By training ChatGPT on vast amounts of data, OpenAI created a double-edged sword of sorts. On one hand, it’s sophisticated enough to manage even the most dynamic digital tasks. But then again, on the flip side, this same dynamism can sometimes make it challenging to prompt specific outcomes – especially if you want to use ChatGPT for marketing.
As someone who's in the market for HubSpot alternatives, you've probably had a taste of the platform and seen for yourself just how complex its architecture is. It features multiple advanced tool suites, all of which can be difficult to wrap your head around. In this article we'll introduce you to simpler (and cheaper!) sales and marketing solutions that might fit your needs better.
Our recommendation for most people is Zoho. It’s easy for even beginners to use, but robust enough to handle customer relationship management at scale. Try Zoho for free today.
Growing an ecommerce store takes more than listing your products. You need to also understand who your customers are, what they are buying, and how to effectively keep your new customer bucket full. Ecommerce CRM software does all this for you and more.
Whether it is identifying your top-selling products, figuring out the device your customers most often use to click the “buy” button, or monitoring revenue in real time, ecommerce CRM software is the tool you need to stay on top of your online store’s performance. Here’s our take on the best ecommerce CRM software tools on the market today.
The Top 5 Best Ecommerce CRM Software Options
Our research uncovered these five ecommerce CRMs as great solutions for a lot of different kinds of web stores. They each bring something special to the table for unique use cases while sporting the core capabilities required from a general ecommerce CRM solution.
The best ecommerce CRM software for most of our readers is Zoho, because it is easy for anyone to learn how to use, but also powerful enough to handle demanding and advanced customer management tasks. Plus, it sports great features for social selling and other channels for boosting your revenue. Get started with Zoho for free today.
Metrilo – Best for deep dives into store analytics
While all of these tools deliver when it comes to customer relationship management, the one that’s best for you depends on your unique needs.
Match Your Scenario to the Right Ecommerce CRM Software Solution
Below you’ll find some common scenarios that ecommerce stores face at one stage of their existence or another. Below, we offer guidance on the best recommendations for each situation. Choose one based on where you are in your ecommerce journey.
HubSpot is a fantastic option for ecommerce shop owners about to hit the launch button. Its free version means you won’t need to make a financial commitment to get started using it. HubSpot’s platform is intuitive and relatively easy to get the hang of, so you can keep your focus on the nuts and bolts of your online shop rather than spending lots of time mastering your CRM software.
Hubspot offers a free starter package that is free forever.
Pipedrive is designed to be easy to use for people of all experience levels (or no experience with CRMs at all) and offers 24/7 email and chat support. This makes it exceptionally easy to integrate with your ecommerce shop as you build and launch it. Got stuck? Don’t sweat—help is just a click away.
Pipedrive won’t overwhelm you with unnecessary bells and whistles, either. This allows you to focus on getting your shop up and running without a hitch. The only consideration for new ecommerce shop owners is cost. Pipedrive doesn’t offer a free version, so you’ll have CRM software expenses from the get go. But we think the ease of use this software delivers outweighs the price point.
If your ecommerce shop is brand new, be sure to keep in mind:
Ease of use: Choose an ecommerce CRM software tool that is easy to set up, learn, and use, so you can focus on getting your online store up and running.
Customer support: Be sure there will be a resource available to help you navigate CRM setup and use, so you don’t waste time spinning your wheels when you’re stuck.
Cost: When your online store is just getting off the ground, every penny counts. Choose CRM software that won’t add a lot to your monthly expenses while you’re still striving to turn a profit.
When your ecommerce shop is in a period of serious, swift growth, you want CRM software that scales quickly and keeps pace with you. Salesforce is your scalability partner. It is one of the more robust solutions on this list and can take you to any level of ecommerce growth you imagine. You won’t outgrow (and then have to replace) your CRM software when you start with Salesforce.
Salesforce is a CRM tool that will grow with your company forever.
HubSpot is another CRM built to grow alongside your store. It’s quite similar to Salesforce in terms of functionality, but is slightly more user-friendly for owners of ecommerce stores early in their growth phase (with budgets to match). So, if you have goals of supercharged growth down the road but are still just beginning your journey to domination, HubSpot is a good choice for an ecommerce CRM tool that’s easy on tight budgets but will still grow with you.
If rapid ecommerce store growth is in your future, be sure to consider:
CRM scalability: Be sure to choose something that has the capacity to grow with you as your web store matures and expands.
Expanded functionality: Favor CRM software that can integrate with new tools as you add them to your online store and offer advanced features when you grow enough to need them.
Cost: Budget becomes less of a priority as your business grows, but be sure to understand how the price of the CRM software increases as your needs increase.
Depending on the type of ecommerce shop or customers you have, social media may be an integral part of your sales strategy. If this is you, then Zoho is one of your best bets for streamlining social into your sales process. Zoho Social will help you publish, manage, and monitor all your social channels with ease. You can schedule unlimited posts and create detailed reports that help you stay on top of your overall social performance.
Zoho does a great job at integrating social media channels into the CRM platform.
HubSpot is another good choice to streamline your social media posting efforts, allowing you to publish ecommerce marketing and customer engagement content directly to LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. You can also connect your blog to your social accounts so new content gets cross-posted automatically. You will have to move to a higher tiered plan to get full social media integration and functionality, though.
