Think about it: Just a few of the many tasks on your plate include marketing, customer service, communication, and nurturing leads and new prospects. Each of these can quickly monopolize your time and leave other critical aspects of your business unattended. Marketing automation software enables you to manage those tasks more effectively. 

And it works. The average ROI from marketing automation is $5.44 per dollar spent, according to Nucleus Research, and email is the most frequently utilized form of marketing automation, with 65% of marketers taking advantage of it in some form. 

Use this guide to learn all about email marketing automation – what it is, how it works, and the steps you can take to grow while opening up more time for other parts of your business and life.

What is email marketing automation?

In essence, email marketing automation tools allow you to send out messages without you needing to be involved each and every time. You create an email once, and through the use of triggers that fire when a visitor takes certain actions on your website or in response to other emails, your email automation software sends that message automatically. 

When you hear about people running businesses online in their sleep, email automation is part of what they’re talking about. You could be on vacation, out for dinner, or sleeping at 2:00 in the morning, and if a website visitor takes a particular action, they’ll receive an appropriate email from you right at that moment.

That’s email marketing automation. 

It’s a trigger-based approach to email that enables you to stay in touch and respond to customers across a vast array of situations, all without having to lift a finger – once your automation structure is in place. And that part does take some work on the front end. But once it’s set up, it just keeps running.

What is the difference between automated and broadcast emails?

Broadcast or batch emails are marketing emails that go out to your entire email list. They usually get sent out in batches, not all at once, to improve deliverability. Segmented emails go out to portions of your customer base. Both these types of emails are typically created by an email copywriter, and perhaps a larger marketing team. If you own a small business, you may do this yourself or hire a freelancer. 

Then, these broadcast-style emails are sent out or scheduled manually. If it’s to a segment of your email list, your team will have to identify and create that segment if it doesn’t already exist. 

These have their place in your email marketing strategy, but are separate from true email marketing automation – a person still has to do the work in order for that email to go out.

With automated emails, they go out even if no one is working at your entire business. They’ll go out even if the power is out, because your email servers aren’t located at your business, but through an email service provider such as MailPoet. 

Examples of automated emails

Here are a few of the most popular and effective types of automated emails that just about any business can use to nurture leads, engage customers, and make more sales.

Welcome emails 

When new customers visit your website and fill out a form to join your email list, what happens? In addition to being added to your list, they should receive a welcome email, or even better, a welcome series.

The welcome email introduces new leads and prospects to your business. It should offer them some type of reward for signing up, such as a coupon, a free guide, a video, or some other quick win. Your welcome series could also introduce your brand, products, and services, connect them with your social media accounts, send them helpful information such as popular blogs or useful web pages, and make them feel welcome and valued. 

A good email welcome series will make sales on the spot, or engage and nurture the new customer so they make purchases later. And it goes out automatically to anyone who joins your list.

Webinar registration emails 

When someone signs up for a webinar, they should receive an immediate confirmation email in their inbox. This reassures them you know what you’re doing, for one, and that their registration didn’t get lost in the abyss. More importantly, it increases the chances they will actually attend the webinar. 

The best webinar automated emails will again be a series, not just single emails. You will create a series of messages before the date of the webinar, and they will get sent out automatically, as the date gets closer, to everyone who registers. 

Free gift or download emails

One way to grow your email list is to offer something free that’s useful or desirable to your target audience, in exchange for their email address. While this might seem like just another version of a welcome email, it’s a little different because this automated email will be written specifically to ‘re-sell’ whatever free item they just requested. 

If it’s an eBook, a guide, a video, a podcast, or a report, you’ll want them to actually read, watch, or listen to it. So this email will promote the benefits of your content and get your new prospects excited to consume it.

If it’s a promotional offer like a first-time customer coupon or special deal, the email will encourage them to use it. Again, just because you send out a coupon doesn’t mean the recipient will buy something. You still need to make the sale. The automated email series motivates that purchase.

Quiz or survey completion emails

If you run a quiz or a survey on your website or through another service, everyone who takes your quiz should receive an email once they have finished. This email might share the results of the survey. It might include a reward of some sort for completing it, and should connect them to other resources on your website. 

It should also just say “thank you,” because they took time to participate.

Post-purchase follow-up emails

After a customer makes a purchase, they need to hear from you. You need to thank them. You also want to give them the chance to send feedback or write a review about the product, or about their customer service experience. For some products, you may include a tutorial PDF or video. 

You can create a post-purchase email that’s specific to every one of your products. 

Email automation like this can be set up to send follow-up emails if the customer doesn’t respond to the first one. This type of email series can also be used to promote a subsequent purchase by offering them new deals or informing them about other products related to what they just bought.

Emails to lapsed or inactive contacts

You can also set up email automation that attempts to engage customers after they have been inactive for a certain amount of time, such as a year. These pre-written emails will offer some kind of deal or opportunity for the customer to re-engage. This could be a free offer, such as a video, interview, new report, or something of that nature. Or, it could be a coupon or one-time promotional offer.

These types of emails accomplish more than just re-engaging lapsed customers. They also help you keep your email list clean. When customers don’t respond to these emails, you may want to remove them from your email list, as they may have abandoned that account.

Abandoned cart emails

This is one of the most profitable types of email marketing automation. According to Experian, customers who receive abandoned cart emails are 2.4 times more likely to complete their purchase than customers who hear nothing. 

These emails can be set to trigger automatically after a shopping cart gets left with items in it for a certain amount of time. Here’s more about how to use abandoned cart emails. 

Personalized automated emails

Customers appreciate personalized marketing because it’s relevant to them. You can personalize emails based on a number of factors, such as:

• Categories of products they’ve purchased
• Demographics like age, gender, or family status
• Birthdays and anniversaries
• Past purchase dates

For example, you might have a couple of automated email campaigns built around each of your product categories. Each year, you can send out those campaigns to any customer who has made a purchase of something from that category. They’ll see this email as relevant to them, and be more likely to respond. See how to set up category-specific email automations.

Likewise, you can set up emails to go out automatically on birthdays, with special promotional messages and offers to make your customers feel special. 

Triggered automated emails

More complicated email automation systems may include workflows that involve a series of triggers that go out depending on what a customer does. 

For example, suppose you send out an email asking if a segment of your customers wants to receive a video that will be coming out soon. Each customer who clicks ‘yes’ will be added to an email sequence built around that video. And within that sequence, you could have another sequence that goes out to anyone who watches the whole video, and a separate one that goes to people who only watch the first few minutes. 

This sort of email marketing automation is much more complicated than most of the other types listed above. But once you have it set up, it can play a big role in growing your business. Not every email automation platform offers that level of complexity.

How email automation helps small businesses

What are the benefits of email automation? Here are a few of the biggest wins for small businesses that use email automation software.

Saves time

What you can achieve with email automation, you simply could not do any other way without abandoning all of your other important responsibilities. Imagine having to track all the shopping carts and send out emails to each customer manually, listing the items they left in their carts. That simply isn’t going to happen. 

Or imagine having to send out a welcome series every time someone joins your email list, or every time someone buys anything from your online store, if you have one. For businesses with consistent levels of traffic, you’d need a whole team of people to keep up with all this. 

Marketing automation software allows you to serve customers immediately in ways that matter to them, regardless of how small your business is or how much it grows. Scaling your business has little effect on how hard your email automation has to work.

Increases revenue

Back to the abandoned cart statistic we mentioned earlier – you make more sales by sending out automated emails. Welcome series and other emails that trigger when a customer requests something simply lead to more revenue. Promotional emails that go out based on product categories or other personalized information will help you make sales you would’ve otherwise missed.

You’ll be selling to more people, in more situations, and more frequently than you ever would if you tried to do all of this manually. 

Keeps customers engaged

Customers are bombarded with communications and marketing. You have to stay on top of their minds or they’ll eventually forget about you. Email is the single best way to do that because it costs so little to send messages out.

Automated email marketing enables you to keep existing customers engaged without you having to do all the work. They are reminded of your business and their past involvement, and you stay relevant to them.

Improves retention rate

Engaged customers are more likely to make second purchases. Email marketing automation thus increases your customer lifetime value. First-time customers become second-time customers. Members stay longer.

Encourages word of mouth

When customers feel well-treated, they’re more likely to write positive reviews and testimonials. With automated email campaigns, you can not only more consistently ask for reviews as part of your post-purchase email series, but you’ll get more good reviews because your customers feel important and valued.

How to get started with email automation

At this point, you’re probably pretty excited about adding email automation to your marketing strategy. Or if you already are using email automation, perhaps you’ve discovered a few new ideas to add to your existing efforts. 

Either way, here’s a step-by-step blueprint for how to create an automated email marketing campaign.

Step 1: Choose an email marketing automation platform

Lots of people wonder if you can automate emails in Gmail or Outlook. The short answer is “no.” Those aren’t designed for sending out mass emails for businesses, and you can’t set up triggers based on particular situations to individual customers. 

You need to use an email service provider that offers marketing automation, such as MailPoet. Different platforms offer different levels of automation, and you need to find one that has the capabilities that you’ll need. 

For example, for an online store using WooCommerce, MailPoet works very well because it fully integrates with the platform and offers many of the automated emails you’ll want to use. And even if you’re not an online store, MailPoet works seamlessly with any WordPress-based website. 

Other email marketing platforms may specialize in the more complicated automated workflows and trigger-based sequences that some businesses desire. The one you choose depends on the type of automated emails you want to send out, as well as cost, learning curve, and convenience. 

Step 2: Upload your email list

If you’re starting email marketing for the first time, you’ll need to upload your email list – whatever you have on hand at the time. The sooner you get your existing customers engaged with email, the sooner you can create automated email campaigns that will benefit them. 

What if I don’t have an email list?

That’s okay! Email automation actually makes it much easier to grow and maintain an email list. 

If you create some incentives for visitors to your website and social media pages to join your email list, you can use basic email automation like a welcome series to engage those new email subscribers and convert them into customers.

A study from VentureBeat found that automated emails produced 180% higher conversion rates than bulk or batch emails. Your welcome series, even if that’s the only email automation you use, will increase your conversion rate compared to what you’d achieve just by sending out regular marketing emails.

To grow your email list, start offering coupons, free guides or other valuable content, and various incentives that will make people want to join your list. Then, use a welcome series to engage and later convert them into customers.

MailPoet shines again here with easy-to-use email signup forms for WordPress. 

Step 3: Determine your campaign goal

The goal depends very much on the type of email automation and who will be receiving it. The goal of an abandoned cart email is obvious – to lead to a completed purchase.

But what is the goal of your welcome emails? It could be to get new email subscribers to follow you on social media. It could be to encourage clicks through to your website, blog readership, video views, requests for a free guide, sign ups for a free consultation, or demo or trial registrations. 

There are many more possible campaign goals for a welcome series. Decide what you want each of your automated campaigns to achieve.

Step 4: Create your email campaign assets

A successful email campaign of any sort, including automated emails, requires more than just the email itself. The assets for each email campaign may differ slightly, but here are the most common items you’ll need:

• Opt-in, registration, or other signup form on your website that triggers automated emails
• Landing page – the page you link to in your email
• Graphics – photos, charts, GIFs, other graphic design elements related to the campaign
• Free stuff like PDFs, eBooks, videos – whatever you promised that motivated the customer to trigger the automated email
• Call to action (CTA) text and buttons
• Coupon codes, if applicable

You have to think through what you’ll need for each campaign. When a customer or lead sees this email, what do you want them to do in response? What happens when they click on your links or buttons? Those are your campaign assets. 

And if anything on your website needs to happen in order to trigger an automated email, those are also campaign assets. 

Step 5: Outline your automated emails

Once your assets are in place, you can write the actual emails and subject lines. Some of these emails may be very short, such as last-minute webinar reminders or abandoned cart emails. 

But whatever you create, remember that once these are done, they are done and you don’t have to write them again. You may need to update them from time to time, but for the most part, automated emails are known as evergreen marketing assets, because they never expire or get old. 

Step 6: Create your emails

If you’re working with an email developer, they can custom code your messages and upload finished HTML emails into your email service provider (ESP).  

However, for the most part, you’ll work within your email service tool to design and create the emails using some type of drag-and-drop builder. MailPoet, for example, has a number of WordPress email templates you can use as a foundation to make this process much quicker. 

Depending on your ESP, you’ll likely be able to integrate shortcodes that automatically input information stores on their system – like the first name of a subscriber, the exact product the email recipient was looking at before they abandoned their cart, and more. 

Step 7: Create the triggers for each email

Each email service provider has its own method to create automated email workflows. There will be some sort of process for setting up triggers. 

For free downloads, registrations, opt-ins, and anything based on a button on your website, clicking that button must trigger email messages automatically. For automation based on something the customer clicks in the email itself, the trigger will fire based on that link or button. 

