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This post is originally published on Designmodo: How to Get Response with Follow-up Emails
It happens to everyone: Your email message elicits no response. But everything is not lost. You still have an opportunity ahead of you with a follow-up email. Believe it or not, the sixth email in the sequence may receive more …
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Do you want to have users enter an email address before downloading a file from your WordPress site?
Many businesses use free file downloads like eBooks, white papers, etc to collect email addresses and potential leads. These lead magnets convert really well because it offers users an incentive that motivates them to sign up.
In this article, we’ll show how to easily require an email address to download a file in WordPress.
Email is still the best way to communicate with customers online. Many businesses collect email addresses as potential leads that they can follow up with to make a sale.
For instance, an online store may capture email leads based on user interests. Those users may not make a purchase right away, but it gives you an option to convert them later.
Similarly, if you are selling an online course, you can offer users a free lesson download in exchange for their email addresses. This way, you can send targeted emails to those users and convince them to buy your premium course.
It doesn’t always have to be a free file download. You can sell e-books, music, software, and other digital downloads.
What You Need to Collect Email Addresses
The easiest way to collect and build email lists is by using an email marketing service. This allows you to not only collect the email addresses but also be able to send beautiful emails, create customer segments, track open rates, and more.
We recommend using Constant Contact as the best email marketing service for small businesses. It allows you to easily collect email addresses, send targeted emails, segment your audiences, and grow your business.
Most importantly, it works really well with WordPress, WooCommerce, and all other essential WordPress plugins.
If you need alternatives, then do check out Sendinblue or Drip.
Note: You can still collect email addresses even if you don’t want to use an email marketing service right away. All the methods described below would still work for manual outreach.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to require an email address to download a file in WordPress. We’ll show multiple methods, and you can choose one that works best for you.
This method is the most flexible, incredibly powerful, and recommended for all users.
For this method, we’ll be using OptinMonster. It is the best lead generation software on the market and allows you to easily collect email addresses with powerful popups, sign up forms, banners, and more.
First, you need to sign up for an OptinMonster account.
After that, you need to install and activate the OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress website. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
This free plugin is a mere connector between your WordPress website and your OptinMonster account.
Upon activation, you need to visit OptinMonster » Settings page and click on the ‘Connect existing account’ button.
This will bring up a popup where you can log in and connect your WordPress site to your OptinMonster account.
Now that your WordPress site is connected, you are ready to create your first campaign. Head over to OptinMonster » Campaigns page and click on the ‘Add New’ or ‘Create your first campaign’ button.
Next, you’ll be asked to select a campaign type. OptinMonster supports lightbox popups, floating bars, inline optins, fullscreen, slide-in, and gamified campaigns.
For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll create a lightbox popup campaign. Below that, you can choose a campaign template by clicking on it.
You’ll then be asked to provide a name for your campaign. You can enter any name here to identify it easily, and then click on the Start building button.
This will launch OptinMonster’s campaign builder interface with a live preview of your campaign in the right panel. You can click on any item in your campaign to edit it.
You can also add new items to your campaign by clicking on the Add Blocks button.
Once you are satisfied with the design, you can switch to the success view. This is the view your users will see when they have submitted their email addresses.
There are multiple ways to allow users to download the file on the success view. You can edit the text and add a link to the download file.
Alternately, you can click on the Add Blocks button and then add a ‘Button’ block. After that, click to select the button block and switch to the ‘Action’ panel.
From here, select ‘Go to a URL’ under the ‘Button click action’ setting and then enter the file download URL.
Once finished, don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your campaign settings.
Next, you need to click on the Integrations tab on the top to connect your email service provider.
Simply click on the Add New Integration button and then select your email provider from the list. Follow the on-screen instructions to set it up.
Note: If you just want to capture email leads for your CRM software or manual outreach, then OptinMonster can automatically use their MonsterLeads feature to store them for you.
Now that everything is set up, you can switch to the Publish tab to make your campaign go to live. Simply switch to the ‘Publish Status’ from Draft to Publish by clicking on it.
Don’t forget to click on the Save changes button to save your campaign settings and then click on the close button to exit the builder.
After that, you’ll be redirected back to your WordPress site, where you can configure where and when you want to display the campaign.
For example, you can show it on specific pages or posts, existing customers, target WooCommerce customers, and more. For details, see our guide on how to show personalized content to different users in WordPress.