If social media is a key part of your ecommerce store selling plans, pay attention to:
Integrated social media management: Social media posting on multiple platforms can be a lot of work, so look for a solution that brings it all into your CRM platform.
Automated content sharing: If your ecommerce website also has a blog (and it should), make it simple to share your new content across all your social media channels.
Pipedrive offers a clean, minimalist user interface that makes it easy to tap into its robust features without feeling overwhelmed. Even beginners will feel comfortable navigating Pipedrive from the first time they log into the software.
Add in 24/7 customer support via chat or email and even the newest user won’t be left in the dark for long. If you are new to the world of CRM software, Pipedrive is an excellent, novice-friendly option to get started.
Pipedrive is a great tool for anyone new to CRM tools.
Zoho is another great choice that takes the guesswork out of navigating its CRM platform. Clean design, intuitive functionality, and a sleek mobile app make it easy to manage your customer information from anywhere at any time.
If you’re new to CRM software, pay attention to:
Available customer support: The faster you can get help, the sooner you can get up and running. Be sure the solution you choose provides the help you need, when you need it.
Streamlined user interface: The easier the platform is to understand at first glance and the more intuitive navigation within it is, the better.
Simplified functionality: You want a tool that is robust enough to get the job done but makes that powerful functionality easy for anyone to use.
You want to dig deep into the data behind your shop’s performance
Analytical data helps you track your online store’s marketing, sales, and revenue performance. When you want to really dig into the numbers behind that performance, Metrilo is your solution. It offers really strong analytics tools that let you get as granular as you want.
It compiles everything on Metrilo’s dashboard (with information updated in real time) and shows you key information like new customers, top selling products, real-time revenue, successful orders, conversion rates by device, and customer lifetime value. One glance tells you what’s working and where you need to refocus your efforts.
Metrilo’s analytics tell you everything you need to know to maximize store performance.
Zoho’s CRM provides powerful reports that help you compile the data most important to you and understand underlying trends for your ecommerce store. You can easily export reports as Excel sheets and CSV or PDF files. Or you can share your analytics dashboard with the people who need that information, either on your website or via Slack.
If data is what you crave, be sure your CRM solution has:
An easy-to-understand dashboard: Having all key information in one place makes quick work of understanding how your business is doing at the moment. You can then flex to address issues before they become problems.
Robust reports: Sharing data is critical to overall store success, so be sure your CRM offers a variety of reports and easy ways to share them.
Report templates: Don’t reinvent the wheel each time you need new data. Find a CRM that includes the templates you need, letting you quickly and easily identify the data you want at any given time.
Ecommerce CRM Software Company Reviews
Finding the right CRM for your online store can make the difference between ho-hum performance and superlative success. We looked at the core functionalities web store owners need from CRM software no matter their size and came up with the following shortlist of options. This is the best of the best and there is a solution for every ecommerce shop in the reviews that follow.
Zoho is a great all-around CRM solution, but where it really shines is in how it integrates social media into its platform. Zoho Social streamlines your social posting efforts by integrating with Facebook and Twitter, allowing you to manage all of your social activities from within the Zoho CRM interface. For brands that put the emphasis on building community with their customers who are active on Facebook and Twitter, no other product on our top list goes as deep as Zoho.
You can monitor customer feedback across your social networking sites, track customers’ social interactions inside the CRM, receive real-time notifications whenever someone interacts with one of your social accounts, and even add social media leads directly into the CRM.
For online shops with multiple social media profiles at the individual product or brand level, Zoho streamlines social media management, too. It allows you to synchronize in real time all your brand profiles and settings, so managing them all can be done from one spot. These integrations save you a lot of time, allowing you to focus on other aspects of selling instead of juggling the management of numerous social accounts across multiple platforms.
Of course, if you leverage other social media platforms to market your products, Zoho may fall a bit short. You may want to consider an alternative like HubSpot that integrates with Instagram and LinkedIn, too.
What Makes Zoho Great
There’s a lot to like about Zoho beyond its deep social media integrations. For starters, the entire Zoho experience is extremely customizable. Zoho’s Canvas View allows you—and anyone else on the platform—to design a personalized dashboard with its drag-and-drop builder. Every Zoho user’s experience can be tweaked to meet their preferred working style.
Integrations is another Zoho sweet spot. It offers over 800 integrations, meaning that practically any third-party app you’re already using can be tied into your CRM. Platforms like Shopify, MailChimp, Slack, and Facebook Ads are just a few of the options. And the robust developer platform provides low-code and pro-code tools to integrate data across your enterprise stack and create custom solutions.
Zoho integrates with 800+ third-party apps.
Zoho also takes an omnichannel approach to customer communication. Whether messages come in via email, phone, social media, or the customer self-service portal, Zoho consolidates it all in one place, ensuring that messages are seen and can be responded to quickly.
Zoho delivers all of this enterprise-level functionality at a very attractive price, on top of that. You can get started for as little as $14 per user per month when you sign up for an annual contract. Take a deeper dive into all things Zoho CRM by reading our full review of the platform.
HubSpot – Best for Ecommerce Stores Just Starting Out
HubSpot is the ideal solution for new ecommerce shops, because you can start with a fairly robust free option and then upgrade modularly as your shop grows. HubSpot is on par with Salesforce in terms of the advanced functionality you can unlock, but HubSpot stands out by also meeting the needs of new ecommerce sellers without complex needs or big budgets.