Abandoned cart emails get sent out based on how much time has elapsed since they put the items in their cart. So you’ll need an ESP that interacts with your WooCommerce platform. Same with emails based on categories purchased. 

Figure out the process for each automated email you create, and set up your triggers.

Step 8: Check your email automation setup and run a test

When possible, especially when you’re just getting started, run tests to ensure that your email automation is working. 

Use a personal email address and sign up for your newsletter. Does the welcome series arrive in your inbox? Does it show up in your spam or promotions folders, or in your main inbox? Do the graphics show up? Do the links work?

Put some items in a shopping cart on your online store, and leave them there. See if the abandoned cart email shows up when it’s supposed to. 

Category purchase emails and lapsed customer automated emails will be harder to test, but once you’re confident you’ve set up the simpler ones correctly, you’ll have more confidence you’ve done the other ones right, too.

Step 9: Sit back and watch it work

Every now and then, go in and monitor your automated emails to make sure they’re still working. You should see metrics such as opens and clicks associated with these emails over time, and that’s your best indication that they’re working.

If people start buying the things you’re selling through automated emails, using coupons, and returning to their abandoned carts, you’ll know it because the money will be in the bank. 

Plus, most platforms have an option to track metrics for email engagement performance. MailPoet even has a way to specifically track the real-world ROI of your campaigns. 

Get started with email marketing automation with MailPoet

According to the Direct Marketing Association, segmented, targeted, and automated emails account for 77% of the ROI from email marketing. So automated emails are one of the top three sources of revenue from email.

As you saw previously, some marketing automation platforms are very complex. Most small businesses and ecommerce stores aren’t going to need or want that, because those have steep learning curves and higher setup costs.

Sending out welcome series and abandoned cart emails doesn’t have to be that complicated. The faster you can start using email marketing automation, the sooner it will generate revenue that you’re missing out on right now. MailPoet blends seamlessly with WordPress and WooCommerce, is easy to learn, and you can have new email marketing campaigns working for your business fairly quickly. Want to try it? 

See MailPoet’s features

In this guide, we’ll take a close look at 10 incredible sales emails from companies selling both products and services in a variety of industries. I’ll share my thoughts on why each email is effective, if there’s anything the email could have done better, and what lessons you can take for use in your own sales emails. I’ll also briefly discuss some best practices for sales emails.

Let’s dive into it!

10 Sales promotion email examples

1. Evernote

What makes it great

This email from Evernote is great for a few reasons:

• High-quality visuals. The graphic at the top presents the offer in a bright, visually appealing manner, using contrasting colors for the text so that it’s easy to read. The smaller images throughout the text are also high-quality, simple images that emphasize the point each section is trying to make.
• Excellent organization. The text is broken down into a list, with each point consisting of a bold headline and a regular-text sentence expanding on the headline. This makes it easy for subscribers to scan the text and grab the information they need.
• Brevity. This email tells subscribers everything they need to know about Evernote Premium and the sale in just a few sentences. This is important when you consider that the average person receives 121 emails per day.
• Multiple calls to action (CTAs). There’s a CTA at the beginning of the email and another at the end of the email. This gives subscribers who are eager for the sale the opportunity to grab their discount without reading the full email while also making sure that subscribers who read the full email don’t need to scroll back up to take action.

All in all, this sales email presents the offer in a clear, visually appealing way while also making it easy for subscribers to take action.

What you can learn from it

The big lesson to take from this email is that your sales email doesn’t need to be complicated to be attention-grabbing. In fact, in today’s busy world, the simplest approach is often the best one.

2. MacPaw

What makes it great

This email from MacPaw is another great example of how much you can accomplish in a short email. All you really need is a headline, a sentence or two to explain your product and the discount you’re offering, and a call to action.

Moreover, this email offers immense visual appeal. The color scheme is vibrant and eye-catching, while also using contrast to make sure that all of the text is easy to read. The illustration of a jumping cat evokes a mood of action and also reinforces the MacPaw brand, while the gift boxes reinforce the message of “gift this to your friends” in the text.

What you can learn from it

This email is a great example of how you can use illustrations to create powerful visual experiences in your emails even if you run a service-based business and/or your work is difficult to turn into high-quality photos.

3. Quickbooks

What makes it great

This email from Quickbooks is a great example of how to make a longer email effective. Each paragraph is contained in its own box, with its own headline and accompanying image. This makes it easy for users to follow what’s happening and focus on the sections with the information they’re most interested in.

Every section also has its own CTA, and these change as the email continues, with each new call to action using stronger words than the last: find out more, learn more, buy now. This increases the level of urgency as the email goes on, encouraging the user to take direct action.

What you can learn from it

Long emails aren’t always a bad thing, but if you’re going to write a long email, you need to make sure it’s organized in a way that makes it easy for people to scan. This means dividing it into clear sections with visual cues like headlines, boxes, illustrations, or photos. You also want to make sure there’s a call to action in every section.

4. Collin Street Bakery

What makes it great

There are a few great things about this flash sale promotion from Collin Street Bakery:

• Bold colors. The bright colors used in this email make it feel almost like it’s popping out of the screen at you, drawing in your attention. These colors are used in the banner to draw you into the email itself, then again for the CTAs and other key pieces of information to make sure you see the most important parts of the email.
• A focus on urgency. This email uses a few different phrases to convey urgency: limited time, flash sale, 48 hours, now $5 off, hurry and order. Some of these phrases are also bolded and written out in capital letters to attract more attention.
• Multiple calls to action. You’ve probably noticed that I mention this in almost every description. That’s because it’s important! If your subscriber has to scroll down at any point, they should still be able to see a CTA when they do.

All in all, this is a simple yet powerful sales promotion email.

What you can learn from it

There are a lot of lessons you can take from this email. For me, the most important lesson is to carefully consider the colors you’ll use and where you’ll use them. Bright colors like the ones in this email attract the eye and make images feel like they’re popping right out of the screen. You can also use one of those same colors instead of the regular bolded black to make important parts of the text more eye-catching.

5. Headspace

What makes it great

The main thing that makes this email from Headspace great is the GIF of a person holding a cone filled with melting ice cream. The animated image is bright, colorful, and has just enough motion to draw the eye without it becoming too distracting. The image of someone watching their ice cream melt too fast conveys a sense of summer and a sense of urgency: this season, and sale, are melting away like the ice cream. And there’s a CTA built right into the GIF.

Another great thing about this email is the copy. In the GIF, you learn what the sale is and when it runs out. If you scroll down, you’ll see this information repeated alongside a quick explanation of how Headspace can help you. While this second section isn’t strictly necessary, it does a good job of reinforcing why you should buy Headspace in the first place.

What you can learn from it

Dynamic elements like GIFs can make your emails more interesting, holding your subscribers’ attention for longer so that you can make your pitch. If you want to try this out, check out our guide to best practices for using GIFs in email.

6. Homage

What makes it great

This email from Homage is a great example of how to promote a multi-product sale, whether you’re discounting a specific type of item or everything in your store. There are high-quality photos of each item, all paired with a title of the item and a call to action. The viewer knows right away what’s on sale and what they need to do.

Another thing I like about this email is how the color scheme of the email complements the color scheme of the products. The main elements of the email are black and red, colors which also feature prominently in the items for sale. This makes the email feel more cohesive.

What you can learn from it

The main lesson to take from this email is that if you’re going to promote multiple products in one email, each product needs to have its own CTA. You should also keep individual product descriptions and images small to make sure the email is a reasonable length.

7. Vinyl Me, Please

What makes it great

There are a few things that stand out about this email from Vinyl Me, Please:

• Excellent photography. The photo chosen for this email displays the products in a unique way and evokes a sense of community, tying it into the holiday it’s connected to.
• A unique way of connecting to the holidays. This email takes a different approach from most marketing campaigns sent around this time of year, tying the sale into the concept of giving thanks and Thanksgiving itself rather than the consumerist frenzy of Black Friday.
• Thematic colors. The warm colors of the background and the text reinforce the holiday theme of the email.

All in all, this is a simple, effective email that runs counter to a lot of the flashier marketing campaigns seen throughout the holiday season.

What you can learn from it

The big lesson from this email is that if you’re going to run sales during the holiday season, you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the million other sales happening at that time of year. And sometimes the best way to do that isn’t to make your email flashier, but to make it simpler.

8. Casper

What makes it great

The main thing I like about this email from Casper is the way it ties Casper’s products into the time of year without relying on big holidays that are frequently used for marketing. The emphasis on Daylight Savings Time and how it affects your sleep makes the email feel timely and serves as an excellent reminder of why having a good mattress is important.

Another thing I like about this email is the photography. The image is prominent enough to draw the eye, the bed looks extremely comfortable, and the model appears to be sleeping peacefully. If you’ve ever struggled with sleep, you’ll find yourself drawn in by the image, maybe even thinking that a Casper mattress might give you that same kind of sleep.

What you can learn from it

The big takeaway here is that when it comes to seasonal sales, you don’t always have to tie your promotions to a popular holiday. You can highlight a different seasonal event or a smaller holiday, like running a sale on World Book Day if you publish books.

9. Yellowbird

What makes it great

There are a couple of different things I like about this email from Yellowbird:

• Simple yet evocative imagery. The only image above the fold is the banner at the top, which uses a silhouette to make it feel like the email’s background is fire. This establishes a connection between the email and the idea of heat, or in this case, spice.
• Copy with character. The text of this email doesn’t simply tell you “our salsas are on sale”. It creates an image using words and phrases like “landed” and “a new flame to town”. This use of language gives the email, and the brand as a whole, a sense of fun and excitement. The CTA, “Get your dip on”, reinforces this sense.

All in all, this email is a great example of what you can accomplish when you commit to a specific brand voice.

What you can learn from it

The big lesson to take from this email is that your email campaigns can become even more powerful if you take some time to think about the character of your brand, then use language to build that character around your brand. You can create images, use descriptions that relate to a specific theme like fire or heat, and make your copy fun.

10. Moo

What makes it great

The main thing I like about this email from Moosend is that it uses a countdown to create a heightened sense of urgency. Three days might be a lot of time for some things, but the small number makes Moo’s subscribers feel like they need to act now or risk missing out. And the company isn’t using a countdown timer, which is important because countdown timers don’t work on the most recent iOS.

Another great thing about this email is how quickly it gives you all of the information you need. You learn how long the sale is, what’s on sale, and how big the discount is in two sentences. This allows subscribers to view the email and make a decision in a matter of seconds.

What you can learn from it

This email is a great example of what you can do with a simple countdown campaign. Moo doesn’t need to create a new email for every day; all they need to do is create the template, vary the text a little bit from day to day, and schedule the varied emails over the course of three (or more) days. You can learn more about this type of email marketing in our guide to countdown campaigns.

Best practices for sales promotion emails

Working on a sales promotion email of your own? Here’s a quick list of best practices to follow:

• Only use high-quality images. If you can’t get high-quality photos, pay for illustrations or create your own graphics using a tool like Canva. Remember, an image can be as simple as the discount you’re offering written in a fancy font.
• Don’t complicate the layout. In most cases, a one-column layout is best since it reduces distractions and keeps things easy to read on a mobile screen.
• Emphasize a sense of urgency. Encourage your audience to act right away by emphasizing when your offer ends and using words like “hurry” and “now”.
• Make sure your subscribers can always see a call to action. A CTA should be highly visible on every screen, including above the fold (before users scroll down).
• If multiple products are on sale, use multiple CTAs. Specifically, make sure there’s a link to each product you’re advertising.
• Organize your campaign so it’s easy to read. Use visual cues like boxes and headlines to separate different items or topics. You can also use bullet points to create white space and make text easier to read.
• Put extra care into your holiday sales. The steady stream of marketing emails people get throughout most of the year becomes a flood in November and December, with dozens of daily promotions for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Boxing Day. If you’re running a sale at this time of year, you need to put in extra work to make it different from what people are already getting. But that doesn’t mean you need to send an elaborate email. In fact, you might stand out more if you take the simple approach.
• Consider the brand experience. You want to use colors, images, and words that fit with subscribers’ existing understanding of your brand. These subtle cues reinforce subscribers’ ideas about, and relationship with, your brand.

If you’re gearing up to run an ecommerce sale, you might also want to look at our guide to WooCommerce emails.

Final advice on promoting your sales with email

These sales promotion email examples work for a variety of reasons, but they all have one thing in common: the people who created them were strategic about every word, image, and color. If you put the same time and care into every campaign, you can make email your most powerful tool for marketing sales.

In this article, I’ll help you figure it all out by exploring what each type of email does and when to use them, plus some of our favorite examples of these email types in action.

