How to Use WordPress Email Marketing?

WordPress Email Marketing is one of the best tools at your disposal to support your audience, promote your products and return traffic to your website. Getting started with WordPress email marketing takes some time, but it’s worth it. More importantly, the sooner you get started, the larger the list of email addresses you can get.

In this article, we will tell you how to start using WordPress email marketing for your business. All that is required is four steps:

• Choose an email WordPress marketing service.
• Create a registration form and upload it to WordPress websites.
• Create a welcome letter.
• Automate the rest of your campaign.

Letters are a powerful tool if you know how to use it. Let’s talk more about why this is!

Content

• Why You Need WordPress Email Marketing
• How to integrate email marketing in WordPress (in 4 steps)
• Conclusion

Why You Need WordPress Email Marketing

You have probably noticed that most of the sites you visit request your email address at some point. If you provide this address, they will usually add you to the mailing list and begin to contact you periodically. Some websites send you discounts, others tell you about updates or new products that might interest you, and so on. The process of collecting email addresses and using them to increase conversions or traffic is what WordPress email marketing is.

However, using WordPress email marketing is not so simple. WordPress allows users to register on your site, and the platform is able to send automatic emails to these users. However, these letters are mainly associated with user accounts. For example, when you sign up for a new site, you usually receive an email confirming your account. These types of messages are called “transactional” emails.

While WordPress email is capable of sending transactional emails, it does not include email marketing by default. This means that if you want to collect email addresses for marketing purposes, you will need to use a third-party solution. Although it takes a little effort, it is worth the time spent in the long run.

To illustrate this, here are just a few ways how WordPress email marketing can benefit your site:

• You can make a list of subscribers. In most cases, people who register on your mailing list will already be interested in your content, so they are more likely to be able to return at some point if you keep in touch.
• Marketing emails can help to bring traffic back to your site. From time to time, a letter may remind your subscribers about your website, so they will come back to look at it one more time or two.
• You can get more conversions. A simple mailing of letters may be enough to provide you with some additional sales, especially if you are advertising a product or service.

In fairness, it should be noted that installing and configuring WordPress email marketing is connected with honest work. You need to come up with new ideas for the campaign, test them and make sure that you are effectively attracting your subscribers. However, many modern email marketing platforms can automate many of these processes.

These days, you can create emails in advance and schedule them later, thanks to automation. You can even set up triggers for specific emails. For example, you can create a “welcome” email that is sent automatically when someone new subscribes to your newsletter. In general, there are many reasons to use WordPress email marketing.

How to integrate email marketing in WordPress (in 4 steps)

At the moment, you are probably wondering how to integrate email marketing into WordPress. So let’s talk about how to get things right. Before you can create your first WordPress marketing campaign, you will need to choose which platform to use.

Step 1: Choose an Email Marketing Service

Currently, you have many options when it comes to choosing a platform for electronic mailing. These services provide you with the tools you need to set up email lists, manage subscribers, create campaigns, and send messages. However, these are just the basics. You can also find email marketing services that provide you advanced features, including email automation, A / B testing, user segmentation, and more.

As you can imagine, these services often differ in price. Fortunately, there are many options that will not “eat up” your budget, even if you use only a small website. Take MailChimp for example. This is one of the most popular email marketing service providers on the Internet, and it offers a free plan that supports up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month:

In addition, MailChimp also allows you to automate your campaigns, even at your own free level. You can even customize the target segments of your users to specific messages. These features make this a great option if you are looking for a budget email marketing service.

If you need something with a bit more firepower, check out Constant Contact, a service that offers all the features of MailChimp, and more. For example, this platform includes advanced tracking and reporting features. It integrates with many third-party applications (including WordPress), and also allows you to conduct surveys and collect donations by email:

The disadvantage is that all these additional features are expensive. To access this feature, you need to pay 45$ per month for the basic Email Plus plan, which supports up to 500 subscribers. Because of this price tag, we recommend this platform only if you use a website that you have already monetized, or if you have a flexible budget.

Finally, we also want to mention SendinBlue, which is a great budget alternative to MailChimp. This particular platform allows you to send up to 300 letters per day for free, and it does not limit your subscribers, even when you use your main plan:

The disadvantage, in this case, is that you do not get access to many advanced tracking and reporting functions. However, the platform works great for sending basic messages, and it has an easy-to-use campaign creator.

Ultimately, if you are looking for a budget option, we recommend that you try both SendinBlue and MailChimp and stick to the one you like best. For the purpose of this guide, we will use MailChimp.

In the following sections, we will show you how to use this platform to use email marketing in WordPress. However, the same basic process applies regardless of the solution you choose.

Step 2. Create a registration form and add it to WordPress.