To get started, HubSpot packs a lot into just its free version of this platform, including:
Marketing forms
Landing pages
Ad management
Live customer chat
Deal pipelines
Meeting scheduling
Basic SEO recommendations
This means even the newest of new ecommerce stores (or those with rock-bottom budgets) can hit the ground running with HubSpot’s CRM.
As your store and needs grow, HubSpot makes it really easy to upgrade from the free to a paid tier, too. You’re not going to find it complicated to add on HubSpot’s advanced features, like email sequences, sales automation, SEO tools, customer knowledge bases, and more.
The HubSpot platform is also quite easy to navigate and use. It breaks down its offerings into hubs, so you can quickly find what you need and implement it.
What Makes HubSpot Great
HubSpot’s hub concept adds a lot of flexibility for growing ecommerce shops. Individuals and small teams can start out on the free plan and then upgrade by adding more capable modules focused on facets like marketing, sales, customer service, CMS, and operations.
You can also create your own bundle for a truly custom approach to your CRM. And, if the limitations within those bundle options aren’t sufficient, there are also add-ons that can further customize your monthly plan.
Hubspot’s bundling option gives users the ultimate flexibility.
When your shop starts growing larger and even reaches enterprise levels, more hub bundles and functionality are available as your needs become more intense or complex.
This means no matter how far you go on your online growth journey, HubSpot remains a viable CRM solution that can stick with you for the long haul. Start small and let HubSpot grow with you.
For individuals and small teams, start on HubSpot’s free-forever package to get acquainted with the platform. When you need more functionality, you can graduate to the Starter plan for $18 per month or the Professional plan for $800 per month. Discover everything you need to know—and more—in our full HubSpot review.
Pipedrive was designed with ease of use in mind. It has a clean and easy-to-navigate interface so that you can get going with it right away, even if you have zero previous CRM experience.
You can choose to set up a customized sales pipeline or use one of Pipedrive’s existing templates. Then, just add your deals manually or import them from a spreadsheet. Once the data is in Pipedrive, all key information—and stages of the sales cycle—are captured in one streamlined dashboard sporting a Kanban board-style display.
This visual sales pipeline really simplifies things. It brings together lead and deal management, communication tracking, insights, automation, and reporting together in an easy-to-digest way. Every person on your team, no matter their prior experience with CRM solutions, can easily stay on top of leads and customers at all stages of the sales cycle.
What Makes Pipedrive Great
Pipedrive makes other parts of customer relationship management easy, too. It takes little effort to add customized web forms to your website using Pipedrive, which can boost your lead generation efforts. Team collaboration is another strength of the software, keeping everyone on the same page about sales updates and wins.
Pipedrive’s Smart Contact Data feature places important contact insights at your fingertips. With one click, Pipedrive retrieves web data about your contacts from available online sources, including LinkedIn. This saves you hours of research time and lets your sales team quickly identify the best possible outreach strategies to reach customers.
Simplified reporting is another big win for Pipedrive. Customizable reports can be generated with just a few clicks and Pipedrive’s Insights feature (and interactive dashboard) lets you quickly identify success patterns so you can optimize future campaigns and workflows.
Insights gives Pipedrive users a window into winning strategies in order to optimize workflow and future campaigns.
Pipedrive plans start at $14.90 per user per month with an annual plan. There are also Advanced, Professional, and Enterprise plans available for a higher monthly rate.
Salesforce is the CRM you want when you have big goals for scaling your ecommerce website. Salesforce brings all the bells and whistles that a business needs when its customer list is already big and constantly getting bigger.
While Salesforce’s core functionality is mostly similar to the other products on our top list, there are some unique aspects that deserve to be highlighted. And those differences are why Salesforce is so good for rapidly scaling ecommerce shops.
Salesforce puts a heavy emphasis on automation and predictive analytics. It leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in its Einstein suite of tools. These tools help you analyze all your data to uncover trends, make predictions, and recommend next steps. This is next-level ecommerce store management, and well beyond the needs of most early-stage web stores.
Of course, all this robust functionality comes at a cost, and Salesforce is at the higher end of the cost spectrum. But Salesforce is anything but a no-frills approach to CRM. It has the power behind it to help rapidly growing ecommerce shops leapfrog above their competition, so the price will be worth it to the right growth-focused online store owners.
What Makes Salesforce Great
It isn’t just cutting-edge technology that sets Salesforce apart from its competition. Another big differentiator is that Salesforce can manage any CRM category you can think of, bringing it all together within Customer 360.
This bundle of all Salesforce products and services gives everyone on your team a shared view of every single customer detail, offering crystal-clear views into all aspects of the customer experience. No silos. No misunderstandings. No missed opportunities.
Salesforce Customer 360 bundles products and services to provide a full CRM experience for maximum ROI.
Reporting is another area where Salesforce dominates. The platform offers two ways to view data—the Salesforce Classic dashboard and the Lightning Experience. Each offers highly sophisticated ways to review and study customer data. Both dashboards give you everything you need to understand your business in granular detail.
Integrations are another standout area for Salesforce. Forget hundreds of integrations. Salesforce offers thousands via its proprietary integration marketplace, AppExchange. Since Salesforce is cloud-based, your integrations will sync in real-time so everything always stays up to date.
Salesforce is definitely not the cheapest option on our list. But, for ecommerce stores growing fast, the robust functionality makes it worth the price. Plans begin at $25 per user per month for the Essentials package. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ll pay $300 per user per month for the Unlimited plan that includes unlimited CRM power and support.