Newsletters

In MailPoet, “Newsletters” are one-time emails that aren’t triggered by a specific event or action. Or, more simply, they’re just regular emails. You can use this function to create a traditional newsletter, but there are many other uses for it as well.

When to use newsletters

When you want to announce an upcoming event

Do you have a sale happening in the near future? Some sort of community event? A newsletter is the perfect way to announce it to your subscribers.

When you’re looking to hire someone

Expanding your team? Want to find someone already in your community for the job? Sending the job ad out in a newsletter is a great way to get the right eyes on it. 

If your WordPress posts are sporadic

If you don’t hold to a consistent schedule, you might not be able to guarantee new content on a specific date, making it difficult to guarantee that there will be new content when a scheduled latest post notification email goes out. 

If you want to offer custom content for subscribers

One of the most effective ways to get more subscribers is to offer them content they can’t get anywhere else, such as additional insight into the process you use to create blog posts. This content can’t be added to the latest post notification emails, so you’ll want to send it in newsletters.

If you want to create a personalized marketing campaign

Welcome emails and latest post notification emails are highly automated, making it hard to do more than basic personalization. If you want to create a truly personalized email campaign, a newsletter is the way to go (or you can check out our WooCommerce emails).

If you want to schedule an email for a specific date

If you want an email to go out on a specific date, like the day before Black Friday, a newsletter is the way to go. 

For most other email campaigns

Newsletters are incredibly versatile and can be used for any purpose you can imagine. If you can’t think of a good reason to use a different type of email, you probably want to use the newsletter function.

How to set up a newsletter email in MailPoet

To create a newsletter in MailPoet, go to the “MailPoet > Emails” in your WordPress dashboard and click the “New Email” button near the top of the screen, then select “Newsletter” from the options provided.

This will direct you to the template library. Note that there are templates specifically for newsletters, including a variety of simple templates that can be used as a starting point if you want to create something fully customized.

Selecting a template takes you to the MailPoet email editor. This is where you can customize the design and content of your email. 

Finally, you’ll be taken to the email overview page. This is where you can choose the list you’re going to email, finalize the subject line and preview text, and schedule the email. When you’re happy with the details, press “Send”, and your newsletter is done!

Welcome emails

Welcome emails are emails that are sent out after someone subscribes to your list. In MailPoet, these emails can be sent immediately upon signup or scheduled to go out a certain number of hours, days, or even weeks later. 

MailPoet also lets you send welcome emails to people when they become WordPress users on your site.

When to use welcome emails

When you need to send your signup bonus

If you’ve created an opt-in bonus, you’ll want to make sure they get it right away. You can do this with a welcome email set to go out immediately after someone subscribes to your list. 

You can also use the welcome email function of MailPoet to send out reminders about your opt-in bonus. This can be particularly effective if the bonus you offer is only available for a limited time, like a one-week discount coupon.

When you want to create a welcome series

A welcome series is a great way to strengthen your brand’s relationship with new subscribers. You can use these emails to share your company’s story, profiles of your creative team, information about how your different products and services work, or any other information you want subscribers to know early on. 

If you’re sending an email course

You can also use the “Welcome email” function of MailPoet to send an email course, like the 4-part MailPoet course on email marketing. This is a great way to share your expertise, show people how to use your products, and provide value to your subscribers so they stay on your list. Check out our guide to creating an email course in MailPoet!

If you want to release content on a specific timeline

If you have a piece of long-form content, like an in-depth article series or a book with several chapters, you can use welcome emails to share this content with new subscribers on a pre-set timeline. For example, you might choose to send one chapter of your book every seven days, giving your audience plenty of time to read and absorb the information you’ve sent them.

How to send a welcome email

To send a welcome email, open MailPoet to the “Emails” area, click the “New Email” below the screen title, and choose “Welcome email” from the options provided. This will open a page where you can select who will receive the email and when they’ll get it. You can choose for users to receive the email either immediately after subscribing or a set number of hours, days, or even weeks later.

Click “Next” to open the template library, where you can find several templates created specifically for welcome emails.

Selecting a template opens the MailPoet email editor, where you can edit your welcome email the same way any other email is edited. If you’re not sure what to include, check out our guide to WordPress welcome emails.

When you’re finished, you’ll be taken to the “Activate” page. This is where you can review key information like your subject line, the list that will receive this email, and how soon after signup the email will be sent.

Latest post notifications

Latest post notifications are recurring, automated emails that tell your followers about your most recent content. This is typically used for blog posts, but in MailPoet you can also set these emails up to share your latest pages, products, or media.

When to use latest post notifications

If you want to automate more of your email marketing

Latest post notifications are automated, meaning that you set them up once and they get sent out repeatedly until you cancel them. This can save you a lot of time in the long run.

If you want to create an end-of-week or end-of-month wrap up

If you post a lot of content, it can be difficult for your audience to keep up with. An end-of-week or end-of-month wrap up lets people see content they might have missed otherwise. You can also create separate lists for these wrap ups, giving people the option to choose how often they’ll hear from you.

How to create a latest post notifications email

To create one of these emails, go to the “Emails” area of MailPoet and click “New Email”, then choose “Latest post notification” from the options provided. This will open a page where you can select the schedule your latest post notification email will run on.

There are four scheduling choices for latest post notifications in MailPoet:

• Immediately. This option will notify subscribers every time a post is published. This is a great option for bloggers who post less than once a week or who post on a sporadic basis.
• Once a day at a specific time. This is broken up into hourly intervals. For example, you might set your post notifications to go out at 8AM every morning.
• Once a week. If you choose this option, you’ll also be able to select a weekday and a specific hour of the day for your email to go out. For example, you might choose to send your notifications at 8AM every Monday morning.
• Monthly on the… This option lets you select a specific date for your newsletter to go out each month. For example, you might choose to have these emails go out on the first day of every month.
• Monthly every… This option lets you send emails on a specific weekday each month. For example, you might send latest post notifications on the last Friday of every month.

Once you’ve selected a schedule, you’ll be able to go to the MailPoet template library, where you’ll find several templates for latest post notifications.

Choosing a template will take you to the editor, where you can alter the design and content of your email. If you’ve chosen a Post Notifications template, you’ll note that it’s automatically displaying your three most recent posts. This lets you see the email exactly as it will appear to readers, although the list of posts will obviously change each time the email is sent ou.

If you’ve chosen a different template, you’ll need to use the “Automatic Latest Content” module. You can find this in the sidebar on the right side of the editor.

You can use this module to add your latest posts to any email. You can also use this block to display recent pages, products, or media. 

Clicking on the block opens customization settings in the sidebar editor. Here you’ll be able to specify how many pieces of content the block will show, what type of content it will use, and any categories or tags the block should specifically pull content from.

Note that in a “Latest Post Notifications” email, the automatic latest content widget will only display content not previously sent in other notifications. This means that if you send a monthly notification with a block set to display three posts but you’ve only published one post in the past month, it will only display the one post published since the last notification went out.

When you’re satisfied with the appearance of your post notifications, you can head to the activation area, triple-check that all of the information is correct, and schedule your latest post notifications!

Final advice on newsletters, welcome emails, and latest post notifications

The three main types of email in MailPoet all have their unique parameters and purpose:

• A newsletter is a one-time email that can be scheduled for a specific date and time. You can use this email type for sending event announcements, job postings, and any other one-time email you might need to send.
• A welcome email is an email sent out a specific number of hours, days, or weeks after someone subscribes to your list.
• A latest post notification is an email round-up of your most recent content. These emails can be sent immediately after content is published or on a daily, weekly, or monthly schedule.

You can use these three email types for the vast majority of your email marketing campaigns. 

If you sell products using WooCommerce, you may also want to check out our guide to WooCommerce emails.

You might want to send email notifications to your blog’s subscribers when you publish a new post. Or, if you have multiple authors and you want to simplify your admin processes, you might want to send yourself post notification emails when someone publishes a post on your site.

Either way, we’ve got you covered because we’re going to cover everything you need to know about the best plugins and tools to send WordPress post notifications.

In this article, we’re going to cover plugins that help you send two different types of notifications:

1. Automatic email notifications to your blog’s subscribers when you publish a new post.
2. Admin notification emails to yourself (or your site’s editors, or really any registered users on your site).

You can click the links above to jump straight to the section for the type of plugin that you’re interested in. Or, just keep reading to learn about all of your options.

Ready to get started? Let’s dig in!

Two plugins to send WordPress post notifications to blog subscribers

If you want to send email post notifications to your subscribers, you’ll need a tool that can do two things:

1. Create an opt-in form that visitors can use to subscribe to your post notifications, along with a way to manage those subscribers.
2. Automatically send notifications when you publish a new post.

We’re going to showcase two tools that can help you do that:

1. MailPoet
2. Jetpack, via its Subscriptions feature

Both tools are easy-to-use and non-technical, but they have a pretty different approach – MailPoet offers the most flexibility and customizability, while Jetpack offers a really simple option for basic notifications.

Let’s go through them…

1. MailPoet

MailPoet is a full-service WordPress email plugin. It can help you:

• Send automatic post notification emails on a custom schedule. E.g. instant notifications for each post, a daily digest of all the posts that day, a weekly digest, and so on.
• Completely customize the email template for your post notifications using a drag-and-drop editor (or any other email templates that you use).
• Design custom email subscribe forms using the WordPress block editor.
• Manage subscribers via your dashboard, including separating them into different segments if needed.
• Send one-off emails in addition to your automatic post notifications.

That’s the main advantage of MailPoet – it’s a full email solution that also includes a built-in feature for automatic post notifications.

It’s the best option if you want the most flexibility for controlling the schedule of your notifications, customizing their design, and managing your subscribers (like sending different types of notifications to different segments of subscribers).

How MailPoet works

To help you collect subscribers, MailPoet lets you design email opt-in forms using pre-built templates and the WordPress block editor.

You’ll be able to manage all of your subscribers from your dashboard, including dividing them into different segments.

To set up post notifications, MailPoet includes a built-in feature to send automatic emails for your posts. You can send an email right away for every single post. Or, you can also set up daily, weekly, or monthly digests that include some or all of the posts that you’ve published in those timeframes:

Then, to control the actual content of your emails, you can use MailPoet’s drag-and-drop builder and pre-built templates, including inserting merge tags for dynamic information (such as the name of the subscriber). 

The builder also includes dedicated widgets to dynamically insert content from your posts. You can choose how much content to include. For example, you could only display the post title or you could include the excerpt or full text.

Finally, MailPoet also includes its own built-in email sending service, which means that you can be confident your emails will make it to your subscribers’ inboxes.

For a detailed look at how to use MailPoet for post notifications, check out our full guide on how to send automatic WordPress post notification emails with MailPoet.

2. Jetpack Subscriptions

Compared to MailPoet, Jetpack’s Subscriptions feature is much less customizable. However, in some situations that might be exactly what you want!

Here are the limitations of Jetpack’s post notifications feature. You…

1. Can’t customize the design of the notification emails. You can choose whether to send an excerpt or the full text of a post, but that’s pretty much it.
2. Don’t get advanced tools to manage your subscriber lists. For example, you can’t create list segments.
3. Can’t send your own custom one-off emails. It only works for automatic post notifications.

But if you’re ok with those limitations, there are some definite positives to Jetpack post notifications:

1. It’s 100% free. Whether you have 100 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers, you won’t pay anything to send them post notifications.
2. It’s super simple. You pretty much just activate the feature, choose where to add your subscribe forms, and you never need to think about it again.
3. It works for comments, too. You can give subscribers the option to also get notified for new comments on posts that they’re following.

How Jetpack Subscriptions works

To set up Jetpack post notifications, you’ll need to install the Jetpack plugin and enable the Subscriptions feature. From there, there’s not much to configure.

Really the only thing that you must do is choose how to collect subscribers. You can create dedicated forms and/or you can add checkboxes to your comment forms that let readers subscribe to notifications when they leave a comment on your blog.

If you want to limit which types of content trigger notifications, you can use code filters to include/exclude certain categories of posts. There’s also a code filter that enables an option to enable/disable notification emails on a post-by-post basis.

To learn how it works, check out our full guide on using Jetpack Subscriptions for email post notifications.

Which tool should you use?

Again, both tools are easy to use, so your decision should really just come down to this:

• If you want the flexibility to customize the design for your post notifications, customize their schedule, and send other types of emails to your subscribers, use MailPoet.
• If you just want a really lightweight solution exclusively for post notifications and you don’t need to control the design of the email, you can use Jetpack Subscriptions.

For most people, we think that MailPoet is probably a better option because it offers more flexibility while still keeping things beginner-friendly.

However, if you’re fine with the limitations of Jetpack Subscriptions, it’s also a great solution for what it does.

