TL;DR: How to Create an Opt-In Form in WordPress (Offer First, Then the Form)
An opt-in form is the box on your site where a visitor gives you their email address in exchange for something they want, like a checklist or a free training. To build one in WordPress with Thrive Leads:
- Click Create new form and pick where it shows: inside a post, in a popup, in a slide-in and more
- Pick a template from the Templates tab
- Name it and give it a lead group
- Design it: your headline, one email field and a button
- Connect your email list and choose what people see after they sign up
- Set the display rules: when it appears and where on the page
- Choose which pages show it
- Review and publish
- Check it like a visitor, on a computer and a phone
But before any of that, decide what you're offering, because that's what people actually sign up for.
Looking for ideas instead? Jump to the examples.
People are reading your posts, and most of them leave without a trace. You want some of them on your email list, so you can reach them again when you've got something to share.
I won't lie to you, I never used to care much about my forms. I added them because I was supposed to. One in the sidebar, another at the bottom of a blog post... and that was that. I didn't see them as part of a real strategy, just something you "should" have.
But a form that people actually fill in has two things going for it: an offer they want, and a spot where they'll see it while they're still interested. So in this guide, you'll decide what to offer first, then I'll build a form step by step in Thrive Leads, and then you'll see real examples, including a few from sites that have run the same offer for years.
Every screenshot comes from Tallwick Consulting, a one-person consultancy I made up for this tutorial (it isn't a real business). Its freebie is The Proposal Checklist, a one-page list of what to check before you send a quote, and its form sits in a blog post about quotes that get ignored.
What an Opt-In Form Is, and Why Fewer Clicks Make It Worth More
An opt-in form is a form on your website where visitors choose to give you their email address, usually in exchange for something free, like a checklist, a discount or a training. "Opt in" means they asked to hear from you. Each sign-up joins your email list, so you can reach that person again.
An opt-in page (sometimes called a squeeze page) is a whole page built around one of these forms. This guide is about the form itself, the kind you put inside your posts and pages. If you want whole pages, these lead gen landing page examples are a better fit.
And your email list matters more now than it did a few years ago, because search is sending fewer people to your site. When the Pew Research Center looked at how 900 US adults browsed in March 2025, people clicked a regular search result on 8% of Google searches that showed an AI summary, compared with 15% of searches that didn't. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1% of them.
So when someone does make it to your site, it's worth giving them a reason to stay in touch. Email still pays for that effort: in Litmus's 2025 State of Email survey of nearly 500 marketers, 70% said email brings back at least $10 for every $1 they spend on it.
An opt-in form is where that relationship starts, so let's make one that people actually fill in.
First, Pick Where Your Form Shows Up (Thrive Leads Has a Type for Every Spot)
Before you build anything, decide where the form will live, because that decides which kind you create. When you click Create new form in Thrive Leads, you'll pick from these:
There are three more under My Forms. ThriveBoxes open when someone clicks a button or link, Lead Shortcodes let you drop a form into any page with a short piece of code, and Signup Segue lets people who are already on your list sign up for something else with one click.
If you're not sure where to start, start with In-Content. It doesn't interrupt anyone, and it sits right where an interested reader already is.
What to Offer in Your Form (Three Rules That Still Hold Up)
What you offer does more for your sign-ups than how the form looks, so decide that before you open Thrive Leads. These three rules have been part of Thrive's advice for years:
- Solve one problem. People sign up for the fix to something that's bothering them right now, not for everything you know. Tallwick's checklist covers one thing: quotes that get ignored.
- Keep it quick. A one-page checklist, a short video or a template is plenty. When Thrive asked blogger Jon Morrow about this years ago, he said that if your offer "requires more than a headline to explain, it's too abstract."
- Match what they came for. The offer should carry on from the page it sits on. Someone reading about quotes that get ignored is far more likely to want a quote checklist than a general newsletter.
If you're still stuck for ideas, this guide to lead magnets has plenty of them.
How to Create an Opt-In Form in WordPress, Step by Step (The One I Built for Tallwick)
I built Tallwick's form in Thrive Leads, which you can get on its own or as part of Thrive Suite. These are the steps I followed, from an empty dashboard to a live form.
