13 secret MailerLite hacks to save time and enrich your emails

Yes, that walnut thing works!

Much like your favorite life hacks, there are some time-saving tricks you can employ in MailerLite that will help you work faster and smarter. We call them “Lite hacks”.

In this article, we’ll show you 13 Lite hacks you can use to simplify your email marketing routine so you can spend more time doing the things you love.

Use case: When you want a subscriber to join another email list by clicking a button, but you don’t want to redirect to an external web page.

Lite hack: Create a button that automatically adds subscribers to a group using the event block.

If you’ve used the traditional button block, you know that the button only appears if you add a destination URL. And to move people into a specific group, you have to create an automation that’s triggered when a subscriber clicks that URL.

You can skip the external link and the automation by creating an event button that automatically adds subscribers to a selected group, without the need for a destination URL and automation.

The event block contains a button—except this button is used for collecting RSVPs, and therefore, doesn’t require a destination URL.

By simply removing the content you don’t need, such as the heading and subtitle, you can hack the event block to make it look like a regular old button block—except you won’t need to add a URL.

Then add your design, some additional text or headings, and voila!

You’ll be left with an incognito CTA that, when clicked, will show subscribers a short success message and automatically add them to your selected group.

Use case: When you want to deliver free content like e-books, checklists or any PDF to subscribers in one click.

Lite hack: Add direct download links to your newsletter content.

When it comes to sending bulk emails, attachments are usually a big no-no as they increase the size of your email. This slows down sending and alerts spam filters that may think you’re sending harmful files, which can negatively affect your deliverability.

For this reason, it’s not possible to attach a PDF to your MailerLite emails… but that doesn’t mean you can’t include them in your newsletters.

Have you ever heard of direct download links? They’re links you can generate that allow people to download your PDFs in one click.

The best part? You can add a download link to a button block一so instead of being redirected to an external webpage, subscribers who click your button will automatically download your PDF. 

When it comes to subscriber experience, you want the journey to be as simple as possible. And it doesn’t get much simpler than one-click delivery.

Use case: When you want to resend a campaign or use a sent campaign as the starting point for a new campaign. 

Lite hack: Use the Copy to drafts feature to create an identical version of a past campaign. 

MailerLite lets you resend campaigns to new subscribers who joined your list since the initial send. But what if you want to send an existing campaign to other people? That’s where the Copy to drafts feature is useful.

There are 3 main situations when you might want to duplicate a campaign:

1. To send the campaign to a subscriber group or segment who weren’t included in the initial send.

2. To resend the campaign to people who didn’t open the initial email, when the campaign wasn’t created with our automatic resend feature.

3. To use the campaign’s design as the starting block for your next email.

When you use the feature, Mailerlite will copy the entire campaign to your drafts, including content, subject lines, and recipients, so it’s ready for sending. You can then edit any part of the campaign to suit your needs. 

Use case: When you want to turn a sent email campaign into an evergreen automation.

Lite hack: Create a new automation and then choose from your recently sent campaigns as the template.

There are times when you send an email as a one-off campaign but realize that it will also work well as an automated message.

For example, if you sent a campaign with speaker information to event signups, you may also benefit from sending the same information to future event signups via an automation.

Rather than creating an automation and then recreating the email by copying and pasting all the information, simply use the recently sent campaign as the basis for your automation email.

You'll save a ton of time, and it's still easy to adjust the content to make it more evergreen, for example, by removing dates.

Use case: When you want to highlight ideas or quickly communicate a message.

Lite hack: Add icons from our integrated icon library.

Using icons in design communicates ideas visually, helping people understand your content faster. They also bring attention to the content blocks with the icons and give your email design a professional touch. 

Previously, you’d have to find and download icon packs and then upload them into your MailerLite file manager. But now you can access them straight from MailerLite via our Iconfinder integration. 

Use case: When you want to reuse content across multiple emails without reusing an entire template.

Lite hack: Save the block as a template.

Templates allow you to reuse entire email designs but they can also be useful to reuse individual sections, such as offer or blog post promotion blocks. Saving an email block as a template allows you to do this. 

All you have to do is design the block you want to use and save it. You’ll then be able to add the block to any of your future emails and customize the content. 

This will help you create consistently on-brand emails in significantly less time. And the best thing is that you can create and save multiple blocks for all your needs.

