This means that the cron service will be retired (which may result in emails being unable to be sent in a timely manner), licenses will no longer be available to purchase or renew, security updates will cease, and no customer support will be made available for this service.

All MailPoet 2 users are encouraged to migrate to MailPoet 3 at their earliest convenience – take a look at our MailPoet 2 to MailPoet 3 migration guide for full details on how to do this.

What does this mean for MailPoet 2 license holders?

If you’re a MailPoet 2 user, you should’ve received an email from us explaining the next steps. If you haven’t seen the email, or if you need further assistance, please reach out to our support team.

Existing license holders have a few options:

1. Migrate over to the MailPoet 3 service by requesting customer support credit any remaining MailPoet 2 license time towards purchasing a MailPoet 3 plan
2. Continue using MailPoet 2 for the remaining duration of your existing license, with the understanding that as of July 31, 2022, email sending could be interrupted and no support will be available (see the next section of this post for more information)
3. Cease using MailPoet’s services altogether, and request a refund for any remaining time left on your existing MailPoet 2 license. 

If you decide to move to MailPoet 3, we strongly recommend starting the migration process as soon as possible in order to avoid any disruption to your email service. Our friendly support team is also on hand to assist with this if you do happen to require any help. 

How does MailPoet 3 differ from MailPoet 2?

We’ve put together a comparison table detailing the full feature list of each plugin so that you can see exactly what the differences are. 

In a nutshell, you can expect a modern and more powerful email marketing solution. Key features include a drag-and-drop email builder, powerful list segmentation options, a Gutenberg-powered form editor, pre-designed email and form templates, WooCommerce-specific functionality, and, of course, the MailPoet Sending Service.

You can find the minimum and recommended requirements for using MailPoet 3 in this Knowledge Base article.

What will happen if I continue using MailPoet 2 after July 31, 2022?

As there will no longer be any support, maintenance, updates, or cron service to make sure that MailPoet 2 is functioning properly and securely, we strongly recommend users migrate to MailPoet 3. MailPoet 3 is being actively improved upon and supported, and offers a far superior experience. 

However, if you were to continue using MailPoet 2 after its retirement date of July 31, 2022, you have the following three options to send emails following the shut down of the cron service:

• Hit ‘Send’ manually on all of your email campaigns – the ‘Schedule’ function will no longer work, meaning any automated emails you have set up will no longer be sent automatically.
• If your website receives a consistently high volume of traffic (we suggest ~1,000 visits per day for minimal interference) WP-Cron will trigger the sending of your scheduled emails. However, as the success of this method relies on there being visitors on your website at the time your emails are scheduled to send, sending cannot be guaranteed. 
• You set up your own cron service using these instructions.

While it is still possible to use MailPoet 2 using one of these options, we do not recommend doing so. Using an unsupported and out-of-date plugin can pose a security risk, and in the long term, could cause a number of problems with the functionality of your website. 

If you have any questions or concerns about the retirement of MailPoet 2, please contact our Support team who will be happy to assist you.

If you’re a MailPoet customer with an active subscription who signed up before March 1, 2022, your plan or license will continue to renew at the current price. It’s only if you decided to sign up, change or upgrade your plan after February 28, 2022, that you’ll be subject to the new pricing tiers.

What’s changed?

At a glance, here are the new MailPoet plans that have been available since March 1, 2022:

Please note that the prices listed in the Creator, Business, and Agency plans are based on the smallest plan size of 500 subscribers – pricing will scale according to the size of your email list.

If you’re just starting out, a free plan will still be available. Within each of the three paid plan types, pricing will scale according to the number of subscribers you have. You can find full details of each of these plans over on our pricing page.

Plans + Licenses, together as one

Our old pricing structure separated the MailPoet Premium Licenses (Blogger, Freelancer, and Agency) from the MailPoet plans that included sending. Now, we have one, easy-to-understand tier system for all use cases.