Step 1: Click "Create New Form" (And Pick In-Content)
Once Thrive Leads is installed, go to Thrive Dashboard → Thrive Leads. On the dashboard, next to Choose a form type, click Create new form.
Create new form on the Thrive Leads dashboard, above the list of form types.
That opens the Templates tab, with every form type across the top. Pick the one you chose above. For Tallwick, that's In-Content.
Step 2: Pick a Template (The Filters Save You a Lot of Scrolling)
There are more than 150 templates for in-content forms alone, so use the filters. Under Filters, you can narrow them down by Steps in a form (single-step or multi-step), Category (like Minimal, Personal Brand or Photography) and Tags. I ticked Single-Step, because I only wanted to ask for an email address.
The Templates tab, with the form types across the top and Single-Step ticked under Filters.
When you find one you like, hover over it and click Use Template (or Preview to see it bigger first). I picked Simple Split Layout 1-Step: a headline, one email field and a button on the left, with a picture on the right.
Use Template on the Simple Split Layout 1-Step template.
Step 3: Name It and Give It a Lead Group
Next, give your form a name. Visitors never see it, so call it something you'll recognize later. Mine is "Proposal Checklist (blog posts)".
Then add it to a lead group. A lead group is a set of forms that share one rule about where they show up, so you set the rule once and every form in the group follows it. I didn't have one yet, so I picked Create New Lead Group from the Add form to a group menu and called it "Tallwick blog". Then click Save Form & Proceed.
Naming the form and adding it to the Tallwick blog lead group.
That opens a four-step setup: Design, Display Rules, Lead Group and Review & Finish. The next four steps follow it in order.
Step 4: Design It (A Headline, One Field and One Button)
The Design step opens your template in Thrive Architect, right inside the setup. Click any text on the form to change it.
The Design step, with Tallwick's form open in Thrive Architect and the four setup steps along the top.
This is what I changed for Tallwick:
Write your button as the thing people get, not "Submit" or "Sign up". And ask for an email address and nothing else, unless your offer really needs more. A short form is easier to fill in on a phone too, which this guide to mobile-friendly forms goes into.
Step 5: Connect Your Email List (And Say Thank You)
Still in the editor, click the form's email field to select the whole form. On the left, under Connection, click Add Connection and choose where sign-ups should go.
If you've connected an email service to Thrive, like Kit, Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, it shows up in that list. The Go to the API Dashboard link underneath takes you to the screen where you connect one.
Tallwick doesn't have an email service yet, so I used Thrive's built-in Email option. It sends each sign-up to an inbox you choose (I used Tallwick's), and Compose Email lets you set the subject and the message. Thrive warns you right there that emails sent straight from your site don't always arrive, and suggests a sending plugin like WP Mail SMTP, so if this is your only connection, set one up.
The form's settings: sign-ups go to Email, and after a sign-up the form switches to the Thank you state.
When you do connect an email service, you'll also choose between single and double opt-in there. Single opt-in feels simpler, but double opt-in is the smarter long-term choice, because people confirm their address before they join your list. There's more on that in the FAQ.
Then decide what people see after they sign up. Under After successful submission, you can send them to a thank-you page (Redirect to Custom URL), show a short message (Show success notification) or Switch State, which swaps the form for another version of itself.
I used Switch State. In the State Manager at the bottom of the editor, I clicked +, added a New State, renamed it "Thank you", changed the text to "Check your inbox" and took out the email field. Then I went back to the form, picked "Thank you" as the state to switch to, and clicked Save Work.
The Thank you state in the State Manager: what people see right after they sign up.
Step 6: Set the Display Rules (When It Shows and Where in the Post)
Click Continue to get to Display Rules. For an in-content form, you choose:
I put Tallwick's form after 2 paragraphs, right after the post's intro, so readers see it once they've decided the post is for them. It shows on page load, on desktop and mobile.
Display Rules for Tallwick's form: on page load, after 2 paragraphs, on desktop and mobile.