Use case: Stop email addresses and sequences of numbers being automatically turned into links.

Lite hack: Paste a short code snippet into the text block’s HTML.

When you add email addresses or numbers to an email, they are automatically turned into links. When people click on the email or number it will automatically open their default email client or phone app. 

While linking contact details can be useful, you might not want it to happen in your emails as links can distract readers from your content. 

Solve the problem by adding a short code snippet around the email or number to stop them from being turned into a link. 

Use case: Create short email preheaders that don’t also include email content. 

Lite hack: Add the null variable ͏ to the preheader text multiple times.

Alongside subject lines, email preheaders are the main tool you have to encourage people to open your emails. This text is shown in the recipient’s email client next to the subject line. 

Typically, email clients show the first content to appear in the email. But with MailerLite, you can choose the text you want to show by filling out the preheader text section in the campaign overview. 

The only problem is that if the text is too short, email clients will also include content from the email to fill up the space. 

That’s where our next hack comes in. By adding the variable ͏ multiple times to the preheader after the text, you’ll add blank space after your chosen email preheader. This will stop email clients from showing text from your email, creating a much cleaner inbox experience.

Use case: Embed videos that are unsupported by the traditional video block like unlisted videos or videos uploaded somewhere other than YouTube.

Lite hack: Use an image block to create a custom video block.

MailerLite’s drag & drop editor contains a video block that allows you to embed published YouTube videos into newsletters that, when clicked, redirect to the YouTube video itself.

You can also create your own custom video block, by enlisting the help of a basic image block.

There are two main reasons why you might want to do this rather than using the regular video block:

1. You want to embed an unlisted YouTube video

2. You want to embed a video that hasn't been uploaded to YouTube, Vimeo or TikTok (e.g Udemy, Facebook, Skillshare, etc)

Faking a video block is as easy as taking a screenshot or recording a GIF of your selected video, adding it to an image block, then adding your desired URL.

Your subscribers won’t know the difference!

Use case: Embed any social media post from any platform in your newsletter.

Lite hack: Use an image block to build a custom social media block.

Similar to hack number 3, in which you use an image block to make a custom video block, you can also use the image block to create a custom social media block.

The MailerLite drag & drop editor already contains 5 social media blocks that allow you to embed posts into your newsletter:

• Twitter post

• Facebook post

• Facebook event

• Instagram post

• LinkedIn post

While those are great, they’re not as useful if your primary social media platform is, say, Pinterest or Soundcloud.

That’s where the image block comes in. You can take a screenshot of your social media post, add it to an image block, and link the image block directly to that post.

It’ll appear as though the post is embedded in your email campaign, but when subscribers click on any part of the image, they’ll be directed to the actual post on your profile.

Use case: Test automations multiple times without needing to wait >24 hours between tests or create multiple email accounts.

Lite hack: Create task-specific copies of your Gmail address to add your email address as a subscriber more than once.

To avoid accidentally spamming your subscribers, MailerLite automations can only be triggered once in a 24 hour period per unique email address.

This can make testing your workflows seem like a cumbersome process. But with this hack, it doesn’t have to be—and all you need is one Gmail address.

If you don’t want to create multiple email accounts for testing automations, simply add a plus sign (+) and any word or number before the @ symbol in your Gmail address.

MailerLite will recognize each variation as a unique email address and all emails will still reach your regular inbox.

Use case: Continue a long automation workflow that has reached the maximum steps limit of 100 steps.

Lite hack: Use the last step of one automation to trigger a second automation.

This nifty hack allows you to bypass the limits of the automation builder and pick up where you left off with a brand new workflow.

The trick is setting your second automation’s trigger to “When a subscriber joins a group” then making the final step of your original automation an action step that moves subscribers to the trigger group.

Use case: Save time by avoiding manually updating your company address in every campaign and automation email.

Lite hack: Update the company details in your email footers en masse by resetting your default settings.

This advanced workaround can save you hours when updating your email footers. Updating the company address in your email footers manually can quickly become an extremely monotonous task. 

This is made possible by resetting your default settings. In a few simple steps, you can update your company details in all of your campaigns, automation, and even your landing pages.

Do you have your own secret set of Lite hacks? Share your clever tricks in the comments below!