The Agency plan has been designed for those who manage MailPoet installations across multiple websites. It’ll allow you to use MailPoet on up to 50 sites and enable you to scale the MailPoet Sending Service – something that was not previously possible. The plan level you choose indicates the number of subscribers allowed on each instance of MailPoet. 

And if you want to use MailPoet without our email sending service (currently available with the Blogger license), the new Creator plan will enable you to do so. You’ll gain access to all of MailPoet’s advanced functionality (more on that next), in addition to utilizing your sending service of choice. Plans scale as your email list grows – now available with monthly payment options.

Functionality and plans designed to scale

If you opt for a Creator, Business, or Agency plan, you’ll have access to MailPoet’s advanced features which include:

• Google Analytics tracking
• Detailed engagement statistics
• Multi-condition subscriber segments, and
• New advanced features coming in 2022 and beyond!

In addition, Priority Customer Support will be on hand in case you run into any issues or require some assistance.

Unlike our previous plans which have started from the 1,000 subscriber mark, our new paid plans start from 500 subscribers. So if you’ve got a smaller list but send more than 5,000 emails/month, require advanced functionality, or need access to priority support, you can still do so without paying for extra list space. 

For users with large lists, the 70,000 subscriber cap has been lifted! Our new plans can scale up to 200,000 subscribers, and beyond that, you can contact support to discuss pricing. 

A free plan for starting out

We continue to offer a free plan for those who are just starting out or do not require access to advanced functionality and features. 

The Starter plan enables MailPoet to be used for free under the following conditions:

• For use on one website
• A total of 5,000 emails can be sent per month
• Up to 1,000 subscribers
• The inclusion of MailPoet branding in emails.

If you opt for the Starter plan, you’ll be able to contact our support team via the WordPress.org forum, and you’ll also have access to our Knowledge Base.

What happens to existing MailPoet users?

All MailPoet customers who had an active subscription prior to March 1, 2022 have been contacted via email about the upcoming changes. For these users, plans and licenses will continue to renew at the old rate and structure. It’s only in the event of a plan change or upgrade that they’ll be subject to the new rates. 

If you have any questions or concerns about the changes, please take a look at our FAQ document. If you need any further assistance, please reach out to Customer Support, who’ll be happy to help.

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! 

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!

Our users can now take advantage of features such as a WooCommerce email customizer, transactional email sending, automated WooCommerce emails, and a variety of different signup form types, amongst many other improvements.

But despite these improvements, we felt there was still something lacking in the MailPoet plugin – the design and user experience. It’s all well and good having these great new features, but if the experience of using them is poor, then those features are, well, not so great after all.

So this year, we decided to treat ourselves and our users to a refreshed look and better experience using MailPoet. We’ve been making iterative updates over the past few months, and today I’m pleased to announce that these are now complete! 

Behind the new look

One of the biggest decisions we had to make as a team before embarking on the redesign project was whether we should try and stick as closely as possible to WordPress’ user interface (like we had done before), or try something new. 

The WordPress admin’s UI has stayed largely the same since version 3.8, which was released in 2013. And even then, it didn’t stray too far away from its previous look. Don’t get me wrong, WordPress’ UI is relatively clean and uncluttered, but it isn’t exactly pretty, is it?!

The team were pretty divided on this issue, with some favouring the familiarity of the WordPress look, and others eager to inject a more modern and MailPoet branded feel to the plugin.

So where did we end up? I’d say somewhere in the middle. 

Excessive use of grey was ditched in favor of clean and crisp white backgrounds.

Life has been added with pops of colour in MailPoet oranges and blues.

Before:

After:

And here’s our email stats page in action on a mobile device:

And the user interface has been greatly improved with clearer signposting.

We haven’t completely strayed away from WordPress’ design elements, though. A conscious decision was made to retain much of the interface logic WordPress uses, so that there’d be an element of familiarity for our users.

For example, in our email editor, we’ve adopted the same ‘Preview’ button design and placement as you’d see when you create a new post or page in WordPress.