Other form types have other options here, like a time delay for slide-ins. One of those caught me out, and I explain why in the examples.
Step 7: Choose Which Pages Show It (The Lead Group Step)
The Lead Group step decides where the forms in your group appear. Under Include forms in, you'll find tabs for basic settings, categories, single posts and pages, post types and more, and Exclude forms from works the same way for anywhere you want to skip.
Tallwick's form only belongs on the blog, so I ticked All Posts under Basic settings. That way, the Let's Talk page and the homepage don't get it.
The Tallwick blog lead group shows its forms on All Posts.
Click Save Conditions, then Continue. If your group already has its conditions set, this step shows them with an Edit conditions button instead.
Step 8: Review Everything and Publish
Review & Finish puts everything on one screen: the design, the display rules and the lead group. If something's missing, like the lead group's conditions, it tells you here, so you can click Edit next to it and fix it before anything goes live. When it says Ready to publish!, click Publish form.
Review & Finish, with Publish form at the top right.
Step 9: Check It Like a Visitor (Computer, Phone and Sign-Up)
Open one of your posts in a private browser window, so you see it the way a visitor does. Tallwick's form sits right after the intro.
Tallwick's opt-in form after the second paragraph of a blog post.
Then sign up yourself, with an address you can check. The form should switch to your thank-you state, and the sign-up should land wherever you connected it.
The same form right after a sign-up.
Check it on your phone too. On Tallwick's, the picture moves above the text and the button stays easy to tap.
Tallwick's opt-in form on a phone.
A few days later, open Lead Reports to see how many people signed up through each form and lead group.
Lead Reports, with the first test sign-ups on Tallwick's forms.
What Thrive's Own Tests Found (One Form Went From 2.09% to 5.66%)
Back in 2016, Thrive worked with John Lee Dumas on the opt-in form on his Entrepreneur on Fire site, changing one thing at a time and keeping whatever won. You can read the full case study, but this is how the numbers moved:
By the end, the form was signing up 2.7 times as many visitors as when it started. These tests are from 2016, so your numbers will be different, and only one of the changes touched the design. Most of the gain came from who saw the form, when they saw it and what it offered.
If you want to run tests like these on your own forms, this guide shows you how to A/B test opt-in forms.
Opt-In Form Examples Worth Borrowing From (Two I Built, Four Still Running)
These are two more forms I built for Tallwick, and four from real sites. Those four first appeared in an old Thrive roundup of opt-in offers, so I went back to see what they're doing now.
Tallwick's Slide-In (On a Page That's Too Short to Scroll)
On Tallwick's Services and About pages, a slide-in offers the same checklist. I built it the same way, from the Slide In templates (I used 1-step Set 008), and gave it its own lead group for those two pages.
Tallwick's slide-in on the Services page.
But it taught me something. I first set it to slide in once a visitor had scrolled halfway down the page, and it never appeared. Thrive Leads measures that scroll from the end of the page's content, and the Services page is short enough to end before you've scrolled halfway. So I switched it to show after 10 seconds instead. If your page is short, use a time delay.
Tallwick's Free-Call ThriveBox (Yes First, Then the Email)
On the Let's Talk page, a Book a free 20-minute call button opens a ThriveBox. It asks first, and only shows the email field once someone clicks Yes, book my call. That's the same two-step idea that took Entrepreneur on Fire's form from 3.28% to 3.79%.
The first step of Tallwick's free-call ThriveBox.
After "Yes, book my call", the ThriveBox asks for an email address.
You create ThriveBoxes under My Forms → ThriveBoxes. Each one has a Copy link button that gives you a short code like [thrive_2step id='438']Trigger goes here[/thrive_2step]. Wrap it around any text or button on your page, and clicking that opens the box. I wrapped it around Tallwick's call button.
Copy link on a ThriveBox, under My Forms.
Smart Blogger's Headline Hacks (The Same Offer, Years Later)
Smart Blogger has offered Headline Hacks, a cheat sheet of headline formulas, for years, and it's still there: one short promise, "A Cheat Sheet for Writing Content That Goes Viral", and a Get the Hacks button. It solves one problem and it's quick to use, which is exactly what Jon Morrow, Smart Blogger's founder, described in the quote above. When Thrive first wrote about it, the page was turning around half of its visitors into subscribers.