For this tutorial, we will be showing it to all visitors. After that, simply set the status from pending to published and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to launch your campaign.
You can now visit your website in a new incognito tab to see your campaign in action.
Your users will be able to provide their email address, and after that, they will see the success view of your campaign with a file download link.
This method is handy if you want to create custom lead generation forms and add them to your WordPress landing pages.
For this method, we’ll be using WPForms. It is the best WordPress form builder plugin that allows you to easily create custom lead capture forms that you can add anywhere on your website.
It also allows you to redirect users to a file download upon form submission.
First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the WPForms website.
After that, you can go to WPForms » Add New page to create your email capture form. First, provide a name for your form and then select a template.
Templates are a starting point, and WPForms comes with several commonly used templates. For instance, you can choose a newsletter sign-up form or a contact form template.
After choosing the template, WPForms will launch the form builder interface with a preview of your live form on the right.
From here, you can click on any form field to add. edit, move it up or down, or delete it. You can also click on the ‘Submit’ button to change the text to ‘Download’.
Once you are done editing your form, you need to switch to the marketing tab to connect it to your email service provider. You can skip this step if you are manually managing form leads.
WPForms supports all the top email marketing platforms. Simply click on your email service provider and follow the on-screen instructions to connect it.
Once finished, you need to switch to the Settings tab and then click on Confirmation. From here, you can configure what to do when a user submits the form.
You can choose to show a message with a link to the file download. You can also show users a page on your website to download the file or redirect them to the file download URL.
Once finished, don’t forget to click on the Save button at the top to store your settings.
Adding The Form to Your Website
WPForms makes it super easy to add your forms anywhere on your website.
Simply, edit the post or page where you want to display the form. On the post edit screen, click on the (+) add new block button and select WPForms block.
This will add the WPForms block to your post or page content. You need to select the form your created earlier from the drop-down menu.
You’ll see a live preview of your form in the content editor. You can now save or publish your post / page and visit your website to see your form in action.
Based on your settings, when users submit the form they will get the confirmation message with the file download link or redirected.
This method is recommended if you want to make the file download available to existing users, members, or paid users.
For this method, we will be using MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin and allows you to easily control access to premium content, file downloads, members-only content, and more.
First, you need to install and activate the MemberPress plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to visit MemberPress » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the MemberPress website.
Next, you need to switch to the ‘Payments’ tab and select a payment method to accept payments for membership subscriptions. You can also create free subscription plans if you want.
MemberPress supports PayPal and Stripe. You can also use Authorize.net with their Plus and Pro plans.
After selecting your payment method, you’ll be asked to provide your account details. You can also choose to add multiple methods.
Once finished, click on the ‘Update Options’ button to save your changes.
Now you are ready to create a membership plan.
Simply go to the MemberPress » Memberships page and click on the Add New button.
On the next screen, you can give your membership plan a name and set a pricing option. Depending on how you want to organize your memberships, you can choose lifetime, expiring, or fixed expiring plans.
After that, click on the Publish button to make your membership plan available.
Next, you need to create an access rule. This allows you to control which parts of your website you want to be protected and available to members-only.
On the next screen, first you need to choose which content you want to be restrict under ‘Protected Content’.
MemberPress offers a whole range of options. You can select posts that match certain tags, categories, pages that are under the same parent page, single posts, or any URL.
For instance, we have chosen to protect all content tagged members-only.
Below that, you need to select who will have access to the protected content. We have chosen anyone who has Basic membership.
Once you have set up the rule, don’t forget to click on the Save Rule button to save your changes.
Next, you need to create content that you want to be protected. For this tutorial, we want users to be able to download a file.
You can create a new post in WordPress, based on our rules settings we will simply add the tag members-only to protect this page.
After that, you can simply add your file download as a link or a download button in the post content.
Next, scroll down to the ‘Membership Unauthorized Access’ box and set the ‘Unauthorized Message:’ to custom. After that, you can add a custom message you want to show to users who have not signed up yet.
You can now save or publish your content and preview it in a new browser window using incognito mode. You’ll see your custom unauthorized access message with the login form.
Connecting MemberPress to Your Email Service
MemberPress works with all top email marketing providers and you can automatically add all new members to your website into your email list.
Simply go to the MemberPress » Addons page and install the addon for your email provider. For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll show you Constant Contact but settings are pretty much the same for most email providers.