Metrilo – Best for Deep Dives into Store Analytics
Metrilo was built with ecommerce analytics in mind. Its real-time dashboard gives you a snapshot of your online store’s performance and includes all the key data points you need to know what’s working—and what needs a new approach.
Metrilo automatically tracks marketing campaign performance, so you’ll know right away whether the strategy you rolled out is working with your target audience. Metrilo also tracks engagement metrics and sales attribution, giving you the insights you need to optimize your marketing spend.
The best part? Metrilo does all this without any manual setup required. The functionality is built into the product out of the box. Metrilo also seamlessly integrates with—and is an official plugin for—top ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify.
What Makes Metrilo Great
Metrilo builds on its powerful analytics functionality with other great features, too. It comes standard with ready-to-use revenue breakdowns, delving into the details of new versus returning customers, coupons, social channels, digital campaigns, and referrals. It also gives you insight into which devices are the source of your orders, so you can optimize outreach accordingly.
Reporting is another strength of the Metrilo CRM software.
Metrilo has great product management reports, too. You get insights into which products are most viewed by site visitors, which are most often purchased, and even which have the highest abandon rate. You can use this information to make sound, data-driven decisions about new products and ways to bundle existing products to boost sales.
There are pre-built funnel reports that map out the customer journey for you, using the data from your store. This lets you identify any bottlenecks and resolve them accordingly. You can also let Metrilo’s smart assistant do the heavy lifting for you. This algorithm analyzes your data and provides suggestions for improvements in specific areas.
Metrilo pricing starts at $99 per month when you choose the annual plan. This includes unlimited team members, so it makes Metrilo quite competitive with others on this list that bill on a per user basis, particularly if you have a bigger team using the product. You can also try out Metrilo free for 14 days.
QuickSprout Ecommerce CRM Software Related Content
Looking for more information about CRM software? We’ve got it in bunches.
Whether you’re completely new to managing customer information, looking for a deep dive into a specific product, or have other considerations, be sure to check out our other Quick Sprout CRM articles, which we’ve listed below.
The best ecommerce CRM software solution depends on a variety of factors and is unique to each online store owner. The great news is that there’s an ideal solution out there for everyone. We think Zoho is the best pick for a wide range of ecommerce store owners, but each of the five options we reviewed above have notable strengths for common situations that call for a CRM.
Whether you’re launching your first ecommerce shop or poised to move into enterprise-level territory, one of the solutions on our list should satisfy your every need.
You craft an enticing sales email but, alas, get no response. What do you do? Leave that potential lead on the table? You don’t have to. There’s every chance your email simply got lost in the shuffle, your recipient was too busy to reply, or maybe you just weren’t persuasive enough the first time around. This is where a follow-up email comes in. It may be the prompt your recipient needs to take action.
Did you know that 80% of sales require 5 to 12 exchanges to convert? Yet 44% of sales reps give up after just one attempt. Don’t fall into that crowd. Take matters into your own hands and use a follow-up email as your do-over whenever you don’t get a reply. Here, we’ll walk you through the steps it takes to write a follow-up email worthy of a positive response.
The 9 Best Marketing Automation Software for Sending a Follow-Up Email After No Response
Marketing automation software streamlines the process of sending follow-up emails and increases your chances of getting responses from potential leads. Here are the top 9 marketing automation tools to help you nurture leads and create effective follow-up sequences:
Constant Contact gives you the ability to schedule emails in advance and create personalized, automated follow-up sequences. Use these to target decision-makers at different stages in the customer lifecycle, including cold leads.
Furthermore, with Constant Contact, you have the option to set behavioral triggers and create email workflows. Thus, you can automatically follow up with recipients that don’t open your emails. And through segmentation, you have the opportunity to target the least engaged members of your email list with follow-up emails.
Tap into Constant Contact’s pre-built segments to re-engage contacts who rarely view your emails with a follow-up sequence.
Constant Contact offers a 60-day free trial that you can use to explore. All you need to do is add some basic account information to get started in seconds. The tool has a free forever plan but it’s limited. To access the features we mention here you’ll need to trial the Constant Contact Plus plan.
Step 2: Decide on Timing and Frequency
Follow up too soon or too many times and your emails are just going to seem like spam. This will of course turn recipients off and hinder any future outreach attempts.
Opinions differ on how many times you should follow up with a prospect. We recommend you stick to three emails maximum to avoid frustrating users. And that is indeed a maximum. You should only follow up with a prospect if you have something new to say. Each follow-up email needs to provide value to the recipient and have its own purpose. In other words, don’t just send three “Have you had a chance to consider my request yet?” emails.
Moreover, each of your follow-up emails should be at least three days apart. You can set a time delay between each email in your follow-up sequence with Constant Contact.
Customize the number of days between your follow-up emails within Constant Contact’s campaign editor.
Bear in mind that you can always experiment with timings and frequencies to see what works best for different kinds of campaigns. For instance, you might find that a link-building campaign requires one quick follow-up while cold sales campaigns need multiple emails.
Step 3: Write Great Follow-Up Emails
There’s a reason why your first email didn’t get a response. It might be that it wasn’t convincing enough. That’s why you need to make your next emails extra compelling.
Social proof works great in a follow-up email. It’s a subtle way to say “here’s what you’re missing out on.” For example:
Hi [Prospect],
It’s [Name] again from [Company]. I must say I’ve been enjoying your tweets about [topic] this week. I saw that you shared an article from [Client].