And our Settings page also has the same logic as the WordPress admin applied:

The final result

Using MailPoet is now a much easier and cleaner experience. The new look is fresh, modern, and professional, with the nods to WordPress’s user interface adding familiarity and ease of use. Not to mention that insured page loading speeds to be more optimal than ever.

The whole team is now really proud of how MailPoet looks and functions. And you, what do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Not yet a MailPoet user and want to see what all the fuss is about? Sign up for a free plan.

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on improving our signup form editor so that you have powerful new ways to attract more people to signup to your mailing list. You shouldn’t need to install an additional plugin just to get nice forms – we want MailPoet to be your one-stop-shop to email marketing greatness.

Today we’re really excited to announce that we’re one step closer to achieving this, as the phase of work on our form editor is complete

In this post I’ll be covering the following:

• What’s new in the MailPoet form editor
• What the benefits of new form types are
• Why we chose Gutenberg
• How to use the form editor (tutorial video)

What’s new in the MailPoet form editor?

Our new and improved form editor includes 4 additional form placement options, new ways to style and customize your forms using the Gutenberg editor, and a library of templates for each form type to help get you started. 

You can also preview how each form will look on both the desktop and mobile versions of your website before hitting publish. Neat!

I’ve provided a short overview of each of our new additions below. These features are available in all plan types, and if you’re not yet a MailPoet customer, you can sign up for free.

Prefer to jump straight to the tutorial video? No problem, here’s the link

Pop-up forms

Love ‘em or loathe them, pop-ups are undeniably effective at increasing your subscriber list. According to research conducted by Sumo, the top-performing pop-ups have a conversion rate of 9.28% .

In MailPoet you can now easily create pop-up forms that both look great, and capture your users’ attention at the right time.

Use the Gutenberg editor to style your form to complement your branding, and then use the pop-up form options to specify when and where it is shown. 

Options include:

• Display your form on all pages, or just specific one(s)
• Display your form on all posts/products, or just specific one(s)
• Display on posts in specific categories or tags
• Set the delay before showing the pop-up
• Set to appear when a user is about to exit your website
• Choose the animation used when your form pops-up. 

Using these options will enable you to use pop-up forms in the best way possible for your business. 

Slide-in forms

Slide-in forms work in a very similar way to pop-ups, but instead of appearing in the center of a page, they slide-in at the bottom right of the page. They’re a great option if you’re after a form that’s a little more subtle than a pop-up!

Like the pop-up form type, you can set your slide-in forms to appear across all posts/pages, or get more targeted with product/post/category specific forms. And our time delay feature is really handy if you don’t want your slide-in form to appear as soon as someone lands on a page. 

Fixed bar forms

A fixed bar form spans the entire width of your website and can be set to appear either at the bottom or top of your page(s). They should be a lot slimmer than a pop-up or slide-in form (you wouldn’t want them to take over your web page!), so they’re the perfect choice if your form only has a couple of fields. 

Again, you’ll have the option to choose exactly where and when this form appears, and which animation you’d like to use for its appearance. 

Forms below posts or pages

The final new form type I’d like to introduce to you is the ‘below post/page’ type. As the name would suggest, these are forms that can be set to appear at the end of a post or page. 

Using the inbuilt form options to specify which post(s)/page(s) your form appears on, makes this form type a great option for landing pages or posts where your call-to-action is to encourage users to get in touch with you about your product/service. 

The below post/page form type also allows for more fields than the fixed bar type, for example. So if you need to collect more data than just a name and email address, this form is an ideal solution. 

There are no delay settings on this one, so your form will be ready and waiting as soon as a user has finished reading your content. 

Form templates

You might be thinking “these all sound great, but where am I going to find the time to create new forms?!”. Do not fear – we can help you with that!

Similar to our newsletter template library, we’ve created a new form template library to help get you started. You can use these templates as the basis of your new forms, and simply update the styling to match that of your own brand. 

There are a variety of templates available for each of our new form types, as well as the classic widget option, and we’ll be continuing to update the template library in the upcoming months.

What are the benefits of using these new form types?