Next, go to MemberPress » Settings page and switch to the Marketing tab. From here, you can connect your email service by providing your account API keys.
For details, you’ll need to see MemberPress documentation for your email service provider.
After entering the required information, click on the Update Options button to save your settings.
Next, you need to visit MemberPress » Memberships page and edit the membership plan you created earlier. Scroll down to the ‘Membership Options’ box and switch to the Advanced tab.
From here you can check the option to enable email sign up checkbox for that membership plan.
After that, don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ button to save changes.
Now when users visit the sign up page, they will see an option to subscribe to your email list.
Now that you have enabled email requirement to download a file in WordPress, you may want to see how users are finding it and how many users download it.
You can do that by using the MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin on the market and allows you to easily track file downloads in WordPress.
For more details, see our complete guide on how to easily track file downloads in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to easily require an email address to download a file in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to get more traffic to your website and our expert pick of the best business phone services, so you can ask for phone numbers in exchange for file downloads using the methods above.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Require an Email Address to Download a File in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.
This post is originally published on Designmodo: Improve your Campaign with Gift Card Emails: Best Practices and Examples
Gift card emails are one of the most underused marketing avenues. People like discounts, special offers, and presents. Reciprocity goes a long way; even the smallest bonus can easily win over clients and compel them to visit your website. This …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Guide to Effective Password Reset Emails; Drive Traffic to Your Website
What type of email garners the highest open- and click-through rates? It is not a Black Friday promo nor welcome email. It is one of the plainest and most compact, and minimal newsletters in the email marketing universe. It is …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Important Email Marketing Trends for 2022
The way we conduct business and how we communicate with clients undergoes constant changes. A decade ago, people preferred face-to-face meetings in the office; today, even serious issues are easily addressed through Zoom. More and more people choose digital. However, …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: How to Set Up a High Conversion Email Marketing Campaign in 2022
In the new year with new marketing strategies on the horizon, it’s time to dive into ensuring your email marketing campaigns are ready to convert customers. More than half of consumers still want brands to contact them via email as …
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At WriteOps, we work with companies who are trying to sell their technical product. Almost all of them had a go at their own technical content. Their engineers wrote blogs, spoke at meet ups, and organized webinars.
The success of their marketing efforts wasn’t a function of money spent, nor were they solely about clever placement of paid ads. This is pretty true in general, but it is an absolute axiom when you’re marketing to the technical class.
This post is originally published on Designmodo: High-Converting Re-Engagement Email Examples and Best Practices
No one wants to lose customers. Sadly, it happens all the time. People need reasons to stick around. If you do not nurture subscribers or slowly react to changes in relationships, you can lose customers. Onboarding a new customer is …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Email Newsletter Marketing Ideas
The biggest retail weekend is fast approaching. Black Friday and Cyber Monday will be here before you know it. It’s time to gear up. The beginning of the Christmas shopping season is the toughest period of the year for retailers. …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Email Design: The Ultimate Guide with Examples
We are talking a lot about how to create successful email campaigns, featuring guides for every occasion: transactional emails, re-engagement emails, seasonal emails (as summer emails, fall emails, winter emails, spring emails), holiday emails, etc. Here, we are looking at …
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Win-Back Email Newsletters: Engaging Examples for Marketing
Win-back email newsletters are an effective way to engage inactive customers and bring them back into the fold. By making a special effort to reach out and offer incentives, you can remind customers of the value of your products or …
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Do you want to create an email list in WordPress?
Email marketing is the best way to stay in touch with your readers. And it’s much more effective for reaching your audience than social media alone.
In this email marketing guide for beginners, we’ll show you how to easily build an email list in WordPress.
Because this is a longer article, we put together a table of contents below to navigate each section.
An email list is a group of people who’ve requested to get regular email updates from you. Typically, people get onto your email list by adding their information in an opt-in form on your site.
Building an email list allows you to stay in touch with your readers and customers by using an email marketing software.
And because email is a reliable form of communication, you can easily let your readers know about anything coming up, such as new products, sales, or special announcements.
On our websites, email marketing outperforms social media marketing in the number of clicks.
We have tested this repeatedly and the result is always the same: Emails get us 10 times more clicks than all social media combined.
But why does email perform so well? The answer is simple: email is private and personal.
If this is not a good enough reason to start building your email list, here are some major benefits.