We actually worked with them on their [solution]. We helped them raise their [XYZ] by [%]. Maybe we could do something similar for you?
Are you free for a 10-minute call next week?
Kind Regards
Social proof, especially when it concerns a brand known to the contact, ups your credibility tenfold and gives them a strong incentive to respond.
Furthermore, it’s tempting to include a ton of information in an email like this such as a longer case study as your social proof. But, it’s better to be concise and to the point. That way you don’t bombard the contact with a ton of extra information that they have to think about. Rather, you want them to react quickly and respond to your request.
You may also note in this example that the request is highly specific. It’s not “maybe we can have a chat about this sometime.” The clearer you are the easier it is for the contact to respond with an answer. No matter what your request is, provide an unambiguous call to action.
Step 4: Make an Enticing Offer
Another key strategy for convincing a contact to respond to your follow-up email is to make an offer they can’t refuse. The idea is to offer them something of value in return for their time or attention. Again, if you didn’t give them reason enough to respond to your first email, this should lure them in.
This offer can come in the form of a freebie. If you know your audience well enough, then you’ll know what they’re most likely to respond to. Perhaps, a free consultation has worked well for you in the past, or access to some gated content, etc.
Another approach is to offer to solve a simple problem for the lead. Here’s an example:
Hi [Prospect],
I just wanted to reach out again as I was browsing your site today and noticed a broken page. If you’re free to jump on a call this week, I’ll be happy to walk you through how to fix it, and we can have that quick chat about web development I mentioned. How does 2pm on Wednesday work for you?
Kind Regards
Naturally, the specificities here will relate to your particular product or service. Either way, the desired result is that the contact is so surprised and delighted they’re more than prepared to hear out your request.
Step 5: Personalize Your Follow-Ups
The worst thing you can do is send out impersonal, robotic follow-up emails. Prospects receive enough emails and follow-ups to know when you’ve just hit copy and paste. These types of emails go into the trash every time. This is because you fail to prove you value the recipient and their individual needs. In other words, your offering or solution isn’t necessarily right for them, you’re just casting out a net over everybody.
However, there are several things you can do to make your follow-up emails more personalized. You can even draw the recipient in with your opening line. Mention something personal to them and/or their company or perhaps talk about a mutual connection or previous meeting.
What Not to Do
Hi [Prospect],
This is just a follow-up in case you didn’t see my last email…
What to Do Instead
Hi [Prospect],
Thanks so much for accepting my LinkedIn invite yesterday. In case you were wondering who the heck I am, I sent you an email last week about…
OR
Just wanted to touch base again as I saw you shared a blog post on [topic] today. I’d love to get your thoughts on…
OR
I was chatting with [mutual contact] last week and she said you were still looking for [solution]…
And so on.
It pays to do your research and get on the radar of each individual contact. This way you can make a genuine connection with them in all of your emails.
And, believe it or not, it’s still possible to send personalized emails when you automate the follow-up process. You just need to make sure you continue to segment contacts on your list. To give you an example, you could tag every C-suite exec you met at a particular conference so that they enter the same automated follow-up sequence.
With Constant Contact, you can get super granular about who receives which emails through the process of tagging.
Constant Contact allows you to filter email lists on a granular level and narrow users by multiple tags.
This ensures the right person receives the right email with the most relevant message at the right time.
Step 6: Use a Compelling Subject Line
Before you can encourage a contact to respond to your email, you first need to get them to open your email. You need a subject line that will pique curiosity. Nobody’s going to open an email with the subject “Follow-Up,” especially if they weren’t interested the first time around.
A couple of rules of thumb. Make the subject line for each follow-up email different. If the first subject line didn’t warrant an open then there’s no sense using it again. Also, make sure your subject lines are honest, not some clickbait ploy.
The best way to create a compelling subject line in this case is to capitalize on the most convincing aspect of the content of your email. For example, if your email contains an offer, your subject line would be “[Offer] for [Contact]”. Or if you’re utilizing a mutual connection it might be “[Mutual friend] gave me your email address” and so on.
Step 7: Automate Your Follow-Up Campaigns
Sending follow-up emails at scale can be difficult and time-consuming. So it makes sense to automate at least some parts of the process so you can focus on more important activities, such as relationship building once you finally get a response.
We’ve touched on this in part already. But we want to give you a little more information, to sum up how you can use Constant Contact to automate follow-up emails.
You can set up multiple automated follow-up sequences for different segments. Set a behavioral trigger—for instance, if the recipient opens an email but doesn’t click a link, then they’ll start to receive these emails.
Create multi-step email sequences based on user behaviors with Constant Contact.
You’re able to customize who receives specific email content by tagging contacts. When you set these filters, a contact must meet certain criteria to be entered into a particular follow-up sequence.
You can also customize the delivery timings between each follow-up email. And easily remove tags or manage contacts depending on how they respond to your follow-ups.
Final Thoughts About How to Send A Follow-Up Email After No Response
A follow-up email is another chance to prompt a response from a potential lead. It’s important you don’t miss the opportunity to connect as it may take several exchanges to get a sales prospect on board with your offering.
Seeing as your email didn’t land the first time around, it’s arguably more important to get follow-up emails right. As such, you need to craft a compelling message and use the best strategies in your arsenal to encourage a positive response, for example, personalization, social proof, and/or an offer that provides value to the recipient in question.