Two plugins to send email post notifications to admins, editors, or other registered users

Above, we showed you some useful plugins to send WordPress post notifications to your readers. But as we mentioned in the introduction, there’s another type of post notification that can also be useful – sending notifications to yourself or your editorial team when there’s a new post.

If you have a multi-author blog or if you just generally publish a lot of content, setting up post notifications can help you stay on top of what’s going on with your site’s content.

These plugins can also help you send post notifications to your users. However, there’s a very key difference between these plugins and MailPoet/Jetpack – both of these plugins only let you send notification emails to people who are registered on your site.

As with the previous section, we’ll share two solutions that you can use here…

1. Better Notifications for WP

Better Notifications for WP is the most popular plugin at WordPress.org for setting up custom WordPress alert emails.

It lets you set up email alerts for a variety of different actions, but we’re going to focus on the post notifications.

When you set up your notification, you can choose from different actions related to your posts. For example, you can send a notification email when a post is…

• Published
• Updated
• Submitted as pending review
• Scheduled
• Moved to trash
• Made private

To control who receives the notification emails, you can either select entire user roles or choose specific usernames.

Then, to control the content of your emails, you can either use the WYSIWYG Classic editor or format the email as plain text.  You’ll also be able to use lots of merge tags to insert dynamic information related to the post, such as the title, URL, author, and so on.

With the premium version, you’ll get more advanced conditional controls. For example, you could only send alerts for posts with certain…

• Categories
• Tags
• Authors
• Post formats
• Terms

By default, the plugin sends its alerts using the regular WordPress mail function. However, to improve reliability, you could pair it with MailPoet by enabling MailPoet’s built-in feature to send transactional emails.

Or, it also works with SMTP plugins and services, including SendGrid and Mailgun.

The free version of the plugin works for basic post notifications. For more advanced features, bundles start at $129.

2. Notification

Notification is another popular option that lets you set up your own custom post notification emails (along with notifications for other types of activity on your site).

When you set up the notification, you can choose from a variety of different actions for your posts. You can send a notification when a post is…

• Published
• Updated
• Saved as a draft
• Set for review
• Scheduled
• Trashed

When you choose who should receive the notification email, you can choose from different user roles, choose specific usernames, or enter any email address.

You can also fully customize the text of the email using the WYSIWYG Classic editor, including using merge tags to insert dynamic information, such as the name of the post and its URL:

With the premium version, you’ll also be able to add conditional logic, such as only sending a notification for posts with a specific category, tag, author, and so on.

You can send basic post notifications with the free version of the plugin at WordPress.org. To unlock the conditional rules and other advanced features, the premium version starts at $99.

Which Tool Should You Use?

For basic WordPress post notifications, both tools are pretty equal so you should be fine with either.

If you need more advanced features, such as only sending notifications for posts in certain categories, the Notification plugin is a bit cheaper for that specific feature (though there are other feature differences between the premium plugins that might push you in one direction or another).

Get started with WordPress post notifications today

Whether you want to send WordPress post notifications to your readers or to your site management team, you can find some great plugins that make it easy to set up.

If you want to send automatic post notifications to your readers, we showcased two great options that work in different ways:

• MailPoet – this is the best option if you want the ability to customize when to send your emails, the content/design of your emails, which segments of users should receive notifications, and so on. You’ll also be able to send other emails beyond post notifications. Check out the full MailPoet guide.
• Jetpack Subscriptions – this can be a good option if you just want a very simple way to send notifications and only notifications. It does have some notable limitations that we discussed above, but if you’re fine with those limitations, it’s a very easy way to implement post notifications (and it’s 100% free). Check out the full Jetpack Subscriptions guide.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a way to send post notifications to yourself, your editors, or other types of registered users on your site, then you might be better off with the other two plugins that we featured – Better Notifications for WP or Notification. 

You can also pair the two types of plugins. For example, you could use MailPoet to send notifications to your readers and Better Notifications for WP to send notifications to your editorial staff.

The cool thing about this combination is that you can still use MailPoet’s built-in sending service to deliver the notification emails that Better Notifications for WP sends – just make sure to enable MailPoet’s transactional email feature.

Do you still have any questions about sending post notifications on WordPress? Let us know in the comments!

However, Apple’s iOS 15 update included some major privacy-focused features that have changed how the email marketing industry as a whole is able to track email engagement. That includes MailPoet.

To continue providing you with meaningful data about your email efforts in a post-iOS 15 world, we’ve made some changes to MailPoet’s analytics.

Most notably, MailPoet will now focus on click rate as the primary engagement metric in the MailPoet interface. Beyond that, MailPoet will also now divide open rates into separate machine-opened and human-opened rates and display bounce rate data on the main analytics page (you’ll learn why these changes are important in a second).

In this post, we’re going to introduce you to everything that you need to know about the new ways to measure email campaigns including:

1. The reasons why we’ve made these changes.
2. More details on the specific changes that we’ve made.
3. Our plans to continue helping you get more from your email marketing efforts now that iOS 15 is live.

Why did we change MailPoet’s analytics measurements?

Based on averages, Apple Mail and Apple devices probably account for around 30-50% of your email list, so any changes that Apple makes to its software are going to have huge ramifications on the data for your email campaigns.

So – what changed in iOS 15, and why should you care about it?

Apple Mail Privacy Protection obscures open rates

The biggest change is Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection feature, which affects how MailPoet (and all other email marketing tools) track open rates.

Email marketing tools like MailPoet track open rates by including an invisible image in your email’s code – called a “tracking pixel”. 

Each email includes a unique identifying image. When a user opens the email and their email client loads that image, we can know that the user opened the email and count it as an “Open” in MailPoet’s analytics.

With Apple Mail Privacy Protection, Apple Mail will now automatically preload that image (and other email data) when the email is received, instead of waiting for a human to open the email. It will also hide the user’s IP address to avoid geo-tracking and fingerprinting.

Using the “normal” method of tracking opens, this would essentially mean that every single email you send to a person using Apple Mail would look like it was opened right away, even if the actual human recipient never opened the email.

Given Apple’s market share, this means that it’s now difficult to accurately track human open rates for anywhere from 30-50% of your email list. Obviously, that’s a problem.

We want the data that MailPoet gives you to be useful and actionable, which means that focusing on open rates as the primary engagement metric is no longer an optimal strategy since we can’t guarantee that open rates are accurate for your entire audience.

To account for this, we’ve done two things:

1. The MailPoet interface will now position clicks as the primary engagement metric, rather than open rates.
2. MailPoet will divide open rates into “machine-opened” (triggered by Apple Mail Privacy Protection or something similar) and “human-opened” (opened by a human).

We’ll share more about these changes in a few seconds. But first, there are a couple of other iOS 15 changes that are worth mentioning.

Apple Hide My Email and Private Relay further muddy things

While Apple Mail Privacy Protection marks the biggest shift, Apple also released two other notable features in iOS 15 that will affect email marketing:

• Hide My Email – this feature lets users create a unique, disposable email address for each service they interact with. This is essentially a dummy email that forwards to the user’s real email address. This means that you might not be able to get a user’s “real” email address, which will make it harder for you to clean your lists of unengaged subscribers.
• Private Relay – this update also lets users hide their IP addresses when browsing in Safari. This means that you won’t be able to accurately detect a user’s physical location, which will affect sending emails targeted to users in specific geographic areas.

If you want to learn more about these changes, we have an entire post on what the iOS 15 update means for email marketers.

Here are the new email analytic measurements in MailPoet

Now that you know why we’ve made these changes, let’s talk about the new analytics area in MailPoet.

In the past, the MailPoet analytics area emphasized both open rates and click rates. Here’s what it looked like in the past:

With these changes, MailPoet will now position click rates as the only primary engagement metric. Again, this is because click rate offers a more meaningful, accurate measure of engagement now due to Apple’s changes.

You will still be able to see open rates, but open rate data will be less prominent in the MailPoet interface. Additionally, open rates will now be divided into two types:

• Opened – opens that we estimate to come from a human.
• Machine-opened – opens that we estimate to come from Apple Mail Privacy Protection or something similar.

We’ve also included a new metric in the main analytics interface – detailed bounce rates. The bounce rate gives you a general idea of how healthy your email lists are, which Apple has made more difficult to track with its new features. 

For example, if someone uses Apple’s Hide My Email feature to create a disposable email address and then later turns off that email address, that would count as a hard bounce if you send an email to that address. 

By giving you access to bounce rate data on the main stats page, you’ll be able to more easily track these details and see how healthy your lists are.

Finally, you’ll still be able to view unsubscribe data, just like you could before.

We’re not done with iOS 15 changes – you’ll get a new re-engagement campaign type soon

Because of Apple’s new Hide My Email feature and the lack of accurate open data, it will now be harder for you to remove inactive subscribers from your lists.

A user might have already abandoned the disposable email address that Apple created for them, but you might not be able to tell this because of how Apple handles open rates now.

If the user disables the private email, you should see it as a bounce rate, which is why we now display bounce rate data on the main MailPoet analytics page.

But if the user just abandons it or changes the email address to which it forwards messages, it will be more difficult for you to monitor the health of your lists.

To help you clean your lists, make sure you’re sending to engaged subscribers, and just generally improve your results, we’re planning to introduce a new re-engagement campaign type in the near future.

Keep an eye out for this new campaign type in the coming months!

iOS 15 changed the game, but you can still have meaningful email analytics

Because of Apple’s privacy-focused features in iOS 15, it’s become more difficult for email marketers across the industry to get accurate open rates and engagement metrics for the 30-50% of people who browse their emails on Apple devices or in Apple Mail.

With MailPoet, we want to provide you with actionable data that you can use to make smart decisions about your email efforts. Given the inaccuracy of open rates in a post-iOS 15 world, this means that focusing on open rates as a primary engagement metric is no longer a viable strategy going forward.

To account for this, we’ve updated the MailPoet analytics dashboard to continue to provide you with meaningful data:

1. Clicks are now the primary metric in the MailPoet interface. Click tracking is still accurate, which is why we’ve chosen this metric as the primary indicator.
2. Open rates will now be divided into machine-opened and human-opened. This will still give you a good estimate of a realistic open rate for your email efforts.
3. Detailed bounce rates are now available on the stats page, which will help you understand how healthy your lists are and account for Apple’s new Hide My Email feature.

If you’re already using MailPoet, you should see these changes in your dashboard when you visit the analytics area.

If you’re not already using MailPoet, install the free MailPoet plugin today to get started.

Finally, if you have any questions about the new email analytics, let us know in the comments!

A landing page is a web page where all of the content is created with the goal of getting visitors to take a specific action, such as making a specific purchase. In the case of newsletter landing pages, also sometimes referred to as squeeze pages, the goal is to get visitors to sign up for your email newsletter. 

Landing pages take longer to create than your average signup form, but they’re worth the time: they offer a signup rate of 23%. This is significantly more than the next highest signup rate of 10% for “Wheel of Fortune” forms.

Your landing page doesn’t have to be complicated either. A single screen with a high-quality image, some text describing your newsletter, and a signup form is all you really need, as demonstrated by the Dreamforce 2019 landing page:

You can create landing pages in the regular WordPress editor or by using a specialized landing page tool.

Best practices for newsletter landing pages

1. Get specific about your goals

The first thing you’ll need to do is establish goals that can actually be measured for your newsletter landing page. These should include a) how many visitors you want the landing page to get each day and b) what percentage of those visitors you want to turn into subscribers. For example, you might set a goal of 500 views/day with a 20% subscription rate. 

So, how do you choose your goal numbers?

First, let’s talk about your visitor goal. This is the harder number to determine, because there are numerous factors that impact it. For example, if you’re turning your home page into a landing page you may expect it to receive a lot of views, since anyone looking up your site will be directed to it. On the other hand, if your site usually has low traffic levels, your homepage might get fewer visitors than a landing page tied to a major marketing campaign.

This means that you need to consider how many visitors your site usually gets, the success of previous marketing campaigns, and how you plan to market this landing page. You can then create a goal that is challenging yet possible to attain for a business with your current audience/traffic levels and resources. Personally, I like to create a number I think is reasonable, then bump it up 20% to give myself a challenge.

Next, let’s talk about your goal subscription rate. The temptation here is to base your goal on the average rate for your industry, but it’s important to remember that many landing pages don’t even follow basic rules of modern web design; as many as half of existing landing pages aren’t even optimized for mobile, and the average landing page conversion rate across industries is still 9.7%. Since you’ll be working with responsive design tools like the WordPress editor and/or specialty landing page builders, you can assume your subscriber rate will be significantly higher; a subscriber rate of 20% or even 30% might be a reasonable goal, especially if you have a high-quality signup bonus.

2. Write persuasive copy

The text of your landing page needs to make a compelling argument to win over visitors who might not be sure about your newsletter. 