But isn’t email dead? Haven’t you heard social media is where everyone’s at?
It’s a common statement but if email use was truly dead, then why does every social media platform require you to sign up with an email address?
Email has been the most reliable form of electronic communication for the past two decades, and it hasn’t slowed down. Plus, building an email list is a lot easier than building a following on social media platforms.
Facebook and Instagram both limit the reach of your pages to a small percentage of your followers unless you want to pay for ads. Similarly, your tweets only appear for a limited time on a user’s feed.
On the other hand, when you send an email, it reaches all your subscribers and stays in their inbox until they take action.
We are not saying you should abandon social media. These sites are great for building user engagement, but email will bring you more visitors, conversions, and sales.
Lastly, a social media site can disappear or become less popular (remember Myspace?). When they disappear, they will take your followers with them.
On the other hand, email has been around since the dawn of the internet. And it’s still the most popular way people communicate online.
The first thing you need is a reliable email service provider.
These companies specialize in email delivery, and you need them to ensure your email reaches the inbox of all your subscribers (instead of having your email marked as spam).
Even though you can use WordPress to send emails, we strongly recommend against that (see why you should never use WordPress to send email newsletters).
These professional email service providers spend a lot of money and resources on their email delivery infrastructure to make sure that your email does not end up in your subscriber’s junk folder.
All major companies like Facebook, Apple, eBay, and Amazon use a third-party email marketing service.
Apart from deliverability, these companies also provide you with email marketing tools that you’ll need to make your emails more effective.
There are many great email marketing providers out there.
It’s a very competitive industry which means companies are always trying to keep their costs low while offering a lot of features.
Below are just some of the providers that we have worked with and highly recommend.
Constant Contact is the best email marketing service provider for all sizes of businesses and websites.
It lets you send emails, manage subscribers, track emails, view analytics, set up autoresponders, create beautiful email templates, target subscribers, and split test your campaigns.
This software allows you to capture email addresses, works easily with WordPress, and has integrations for all the top WordPress plugins and tools.
The best part is that Constant Contact comes with a two-month free trial. This gives you enough time to set up your email list and start capturing email addresses.
By the end of the trial, your list will be paying for itself. Sign up for FREE!
Other alternatives are SendinBlue, Drip, and ConvertKit. They all work well with WordPress and are easy to use for beginners.
For the sake of this guide, we’ll show you how to set up an email list using Constant Contact. However, the process is quite similar regardless of which email service you choose.
Let’s set up your email list. This is simply a list where you will store contact information of all users who sign up for your email newsletter.
Go to the Constant Contact website and click on ‘sign up for free’, and then fill out your information.
After the sign up, you need to click on the ‘Contacts’ button at the top of your Constant Contact dashboard.
Now, you’ll see the contacts page. On this screen, click on the blue ‘Create List’ button.
At this step, it’s time to name your email list. It can be whatever you want, but we’ll call it ‘My Email List’ for this example.
You’re done creating your list people can subscribe to. The next step is to add an email subscription form to your WordPress website where your readers can sign up.
For more details on setting up your email list, see our guide on how to add email subscriptions to your WordPress blog.
While Constant Contact comes with an email signup form builder, the fastest way to get started is to use the WPForms. It integrates seamlessly with Constant Contact to set up an optin form easily.
First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you need help, then follow our guide on how to install a plugin for detailed instructions.
Note: There is also a free version called WPForms Lite, which includes Constant Contact support but it has limited features.
Upon activation, head over to the WPForms » Add New page and then select the ‘Newsletter Signup Form’ template.
You’ll see a sample newsletter signup form inside the form builder interface.
On the next page, you’ll get a notice to connect your email marketing service in the marketing tab. More on that in a second.
Make sure to change the name of your form by clicking on the title. For this example, we called it ‘Subscribe For Regular Updates’ but you can name it whatever you want.
Click on the orange ‘SAVE’ button. Now, you’ll want to set up your confirmation message. Click on ‘Confirmations’ on the left under ‘General’ and we’ll update that.
You’ll see this:
The default confirmation message reads “Thanks for contacting us! We will be in touch with you shortly.” but you can put anything here you want. This is the message your readers will see after they subscribe to your newsletter.
Now, click the marketing tab on the left:
Now, you’ll see the ‘Constant Contact’ button. Click that to connect your new email list to the form we’ve created.