And given the fact that this process can be so difficult and time-consuming, it’s a good idea to automate your follow-up emails. It will allow you to streamline the process and personally follow up with prospects at scale.
Trello is one of the most widely used project management software solutions for a reason. Its simple Kanban setup makes it easy for new users as well as more seasoned Agile veterans. Millions of teams trust Trello with their projects, especially when you can have unlimited team members for free.
This software has a visual layout that shows your task cards and assigned team members all on the same page. The platform works especially well for simpler projects and smaller teams. It helps prevent bottlenecks and promotes organization and productivity.
The 9 Best Project Management Software Services
We researched several project management software solutions to bring you the best ones to explore for your team. Zoho Projects earns its place as the best overall project management software for its user-friendly interface and extensive tools that have what you need for projects of any size and complexity. You can see the full list here.
Zoho Projects gives you a solid foundation with its easy setup, and it doesn’t take long to learn the software. The platform’s customizability and extensive tools make it an excellent tool for businesses of any size. With so many options, from workflow rules and automation to time tracking to task management, you can build a dashboard unique to your team’s needs and get started on your project in no time.
Zoho Projects’ task management tools give you more options than most project management software with tools for work breakdown, issue tracking, task views, sprints, and project baselines. With custom fields, views, and functions, your team can prioritize tasks with a clear view of what needs to get done next. Plus, Zoho Projects makes it easy to automate repetitive tasks and free up team members for more focused tasks.
Unfortunately, Zoho Projects doesn’t provide pre-built templates, but you can still build your own to suit your team and projects. Your team also has plenty of communication channels within the software, including chat, mentions, forums, and document collaboration.
Zoho’s flexibility and customization puts it in the top spot for project management.
How Zoho Projects Compares to Trello
Zoho Projects has many more features than Trello, but part of Trello’s strength lies in its simplicity. However, if you’re looking for something to cover any size project with flexible team sizes, Zoho Projects is a good bet.
Trello is better for small teams and doesn’t have the same level of adaptability as Zoho Projects. It functions as a Kanban board setup with a few extras and add-ons, while Zoho Projects comes with extensive features built-in. In other words, with Zoho Projects you don’t have to go searching for too many things you’ll need to increase productivity.
Zoho Projects is the exact same price as Trello, with a free plan and a $5 base plan that you pay by the user. The next step up costs $10 on both plans, and Trello’s only advantage here is that it offers a fourth plan. At the same time, that plan doesn’t offer much that you can’t get with Zoho Projects.
Monday.com—Best for Customizing Your Project Workflow
Monday.com allows you to customize your dashboard and workflow more than any other software on our list. You can create your own templates to fit your project, color-code your columns and team members, and use drag-and-drop editing to move tasks to create a setup that works for your team. If you want a low-effort startup, Monday.com also has over 200 templates in its library that you can choose based on your project and industry.
This project management software prioritizes communication and collaboration. It lets multiple team members edit a single document and leave comments and suggestions. You can also message team members individually or as a group to stay updated on projects. With the software’s live updates, you can even get alerts to see in real time when someone comments or assigns work.
Monday.com’s Gantt and Kanban charts help you keep track of your tasks visually. Its different views help coordinate your team and prevent bottlenecks by organizing your workflow according to project goals. Whatever Monday.com lacks, you can find in one of its hundreds of integrations.
Explore all of Monday.com’s industry templates.
How Monday.com Compares to Trello
Above all, Monday.com excels in communication and collaboration compared to Trello. While Trello allows you to comment on cards, mention team members, and effectively assign tasks, Monday.com goes several steps further. It also offers much better automation capabilities.
Monday.com may be more expensive than Trello, but that’s because it offers much more. It has significantly more views, with Gantt charts, timelines, calendars, and a Kanban setup that rivals Trello’s. It offers a free plan for individuals, but its most basic package starts at $8 per person per month for a minimum of three users.
If you have a large team, Monday.com will serve you better than Trello. Despite Trello’s unlimited user feature, Monday.com is built for more complexity.
Wrike stands out among the rest for giving marketing teams everything they need to stay on track. It has extensive tools to help with campaign management, content creation, event management, and more. Your team can collaborate and keep track of campaign results while using Wrike’s templates designed for creating content to take your team from the idea and brief stage to the moment you hit publish.
Wrike offers plenty of reporting and analytics, which is a necessity for marketing teams to ensure their campaigns are working. Wrike updates its analytics every 15 minutes so that you always have the most updated information. Plus, its department-specific solutions mean that you can choose templates made specifically for the kind of work your team does.
Wrike has more than 400 integrations and over 100 automations to make your team’s lives easier and streamline your workflow. However, its enterprise-level features also mean that Wrike works better if you know what you’re doing before you get started.
Stay up to date with Wrike’s analytics and reports.
How Wrike Compares to Trello
Wrike is much more complicated to use than Trello, but it also comes with more specific functions. While Trello’s Kanban boards and collaboration features work on a general scale, Wrike’s industry-specific templates and marketing compatibility give it a leg up in those areas.
Wrike coordinates everything you need into three panes, unlike Trello, which keeps it all on one page. These panes make it easy to view and manage your projects, assign tasks, and focus on the tasks you’re currently working on. This setup allows you to come together with your team while staying focused on your own tasks, as opposed to viewing everyone’s tasks along with your own.