You can use several strategies to achieve this with your copy:

• Focus on the benefits your newsletter provides. People know that their email address is valuable to you. What you need to do is establish that your newsletter is also valuable to them. For example, you might focus on the opportunity to access subscriber-only discounts. 
• Establish your expertise. Show people that you can be trusted by sharing the story of how you started your business, your professional credentials, or the number of years you’ve been in business. Case studies that show how you’ve helped people or businesses in the past can also act as proof of expertise and social proof (we’ll talk more about social proof later).
• Get specific with your calls to action. Your calls to action should use specific language like “Sign up” or “Join the club”. You may also want to create and include a branded name for your subscribers, like KJ Harrowick has done for her fan club, Hàlön Crew:

• Use simple language. It’s important to remember that the average person in the US reads at an eighth grade level. This means that most of the time, simpler language is better. After all, if a person is confused about what you’re offering, they’re probably not going to sign up. However, you also need to remember your audience. If they’re used to more advanced language from your brand or brands like yours, you’ll want to stick with that language.
• Keep your paragraphs short. Short paragraphs are easier to read on the screen and allow for more white space. 

You should also run your copy through at least one round of edits, looking for ways to tighten the text and also eliminating any spelling or grammar errors.

3. Make your calls to action highly visible

There are two aspects to this. First, your newsletter landing page should have a call to action (CTA) above the fold (content visible before you scroll down) and another one on every screen. This allows your visitor to stop reading and take action at any point as they scroll through your page.

Second, the visual design of your page should make the call to action highly visible. The easiest ways to do this are by putting your CTA in a button and using contrasting colors. For example, if the background of your page is white, you might add a black CTA button with white text. 

You can take this a step further by using directional elements to guide the viewer’s gaze to the call to action. For example, you might have a photograph of a person whose face is pointed toward your signup form. 

4. Display social proof

Social proof is anything that shows that your business has helped people in the past. This can be as simple as a headline on your site declaring that you’ve had 2,000 satisfied customers or as complex as a video testimonial from a past client. You might even want to use both of these strategies, placing a short line about the number of people you’ve helped above the fold and a series of reviews below it.

There are a couple of strategies you can use to maximize the effect of your social proof:

• Use excerpts instead of full reviews. Pull the most complimentary or informative quotes from a review and leave the rest.
• Get permission to use photos. Photos establish that your testimonials were created by real people. 

If you don’t currently have any reviews or testimonials, check out our guide on how to ask for feedback via email.

5. Use large, high quality images

The visual aspects of your landing page are just as important as the text. This makes it important to use only your highest quality photos and illustrations. You also want to make sure that these images appear in a large enough format for the details to be clear.

However, you don’t want the actual file size of your images to be large, as this can slow down your landing page. To remedy this, run any images you’re planning to use through a free file compressor like TinyPNG.

6. Add a video

If you’ve spent any time at all in the digital marketing world, you’ve probably heard that video is the next big thing. And it’s true for landing pages too: embedded video content can increase conversions by as much as 86%. 

The type of video you publish on your newsletter landing page will vary based on what you’re offering. Here are a few examples:

• If you have an opt-in bonus, you can create a video explaining how users can benefit from it. 
• If your newsletter offers weekly business tips, you can create a video of yourself reading tips from past newsletters.
• If your newsletter features updates on your creative work, you can create a video sharing how you got into this type of creative work in the first place.

And of course, you can also add video testimonials related to your opt-in bonus or newsletter.

7. Eliminate distractions

Everything on your newsletter landing page should be focused on getting people to subscribe. In many cases, companies don’t even put navigation menus on landing pages. Others move the navigation bar to the bottom of the page so that people only find it if they’re actively looking for it.

The main exception to this is if you’re using your homepage as a newsletter landing page. Since your homepage is the main hub of your site, you want to leave navigation intact for visitors trying to find specific information.

8. Use the testing tools available to you

If you’re using one of the landing page tools I mentioned earlier, make sure you take advantage of the testing tools you have access to. These tools let you test content before you send out a major marketing campaign, allowing you to refine your landing page before publishing it.

If you’ve never run these kinds of tests before, check out the VWO guide to A/B testing. 

9. Check your analytics regularly

The best landing pages are the ones that are refined over time, with changes made based on real data. This means making a regular appointment with yourself to go through your analytics, watching for trends. 

Here are some things to look at:

• How many people visit your landing page per day/week/month. This can tell you if your marketing campaigns are actually driving traffic to your landing page. If your visitor numbers are low, you’ll need to reevaluate your overall newsletter marketing strategy.
• Where visitors come from. This tells you what your most effective marketing channels are most effective, what platforms you can improve your marketing on, and what platforms are performing so poorly that you may want to stop using them altogether.
• How much time people spend on your page. If people are only spending a few seconds on your landing page, it might indicate that you’re failing to meet user expectations or that something on the page is broken.
• Subscriber rate. If you’re using a landing page builder like Unbounce, you’ll be able to toggle conversion rate tracking for this. Otherwise, you’ll need to rely on the analytics for the signup forms used and/or linked to on your newsletter landing page.
• What CTA drives the most conversions. You can figure this out either by looking at the most-clicked links on a given page or by tracking the stats of specific signup forms. In most cases, this will be the first one because it’s the most visible. If a different call to action gets more attention, it may mean that your original CTA isn’t compelling enough. 

As for how often you should look at these statistics, it depends on your goals. If the landing page is part of a short-term marketing campaign, you might want to look at your analytics weekly or even daily, giving yourself the ability to pivot quickly if your campaign is tanking. 

On the other hand, if you’re turning your homepage into a landing page, you might only want to check your analytics once a month or even once every three months. Really, the key is to check often enough that you can address the cause of any sudden dips in traffic before you start losing money.

10. Make multiple landing pages

I’m always talking about the importance of personalization in email marketing, and it can be used here too. Specifically, you can create different landing pages for people who are introduced to your content in different ways. For example, you might have personalized newsletter landing pages for the following groups:

• People who come to your landing page from social media
• Users who reach your landing page by searching for specific keywords
• People who clicked on specific advertising campaigns
• Users referred to your landing page by a member of your audience

You don’t need to reinvent your landing page completely for each group either. Instead, you can create a duplicate of your initial landing page, then change a few words or images to better suit the audience this page is for. For example, if you’re personalizing the landing page for someone who looked up a specific keyword, you might make sure that keyword appears more often than it does on the regular page.

Newsletter landing page examples

Publisher Weekly

The Publisher Weekly landing page is simple, without any imagery, animations, or other complex elements. Instead, it uses a couple of lines of text to explain what visitors get when they subscribe to the newsletter.

If that isn’t quite enough of you, Publisher Weekly offers two forms of social proof: the logos of professional organizations that rely on this newsletter and a line about joining their 2,000+ subscribers. This establishes that Publisher Weekly is a reputable source.

Overthink

There are a few reasons to love this newsletter landing page:

• Simple, clean design with minimal distractions
• Copy that spells out exactly what subscribers can expect
• Highly specific call to action
• An image of what the newsletter will look like when people open it on their phones, complete with a headline and article you might find in the newsletter

All in all, it’s one of the best newsletter landing pages I’ve seen, and it proves that you don’t need to put in a lot of work to create an effective landing page.

Close

This newsletter landing page centers an opt-in bonus instead of the newsletter itself. The cover image is eye catching and the hand shapes direct the action to the page’s headline. The text goes on to explain exactly what subscribers will get, reinforcing this idea with the “Download Now” CTA. Personally, I might have added a line about what subscribers can expect from the newsletter in the long run, but this page is already quite effective.

Newsletter landing page tools

There are several specialized tools for creating effective newsletter landing pages. These often use a block system similar to the WordPress block editor, but offer additional tools like A/B testing and conversion tracking.

Here’s a quick run-down of three of the most popular newsletter landing page tools:

1. WP ProfitBuilder

Standout features

• Over 100 landing page templates designed for specific purposes like lead generation and sales
• Drag and drop builder
• Fast loading pages
• A/B testing
• Funnel builder and analytics
• Conversion tracking

Overview

WP ProfitBuilder is a WordPress plugin with a flexible page builder, a growing library of page templates optimized for lead generation, and A/B testing capabilities.

As a WordPress plugin, WP ProfitBuilder is also directly compatible with MailPoet signup forms. This allows you to skip the use of third-party tools like OptInMonster.

Cost

You can buy a license for WP ProfitBuilder for a one time payment of $47 (usually $197). If you have multiple sites, you can buy a $67 (usually $297) license that works on up to 10 sites or a $67.67 (usually $497) license for 50 sites.

2. Instapage

Standout features

• Unlimited landing pages
• Unlimited conversions
• Template library with over 500 layouts
• Unique conversion tracking system
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• InstaBlocks 
• A/B testing
• Multivariate testing
• Real-time visual collaboration
• Option to work with Instapage experts to optimize your landing page
• Advanced analytics
• AdMap for connecting individual landing pages to specific ads

These features are included with the Building plan. Check out the pricing page for more details.

Overview

Instapage is an advanced landing page builder that uses InstaBlocks, a design system similar to the WordPress block editor. This makes it remarkably easy for experienced WordPress users to make landing pages with Instapage. They can then publish their newsletter landing pages directly to WordPress.

Unfortunately, Instapage doesn’t integrate directly with MailPoet. If you want to display an opt-in form on an Instapage landing page, you’ll need to use a third-party form builder that integrates with both MailPoet and Instapage, such as OptInMonster.

Cost

The basic plan of Instapage costs $199/month ($2388/year). when purchased annually. Instapage also offers custom plans; you can find more about these on the Instapage pricing page.

3. Unbounce

Standout features

• Unlimited landing pages, pop ups, and sticky bars
• Access to both the classic drag and drop builder and the new Smart Builder
• Conversion tracking
• Conversion mapping
• Unlimited client sub-accounts

Overview

Unbounce gives users access to a variety of AI-powered tools that make it easier to both create a successful landing page and refine that landing page over time. The company recently unveiled the Smart Builder, an upgraded landing page builder with several new features, including an AI-powered Design Assistant.

The downside of Unbounce is that it doesn’t integrate directly with the WordPress block editor, so you can’t paste MailPoet forms directly onto landing pages built with this tool. To put forms directly on an Unbounce landing page, you’ll need to use a tool like OptInMonster that integrates with both MailPoet and Unbounce.

Cost

The Launch plan from Unbounce costs $81/month ($972/year) when purchased annually and allows for up to 500 conversions. Plans go up to $225/month.

Final advice on building your newsletter landing page

Landing pages are incredibly powerful marketing tools that can be created for anything: a product, a service, an event, and of course, your newsletter. You can use a tool like Instapage or Unbounce to create a newsletter landing page, but all you really need is WordPress and some best principles:

• Get specific about your goals
• Write persuasive copy
• Make your calls to action highly visible
• Add social proof, especially if you have visual social proof
• Use large, high quality images
• Add a video
• Eliminate distractions
• Use any testing tools you have access to
• Check your analytics regularly, using the data to refine your landing page over time
• Create multiple landing pages

Most of all, remember that a landing page doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, many of the best newsletter landing pages are quite simple. Yours can be too.

With its looming iOS 15 update, Apple is putting a major blow to one of the most widely-used metrics to measure email marketing effectiveness — the open rate. 

It’s one of several major changes to email that Apple’s implementing to help protect user privacy. And while there are pros and cons for both users and the businesses who use email to reach them, there’s no debate that it will have a wide-spread impact. 

To continue to be the most effective, marketers will need to be more specific in their efforts and intentional about the information they collect and how it’s used. 

The update is expected to hit in September. Keep reading to learn what’s changing and what you need to do next. 

The iOS 15 update: What Apple’s changing

There are three primary updates that will affect an email marketer’s ability to serve subscribers:

1. Mail privacy protection will eliminate the ability to accurately track open rates
2. Private relay will hide the user’s IP address while browsing the web
3. Hide my email will allow users to mask their real email address with a fake one

Estimates vary based on whose data you use, but it’s fair to assume that about 30-50% of your email list is using Apple Mail and Apple devices to open emails. For all the people in that group who opt in to Apple’s new privacy option, email marketers will lose access to data they’ve always had in the past. 

And in case you’re wondering, it’s likely that almost every Apple user will opt in, because of the language used in the process. Apple will give a user two choices, which read:

• “Protect mail activity – hide IP address and privately load all remote content”
• “Don’t protect mail activity – show IP address and load any remote content directly on your device”

Given these choices, it can be expected that almost everyone will select the first option.

How do open rates work?

Open rates have always been tracked through a tiny invisible image embedded in the email code. When the email is opened, that image loads, and the loading of that image tells the sender that their email was opened.

Now, with Mail Privacy Protection, Apple Mail will pre-load that image and all other script and code data when the email is received, rather than when it’s opened. 