For the next step, click on the ‘Add New Connection’ button and you’ll see a popup that asks you to name your connection. We’ve named it ‘My Newsletter Form’ but you can name it anything you wish.
After that, you’ll see this:
Click on ‘Click here to register with Constant Contact’ link to enter your Constant Contact details. Now, you’ll see a message that asks you to let WPForms to access your account. Click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.
You’ll be given a long authorization code to register your form.
Enter your code, along with the account nickname (make sure it’s something that is familiar) into those fields. Click ‘Connect’ and you’re done.
On the next screen, you can select the fields you want to pass from your WPForm to your Constant Contact list. We chose ‘email’ and ‘full name’ but you can select as many as you want.
Just be sure those two fields are on your optin form.
Click the big orange ‘Save’ button when you’re done.
Now your form is set up and it’s time to place it on our WordPress website. For this example, we’ll put it in the sidebar.
Go to Appearance » Widgets page to add the WPForms widget to your sidebar.
Give your widget a title and select your newsletter sign-up form. Click on the ‘Save’ button to store your widget settings.
When you visit your website, you’ll see your email subscription form in the sidebar.
Now, any time someone inputs their name and email into your form, they’ll be added to your email list.
Did you know that more than 70% of your website visitors will never visit it again? The Internet is just too big and there are tons of websites and competition is fierce in most industries.
You get just a few seconds to convince a website visitor to stay and look around.
This is where OptinMonster comes in. It is the best conversion optimization software in the world and allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.
With this optin software, you can set up welcome mats, exit-intent popups, slide-in forms, floating bars, and more optin styles to capture the most email subscribers possible.
From there, you can customize your form in style, and use smart targeting rules to display it at the precise time and location.
Here’s an example of a subtle and polite slide-in form used on the OptinMonster blog:
One thing here is key: user experience. At WPBeginner, we have successfully used this lightbox popup and noticed a 600% increase in our subscribers without affecting the user experience or seeing any decrease in pageviews.
OptinMonster comes with a 14-day money back guarantee, so if you use it and don’t see an increase in your subscribers, then you can get a full refund.
Once you’ve started building your email list, it’s crucial that you engage with your subscribers.
Ideally, you’ll make it a habit to send them regular emails, whether it’s weekly or monthly.
Not every email has to be promotional. You can send emails requesting feedback, giving helpful tips, or letting them know of new content you’ve created.
We hope this article helped you learn how to build an email list in WordPress. You may also like our list of tested and easy ways to grow your email list faster, and our proven tips on how to grow your website traffic.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
The post How to Build an Email List in WordPress – Email Marketing 101 appeared first on WPBeginner.
This post is originally published on Designmodo: Email Design Accessibility: Why It Is Important to Improve It
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This post is originally published on Designmodo: Guide to Confirmation Emails: Examples and Best Practices
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For more information please contact Designmodo
This post is originally published on Designmodo: Guide to Successful Thank You Email Newsletters, Examples and Best Practices
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For more information please contact Designmodo
This post is originally published on Designmodo: Back to School Email Newsletter Examples and Marketing Tips
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For more information please contact Designmodo
This post is originally published on Designmodo: How to Drive Transactional Email Engagement for E-Commerce
Whatever meaningful action a user takes – creating an account, buying stuff, changing preferences, resetting a password – should result in a notification that the interaction was a success. This direct response is crucial for a good user experience. A …
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Are you looking for the best marketing automation tools for your small business?
Whether it’s email marketing, content marketing, social media, or sales, there are now marketing automation tools available that can help you get better results, faster.
In this article, we will share the best marketing automation tools for your small business, so you can grow your business, reach more customers, and save time.
Marketing automation helps make your workflow more efficient, so you can grow your business faster and smarter.
Basically, you can create specific content or process, and then the tool keeps working for you without you needing to do anything.
For instance, you might set up an email autoresponder series, create a smart chatbot for your site, or set up a sales CRM that organizes your leads for you.
To help you find the best marketing automation tools, we have organized them in the following categories (simply click on the link to jump to specific sections):
Even if you have an email newsletter, you may not be taking advantage of all the automation tools available.
These tools let you set up autoresponders to market consistently to every new prospect who joins your list.
Constant Contact is the best email marketing service for small businesses. You can use it to set up a sequence of emails that will go out automatically to new subscribers. You can even send messages based on what actions your subscribers take, or don’t take.
