If you want to use the services offered by your Thrive Themes and your MailRelay account at the same time, you should create an API connection between them.

This way, whenever you will add a “Lead Generation” element with Thrive Architect, or an opt-in form with Thrive Leads to your website, you will be able to connect them to the mailing lists that you have set up in your MailRelay account.

Here is how to achieve this:

In order to set up the API connection, you will need to get the “API URL” and the “API key” from your MailRelay account. Log in to your MailRelay account and access the “Settings”, the last item from the top menu:

Then a variety of options will open under the “Settings”. Scroll down until you see the “API keys” option and click on it to access it:

The API key should be displayed under the “Token” part of the page if you have previously added one or more API keys. Copy the API key from there:

If you haven’t created an API key yet, or you want to have a new one, you can use the “Add” button from the top left side of this page:

On the page that opens, choose the user of your choice, and click ok "Create API key":

You will then have the key to be inserted in the Thrive Dashboard.

The API URL is the hostname that you have created on the MailRelay.com website. Thus, this is the first part of the URL of the page you are on right now.

You can find the API URL from the address bar of the browser. Here is an example of such an API URL:

Make sure to copy your API URL as well.

After you have copied the “API URL” and the “API key” from your MailRelay account, you will need to insert them into your Thrive Dashboard to create the connection.

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

Scroll down until you see the “API Connections” card and click on the “Manage Connections” button from it:

The ”Active Connections” page will open, where you can see every API connection that you have set up so far, and where you also have the option to add new ones. Look for the “Add new Connection” option from the page and once you have found it, click on it:

You will first have to define which service you want to connect to. To do this, click on the “Select an app” section to open its drop-down:

In the drop-down that opens, look for “MailRelay”. Either start typing "MailRelay" or scroll down until you see it in the list and then click on it:

The MailRelay connection card will open. This is where you will have to complete the information that you have previously copied. Paste the “API URL” and the “API key” that you have copied from your MailRelay account, in the corresponding sections of the connection card:

After completing the required information in the fields, there is one additional option you can use. You can choose whether or not you would like to connect to the Transactional Email Service as well.

If you are using MailRelay to send transactional emails as well (e.g. asset delivery emails) and you want to connect to this service too, then all you have to do is to click on “Yes” in the second section of the connection card:

Once the “API URL” and the “API key” fields are completed and you have also chosen whether or not to connect to the transactional email service too, all you have left to do is to click on the “Connect” button from the connection card:

A few seconds after you click on the button, the MailRelay API connection will be created and ready to use:

After you have created the API connection with MailRelay, you will be able to connect your Thrive Leads forms and the "Lead Generation" elements to this service.

Firstly, you will need to add a "Lead Generation" element to your post/page. For that, click on the plus sign from the right sidebar to open the list of elements. Look for the “Lead Generation” element:

Drag and drop this element, to place it on your page. Then, its options will appear in the left sidebar:

We do have a separate, more comprehensive article, about the "Lead Generation" element, and how to set it up, which you can find here.

In order to connect the element to your MailRelay account, go to the options of the "Lead Generation" element, make sure you select "API" in the "Connection" section:

Connection

Next, click on the "Add Connection" option:

A small pop-up will open, where you have to choose the API Connection that you want to use, from a list of connections, which in this case is "MailRelay". Click on the field, to open the list, and click on "MailRelay":

Mailing List

Next, a field will appear in the same pop-up, where you will have to choose your mailing list (the mailing lists are called groups, on the MailRelay website). Click on the field, to open a drop-down with all of your mailing lists, and choose one by clicking on it:

When finished, click on "Apply":

After creating the connection here, you can start setting up the form fields:

You can remove or edit existing fields, or even add new fields. If you want to find out how to add and customize each type of custom field, please check out this article. After setting up the fields, you're all done, and you can start using the connection. Just make sure to save all the changes, so that the API connection to be saved as well.

If you want to connect this service to your Thrive Leads dashboard, here is how to do that: Firstly, access your Thrive Leads dashboard, from the left sidebar of your WordPress admin dashboard:

Once you access the dashboard, look for the Lead Group, with the form that you want to add the MailRelay connection to, and click on it, to open the list with all of the form types from that Lead Group:

After you find the form type that contains your form (for example, "Widget"), click on "Edit", from the right side:

This will open a list with all the "Widget" types of forms. Then, click on the "Edit Design" option of the form that you want to add the connection to, in order to open it in the Thrive Architect editor:

The editor will open, and you can click on the "Lead Generation" element, from the form, to select it:

After this, the "Lead Generation" options will appear in the left sidebar. You will then be able to set up the connection, just like in the case of connecting MailRelay to a "Lead Generation" element, described above.

You can then set the display settings of the form, and choose on what posts/pages it should appear, and you're all set.

After you have successfully set up this connection, whenever someone completes the form from your site, you should be able to find them as a subscriber in the chosen group.

If you need more information about various Thrive Themes features or products, make sure to check out our articles and tutorials, here.

I hope this article was useful to you. If that's the case, don't forget to leave a smile below :)