HubSpot's Website Grader (A Free Tool as the Offer)
HubSpot asks for two things, your website and your email address, and gives you a score for your site in return. The payoff arrives in seconds, which makes it about as quick as an offer gets.
HubSpot's Website Grader: two fields and a Get your score button.
Amy Porterfield's Free Training (A Bigger Offer With More Fields)
Amy Porterfield's opt-in is a free training. You choose a day and time, then give your first name, email address and phone number. That's more fields than I'd suggest for a checklist, but it's a bigger offer too, a training with a set time instead of a PDF.
Amy Porterfield's free training sign-up.
Her site also runs a bar across the top of every page that points to the training, so a reader who never visits the training page still sees it. That's a notification bar doing its job.
Brendon Burchard's Newsletter (A Form at the Top of the Homepage)
Brendon Burchard used to give away a free book (you paid the shipping). Now his homepage leads with a newsletter form, right under the headline, with one line of proof underneath: "Trusted by 1,000,000+ readers · Free · Weekly." New subscribers also get a free 10-day guide, and there's a two-minute "Habits Score" assessment for anyone who'd rather take a quiz first. If a quiz suits your audience, you can build one with Thrive Quiz Builder.
Brendon Burchard's homepage, with the newsletter form under the headline.
Frequently Asked Questions About Opt-In Forms
A few questions tend to come up once you start building forms, so these are the short answers. Click one to jump to it:
What Is an Opt-In Form?
An opt-in form is a form on your website where visitors choose to give you their email address, usually in exchange for something free, like a checklist, a discount or a training. Because they asked to hear from you, you can email them afterward.
What's the Difference Between an Opt-In Form and an Opt-In Page?
An opt-in form is the form itself, which can sit inside a post, slide in from the side or pop up over a page. An opt-in page (or squeeze page) is a whole page built around one form, usually with nothing else to click. You can build forms with Thrive Leads and whole pages with Thrive Architect.
Should I Use Single or Double Opt-In?
With single opt-in, people join your list as soon as they submit the form. With double opt-in, they confirm first by clicking a link in an email. Single opt-in feels simpler, but double opt-in is the smarter long-term choice, because it keeps typos and fake addresses off your list. You turn it on in your email service, not in the form.
Is Opt-In or Opt-Out Better?
Opt-in. With opt-in, people choose to join your list. With opt-out, they're added unless they say no. Opt-in lists are smaller, but they're full of people who want your emails, and in places like the EU, the rules expect that kind of consent before you send marketing emails.
How Many Fields Should an Opt-In Form Have?
As few as your offer needs. For a checklist or a guide, an email address is enough. A bigger offer can ask for more: Amy Porterfield's free training asks for a date, a first name, an email address and a phone number, because a scheduled training needs them.
Do I Need a Plugin to Add an Opt-In Form in WordPress?
WordPress doesn't come with an opt-in form of its own. Your email service may give you a form you can paste into a page, but a plugin like Thrive Leads lets you design the form, choose where and when it shows, and see how many people sign up, without touching any code.
Start With the Offer, Then Build the Form
A form is a small thing to build, but it's how you reach a reader again after they leave. So decide what you're offering first, put it where the right readers will see it, and keep it short. Then check your Lead Reports and change one thing at a time, the way Thrive did with Entrepreneur on Fire.
A few next reads, depending on where you're headed:
Ready to Build Yours With Thrive?
Tallwick's blog form, its slide-in and its free-call ThriveBox were all built in Thrive Leads, with the designs edited in Thrive Architect. Both are part of Thrive Suite, so if you already have Thrive Suite, you already have everything I used here.
Start with one form in one spot, and grow from there.
Do your forms integrate with HighLevel?
Hey Jimmy!
We don’t have a direct integration with HighLevel (yet), but there is a way to do it with webhooks. This tutorial focuses on connecting Thrive Apprentice to HighLevel, but there should be a workaround to connect your forms in a similar way.