It’s easy to create emails using Constant Contact’s simple drag and drop interface. There’s a 60 day free trial of Constant Contact available, letting you try out this tool before committing to a payment plan.
The Constant Contact support team is available through live chat, phone, and email.
Price:
Constant Contact’s ‘Email’ plan costs from $20/month. This only has basic automation features. For the advanced automation features, get the ‘Email Plus’ plan, which starts at $45/month.
Sendinblue is one of the best WordPress email newsletter plugins. It’s also a great tool for SMS marketing. There’s a range of templates to create your emails.
Sendinblue lets you build custom workflows that send out emails automatically. You can even use your contact’s behavior on your website to trigger emails. For instance, you could send an automated email if a customer adds an item to their basket but fails to check out.
Price:
Sendinblue offers a completely free account for up to 300 emails per day. You get unlimited contacts. If you want to send more emails than that, paid plans start at $25/month.
Drip is a powerful email marketing platform, with great WooCommerce integration. It’s an especially good option if you run an eCommerce website. It has intelligent marketing automation tools and smart email segmenting.
Drip also provides plenty of support, through live chat as well as with webinars, detailed online courses, and excellent documentation. It isn’t the cheapest option, but it’s well worth the money if you want to maximize your marketing efforts.
Price:
Drip offers a 14-day free trial. After that, their plans start from $19/month, but that only gives you 500 subscribers. For $39/month, you can have up to 2,500 subscribers.
ConvertKit is an easy-to-use and robust email marketing platform. It has some great features for creators and bloggers, but it’s also a popular option for small businesses.
ConvertKit makes it easy to segment your contacts in leads and existing customers, you can then send different emails to each. It has a simple email builder to create emails that will look great on all devices. You can even create clickable CTA buttons and track conversions when users click on them.
Price:
ConvertKit costs from $25/month (paid annually) for up to 1,000 subscribers. This includes all their features, such as automated funnels and email sequences. There’s a 14-day free trial, which doesn’t need a credit card.
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization software on the market. It allows you to easily convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.
It comes with easy to integrate lightbox popups, slide-ins forms, welcome mats, coupon wheels, and more.
OptinMonster works with all popular email marketing services and helps you quickly get more subscribers for your email list.
It is packed with many features that help you automatically target users and show them personalized campaigns. For instance, you can show targetted messages for different pages on your site. You can also show campaigns based on user activity and geographic location.
Price:
OptinMonster costs from $9/month (billed annually). However, you will get 10% off if you use our OptinMonster coupon.
Onsite marketing automation tools are ones that you use directly on your website. They let you market to your website visitors automatically and effectively.
ChatBot is a smart automated bot that can engage with users in a similar way to a live chat agent. It’s like having a virtual assistant for your website who’s available 24/7 and can answer instantly.
You can use ChatBot to take bookings, schedule calls, or even to sell products directly from the chat window. It integrates seamlessly with LiveChat. This means a live agent can jump into the conversation if the user needs a little extra help.
Price:
ChatBot costs from $50/month, which gives you up to 1000 chats. There’s also a 14 day free trial.
OptinMonster‘s OnSite Retargeting® feature helps you make the most of your advertising budget. It lets you customize your promotions for visitors who are returning to your site. That way, you will not be showing them the exact same campaigns they’ve already seen.
You can use the OnSite Retargeting® in conjunction with OptinMonster’s other features. These include powerful display rules that let you easily target people based on the page(s) they’re viewing, what device they’re using, how they have interacted with your website in the past, new vs returning visitors, and much more.
Price:
You will need OptinMonster’s ‘Growth’ plan ($49/month, billed annually) to use the OnSite Retargeting® feature. You can get 10% off by using our OptinMonster coupon.
Intercom is often seen as a live chat tool, but it does much more than that. It lets you use chatbots and integrate your chats with other elements of your marketing workflow too.
Intercom lets you send automated in-app messages that go far beyond just text. You can use images, videos, emojis, and even apps to help with your marketing. It’s easy to choose from lots of different message styles, without needing to get a developer involved.
Intercom also has several optional add-ons available. These include product tours, advanced lead generation, and advanced customer engagement.
Price:
Intercom costs starts from $39/month. The optional add-ons are priced separately. The cost will grow as you get more subscribers, and it can easily go into thousands per month.
