayed, with your navigational link, allowing users to go to the next step in the form.

On the final step in the form, the Submit button element acts as a normal submit button, and the form is then completed and dealt with in the way it has been configured in the Submission, Notifications, and Confirmation tabs of the Form Options. For more help on configuring Avada Forms, see the How To Use Avada Forms document.

By default, WordPress uses the wp_mail function to send emails via PHP mail (including any Avada notification emails). So your site is sending emails via the same server that your site is hosted on, which is almost certainly not optimized for sending emails. It’s very simple, and it sort of works (mostly), but it lacks proper authentication, which is why emails that you send via the PHP mail method often end up in spam, or even worse, just get outright blocked by some email providers.

SMTP, on the other hand, tells your WordPress site to send emails via a properly-configured SMTP server, rather than using your site’s server. Instead, your website sends the email to the SMTP server, which then processes the email and sends it to the user’s inbox. Because the SMTP server is configured to handle sending emails and has the proper authentication in place, your emails are much more likely to make it to recipients’ inboxes.

As well as this, some web hosts don’t even offer email as part of their hosting package. For example, neither Kinsta nor Flywheel offers email hosting, so in these cases, you would absolutely need an SMTP plugin.

Thirdly, the deliverability of emails is of vital importance to a business, and instead of relying on a hit-and-miss default solution, you can use a third-party SMTP server that’s 100% dedicated to sending emails.

The best solution is an SMTP plugin. There are many of these, but the most popular SMTP and PHP Mailer plugin for WordPress is WP Mail SMTP. This is a free plugin and can be installed directly from the WordPress Plugin Repository. It provides a full Wizard to help you configure the plugin. There is also good documentation to be found at the WP Mail SMTP website.

The best solution is an SMTP plugin. There are many of these, but the most popular SMTP and PHP Mailer plugin for WordPress is WP Mail SMTP. This is a free plugin and can be installed directly from the WordPress Plugin Repository. It provides a full Setup Wizard to help you configure the plugin. There is also good documentation to be found at the WP Mail SMTP website. Once it is installed and activated, you will find yourself on the Setup Wizard page. To activate the Wizard, just click on the Let’s Get Started button.

In this first step, you have to choose an SMTP Mailer for the plugin to use. For more infomation about SMTP Mailers and the various options they provide, see the Complete Mailer Guide. Most of the SMTP Mailers are not free, or are time or email limited. Some, like Sendinblue might work for sites that don’t send a lot of emails, but for this tutorial, we are going to use the Google/Gmail option, as it’s completely free.

Just note with the Google/Gmail option, that there can be rate limitations and API restrictions.

Now we come to the Configure Mailer Settings page. Here you need to add your Client ID and Client Secret code. To get these, you have to log on to the Google Cloud Console. It’s a bit technical, but there’s a good guide to walk you through the various steps required.

Once you have added your Client ID and Client Secret, there is an Authorization Step, to allow the plugin to connect to your Google account. This is also covered in the afforementioned guide.

Once your have done that, a Successful Authorization message will appear on your screen.

When you OK that, you will see the Authorization section at the bottom of the screen has expanded, and it is here you configure your email address.

Authorization – Depending on whether you have connected to Gmail or a Google Workspace email, you might need to setup a Google email alias, so you can send emails from the domain email address. Again, you can find instructions on the WP Mail SMTP site on how to do this.

From Name – In the From Name field you can add whatever name you wish. In my example, I’m sending emails from a site called Avada Garden, and so that’s what I will call it here. There is also a Force From Name option to make sure that name is used by all emails leaving the site, regardless of other plugin settings.

From Email – Finally, at the bottom, the From Email field is where you select what email address the emails are coming from. Here, in my example, I would like my emails to be coming from admin@avadagarden.com and so I configured a Google email alias, as mentioned in the top section. Once I have done that, the email will be available to select from the From Email dropdown. Now I can move to the next step of the Wizard.

The next step in the Wizard asks which email features you want to enable. Some of these are only available in Pro mode. For my example, I turned off Smart Contact Form, as Avada Forms will do the job there.

The next two steps are basically Promo Screens, with the first on being a Newsletter & Tracking sign up, and the next being an upgrade to Pro promo. Both of these steps can be skipped.

The final step of the Wizard sends a test email based on your configuration, and lets you know if the plugin has been successfully configured. If there are no configuration issues, you will see a screen like this one, shown below.

If there are configuration issues, you instead see a different screen, from where you can click on a Start Troubleshooting button, to see what the issues are.

The results of the Troubleshooting appear on the plugin Email Test page, as seen below. In this example, it’s letting me know that the test email might have sent (they did), but its deliverability should be improved.

The Domain Check Results show that here are SPF, DKIM, & DMARC records missing from the domain’s DNS records. Depending on your domain name and hosting situation, you might need to update these records at either your domain registrar or through the Zone Editor on your hosting cPanel. This is unfortunately out of the scope of Avada’s support so please contact your hosting comany or domain registrar for more details.

Once the records have been updated, you will need to wait for them to be propgated. This often takes 12 hours or more. But once they are propgated, you can send another test emai from the link on the bottom of the Email Test tab, and hopefully your domain check results will be looking better!

That’s it. Now you have a properly configured SMTP email solution, and you can be confident that your emails are getting to where they are meant to be going.