Growing an email list is undoubtedly one of the most important (and often most difficult!) parts of email marketing. As your subscription form is likely to be responsible for the bulk of this hard work, it’s vital that it attracts your users’ attention, represents your brand, and clearly conveys the benefits of joining your mailing list. 

Our new form types will give you greater flexibility and control of how, when, and where your sign up forms are displayed, enabling you to capture more signups. 

Using the familiar WordPress block editor (Gutenberg), you can easily style your form to complement your brand and convey the benefits of signing up to your mailing list. Plus, the option to specify exactly which pages, posts, categories, or products you’d like to display each of your signup forms on will allow you to get super targeted in your messaging. 

Why did we choose Gutenberg?

Gutenberg is the block-based editor that replaced WordPress’ classic editor in December 2018. If you’re using version 5.0 of WordPress or higher, Gutenberg will be the default editor used on your website.

Since its release, Gutenberg has been met with criticism that it is not yet fully mature and stable. And that’s true – it’s not! Opting to create our own form editor in Gutenberg was, therefore, a pretty controversial, and unique, decision in itself.

But Gutenberg also comes with a number of positives, which solidified our decision in using it for our form editor.

1. It’s familiar to our users. As Gutenberg is now the default editor in WordPress, there’s a high chance you’re already using it when publishing your blog posts and creating pages on your website. We want to make using our plugin as easy as possible and eliminate the need to learn how to use another piece of software from scratch.
2. We don’t have to create and maintain a custom form editor. Creating a custom form editor from scratch would take a really long time. We’re a small team here at MailPoet, and so using existing software as the basis for our form editor means our engineers will have more time to work on other improvements to the plugin. 
3. Gutenberg isn’t going anywhere. It may not be a fully realized block-based editor yet, but it’s here to stay. The future of WordPress is Gutenberg, so it was a safe bet to build on this.
4. It’s improving quickly. The team behind Gutenberg is refining and enhancing it at a rapid rate. At the time of writing, the latest version was 9.2.0, with new versions being released twice a month on average. We’ve already seen a vast improvement, and that’s only going to continue.

And the cons:

1. It’s not a true ‘What You See Is What You Get’ editor. You still have to click Preview to see the final result of your post/page/form, which isn’t ideal. Other visual editors allow you to see what you’re building in situ.  
2. It’s changing rapidly. The downside to it being worked on so regularly is that our engineers consider it to be experimental software. We need to update our Gutenberg every month at least, and these updates can sometimes dramatically change the expected behavior of certain elements.

Whilst there are some cons to using Gutenberg, we’re confident that it’s the right solution for our form editor, and that it’ll only continue to get better in every release.

How do I use the new MailPoet form editor?

To get started using the new form editor, in your WordPress dashboard head to MailPoet > Forms > New+. From here you can select your form type and template to get started with!

The video below will take you through the different settings and customization options available.

We hope you enjoy using the new and improved form editor! 

Not yet a MailPoet user? It’s free to get started! Take a look at our plans, or download the plugin from the WordPress plugin repository.

Welcome emails are an automated email type that are triggered to send after someone confirms they’d like to be signed up to your list. In MailPoet, these can be set up to be sent immediately after sign up, or after a set period of time. The best bit about them is that you only need to set them up once, and then they’ll automatically send when someone joins your list!

If you’ve just arrived here and haven’t read the rest of our signup confirmation series, you should have a read of Part 1 –  Improve Your Signup Confirmation Email and Part 2 – Improve Your Confirmation Landing Page first.

Why have a welcome email?

Back in Part 1, we talked about how the signup confirmation email should be kept barebones in order to get people to activate their subscription. Whilst this tactic is definitely the right approach for your confirmation email, you might be thinking that it was a missed opportunity to show your nearly new subscribers what your business is about.

But that’s where a welcome email comes in.

The welcome email is an email that is sent after the user confirms their subscription. Think of it as a brief “getting to know you” message. It’s the perfect opportunity to welcome your new subscriber to your mailing list with some useful content and links.

