Some experts in marketing and communications say that emails are still the best way to communicate with different types of people. Millions of emails are being sent daily, and emails are being used for everything, from important communication related to business, jobs, education to various updates and promotional campaigns by business owners and marketers. However, some of the emails sent often end up in the spam folder, which destroys the potential of starting a conversation or building a relationship with the email recipient. This doesn’t mean that just the promotional emails end up in the spam box, but sometimes even important emails can end up unnoticed.
Preventing this from happening is especially important for business owners, whether it is some important email over a potential deal or just a piece of a promotional campaign; you do not want to spend money on something that goes straight to trash. However, this happens for many reasons. Maybe you didn’t get the permission to email that person (CAN-SPAM act), maybe your IP address was used for spam, or you have low engagement rates (which means they are at higher risk for being flagged as spam). Maybe you even used some spam words, such as amazing, cancel at any time, clicker here, or congratulations. All of this can affect what happens to your email once it is sent.
However, this can still be prevented, and this can be done by ensuring that the emails you send are specifically targeted at your customers. They also need to be properly personalized and offer them what they want or need. Make sure you have a clear subject line and a proper email address. However, this is not always easy to do. It is impossible to keep track of all of the subscribers you have (especially if you have several thousand) and pay attention to their specific needs and wants. Luckily, there are some good customer management systems out there that do just this. They are designed to help you engage with your customers.
Out of so many different email software out there, it is tough to pick just one. However, we will focus on MailPoet. We will do a review of the plugin and all the features it has to offer. First of all, if you wish to use this plugin, you need to download it (you can click here) and then activate it on your WordPress dashboard.
So, let us get started!
What is MailPoet?
MailPoet, in short, is a newsletter WordPress plugin. Some would even say that it is the best email plugin for WordPress, which is supported by the fact that more than 300,000 websites use it every day to send thousands of emails. Moreover, while there are many email tools out there, MailPoet has been specifically designed to offer you the best features so you can create effective emails and newsletters and send them to your customers with an almost perfect delivery rate.
What are its features?
This plugin lets you add content and images directly to the email template from your media library. This means you don’t need to waste your time uploading files to some third-party service and then to your emails. Instead, everything is easily available straight from your WP dashboard.
Also, it has options for you to send different emails to different customers (as it should be done if you are thinking in terms of audience analyses and segmentation). This means that everything from the first welcome email to the specific email for loyal customers can be created and sent later. You can also set up automated emails to be sent out to your customers whenever you post a new blog, whether daily, weekly, or monthly.
Also, there are numerous templates available for you to try out and use (more than 50).
You can use many design options, colors and fonts, logos, and many advanced features to create entertaining and visually appealing emails.
Also, there is a quick preview option to see how your emails look like before you send them out. You can also add images, blog posts, product features, etc., to your emails to make them more visually appealing and provide more value to your customers. When customizing your emails, you can use the drag and drop option, making designing emails really fun and easy. Also, there is no coding knowledge needed. It’s that easy!
Furthermore, the plugin can also be used to create different registration forms, collect leads and subscribers, and add them to a database. There, you can further analyze and segment your audience, see who the inactive subscribers are, and create email lists that are tailored for customers based on their behavior. For example, you can send out emails to those who opened but didn’t click on your previous email or send an email to those who didn’t open it at all. You can even send specific emails to those who made a purchase or left their product in their shopping cart. You have lots of options. There is no limit on the number of lists you can create, so take this opportunity and really analyze your audience.
The signup forms are also designed to help you get subscribers and have their information accessible in your database. You can also choose what information you wish to collect, such as names, email addresses, location, or birthdays. They can also be edited and customized with your own CSS styles, and you can choose how you want them to appear on your site. They can be shown as a pop-up, sticky bar, widget, or just somewhere on your site. If needed, you can add the form to your page by using the iFrame, PHP, or Gutenberg block that MailPoet has. It also offers a big collection of third-party form integrations that help you create and customize the forms, but with no need for coding. Below you can see how it all looks like once you have created a list (or more).