This will result in the appearance of an email open where one may not have actually occurred.

So, in September or October of 2021, you can expect to see your open rates jump significantly. But, unfortunately, it will be impossible to tell whether or not more people are actually opening your emails.

In other words, open rates will no longer be able to be the primary metric when measuring the engagement levels of your subscribers. 

Apple’s other iOS 15 updates

The private relay update 

Users will now have their IP address hidden when browsing on Safari. Apple will do this by re-routing the server request through what is essentially a cyber maze, which will conceal the identifying headers and IP address, similar to how a virtual private network (VPN) works. 

This update will inhibit your ability to send geographically-targeted email marketing. 

The hide my email update 

Subscribers will be able to create a ‘disposable’ email address when interacting with businesses — like filling out a form to download an eBook. This is basically a fake email address that will route messages to the real one, but it prevents the email sender from knowing the subscriber’s real address. Thus, long after the recipient has abandoned the fake email address, it may still show up on the business’ email list. 

You would normally just scrub inactive emails from your list or, if you use MailPoet, toggle the inactive subscribers feature to automatically remove those who haven’t engaged lately. But without accurate email open rate data, there’s no reliable way to recognize the fake email address, since it may still show the email as being opened.

Six ways the iOS 15 update affects email marketing

This isn’t a change you can ignore. Here are six ways you might need to change your email marketing as a result of the iOS 15 update:

1. Move away from open rate data

The biggest point here is that you will no longer be able to easily tell who or how many people are opening and at least glancing at your emails. 

This means you can’t tell how well subject lines are working or who your most active subscribers are.

As a result, you won’t be able to segment emails based on who opened previous ones. For example, suppose you have a webinar coming up about a particular topic. In the months beforehand, you send out emails offering links to a case study, two blog posts, a survey, and an eBook that all touch on topics related to the webinar.

Before the iOS 15 update, you could have sent additional, targeted emails advertising the upcoming webinar specifically to people who opened one or more of those emails.

After the update, the only valuable data you would have for creating that targeted segment would come from readers who clicked on any of those emails. That will be a much smaller sample of your subscribers.

The good news is that, while opens have been a great measurement for engagement, there are far more precise ways to segment your emails and determine what’s working. By narrowing in on these metrics, and with the help of MailPoet, your email marketing efforts might be even more valuable: 

Data you can still use from email engagement includes:

• Clickthrough rates (a general percentage)
• Those who visit your website (a specific list)
• The size of your email list
• Signups for events, webinars, etc.
• Survey data
• Purchases and orders
• Subscriber lifetime value
• Shares on social media

2. Re-imagine your A/B testing on subject lines

Without open rate data, it becomes more difficult to test how well various subject lines are working, and that includes A/B tests. 

Before, you might send two different subject line options to a random mix of 20% of your audience. Then, you’d send the best-performing subject line to the rest of your list so you can maximize your campaign’s performance. 

Now, you’ll have to look deeper to draw conclusions about subject lines. For example, if your list is large enough, you can still send two emails with different subject lines but the exact same content within the email. If one email gets more clicks than the other, you might assume that it’s the result of more opens for the particular subject line used. 

This won’t be possible for every business. 

So instead, use this change as an opportunity to focus less on subject lines and more on the content of the message itself. For example, if one email has an image, and another has just text and no image, you could compare the clickthrough rates from both emails and determine if the image helped or hindered people from clicking.

Clicks remain the ultimate objective. You can still optimize for those. 

3. Take a new approach to personalized, location-based emails

Another form of personalization depends heavily on the ability to geo-target your email subscribers. With no IP address data, this will be much harder.

If you have, in the past, relied on IP addresses to segment emails by subscriber location, you’ll need to use a different approach.

This pertains to all sorts of potential content such as local events, sports updates, local holidays, concerts, or even information such as ‘locations near you.’ Likewise, if someone like an author, speaker, or consultant is planning a live event in a particular area, they would have to find another way to email the segment of their list that lives nearby.

How might you do this? You just have to acquire location information about your subscribers through other means. You can use a survey. Or you can add a line to your sign-up forms that asks for a location. If you’re running a WooCommerce store and already using MailPoet, you can use the ‘Customer Country’ segment to target your campaigns by location.

Some of these methods do require more participation from subscribers, but those who do participate are likely to be more engaged as a whole and provide valuable returns for your efforts. 

4. Communicate urgency in a new way

Countdown timers are one of the most commonly-used types of live data that will be affected by the iOS 15 update.

If you often feature things with set dates and use countdown timers to increase urgency, the timers will no longer function. Thus, you’ll have to revert to other methods such as more frequent emails or more dramatic use of graphics to communicate urgency. 

5. Take a new look at list management 

Mailbox providers are constantly improving the way that they fight spam. A big part of that fight requires email senders to routinely clean their lists of inactive subscribers, some of which are also known as ‘spam traps.’ 

By continuing to email inactive contacts, you run the risk of being labeled a spammer. Keep doing it, and more of your emails will be filtered into spam or junk folders, or blocked altogether.

The problem is, open rates have historically been the best way to identify inactive email addresses. Without that ability, it’s going to be difficult for senders to clean their lists. You can use clicks to determine engagement, but many legitimate potential customers might open emails off and on for a year before finally clicking. 

Businesses might have to choose between cleaning their lists to maintain good deliverability and leaving them alone to avoid cutting off someone who’s just been “looking” but might become a customer tomorrow. 

6. Consider sending more emails

People want email personalization, in part because it reduces the number of emails they receive, and because it means more relevance. For subscribers who have indicated clear interests in certain topics, in the past you could use open rates to segment content based on this data. With Apple’s new changes, you’ll have to find new ways to identify preferences.

One option to get around this is to just start sending all the emails to everyone again, and many businesses will have to do that. However, customers may feel bombarded with more irrelevant emails.

Another way is to use survey data, prior purchases, click behavior, and other information to create the same types of segments. You can also add subscribers to different lists based on the form they used to register — separating them based on what piqued their interest — or the answer to a question on the form. 

If you can make that work, you can continue to personalize to some degree and not send emails that aren’t relevant to your list.

To the extent you can do it, that’s going to be your best solution.

What should you do about Apple’s iOS 15 update?

If your business relies heavily on email marketing (and most do), know that MailPoet is always working to ensure you have all of the tools you need. This isn’t the first time there have been major changes, and it won’t be the last. Specifically, MailPoet will be highlighting other ways to measure user engagement and determine what’s working — and what’s not — for your email efforts. Plus, MailPoet will lean more heavily on key partnerships and put more emphasis on the tools proven to be effective for businesses across the world. Meanwhile, you should: 

1. Review your subscriber funnels such as signup forms and ensure subscribers clearly understand what they’re signing up for, give proper consent, and confirm their decision with a double opt-in. 
2. Take action now to remove inactive subscribers from your lists while you still have the data. MailPoet offers this feature to all users. Go to Settings → Advanced → Stop sending to inactive subscribers and set the inactive definition to six months.
3. Accelerate your usage of other campaign performance metrics and correlate them to email metrics. For example, look at website engagement such as visits and comments. Look at commerce activity such as orders, repeat orders, and changes in order size.
4. Adjust your automations so none of your trigger points depend on open rates. Switch to clicks instead.
5. Segment your lists to send more relevant messages. You can sort subscribers based on past purchase behavior like amount spent and types of products bought, specific links clicked, subscription date, and much more. 
6. Push for subscriber preferences at the moment they sign up so you’ll know which lists and topics most interest them, as well as any email frequency preferences. Ask how they want to be communicated with.

Email continues to be one of the best ways to communicate with your audience — that’s not changing. Stay tuned to learn how to adapt and make the most of your email marketing efforts! 

Sending out an email newsletter of your latest posts is a great way to engage with your audience and get eyeballs on your content. But doing everything manually can be tedious, especially when you have to do it for every single post.

In this article, we’re going to show you how you can completely automate sending WordPress post notification emails using MailPoet.

Setting up this functionality with MailPoet has a few big benefits:

• Save time/effort – as a busy webmaster, you probably have a lot of things on your to-do list. If you automate sending your blog posts, you can permanently eliminate one task, which gives you more time for the other stuff!
• Ensure consistency – if you automate things, you never need to worry about forgetting to send an email. You can be confident that every single blog post will go out at the exact right time.
• Avoid third-party setup – with MailPoet, you don’t need to mess around with RSS feeds or third-party setup. You can configure/manage everything without leaving your WordPress dashboard.

In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll show you exactly how you can set this up on your site, along with a few useful tweaks you can implement to really make this setup work for you.

Let’s dig in!

How to automatically send blog posts to subscribers on WordPress

For this tutorial, we’re going to assume that you already have MailPoet set up on your site. If you don’t, you can install the free MailPoet plugin from WordPress.org and then follow our getting started guide to get up and running.

Once you’ve got that out of the way, you can jump into setting up your automatic email newsletter.

1. Set up a new post notification email

To get started with your automatic blog post email, head to MailPoet → Emails and click + New Email to create a new email. 

Then, click the Set up button under Latest Post Notifications:

Now, you’ll be prompted to choose the frequency of the email.

What frequency should you use? Well, that really depends on your personal preferences and how frequently you’re publishing content.

There are two questions you need to answer here:

1. When do you want to send the emails? 

You can either send the emails immediately (as soon as you publish the blog post). Or, you could schedule them to go out at a certain time each day. For most sites, scheduling the post will work better as it lets you make sure the email is always going out at an optimal time. 

For example, if you publish your blog post at 11 PM, you might want to wait so that the email doesn’t hit subscribers’ inboxes when they’re sleeping.

2. How often do you publish new content and how often do you want to send emails?

When you set up an automatic email, MailPoet will include all of the content that was published since the last email up to the post limit that you set. If you publish a lot of content, you’ll need to decide if you want to give every post its own email or if you want to combine multiple posts into a single email.

For example, if you publish three posts per week, you could:

1. Send a weekly digest that includes all three posts in one email.
2. Send three separate emails for each post.

In total, you have five options for the frequency:

1. Once per day at a certain time – e.g. every day at 7 AM.
2. Weekly on a specific day – e.g. every Monday at 7 AM.
3. Monthly on a specific date – e.g. the first day of the month at 7 AM.
4. Monthly on a specific day of the week – e.g. the first Monday of the month at 7 AM.
5. Immediately – as soon as you publish the post.

For this example, let’s say you want to send your latest blog posts every Monday at 7 AM – you would configure it like so:

2. Choose a template and design your email

Next, you can choose one of the pre-built templates. Or, you can also choose to design your email from scratch using one of the blank canvases:

You’ll then be in the visual editor.

You can use the regular content blocks to add content and control the design. For example, you might want to add some static content that you want to be the same for every email.

To automatically insert your latest content, add the Automatic Latest Content element where you want your blog post(s) to appear. 

MailPoet will fill the widget with some real data from one of your existing blog posts, but this is just dummy data – in real life, this will automatically fill with the real information from your latest blog post(s).

To configure how your latest content appears, click on the widget to open its settings in the sidebar.

At the top of the sidebar settings, you can choose:

1. The maximum number of blog posts to include in one email. Remember, MailPoet will include all of the blog posts since your last email, up to the limit that you specify here. So if you set the limit to three posts but you’ve published four posts since your last email, MailPoet would only include the three most recently published posts.
2. Whether you want to filter out specific blog posts based on their categories or tags. For example, you could only send automatic emails for blog posts in a certain category, or you could exclude a certain category.

To open some additional design options, click the Display options link. Here, you can control how posts appear in your email. For example, you can:

• Choose how much content to include.
• Choose whether or not to include the post featured image.
• Show additional details like the author or categories.
• Configure the read more button/link. For buttons, you can click the Design a button link to access more options to configure the text, colors, etc. For example, you could change the button text from “Read More” to “View Full Post”.
• Choose how to sort posts (if displaying multiple posts).

3. Activate your email

Once you’re happy with the design of your email and you’ve added the Automatic Latest Content element to ensure your latest posts get automatically placed in the email, you’re officially ready to activate your email.

To do this, click Next in the top-right corner of the MailPoet interface. Now, you can configure a few more important odds and ends.

First, there’s the title and preview text of your email. One nice thing here is that you can use shortcodes to insert information, such as the number of blog posts that have been published since the last email.

For example, if you’ve published two blog posts since the last email, “The last [newsletter:total] posts from our blog” would read as “The last 2 posts from our blog”.

You can check out the full list of available shortcodes here.

Beyond that, another important choice here is which list you want to send these emails to. Depending on what people have opted in for, you could send this to all of your subscribers or just a specific list/segment. 

You could even use the MailPoet form builder to create a custom form to let people specifically subscribe to new post notifications. You could do this by adding people who use that form to a special list.