Let’s take a look at a snippet of the MailPoet newsletter welcome email. You can see the full version here.

What should I include in my welcome email?

As you can see from our own example above, we’ve already shared one top tip for content you should include in your welcome emails – a message that asks the reader to add your email to their primary inbox, or VIP list. 

Asking your readers to do this from the outset will mean you’re less likely to run into any email deliverability issues further down the line. You’ve worked hard to get people to sign up to your mailing list and create your newsletters, so you’re going to want to make sure they do actually receive them!

Here’s the copy we used in our own welcome email, which you’re free to customize and reuse as you please.

To make sure our monthly newsletter hits your inbox, we recommend following these quick steps:

Gmail users—move us to your primary inbox

On your phone? Hit the 3 dots at top right corner, click “Move to” then “Primary”

On desktop? Back out of this email then drag and drop this email into the “Primary” tab near the top left of your screen

Apple mail users—tap on our email address at the top of this email (next to “From:” on mobile) and click “Add to VIPs”

For everyone else—follow these instructions.

But what else should you include?

First up, it’s a good idea to remind your subscribers what they signed up for. Reiterate how often they can expect your emails, and what they’re likely to include (e.g. unique tips, a roundup of the best blog posts, exclusive discounts, etc). Set some expectations, and exceed them!

You can then use the rest of your email to encourage your subscribers to engage with your brand by highlighting your products, services, or content.

We’ve included a clear call-to-action encouraging our new subscribers to try out MailPoet for free. This is a pretty enticing offer for readers who haven’t tried MailPoet yet and have signed up to find out more about us. 

And in addition to the promotion of our product, we’ve also highlighted a few of our blog posts. As our monthly newsletter contains a roundup of our latest posts, we’ve used this opportunity to give readers a taste of what’s to come, as well as promote some key pieces of content from our website.

Your welcome email should be used to show your new subscribers what’s great about your business. For example, if you’re a food blogger, why not include your top reviewed recipe for readers to try? Or if you run a consultancy business, you could include a case study of a recent project you undertook, or perhaps a link to download a how-to guide.

For ecommerce store owners, welcome emails are a great way to reward subscribers for their interest in your brand. Why not include an exclusive discount code, and highlight your top products? Just make sure you mention your discount in your signup forms – you’ll incentivize more users to sign up that way .

For more ideas on how to use welcome emails to engage your audience, make sure you check out our ultimate guide.

Should I send the email immediately after confirmation?

That will depend on how important you consider the information. People are much less likely to read your email if it is sent immediately, as they’ve already had to open the signup confirmation email.

However, if you’re sending a discount offer, you’ll probably want to send it soon, especially if you used the offer as a means of getting people to sign up (e.g. Sign up to our newsletter to get 10% off your first order).

In a nutshell: if it’s not important, don’t send the welcome email immediately, try an hour or two later. This way, you are likely to get higher engagement. If it’s not working for you, try reducing or increasing time.

How do I set up welcome emails in MailPoet?

It’s easy!  Go to MailPoet > Emails > Add new.

Choose ‘Welcome Email’ and select ‘When someone subscribes to the list‘. Choose your list and the amount of time you’d like to wait before sending the email.

Create your newsletter then select ‘Activate‘.

Even more emails

Don’t limit yourself to just one welcome email.  You can build a whole “welcome program” and create your own drip campaign. All you have to do is change when each email is automatically sent.

For instance:

• Your first email could be about you and what you stand for, and go out immediately.
• The second email could have more information about your blog posts and products, and go out one week later.
• A third email could have a discount offer or some unique content, and go out two weeks after the initial email.

This post concludes our series on improving your signup confirmation sequence! We’d love to hear if you’ve made any improvements to your email signup program – do leave us a comment. 

The signup confirmation page is the page your subscribers will see once they’ve clicked the confirmation button in your signup confirmation email. By default, in MailPoet this page will look similar to the one below, but with your theme’s styles applied.