After you sign up and create a MailChimp account, the first thing you need to do is set up your email list. You can do this by going to the Lists tab at the top of the MailChimp control panel and clicking the Create List button:

Then you need to select a title for your list and specify which email address and name should be displayed as the sender. By default, the admin email name in WordPress and your real or commercial name will be used:

Below you will find a section called Form Settings, where you can enable compliance fields for GDPR compliance. Sign-in verification means that new subscribers will need to confirm that they want to join your email list to receive messages:

Finally, if you go to the Notifications section, you can enable notifications for both new subscribers and those who leave your email list:

Now that your email list is set up, MailChimp will show you a list of your contacts, which should be empty at the moment: Now that your email list is set up, MailChimp will show you a list of your contacts, which should be empty at the moment:

Go to the Signup Forms Tab. Inside you will see a list of methods for adding your new WordPress signup form. Remember that without the form, users will not be able to subscribe to your mailing list:

The quickest way to add a new form in WordPress is to choose the Embedded Forms option. Then MailChimp will provide you with a snippet of HTML code that you can add to WordPress:

On the same screen, you can also configure how your form will look and view it:

When you have the HTML code to embed, you can add it to your WordPress website in two ways. The first is to open the WordPress editor for one of your pages and select the Text tab, which supports HTML:

However, this approach can be a bit confusing, which is why many people prefer to add their email signup forms using widgets. To do this, go to the Appearance> Widgets tab and find the Custom HTML option:

Drag this widget to your sidebar (or your footer, if you want), and paste the HTML code inside:

That’s all! If you look at your site now, your email newsletter subscription form should appear where you added it:

At this point, you’re ready to get started with email in WordPress. This means that it’s time to start creating your first message.

Step 3: Create a Welcome Letter

After your registration form is configured, you will need to return to the MailChimp control panel and go to the Campaigns tab. Then click the Create Campaign button. MailChimp will ask you which campaign you want to create, so select the Create an email option:

On the next screen, click the Automated tab at the top and select Welcome new subscribers:

Then enter the campaign name and select which list of email addresses you want to configure (this should be only the one you just created):

On the next screen, you will see a brief overview of your welcome message. By default, he will be in contact with new subscribers a day after their registration. However, you can change this by clicking the Edit trigger link:

Check the Delay section and change the existing setting to Immediately. This will send your welcome email as soon as someone signs up for your newsletter:

Then you can customize the body of the email itself by clicking the Design Email button:

On the next screen, set a subject for your email. You will also want to include the preview text that appears immediately after the header in the Inbox of subscribers, before they open the message:

Click Next when you are ready and you can choose a template for your welcome message. You have many options to choose from:

After you configure the template, you can edit it using the drag and drop function. MailChimp provides you with a wide range of elements that you can add to your template:

When you add an element to your design, you can click on it to select and edit it:

Clicking on any item also gives you the ability to duplicate it or delete it.

Take a few minutes to get to know this editor and work on your welcome letter. When it is ready, click Save and Continue at the bottom of the screen. That’s all, your welcome letter is ready to go!

Step 4. Automate the rest of your campaign.

You have just taken your first step in WordPress email marketing. Now we recommend that you take a little time to set up some additional automatic emails. This way, you don’t have to come back to create and plan new messages every day.

The easiest way to do this is to add additional letters to the Welcome Message campaign. Thus, you can send a welcome letter as a series of messages. Just open the campaign from the control panel and click the Add Email button at the bottom of the screen:

Now all you have to do is repeat the same process from the previous step. This means selecting a trigger and editing the contents of your email to say everything you need.

You can add as many letters as you want in your welcome series. Most websites use this feature to help subscribers learn more about what they are offering and to explain why continuing to subscribe to their emails is a good idea.

However, if you do not want to create an extensive welcome email, you can also create a completely new campaign. To do this, go back to the Campaign tab and click Create Email List again.

This time you will choose another option, in addition to the welcome letter. For example, you can set up a campaign to send automation emails whenever you update your WordPress blog:

You can learn more about this process in the MailChimp knowledge base and learn about other types of campaigns that you can set up using this platform. Thanks to WordPress email marketing, the possibilities are almost endless. So feel free to experiment with new types of campaigns!

Conclusion

There is a reason many websites want you to subscribe to their email newsletters. Email marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that allows you to attract an audience to yourself and get more conversions. If you use the WordPress website and you don’t have a customized email marketing solution, you are missing out on many potential benefits and you urgently need a WordPress email newsletter. Fortunately, there are many platforms you can use that integrate seamlessly with WordPress, such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, and SendinBlue.

Do you have any questions about how to use WordPress email marketing? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!