Naturally, you can create different email categories and segment subscribers into multiple lists. If there are some inactive subscribers, the plugin will filter them out, not harming your sender score and deliverability. If you do not send an email to those who haven’t opened your emails, you will actually be improving your email reputation and increase your deliverability rate. You also increase your open rates. These statistics are very important when analyzing your performance and ensuring as many of your subscribers get your emails in their inboxes, not spam boxes. Lastly, you can track your email campaigns’ performance as you have access to some statistics regarding your emails and their performance. Basically, you can collect how your email campaigns are performing, check your open rates and click-through rates. That way, you can see what needs to be improved, such as calls to action, email subject lines, content, or design. You can even integrate this with Google Analytics to get more information about your customers.
This is how your stats page will look like once it gathers enough data about your email campaigns.
What types of emails can you send?
This plugin is quite versatile and lets you create three broad types of emails. All of them are very easy to design and set up, and everything is done from your WordPress dashboard (check the screenshot below). You simply have to follow the instructions when designing an email. You start by click on the email type you wish to create and click on Set Up.
The first type is a newsletter. With this type of email, you can keep your customers up to date about your business offers and discounts.
Second, you can create welcome emails. These emails work best when trying to make a great first impression. You can also set up two triggers: it can be sent when a new subscriber joins or when a new WordPress user is added in a specific role. You can decide when you wish to send them out and can even schedule them to be sent for a few weeks in a drip-content style format.
The final type is the last post notifications. For example, if you are running a blog, you can send automatic emails whenever you publish a new post. You can decide what posts you wish to include and how many. What’s even better is that this plugin comes with the automatic Latest Content widget that you can include in your email, and it lets you feature your newest posts on your site, but without you needing to choose them separately.
As we mentioned before, in the screenshot, you can see the process of editing and costuming an email (as you can see, it is fairly simple and intuitive).
Now, the plugin is designed to ensure your emails don’t end up in the spam box. Also, to reduce the bounce rate, it will avoid addresses that are no longer in use. It also has a built-in SMTP service, so you will not miss any transactional emails. This helps guarantee all email services run smoothly.
If you have been using a different email plugin so far, don’t worry. You can import your lists through a CSV file upload so you can switch between plugins. Also, the plugin is GDPR compliant and will protect the data from you and your clients.
What about WooCommerce?
If you are a business owner and sell products online, you can still use this plugin. MailPoet will seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce. You can then target customers at any stage of their buying process. You can also change the look of your emails on WooCommerce and add some brand themes to them. Here, you can also send welcome emails, follow-up emails, and abandoned cart emails. You can also run email analytics here and see who you are doing on your emails and email ROI.
Each option (as seen in the screenshot) has a short description of what it is designed for so you can choose the best option for your plan.
Anything else?
For now, this plugin does not support LTR language and multisite. Also, there are some minimum requirements you need to be aware of. To be able to run it, you need a WordPress version equal to or greater than 5.3. Also, it requires write permission “755”, “775” or “777”. You need a PHP version 7.1.8 or higher. For a list of all of the requirements needed, click here. There is also a page with extensive documentation on different parts and segments of the plugin that you can check out here if you need any help.
Pricing plans
MailPoet has several pricing plans that you can choose from, depending on the number of subscribers. However, any plan is free for up to 1,000 subscribers, so if you are just starting your email campaigns, don’t worry about additional costs. If you have up to 1,500 subscribers, it is €17 per month. It goes up by the number of subscribers you have, with the most expensive plan being €292 per month for up to 70,000 subscribers.
If you chose the option without the MailPoet sending service, you get a blogger license for 1 website for €149 per year, a freelance license for 4 websites for €249 per year, or an agency license for an unlimited number of websites for €499 per year.
Conclusion
MailPoet is definitely a well-designed and useful tool to have. It is easy to set up and use and comes with many features that can help you improve your email marketing campaigns. In short, you can manage your subscribers, send automated emails, integrate it with WooCommerce to increase your sales, and much more. It is also easy to use and has lots of templates to chose from, which you can further customize to fit your brand. We definitely recommend you get this plugin and improve your email marketing campaign.