To check what your current signup confirmation page looks like, head to Mailpoet > Settings > Signup Confirmation and you’ll see the option to preview your confirmation page.

In this post, I’m going to be showing you how to spruce this page up and make the most of this opportunity where you have your new subscribers’ attention.

Here’s how ours looks after a bit of tweaking:

Why should I change this page?

Your signup confirmation page is another touchpoint you have with your audience, so it’s a great opportunity to capture your new subscribers’ attention and get them interacting with your brand.

Encourage your new subscribers to explore your website; try including some links to more information about your brand, product, or service, or share some of your most popular blog content. You want people to engage with your website and visit as many pages as possible. After all, you’ve put a lot of hard work into it! And just because they signed up, it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed their loyalty.

Building a stronger relationship with your subscribers at this early stage means they’re more likely to engage with and remain loyal to your brand from this point forward.

What to include on your signup confirmation landing page

If you’re not sure about what direction to take the signup confirmation page in, ask yourself some questions like “Why did I get them to sign up?”, “What is the purpose of this website?” and “What are the most popular pages/posts on this site?” – this should help you think about the next steps and actions a subscriber might wish to take.

On our confirmation page, we’ve decided to signpost to information/services that cover each stage of our buyer’s journey.

For subscribers who’ve already decided that MailPoet is the email marketing plugin for them, the ‘Download now’ option linking to the plugin repository makes this quick and easy for them to action.

And the link to our blog content is useful for everyone interested in MailPoet, but it’d be particularly helpful for existing customers who are keen to improve their email marketing skills.

This information is in addition to a nice illustration and a message that confirms their subscription to our mailing list – don’t forget to include this message! Failing to include this could leave subscribers wondering if their subscription has actually been confirmed, as well as being confused as to how they ended up on this page.

More ideas for your landing page

Still not sure what to include? Here are some more ideas for your landing page content:

• Offer a free download for subscribers
• For eCommerce stores, you could showcase your products – best sellers will work well here
• Include a video thanking your new subscriber for signing up
• Share a code for an exclusive discount or a special offer
• A link to your email archive so that your subscribers can see what to expect
• Add a fun GIF or animation.

Whilst some of these ideas may not be suitable for your brand, there’s almost always an opportunity to customize this page and improve your new subscriber’s experience.

How to create a customized signup confirmation landing page in MailPoet

Ok, so this bit technically isn’t in MailPoet! Instead, you need to add a new page for this purpose, via the WordPress dashboard.

The process of customizing and styling this page will depend on your theme and if you’re using an additional page builder. You may already have a page template that would be good for this purpose, which you can select in the ‘Page Attributes’ section of your page settings.

Regardless of you decide to “build” this page, it’s important to consider the following:

• Keep it on-brand. Your page should follow the branding and style of the other pages on your website. Creating a page in a completely different style would be confusing for subscribers, and is likely to take more time!
• Confirm they’re on your list. Remember to include a heading or clear message that provides confirmation to your subscriber that they’re now subscribed to your mailing list.
• Keep it simple! Signup confirmation pages are great ways of engaging with your new subscribers, but you don’t want to overload them with links and information. We recommend including just a few key pieces of content or links.

Once you’re happy with your page, all that’s left to do is adjust your signup confirmation page settings so that it links to your new page.

To do this, head to Mailpoet > Settings > Sign-up Confirmation and scroll to the ‘Confirmation page‘ option. Here you’ll be able to use the dropdown to select the page you’d like your users to see once they’ve confirmed their subscription.

And there you have it! Customizing your subscription confirmation landing page is a great opportunity to get new subscribers engaging with your brand and viewing your content.

In the final part of this series, we’ll be exploring welcome emails. Missed part one? Here’s how to improve your signup confirmation email.

Email spoofing is a common tactic used by fraudsters, in which they impersonate an email sent by a brand or person at a business. Spoofed emails can sometimes be used in phishing attacks, where they try to fool readers into giving away personal information (such as credit card details), by posing as a known legitimate business.