Smash Balloon offers 4 different WordPress plugins that let you add social feeds to your website. These cover Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. They are a great way to make the most of the time you spend on social media. You can automatically include posts from your account – or even posts with a specific hashtag, where applicable.
You can customize your social feeds in multiple ways. For instance, you could create a shoppable Instagram feed so clickable Instagram photos of your products are automatically added to your site.
Price:
Smash Balloon’s plugins are available both separately and as a bundle. The best value option is the ‘All Access Bundle’ at $299/year. This gives you all 4 plugins plus priority support.
If you just want one plugin, they’re each priced from $49/year.
RafflePress is the best WordPress contest and giveaway plugin which allows you to incentivize user interactions on your site.
These might include visiting a page on your site, taking part in a poll or survey, watching a video, and more. You can even create your own actions, such as prompting readers to leave a comment.
By creating a competition for your readers, you can dramatically increase how engaged they are with your content. You are also able to set actions that prompt readers to share your content on social media.
Price:
RafflePress costs from $49/year.
Is creating content taking up a lot of your time? Here are some great tools to help you get more from your content.
Outbrain lets you showcase your content on popular online publications. They have partnerships with sites including CNN, US Weekly, MSN, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BuzzFeed, and many more.
Instead of republishing your full articles on those publications, readers will see a thumbnail, title, and the name of your brand. This will link directly to your own website.
Price:
Outbrain charges a CPC (cost-per-click) rate. You get charged for the number of clicks your content receives. You can set a budget cap for each campaign.
Zapier is a tool that lets you connect other apps together, with a huge range available. It’s a great way to move content from one place to another. For instance, you could set up a ‘Zap’ to automatically create a new story in Medium whenever you publish a new post in WordPress.
You can also automate lots of other tasks, like sharing new content on social media, adding new leads to a spreadsheet or database, or creating a Trello card when a new WooCommerce order comes in.
Price:
Zapier has a free plan that gives you up to 5 Zaps and 100 tasks/month. Paid plans start from $19.99/month (billed annually).
Google My Business Auto Publish is a simple but very useful WordPress plugin. It lets you automatically publish content to your ‘My Business’ Google account. This means your posts will instantly appear on your Google business profile.
You can publish posts or pages and even set up a default share message to save time. If you don’t want to publish a particular post, you can simply check a box or set the plugin to not automatically publish new posts.
Price:
Google My Business Auto Publish is free.
Social media marketing can be incredibly powerful but it can also take up a lot of time. You need automated systems in place to ensure you make the most of these opportunities and track what’s most effective.
ManyChat lets you send automated Facebook messages so that customers can purchase directly from Facebook Messenger. The bot can help customers select a suitable product and take payment within Messenger itself.
You can even use the conversations and customer’s responses to tailor which products are recommended. ManyChat can send a customer a coupon to prompt them to buy. It also integrates with popular payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe, and can be used with over 2,000 apps by connecting with Zapier.
Price:
ManyChat has a free plan which offers basic features. Their Pro plan starts from $10/month, for up to 500 subscribers.
Tailwind has Pinterest and Instagram scheduling tools that let you schedule posts ahead of time. It will give you hashtag suggestions for Instagram. With Pinterest, you can schedule 10 pins with a single click. You can use Tailwind’s analytic tools to see what’s working and to schedule your content at the best times to get more engagement.
Tailwind also offers Power-up features that let you do even more with your social media accounts. The SmartLoop Power-up lets you reshare pins, including resharing seasonal content at the right time.
Price:
Tailwind has a free trial (no credit card required). After that, it’s $9.99/month for each social media profile. You need to pay for Pinterest and Instagram separately. PowerUps cost from $4.99/month for each social media profile.
HootSuite is a popular social media management platform that lets you bring together all your social content in one app. You can automatically schedule posts ahead of time, monitor public channels and private messages, and much more.
If your small business has a social media team, then HootSuite is really helpful as it gives you robust team management and permissions. You can use HootSuite’s analytics to get detailed reports about how your posts are performing across different networks, too.
Price:
HootSuite has a limited free plan that covers 3 social profiles and 1 user. Paid plans start from $29/month. There’s a 30 day free trial of the ‘Professional’ and ‘Team’ plans (credit card required).