Wrike is much more expensive than Trello, with its cheapest package after the free plan starting at $9.80 and a Business package beginning at $24.80. That’s almost twice as expensive as Trello, but Wrike gives you significantly more project management options. It also offers a free trial.
Favro was built for small teams with big goals. Its agility makes it ideal for teams that work in SaaS and the games industry, as both are constantly changing. Its Agile tools present all your tasks and information upfront, so you can work efficiently with a visual system.
Favro makes it easy to collaborate and communicate with simple file sharing, organization, and progress views. It shows any edits from team members in real time, so everyone is always working from the same document version. The software allows you to quickly transfer work between departments when necessary so that no matter where everyone works from, they have access to the information they need to boost productivity.
The software lets you create complex rules for automation to help your team stay on track with the more technical projects. Its integrations, including GitHub and GitLab, only serve to streamline your workflow even further.
Favro has robust collaboration tools.
How Favro Compares to Trello
Favro and Trello have one thing in common—they’re both built for small teams. However, Favro takes a more niche approach with its focus on tech and gaming. Favro’s Standard and Enterprise packages especially offer more technical features, like API calls and OAuth with Google and GitHub. The main difference between Trello and Favro is how you use them, and more technical industries probably won’t get everything they need with Trello.
Favro looks more expensive at first glance, but it’s priced not based on the number of seats but by offering a set price up to a certain number of users. Its Lite package starts at $10.20 per month for up to 10 users. Standard goes up to $13.60, and Enterprise begins at $25.50.
When you need to bring your remote team together, Teamwork is the place to do it. It thrives on visibility with project boards that users can navigate seamlessly, templates for fast setup, and excellent communication features.
It has packages built for all team sizes, and its convenient chat feature allows for a check-in whenever you need it. Teamwork’s charts show project milestones with upcoming, current, and late tasks so that as the project manager, you know who’s on track and who might be getting overwhelmed.
Teamwork also has an entire software solution dedicated to marketing. It combines your projects with your team’s client work to allow for better communication about marketing projects while encouraging productivity with time tracking.
Unify your remote team with Teamwork.
How Teamwork Compares to Trello
Both Trello and Teamwork are excellent project management solutions for remote teams. Teamwork offers more specific resources, and it has features that Trello lacks, including project and time tracking. It also has more advanced automations and organization tools to help cut down on busy work.
Teamwork and Trello both have free plans. Teamwork’s Deliver package starts at $9.99 per user per month and its Grow package begins at $17.99. However, because of its five-user minimum, you’ll pay a lot more than that.
Teamwork adds a few features outside of Trello’s wheelhouse, too, including budgeting and billing. Trello also doesn’t let you communicate through chat with teammates without integrations, which can make things less convenient when you have a remote team.
TeamGantt—Best Project Management Software for Beginners
TeamGantt uses Gantt charts to give your team a visual platform to track their projects. Its simple drag-and-drop interface lets you order your tasks and change timelines in minutes while keeping all your projects in one transparent space.
TeamGantt makes managing resources efficient with its availability tab that tells you who’s available for more work. You can also share progress and documents with stakeholders to ensure tasks progress as intended. If your team starts neglecting any tasks, this software identifies the problem areas with project health reports and portfolio views.
TeamGantt offers a different approach to productivity boards.
How TeamGantt Compares to Trello
TeamGantt and Trello are similar in that they both focus exclusively on one specific type of chart. TeamGantt’s free version offers far fewer tools than Trello’s with only the most basic features available.
When comparing these two solutions, they work much better together than on their own. Combining the two can enhance their capabilities, as on their own they’re more suited for small teams and simple projects.
TeamGantt costs much more than Trello’s $5 base price, coming in at $19.90 per month for one user, plus unlimited guests, on its Standard plan. Its Advanced plan starts at $24.45 per month.
Celoxis works best for users who already know how to use software like it. It’s got a longer learning curve because it handles more complicated projects for enterprise businesses. It allows you to see your team members and delegate work based on their availability and skills, and the software even estimates your revenue per project.
With Celoxis, you can manage your accounting, resources, and portfolio. Its comprehensive project management features, including various board views, issue tracking, and risk management, allow your team to stay on task. It also makes sharing project reports easy by sending them directly to the people who need to see them.
Celoxis has advanced enterprise features for large teams.
How Celoxis Compares to Trello
Celoxis and Trello are both project management software solutions that include Kanban boards, but the similarities stop there. Celoxis has a much more advanced interface designed for companies much larger than Trello can accommodate.
Celoxis costs $25 per user per month for its cloud-based version, but you can also pay a one-time $450 per person fee for its on-premise version. Above all, Celoxis provides more data than any other project management software. Remember, too, that this software is enterprise software regardless of your package, so it’s fairly affordable for its tools.
LiquidPlanner adapts to project changes well, which makes it ideal for engineering teams. Its forecasting engine predicts outcomes for your projects based on current progress and project goals. It also dives deep into budgeting and risk to reduce errors and boost productivity.
The software balances your team’s workload by showing availability and each team member’s current schedule. With priority-driven boards, LiquidPlanner ensures that each person works on the most important tasks while reducing uncertainty.
LiquidPlanner pivots fast for teams in tech.
How LiquidPlanner Compares to Trello
LiquidPlanner is a much more advanced and flexible platform than Trello. Where Trello struggles to pivot, LiquidPlanner was made for it. Trello has no predictive capabilities, but LiquidPlanner teams rely on them, and they’re a major function of this software.