91% of cybersecurity attacks start with an email and a whopping 3-6million scam attempts happen daily, says research from Valimail, reported by Forbes. While spoofing attacks are common, there are fortunately ways in which you can better protect your email sender domain and prove that the emails MailPoet Sending Service, or any 3rd party service, delivers on your behalf are indeed authorized to be sent. 

Adding DKIM authentication is one method, and MailPoet has just released an easy way of including DKIM records to your emails if you’re a MailPoet Sending Service user

In this post, I’ll be covering:

• What DKIM is
• Whether you need to set up DKIM
• How to set up DKIM in MailPoet
• Troubleshooting problems

What is DKIM?

If you’re not familiar with email authentication methods, you might be thinking “D-what?!”. Do not fear – we’ve got you covered.

DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is a type of “digital signature” that confirms to the email recipient that an email is genuine and from the listed sender. 

We like to think of it as a digital permission slip. By adding DKIM records to your sender domain in MailPoet (or any other email marketing provider), you’re telling your subscribers’ mail server that you have given us permission to send emails from your domain.

These digital signatures are generally not made visible to the email recipient and are instead included in the email infrastructure. So no need to worry about them getting in the way of your email content!   

What about SPF and DMARC?

You might’ve also heard the terms SPF and DMARC banded around in conversations about DKIM. 

SPF is another email authentication method and works in a similar way to DKIM. Instead of a digital signature, SPF uses IP addresses to authenticate your emails. Via your DNS records, you specify the IP addresses of the authorized senders associated with your domain. Your email recipient’s mail server will then check your sent email against this list, and if it isn’t a match, it’ll get marked as spam.

The use of SPF or DKIM enables DMARC. If you want to use DMARC, you first need to set up SPF or DKIM. This allows the domain owner to specify how the recipient should process the email when it is not authenticated by SPF or DKIM.

So if a fraudster sends an email on your behalf and you have SPF/DKIM and DMARC set up, you can instruct the recipient to outright reject the email, mark it as spam, or not suggest anything at all. Having SPF/DKIM is necessary to authenticate your own emails.

Do I need to set up DKIM?

Some email marketing service providers require you to set up DKIM in order to use their software and successfully send emails.

If you use the MailPoet Sending Service, this has never been (and still isn’t) a mandatory requirement. Our stringent account approval process has enabled us to retain a high sender reputation, which minimizes any email deliverability issues for our users. Put simply, we’ve never really needed our users to do this.

“So why are you recommending we start doing this now?” I hear you ask. As fraudsters get more advanced in their tactics, the email marketing industry as a whole is now far more security-focused. 

We’ve already noticed email service providers are adopting stricter mail delivery processes in order to clamp down on fraudulent behavior. Microsoft Outlook, for example, has been classing more and more emails without an email authentication method present as spam. And we suspect it won’t be long before others follow suit.

We want to make sure your emails have the highest chance of delivery now and in the future. Setting up DKIM can help do this, as well as protect your business from being imitated by fraudsters. Plus the setup process is quick and easy. What’s not to like?

How you set up DKIM will depend on the sending service provider you use. But if you’re a MailPoet Sending Service customer, we’ve just added an easy way to set up DKIM for your sending domain

How to set up DKIM for your Sender Domain in MailPoet

Please note that the following DKIM setup instructions are only applicable to MailPoet users whose sending method is the MailPoet Sending Service. If you use a third-party sending method (such as SendGrid or Mailgun) and want to set up DKIM, you will need to follow instructions given by your sending provider. 

Setting up DKIM authentication should be a pain-free process that only takes 15 minutes!

You’ll first need to log in to your MailPoet account at account.mailpoet.com.

Then head to the ‘My Sender Domains’ tab in the account interface, in order to add your sender domain. A sender domain is the domain you are using on the FROM address of your emails. This is usually the same domain as your website. Let’s say you’re sending emails as laura@yogaclasses.com. In this case, your sender domain is “yogaclasses.com”. 