Other things that you can do here are:

1. Make any edits to your frequency if needed (you already set this up in step one – this is just a recap and another chance to make edits).
2. Edit the sender and reply-to details.
3. Add a Google Analytics campaign.

Once you’re happy with everything, click Activate to make your email live.

And that’s it! Your emails will now start going out automatically according to your settings.

If you ever want to pause or edit your automatic emails, you can go to MailPoet → Emails → Post Notifications:

How to automatically include your latest blog posts in other emails

In addition to letting you create a newsletter that automatically sends, MailPoet also makes it easy for you to include your latest blog posts in emails that you create manually.

For example, let’s say you write a custom newsletter that you send out every Friday. As part of that email, you might want to also include details on your most recent blog post(s).

With MailPoet, you can easily automate including those details so that you don’t have to worry about copy and pasting URLs, images, titles, etc. every time you write your newsletter.

To quickly insert one or more blog posts in a newsletter email, you have two options:

1. You can use the same Automatic Latest Content element from above to automatically insert your most recently published posts.
2. You can use the Posts element to choose any piece of content on your site – new or old.

We already showed you how things work with the Automatic Latest Content element, so let’s just take a quick look at the Posts element.

To begin, just add the Posts element wherever you want to insert the content. You can use the sidebar settings to choose one or more pieces of content to include and click Insert Selected to add them to the post:

Then, you can expand the Display options to control exactly what information you want to display and how to present it. For example, you can choose whether you want to include the post’s excerpt, just the title, or the full text:

And that’s it! You can proceed to send the email just like you normally would.

If you want to save time, you can save this design as a template. Then, whenever you go to write your weekly newsletter, all you need to do is write the unique content at the top and MailPoet will automatically handle inserting your blog posts for you.

To save your design as a template, click the arrow next to the Save button in the top-right corner of the editor and choose Save As New Template:

Then, you’ll be able to choose that template when you create a new email.

Bonus: New content notifications aren’t just for blog posts

So far, we’ve focused exclusively on automatically sending your latest blog posts to subscribers. But MailPoet actually isn’t limited to just blog posts – you can also use it to automatically send your products or the latest item in any custom post type.

If you’re not familiar with custom post types, they basically let you store new types of content on your WordPress site. For example, an event site might have an “Event” custom post type, a job board site might have a “Job” custom post type, etc.

For custom WordPress sites, this opens up some really cool solutions. Here are some examples:

• WooCommerce store – automatically send an email with your recently added products.
• Event site – automatically send an email with your latest events.
• Job board – automatically send a list of the most recent job listings.
• Directory site – automatically send an email with the businesses/service providers that have been most recently added.

Here’s an example of what it looks like to automatically insert posts from a custom post type – “Jobs” in this example:

Basically, no matter what type of content you’re creating, you can use MailPoet to automatically send out new content notification emails.

Start automatically sending blog posts to subscribers today

Automatically sending your blog posts to subscribers is a great way to engage with your audience and promote your content without lifting a finger. Once you set up your automatic post notifications, you can be confident that they’ll go out at the right time and with the right formatting.

With MailPoet, you can easily set up these automations for your blog posts (or any other type of content). Or, you can also quickly insert blog posts in newsletters that you manually create.

If you’re already using MailPoet, try out this feature today and start benefiting from automation.

And if you haven’t started using MailPoet yet, install the free MailPoet plugin today and you’ll be up and running in no time.

According to Campaign Monitor, marketers who use segmentation in their campaigns have noted highs of a 760% increase in revenue. And the folks at HelpScout have reported that segmented email campaigns see 30% more opens and 50% more click-throughs than untargeted campaigns.

Those numbers certainly aren’t to be sniffed at, so if you aren’t already segmenting your email list, it’s well worth looking into! 

At MailPoet, we’ve recently introduced new and improved segmentation options so that you can tailor your email campaigns even further; creating a highly personalized and targetted experience for your subscribers. 

The segmentation options included in MailPoet are as follows:

Email

• Number of email opens
• Opened* 
• Not opened*
• Clicked (a specific link)*
• Not clicked (a specific link)*
• Clicked any email link

Subscriber

• Subscribe date
• MailPoet custom fields
• WordPress user role*

WooCommerce

• Number of orders
• Purchased in this category*
• Purchased this product *
• Total spent
• Customer country
• Has an active membership (using WooCommerce Memberships)

Subscriptions

• Has an active subscription (using WooCommerce Subscriptions)

* Existing segmentation options available prior to this update.

You can use these options individually, or combine them to create more complex segments of subscribers. Note that the ability to combine segments (multi-condition segmentation) is an advanced MailPoet feature that’s only available in our Business, Creator, and Agency plans.

To get started, head to your MailPoet plugin in your WordPress dashboard, navigate to ‘Lists’, and then select ‘+ New Segment’. You’ll then be able to start building your segmentation criteria.

In need of some inspiration on how to use these segments? Keep reading!

How to use the new segmentation options in MailPoet

There are a multitude of different ways you can use segmentation to create a personalized experience for your subscribers – especially when you start combining segments!

Every business will have a different use case for segmentation, but the following overview will hopefully get your creative juices flowing as to how you can use these options to start personalizing your email campaigns.

Number of email opens

Using this segment, you’ll be able to create email campaigns according to your subscribers’ engagement (or lack of) with your previous emails. 

Specify whether you want to segment by more or less than a set number of email opens within a specific time frame to start building your segment, and you’ll see a handy subscriber total to give you an indication of how many people fit that criteria. 

This option is perfect for re-engagement campaigns (send to those who have not opened many of your emails within the last few months with messaging enticing them to come back, or an offer to remove them from your list), rewarding loyal readers (try offering a coupon or an exclusive piece of content to those who have opened the vast majority of your emails as a thank you), or to remind/follow up on a specific action you were asking readers to take in one of your previous campaigns. 

Clicked on any email link

This email segment can be used in a similar way to ‘Number of email opens’, but enables you to drill down to those who are more actively engaged with your campaigns by segmenting subscribers who have clicked a content link in any of your previous emails. What do we mean by a content link? That’s any link you’ve actively added to your email campaigns, and not those that are added automatically (‘Unsubscribe’, ‘View in Browser’, or ‘Manage Subscription’).

You can combine with the ‘Number of email opens’ segment to send to the subscribers who have both opened and clicked a link in one or more of your emails. 

Subscribe date

This segment enables you to send to your subscribers according to when they joined your mailing list. Choose from before/after a specific date, or within / not within a set number of days. 

This is a really flexible segment that you can use in a lot of different ways. Maybe you’ve recently launched an additional newsletter that you’d like to make your early subscribers aware of? Or perhaps you’d like to share some existing content with those who have joined your mailing list more recently? The subscribe date segment will give you the power to do this!

Combining with other segments will enable you to get super specific with your targeting.

MailPoet custom fields

When you create a MailPoet signup form, you have the option to add custom form fields so that you can capture any additional information you require from your subscribers. The MailPoet custom fields segment enables you to tailor your emails according to the information your subscribers enter.

If you’d like to personalize your email communications according to where your subscribers are based, you might consider adding a ‘city’ or ‘country’ field to your form, and then use segmentation to deliver them relevant information according to their location.

If your email newsletter content covers a lot of different topics, another idea is to ask your subscribers what they’re most interested in hearing about, so that you can segment by interest. Deliver dedicated emails for each topic, and watch your engagement rates soar!

Number of orders (WooCommerce)

This segmentation option is perfect for rewarding loyal customers, and re-engaging those who have not yet made multiple purchases. 

Choose from ‘more than’, ‘equal to’, and ‘less than’ a set number of orders within a specific time frame to build a segment of customers you can create tailored messaging for. 

Reward those who keep coming back to your store with a discount or an exclusive look at an upcoming product range you’re launching. And for those who haven’t purchased again, reach out to them with a feedback request, or highlight any recent changes you’ve made to your stock or delivery costs, for example. 

Total spent (WooCommerce)

You can use this segment in a similar way to ‘number of orders’, but it’ll allow you to get way more specific with your targeting. Again you can specify ‘more than’, ‘equal to’, and ‘less than’ values within a specific time frame, but this time it’s centered around total customer spend.

Get even more targeted by combining with other segments such as ‘Number of orders’ or ‘Purchased in this category’ to drill down to specific customer behaviors.

Customer country (WooCommerce)

Deliver location-based emails to your customers using the Customer country segment. This option is perfect for promoting country-specific updates to your customers. 

For example, if you’re running a free shipping promotion that’s only available in Germany, you can use this option to only promote this offer to customers based in Germany – there’s nothing more frustrating than receiving details of a special offer to then find out you’re not eligible for it! 

Or why not combine with segments such as ‘Purchased this product’ or ‘Purchased in this category’ to let your customers know about country-specific offers or product launches based on their purchase history?

Has an active subscription (WooCommerce Subscriptions)

If you offer product subscriptions using WooCommerce Subscriptions, you can use this segmentation option to directly contact customers who have an active subscription with your store. 

This is a really handy way to let your subscribers know about new products, promote special offers, inform of changes to their subscription, and more. 

If your subscription model is based around offering digital goods, such as whitepapers, reports, or any other digital content, you could also use MailPoet to deliver this content to your subscribers. 

You could even start monetizing your email content by creating a paid newsletter subscription! These are a great way to earn monthly recurring revenue. For more information, check out our how-to guide. 

We hope you enjoy using the new segmentation options in MailPoet! Remember, if you’ve signed up for a plan with advanced functionality, you can combine segments to make your marketing messaging even more personal.

Let us know in the comments how you’ve been using segmentation to personalize your email marketing campaigns!

This type of paid newsletter approach has gone mainstream with platforms like Patreon and Substack. But while those tools undoubtedly make it easy to create a paid newsletter, they don’t give you much flexibility and they’ll take a 10%+ cut from every dollar you make forever. That 10% can really add up over time, especially as your newsletter grows.

In this post, we’re going to show you a better way to create your own paid newsletter subscription using self-hosted WordPress.

You’ll not only be able to keep more of your hard-earned subscription revenue, but you’ll also have more ownership and flexibility in your platform, which opens up new opportunities that those other platforms can’t offer.

Here’s everything that we’ll cover in this big guide:

• Some real-world use cases of how you can use this type of paid newsletter functionality.
• An example of what you’ll be building in the tutorial.
• What you need to create a paid newsletter subscription service with WordPress.
• A detailed step-by-step guide on how to set up your paid newsletter.

Why create a paid newsletter subscription service?

In a nutshell, a paid newsletter helps you achieve the holy grail of making money on the internet – automatic recurring revenue.

Once you convince a subscriber to sign up one time, they become a recurring source of revenue every month for the life of their subscription.

As long as you keep releasing the same quality of content that convinced them to subscribe in the first place, you’re likely to maintain a large percentage of your subscribers going forward.

Now, you might be saying, “people aren’t willing to pay for subscriptions from creators – I’m not Netflix”. That thinking was pretty popular five years ago, but it’s been proven wrong in 2021.

You can now find tons of examples of successful creators monetizing their content with subscriptions. Let’s look at some…

Examples of successful paid newsletters

A classic example of a paid newsletter is Ben Thompson’s Stratechery, which charges $12 per month for access to premium content and has built a household name doing so.

Scott’s Cheap Flights follows the same model, sending the best cheap airfare deals to paying subscribers, while only giving free subscribers a limited taste.

Companies have also built huge businesses helping creators monetize with subscriptions. Take two popular examples:

• Patreon – check out Graphtreon to see some popular creators and what they’re earning.
• Substack – view some of the most successful newsletters here.

There are heaps of creators making serious money with subscriptions, all from individual subscriptions that usually cost around $3-$12 per month. There’s no reason why you can’t join them.

How much could you make with a paid newsletter?

The attraction of recurring revenue is that it builds up over time.

For example, let’s say you charge $5 per month for access and you get five new subscribers per month. Here’s how much you earn per month.

• Month 1: $25 per month
• Month 2: $50 per month
• …
• Month 6: $150 per month
• …
• Month 12: $300 per month
• …
• Month 24: $600 per month
• and so on

Of course, in the real world, you’d have some subscribers stop paying (called churn). But you’d also see your new subscriber counts start increasing as your newsletter grows. 

By month six, you could be getting 15 new subscribers per month. And by month 12, you could be up to 40 new subscribers per month.

The key lesson here is this:

With automatic recurring revenue, even small increases in subscribers can grow to become a large source of revenue if you remain consistent in creating content.

Yes – it will certainly take time to grow a subscriber base. But once you have that base, you have consistent money coming in every single month, which is a pretty powerful concept.

What can you do with a paid newsletter subscription?

