Collect Email Address on Step 1 of Checkout

I am using both MultiStep Checkout for WooCommerce and Checkout Form.

I am also using MailerLite for email newsletters to collect email addresses.

I then create a new first step for checkout. My objective is to collect the email address on step 1 for the newsletter. I have tried 2 options but none work.

Option 1 (Preferred)
Checkout Steps>Edit Step 1>Disable Use only custom content for this step

Checkout Form>Remove Email from Billing Details
Add New Section>Re-add billing email collection here with same settings
Change display position of new section to Step 1 in Checkout to collect email here

Now mailterlite is setup to collect an email if a profile is created at checkout but because only the email is collected at step 1 it does not create a profile and in turn does not add the email to MailerLite.

Is there anyway to ensure that the email is added to MailterLite from this newly created step 1? Maybe a profile must be created from only the email at step 1.

If a profile can be created here on step 1 with only an email address, then when the client proceeds to finish up the checkout process the other checkout details must be updated to their newly created profile in step 1.

Option 2
Checkout Steps>Edit Step 1>Enable Use only custom content for this step>I added in a short code which inserted directly a Mailerlite Form to collect the email

ISSUE: when the user gets to step 1 and inserts their email and clicks submit on the Mailerlite form an error appears saying all the required checkout details have not been entered such as Billing First name is a required field, or Billing Last name is a required field etc. But these other checkout details are on step 2 and also have nothing to do with the Mailerlite Form. Why does it restrict adding the email to a MailerLite form, it has nothing to do with the checkout process in this case as its integrated from external.

Let me know if you have any suggestions to resolve the issue above? I purchased the above plugins for the purpose of being able to achieve collecting an email at step one.