This will then produce three DNS records which you’ll need to add to your domain’s DNS server. Your DNS provider is usually the same organization as the one you purchased your domain name from originally (e.g. GoDaddy, NameCheap etc), or your hosting company.

Not sure how to do this? Your hosting or domain name provider will be able to help you out here. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, and they’re likely to have already published a guide on how to do this. For example, GoDaddy has published these instructions and NameCheap has shared this guide.

Once you’ve added the three DNS records to your DNS server, click the ‘Verify DNS records’ button and you’ll see the status for each will change to ‘Verified’.

And that’s it! You can now sit back, relax, and enjoy better deliverability and protection from pesky email fraudsters.

DKIM not working? Here are some common problems

Setting up DKIM should be a quick and easy process, but unfortunately, sometimes problems do arise.

If your records are not appearing as verified, please double check the following:

1. The record types, names, and values in your DNS manager need to match the values in the MailPoet interface exactly. Please make sure you check this carefully, otherwise, verification cannot work.
2. If you’ve just added the records, please try waiting 5-10 minutes and before clicking “Verify DNS Records” again. DNS changes can sometimes take up to 24 hours to generate, but normally you’ll see them within 5-30 minutes.
3. Some DNS providers create DNS records with a duplicate of the domain name, so please double-check the DNS record name. This can cause “mailpoet1._domainkey.yourdomain.com” to be incorrectly created as “mailpoet1._domainkey.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com“. If this is the case, please removed your domain name from the record’s name, leaving it as “mailpoet1._domainkey“, “mailpoet2._domainkey” and “_mailpoet“.
4. If Cloudflare is your DNS provider, make sure you switch from “Proxied” to “DNS only” proxy status for both of the CNAME records.

Not yet using the MailPoet Sending Service? It’s free to use (up to 5,000 emails per month) if you have less than 1,000 subscribers, with paid plans starting at just €7/month. Download now, or find out more about what’s included in MailPoet.

That’s right. Stats per subscriber is back

What’s ‘Stats Per Subscriber’?

If you missed it the first time around, this feature is an extension of the existing email analytics you’ll find in MailPoet. In order to access it, you’ll need to make sure that you’re using a paid MailPoet plan (Creator, Business, or Agency).

Stats Per Subscriber enables you to see how each of your subscribers is interacting with your emails, including which newsletters they opened and the links they clicked on. If you’re a WooCommerce store owner, you’ll also be able to see the details of any purchases made as a result of your email.

You’ll still be able to see your email marketing campaign’s overall open rates, click-throughs, and unsubscribes, but we’re now giving you the option to dig even deeper into your email marketing performance.

Wanna know what the best bit is? All of your historic subscriber engagement data is there ready and waiting for you, so you can start analyzing your campaigns from the get-go!

What are the benefits of seeing stats per subscriber?

By having access to in-depth insights on a subscriber-by-subscriber basis, you’ll be able to start making more informed changes and improvements to your email campaigns.

You might notice that you have a group of subscribers who only click on links related to a specific topic, for example. This could prompt you to start a secondary newsletter dedicated to that topic; segmenting your existing list according to interests.

Or maybe you’ll spot that your subscribers are only opening one of your weekly emails every month, which would indicate that you’re sending too frequently and a monthly newsletter might be a better approach.

In a nutshell, the more you know about how your subscribers are engaging with your emails, the better you’ll be able to optimize them. And better optimization equals more opens, clicks, and sales. Happy days!

How do I get access to ‘Stats Per Subscriber’?

This feature was added to version 3.0.91 of the MailPoet plugin, and is available to MailPoet users with a Creator, Business, or Agency plan.

To start gaining valuable insights about your subscribers, head to your WordPress dashboard. Select MailPoet > Subscribers and hovering over an individual subscriber will give you the option to view Statistics.

Not yet a MailPoet paid plan user? Plans start at €7/month, and also include access to our advanced features and priority support! So what are you waiting for? Take the guesswork out of your email marketing, and start using MailPoet today.