Setting up an API Connection with SendGrid

If you want to take advantage of your Thrive Themes and your SendGrid account at the same time, you can set up an API connection between them.

This way you will be able to make a connection between a “Lead Generation” element you added to your page with Thrive Architect, or one of your opt-in forms created with Thrive Leads, and the email marketing (as well as transactional email) services of SendGrid.

Thus, if someone will subscribe through the respective “Lead Generation” element, or Thrive Leads opt-in form, they will be added to the mailing list of your choice from your SendGrid account.

Here are the steps you need to take in order to achieve that:

Get the SendGrid API keys

In order to be able to set up the API connection between SendGrid and Thrive Themes, you will need an API key. You can get that key from your SendGrid account.

Log in to your SendGrid account and click on the “Settings” section from the menu on the left sidebar:

This will open a drop-down with all the settings and options you can use. Look for the “API Keys” section and click on it to open it:

Create an API Key

You will have to create a new “API Key” in the API Keys page that opened. Click on the blue “Create API Key” button, from the upper right corner of the page:

This will open a window where you can create a new key. There are three things you need in order to do this:

1. Give a name for your key in the “API Key Name” section

2. Set the API Key Permissions by selecting one of the permission types. In our case, you should select/click on the “Full Access” type.

3. Click on the “Create & View” button to create the key:

After the key is created, it will be displayed along with a notification message. Make sure to copy the key and also save it somewhere, because just as the notification says, this key will not be displayed to you again, because of security reasons:

You can copy the key by simply clicking on it, or pressing the “CTRL+C” keys simultaneously after selecting the key.

Once you have copied it, the “Done” button will become active and you can click on it, to go back to the API Keys page:

Add the keys to your Thrive Dashboard

The next thing you will have to do is to insert the API key you have just created and copied into the API Connections section of the Thrive Dashboard.

To do that, go to your WordPress admin dashboard click on the “Thrive Dashboard” from the left sidebar to access it:

Scroll down a bit to see the “API Connections” card and when you have found it, click on the “Manage Connections” button from it:

The button will open the “Active Connections” page. Here you can see every API connection that you have set up so far, and you can also add new connections.

Look for the “Add new Connection” option from the page and when you have found it, click on it:

Then click on the “Select an app” section to open its drop-down:

Look for “SendGrid” in the dropdown. Either start typing “SendGrid” or scroll down until you see it:

Once you have found it, click on it and the SendGrid connection card will open:

This is where you will have to paste/enter the API key that you have previously created and copied from your SendGrid account. Complete the “API key” field with the key you have copied:

Besides completing the API key field, you also have another option here. You can choose whether or not you would like to connect to the Transactional Email Service as well.

If you use SendGrid to send transactional emails (e.g. asset delivery emails) then, this option can be useful for you. In order to activate this option, select “Yes” in the second section of the SendGrid connection card:

After you have completed the API key and selected an option for the transactional email connection, click on the “Connect” button:

In a few seconds, you will see that your API connection will be ready to use:

Setting up the API connection between your SendGrid and Thrive Themes account will make it available for your website.

In order to use this connection, you will have to connect one of the “Lead Generation” elements you have added to your page with Thrive Architect, or your opt-in forms created with Thrive Leads, to this SendGrid API connection.

This way when someone will subscribe through the opt-in forms or “Lead Generation” elements, they will automatically be added to one of your mailing lists from SendGrid.

Connecting SendGrid to a “Lead Generation” element

In order to connect your SendGrid account to a “Lead Generation” element, you first have to open a page or post with Thrive Architect.

Add the element to your page, just like you would do with any other Thrive Architect element:

Once added, the “Main Options” will appear in the left sidebar:

1. Add Connection

You will see that by default the “API” option is selected in the “Connection” section of the “Main Options”:

This is the option that needs to be selected/used to connect the “Lead Generation” element to SendGrid, so leave it selected.

Connection

Now go to the “Send leads to” section, which is below the “Connection” one and click on the “Add Connection” button:

Click on the “Choose connection” option from the window that opened:

A list will open with the available connections that you have set up in your Thrive dashboard. Look for the SendGrid connection and once you have found it in the list, click on it:

Mailing list

Another option will appear in the same window, allowing you to choose between the mailing lists you have in your SendGrid account.

Just click on the field under the “Choose your mailing list” option in order to choose the list you want subscribers to be added to:

This will open a drop-down with the mailing lists that you have set up in SendGrid. Simply click on the list you want to use to select it.

In case the list was recently added to your SendGrid account and you do not see it here yet, you can also use the “Refresh” option (arrow icon), which is next to the “Mailing list”. This will refresh the information in the drop-down:

After you have selected the list, click on the “Apply” button to save the settings:

2. Set up the form fields

You can also set up the fields that appear in the “Lead Generation” element using the “Form Fields” section. By default, the “Name” and the “Email” fields are already added to the element.

Note: Please keep in mind that the “Email” field cannot be deleted because without it people would not be able to sign up through the “Lead Generation” element.

You can read more about how to set up the form fields in the dedicated section from the “Lead Generation” article.

After you have finished using these options, the “Lead Generation” element will be connected to the mailing list of your choice from your SendGrid account.

All you have left to do is to save your work using the “Save Work” button, from the bottom left side of the editor, in order to apply the changes to the page:

Once this is done, whenever someone will subscribe using the “Lead Generation” element, their information will be added to the SendGrid mailing list that you have chosen.

If you need more information about this setup or on how to use the “Lead Generation” element in general, please check out this tutorial.

Connecting SendGrid to Thrive Leads

You can use your SendGrid account for a Thrive Leads integration, with one of your opt-in forms.

In order to do that, you first have to access the Thrive Leads section, from your Thrive Dashboard:

Next, look for a Lead Group that has the opt-in form that will be connected to SendGrid, and click on it to expand it:

Choose an opt-in form from the available list – for this example, we will use a “Ribbon”:

This will take you to another dashboard, with all the “Ribbon” types of forms. Click on “Edit Design” next to the one you want to edit:

This will take you to the Thrive Architect editor, where you will be able to select the “Lead Generation” element from the template:

This will trigger the “Main Options” of the element in the sidebar:

From this point onwards, you can start setting up the connection just as previously done in the first example.

These are the steps for connecting your SendGrid account to your site, with the help of a “Lead Generation” element, or a Thrive Leads opt-in form.

Don’t hesitate to check out our knowledge base if you want to read more about API connections and how Thrive Leads works.

Hopefully, this article was useful to you. If so, please give us a smile below 🙂