There are a lot of different types of content that you can monetize with a paid newsletter. Here are some ideas – but you can get creative and come up with your own use cases:

• Long-form content/journalism.
• Course content.
• Webinar access.
• Early access to a new feature/content.
• Exclusive content.
• Exclusive deals (e.g. Scott’s Cheap Flights).

Remember, you’re not only limited to the content that you can include in the newsletter itself.

For example, you could send an email to your paying subscribers that includes a special link to a webinar that’s only for them. This lets you get creative and go beyond just the standard long-form content model.

Here’s what you’ll be building in this tutorial

Now that you have some background, we’re going to start shifting into the “how to” portion of this post.

But before we get to the instructions, we want to give you a real example of the type of functionality that you’ll be able to set up and what the “flow” will be like for you and your users.

So – here’s an example from our actual test site, which we set up using the tools and instructions from the tutorial.

Experience for users

With the tutorial below, you can create two types of user experiences:

1. Just a paid newsletter where you only publish content via email.
2. A website/email hybrid where you publish paid content via both your blog and email. Visitors can consume content via either platform (or both).

Our example site is set up to demo the second approach, but you can also implement the first.

When a user lands on the site, they’ll be able to see the first paragraph of each premium blog post, but the full content will be locked behind a prompt to purchase a subscription. Or, visitors can subscribe directly from the sidebar or a dedicated subscription page:

You can also publish some content that’s fully available for free.

On the subscribe page, they’ll see a prompt to pay. If desired, you can offer multiple options, like a monthly rate and a discounted annual rate:

Clicking the option to sign up will prompt the user to check out* using your preferred payment gateway. You can use PayPal, Stripe, and lots of other options:

*In the tutorial, we’ll talk about some ways that you can simplify this if desired.

As soon as they pay, the visitor is now a subscriber, which means that they’ll be able to access the full text of the premium content and receive emails.

Your visitors will also be able to view and manage their subscription details from a dedicated area on your site:

Experience for admins (You)

On the admin side, you’ll be able to manage all of your subscribers from a simple dashboard:

Anyone who has an active subscription will automatically be on your paid newsletter list.

When you want to create an email, you can design the content using a visual drag-and-drop builder and/or insert the full text of a blog post:

You can then send the email to all paying subscribers with just a couple of clicks.

You’ll also have the option to publish the content on your website and restrict access to only paying subscribers.

What you need to create a paid newsletter subscription with WordPress

To create a paid newsletter subscription service with WordPress, you’ll only need two tools on top of your WordPress site.

1. MailPoet

First, you need MailPoet.

MailPoet is what handles all of the email parts of your service. It’s what will help you:

• Create emails to send to your subscribers – you can either use a simple text editor or create more unique emails via the visual, drag-and-drop editor.
• Reliably deliver emails to subscribers’ inboxes using the built-in email sending service.
• Segment your subscribers. For example, you could have one segment for all email subscribers (free and paid) and another for just paid subscribers so that you can offer multiple “tiers”.

Basically, if it has anything to do with email, MailPoet will handle it for you.

2. WooCommerce

While MailPoet can handle everything to do with “newsletter subscription”, the one thing it does not handle is the “paid” part of your newsletter subscription service.

To handle that, you need the free WooCommerce plugin, which is the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress.

However, you won’t be using it as a full-service eCommerce platform. Instead, you’ll just be using it to process payments and manage subscriptions.

You’ll also need at least one paid WooCommerce extension – maybe two depending on your desired setup.

To accept ongoing subscription payments, you’ll need the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin, which costs $199.

With the plugin, you can charge monthly or yearly (or both – and let users choose). You can also incorporate elements like free trials, which are a useful marketing strategy.

If you also want to cross-publish your newsletter content on your blog/website and restrict access to that content for subscribers, you’ll need to add WooCommerce Memberships to the mix, which also costs $199.

Summary

To recap what we covered above, here’s what you need to create your paid newsletter service and what it will cost:

1. MailPoet – required – free Starter plan for 5,000 emails per month to up to 1,000 subscribers. Once your subscribers grow past that, suitable plans start at just €17 per month.
2. WooCommerce – required – free.
3. WooCommerce Subscriptions – required – $199.
4. WooCommerce Memberships – optional – $199.

The key thing here is that there are no ongoing commissions on the money that you accept. Minus the flat fees that you pay for these tools, you get to keep every dollar from your subscribers*.

*You’ll still need to pay the “standard” ~3% credit card processing fee to a payment processor like Stripe. This is unavoidable if you want to accept credit card payments on the internet and you’ll need to pay it no matter what solution you use.

For comparison, Substack charges 10% and Patreon charges 5-12% of all your subscription revenue forever, which really adds up over time. Those numbers are excluding the payment processing fee, so you’ll actually be losing ~13% with Substack and ~8-15% with Patreon.

How to create a paid newsletter subscription service with WordPress

Now, let’s get into the step-by-step guide for how you can set up this functionality using WordPress and the tools that we’ve discussed above.

For this tutorial, we’ll only assume one thing – that you already have a working WordPress website.

If you’re not sure how to create a WordPress site, here’s the quick process:

1. Purchase web hosting. Here are some WordPress web hosts that we recommend.
2. Use your chosen web host’s WordPress installer to install the software. Most hosts make this pretty easy to find, but you can always reach out to their support if you need some help.
3. Choose a WordPress theme to control the design of your site. You can always come back to this later once you set up your paid newsletter – so don’t stress too much.

Once you have your basic WordPress website up and running, here’s how to turn it into a paid newsletter subscription service.

1. Install and configure WooCommerce

To get started, go to Plugins → Add New. Search for and install/activate the free WooCommerce plugin.

Once you activate it, WooCommerce should automatically launch a setup wizard to configure some important basics for your store. Go through the steps to add some basic details – these choices don’t have any big implications, so don’t stress too much. Just answer the questions to the best of your ability.

When you get to the free features section, you can uncheck all of the boxes except for WooCommerce Payments, Jetpack, and MailPoet (the last of which you’ll set up later in the tutorial):

On the last step, WooCommerce will suggest some themes. If you already like your current WordPress theme, you can just continue with it.

Once you exit the wizard, you can go to WooCommerce → Settings → Payments to set up your payment processor. We recommend WooCommerce Payments. But you can use any gateway that supports subscription payments.

If you need any additional help with WooCommerce, we recommend consulting the support docs, like the getting started guide.

2. Set up WooCommerce Subscriptions

Now, it’s time to set up your subscription payment options.

To begin, make sure that you’ve purchased, installed, and activated the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin.

Then, go to Products → Add New to create your subscription product. When a visitor purchases this “product”, it will give them access to your paid newsletter content (and paid website content, if applicable).

To get started, enter the basic product details. You can give it a title – e.g. “Paid Newsletter Subscription” – and enter a simple description to explain what people will get with their purchase.

Then, you’ll use the Product data box to set up details for your subscription. First, set the drop-down equal to Simple subscription.

Then, use the settings to configure:

• Price
• Billing duration (e.g. every month or every year).
• Duration (you’ll probably want to set this to Never expire)
• Free trial (optional – but you can set this up if desired)

For example, to set up a subscription that costs $5 per month, you’d configure it like so:

If you want to offer multiple payment terms, you could optionally change the product type to Variable subscription. For example, this would let you charge “$5 per month” OR “$50 per year”:

And that’s it! Now, when people purchase this “product”, they’ll automatically be subscribed to your newsletter.

3. Set up MailPoet

Next, it’s time to set up the email portion of your paid newsletter service using MailPoet.

You should’ve already installed MailPoet when you went through the WooCommerce setup wizard in Step #1 of this tutorial. If you haven’t installed it yet, no worries! You can also just install and activate the free MailPoet Starter plan.

When prompted to use MailPoet with WooCommerce, make sure to allow both options so that MailPoet can automatically add your paying subscribers to your email lists:

Now, the user flow will go something like this:

• A user visits your site.
• The user purchases the subscription product via WooCommerce.
• MailPoet automatically adds the user to your email list based on the email they entered at WooCommerce checkout.

4. Send emails to your subscribers

At this point, you’re ready to start sending newsletters to your paid subscribers.

There are two parts to this…

Create a segment for paying subscribers

First, you need to create a segment in MailPoet that only includes users with an active subscription. This will distinguish paid users from free users or users whose subscriptions have expired.

To create your segment, go to MailPoet → Lists and then click New Segment:

Give your segment a name – e.g. “Paying Subscribers”.

Then, under the Segment drop-down, find the WooCommerce Subscriptions section and choose has an active subscription. That will expand another drop-down – choose the subscription product that you created in Step #2 of this tutorial:

Then, Save your changes.

Send emails to that segment

Now, you can use MailPoet’s email builder to send an email that only goes to your segment that contains paying subscribers.

To create an email, go to MailPoet → Emails → New Email. Then, choose the option for Newsletter:

You can then choose one of the templates. For a newsletter, you’ll probably just want a simple text email or one of the blank templates

For the content of the email, you have two options:

1. You can add the content directly to the email.
2. If you’re cross-publishing content between your blog and email newsletter (which we’ll touch on in the next section), you can automatically insert the full text of the blog post in the email.

If you want to add the content directly, you can just click and type:

To insert a post’s content, add the posts widget from the sidebar and choose the post you want to display:

Then, click Display options and choose Full post to display the full text. Make sure to click Insert Selected at the button to add the post.

Even if you’re embedding the full content of a post, you can still include custom content. For example, you could write a custom introduction for your email subscribers followed by the full text of the blog post.

Once you’ve added the content, click Next. Then, enter the basic sender details. Under Lists, make sure to choose your “Paying Subscribers” segment. You can then either send the email right away or schedule it for the future:

And that’s it! You just created your very own paid newsletter subscription service.

Optional enhancements to your paid newsletter subscription service

In the section above, we showed you the bare minimum to set up a paid newsletter subscription service with WordPress.

Now, let’s run over a few useful tweaks/additions you might want to configure. These are 100% optional, but they can further enhance your site’s functionality.

Restrict access to premium content on your site

If you want to also restrict access to some/all of your website’s content, you’ll need to purchase, install, and activate the WooCommerce Memberships plugin.

Then, go to WooCommerce → Memberships → Membership Plans → Add Membership Plan:

Give it a name and set Grant access upon equal to product(s) purchase. Then, choose your Newsletter Subscription product that you created earlier in the tutorial.

Under Subscription-tied Membership length, make sure to select subscription length. This will tell the plugin to maintain a user’s membership as long as they have an active subscription:

Then, Publish your membership.

Now, when you want to publish a piece of content that’s only available to paying newsletter subscriptions, you can use the Memberships box in the content editor to create a rule so that only paying subscribers can see the content – other users will be prompted to sign up for a membership:

WooCommerce Memberships has lots of other useful settings that you might want to explore. For example, you could show partial excerpts, customize the restricted content message, automatically restrict entire categories of content, and more.

Offer both free and paid subscriptions with different content

A lot of paid newsletters use a freemium model where free subscribers get access to basic content and paid subscribers get access to premium content.

MailPoet makes this easy to set up. In addition to your paid subscriber segment, you can just create another list to house all subscribers:

• When you want to send free content, you just send it to the list of all subscribers.
• When you want to send premium content, you only send it to the paying subscribers segment.

To help grow your free subscriber list, MailPoet can also help you create email opt-in forms – just go to MailPoet → Forms → New Form to get started:

Simplify your checkout process

As we mentioned earlier, WooCommerce is primarily an eCommerce plugin, so the default checkout process still follows the normal eCommerce flow where users first add the subscription to their shopping carts and then check out.

For a paid newsletter subscription, you don’t really need a shopping cart, so you might want to adjust the checkout flow.

For a simple option, you could use the WooCommerce Direct Checkout plugin, which lets you skip the shopping cart page and send users straight to checkout after they click the button to subscribe.

Or, you can find other plugins that let you completely revamp the entire checkout process. 

A good option is CartFlows, which would let you create a single landing page for your newsletter subscription. Visitors will be able to view details about the subscription and check out from just that page, which creates a more user-friendly experience.

Here’s an example of the type of integrated checkout you can create with CartFlows:

You can easily adapt this to a newsletter subscription without needing any code.

Create your WordPress paid newsletter today!

In 2021, we’ve seen the growth of paid newsletter subscriptions from solo creators or teams.

With WordPress, you can create your own paid newsletter subscription with more flexibility and without needing to pay an ongoing commission to another service.

You’ll keep all the money that your subscribers pay and you’ll retain the ability to add new features to your site, like launching an online course, selling products, creating a discussion forum, and more.

All you need is WooCommerce + WooCommerce Subscriptions to handle the “paid” part and MailPoet to handle the “email subscription” part.

Do you still have any questions about creating a paid newsletter subscription service with WordPress? Ask us in the comments!