AgoraPulse is a social media management tool. It gives you lots of flexible scheduling options to queue up social media posts ahead of time. You can also reschedule and even bulk upload your posts. There’s a social inbox within the tool that lets you manage all your mentions, ad comments, and other important messages.
With AgoraPulse, you get unlimited reports that let you figure out the ROI of your social media efforts. It’s easy to assign draft posts, comments, and messages to different teammates. There’s also a built-in CRM where you can label and group your audience into segments. AgoraPulse also lets you add internal notes to each user and view their conversation history, too.
Price:
AgoraPulse costs from $79/month (paid annually). There’s a 28 day free trial available, with no credit card required.
Buffer is a long-running social media scheduling tool. It lets you schedule content ahead of time for multiple different social networks, including Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
You can also use Buffer to plan and organize hashtags for Instagram, to measure the performance of your content, and more. Buffer offers both ‘Publish’ and ‘Analyze’ tools (billed separately). If you have a social media team, you can assign different access and permissions to different people.
Price:
Buffer costs from $12/month (billed annually), with a 14 day free trial available. There’s also a basic free plan, which gives you 3 social accounts and 10 scheduled posts at a time.
Mention has a ‘listen’ feature that lets you monitor social media, plus review sites, blogs, and the whole of the web. That way, you don’t need to spend a lot of time monitoring social media for mentions of your brand.
You can even monitor what’s being said about your competition. Mention can also provide you with audience insights about your key topics. It’s easy to use it to organize and schedule multi-channel social media content.
Price:
Mention offers a free plan that lets you create a single alert. Their paid plans cost from $25/month (billed annually).
Is your sales team closing as many deals as you’d like? Or are little details getting missed despite lots of the team’s time being spent on admin? There are many powerful sales automation tools out there to help keep track of everything.
HubSpot offers a suite of all-in-one marketing software. This includes the HubSpot CRM (customer relationship management) tool that allows you to organize your content and view your entire sales funnel in a straightforward visual dashboard. You can sort your contacts based on deals won or lost, appointments, specific time periods, and more.
You can use the HubSpot CRM to schedule automated emails, for live chat, and much more. HubSpot also lets you include chatbots to automate your live chat marketing. It’s possible to integrate HubSpot with many other popular services, such as the business phone service RingCentral.
Price:
You can use HubSpot CRM or a basic HubSpot plan for free. To get the most out of HubSpot, you will want to use all their tools. Their paid plans start from $33.60/month (billed annually).
If your business is a startup, you may be eligible for the ‘HubSpot for Startups’ program, which gives you up to 90% off.
Pipedrive is a sales CRM that helps you to manage leads, prioritize deals, track communication, and much more. You can automate repetitive tasks using both Pipedrive’s features and app integrations. It integrates with lots of tools, including Chatbot and LiveChat.
Pipedrive also gives you activity reminders to help you keep on top of work, automatically syncs your activities with Google Calendar, and can even automatically create follow-up tasks for you. With the reporting tools, you will see the conversion rates of your deals and can work out which activities are leading to the best conversion rate.
Price:
Pipedrive costs from $12.50/month (billed annually). There’s a a 14 day free trial, which doesn’t require credit card details.
Freshsales is another great CRM with a sales-oriented approach. It uses AI-powered lead scoring, which lets you automatically prioritize leads based on which ones are more likely to convert. Plus, Freshsales will automatically include extra details on your leads, contacts, and accounts based on social and publicly listed information, so there’s no need to put this in manually.
Freshsales lets you create smart email campaigns based on your leads’ activities. You can also automate follow-up activities and create workflows to improve productivity in your team. You can even use Freshsales to automatically detect how users interact with your website and product, through activity tracking.
Price:
Freshsales costs from $12/month, billed annually. There’s a a 21 day free trial, too (no credit card required). There’s also a free plan but this doesn’t offer many features.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It helps you understand where your users are coming from and what they do on your website.
To use any marketing automation tool effectively, you’ll need easy to understand reports that tell you exactly what’s working for your business and what’s not.
MonsterInsights helps you track user activity on your website. It comes with WooCommerce conversion tracking, form submissions, outbound link tracking, and user tracking.
Basically, you get a clear picture of what’s happening on your site and what you can do to bring in more sales and conversions. For more details see our ultimate guide on conversion tracking in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn about the best marketing automation tools for small businesses. You might also like our articles on the best phone services for small businesses and the best live chat software for small businesses.
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