LiquidPlanner costs a lot more than Trello at $15 a month per person with a five-member minimum. Its professional package is $25 per person and the Ultimate package starts at $35 per person.
Quizzes have become one of those trends that make rounds in different life aspects: education, entertainment, business, and of course marketing. Quizzes used for education engage students in the learning process and encourage them to learn from their own mistakes. Have you ever passed a “Which slice of pizza are you” type of quiz? Those […]
Learn to create online courses in WordPress quickly and easily with the help of some fantastic LMS (Learning Management Systems) plugins, as well as how to sell your courses, course examples, and more.
Now is a good time if you’ve ever considered launching an online course. E-Learning is going from strength to strength (A billion dollar industry according to analysts), and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon – especially with many people wanting online/remote education since the pandemic. Distance learning is the ‘new normal’ for many.
Of course (no pun intended), this isn’t just about basic K-12 education. Having your niche course about something you’re knowledgeable about is key.
For example, a lesson about building amazing WordPress plugins, or learning to jump rope like a pro – maybe a complete system to win a marathon.
Chances are you know something about something and can teach it to others. And WordPress is an excellent platform on which to create an online course.
We’ll be going through step-by-step how you start an online course on WordPress, from conception to implementation and sales.
This article takes a look at: (Skip ahead at your preference)
There are many reasons why launching a course is beneficial. For example, they:
Are a minimal investment to get started
Do not require much technical knowledge
Give you access to students worldwide
Provide supplemental income
Build a community
Are growing
Plus, virtual learning is becoming more the norm in this day and age. It’s not uncommon like it used to be.
That being said, why WordPress?
There are several reasons why WordPress offers a great solution to hosting your online courses compared to other options. Some of these are touched on in the list above; however, here’s a breakdown of some specific reasons why WordPress is the best.
You Have Control: Launching a course on your own dedicated WordPress website lets you choose the pricing plans and membership levels and run your own business, unlike using a 3rd party online course creator (e.g. Udemy).
Plugins and Themes: As we’ll be going over later in this article, there are plugins and themes to make the process of setting up your online courses simple and easy. Thanks to plugins and themes, it won’t require coding or a lot of technical knowledge to be up and running in no time.
Support: You’ll find that you’ll get support anytime you need it with premium course plugins. Plus, there is support from WordPress management services, such as WPMU DEV, with 24/7 support on any issues that you may run across when creating and running your online course.
Cost-Effective: It doesn’t take that much money to start a WordPress website and to use plugins and/or a theme to run your courses on. You can begin online courses with very little expense, and the costs stay very moderate throughout the duration of time that you keep your classes live.
Security: With security plugins like Defender and a CDN, such as Cloudflare, you’ll be able to beef up your website’s security. Plus, WordPress is constantly updated, and it’s easy to stay in control of ensuring your website is up-to-date and secure.
Simplicity: Assuming you’re familiar with WordPress, setting up a course with it will be simple, and going about it will be familiar to you. Even if you’re new to WordPress, WordPress makes it extremely easy to set up a website – whether it’s a course site or something else.
Design: Your design and courses are determined by you. There are many variations, course options, membership gateways, and more that you can customize to suit your design needs.
As you can see, there are some pretty good advantages of using WordPress for your online courses. Considering WordPress is growing and constantly improving, you’ll be in good hands with using WordPress as your platform.
On another note – what about those 3rd party sites that enable you to create courses?
Pros and Cons of 3rd Party LMS Sites Compared to WordPress
3rd party sites, such as Udemy, Skillshare, and LinkedIn Learning, make it easy and tempting to go with them instead of WordPress.
This article isn’t here to convince you to go with WordPress. You might prefer a 3rd party site to set up your course on. They make it extremely easy. Plus, there are other pros such as:
In a nutshell, having an online course on a 3rd party site is a money-saving option to get started. Just be ready to give up control over price, design, and vital information (e.g. email addresses).
The biggest negative is that you won’t have too much ownership as a course creator.
If you feel like WordPress is the way to go, let’s check out the…
Essentials to Set Up an Online Course
Like most things, there are some essentials you’ll need.
There are some essentials needed to set up and operate an online course.
The main essentials are:
Picking a Course Idea (that sells)
Having a Domain Name
Setting Up a WordPress Hosting Account
Including an eLearning Add-On
Getting Good Equipment
Marketing Your Course
We’ll go through them and point out why you need to have this sorted out before you start.
1. Picking a Course Idea (that sells)
This can vary, depending on whether you WANT your course to sell. There might be a situation where you have a specific course that you need to implement for your employees or a small group of people, and you plan on offering it for free. Or, maybe it’s included in your membership (e.g., integrated video tutorials on WordPress).
But, let’s go with the notion that you want to sell your courses online.
That means there’s going to be a fine line between what you’re knowledgeable about and what there’s a market for.
The good news is that there are several ways to pick a good course idea.
First of all, a few of the top reasons people want a course is:
To gain knowledge
They want to boost career opportunities
To learn a new skill
As academic prep
To earn income
Some of the highest-selling courses are often about taking something to the next level. That’s why some popular courses are:
Tech and computer-related
Entrepreneurship
Arts
Health and fitness
Lifestyle changes
Education
Realize that these are vast topics. It’s essential to find your niche and narrow down a specific course for a category.
A good example would be this: Let’s take Health and Fitness. You have a way of toning your abs in 4 weeks. So, you create a course titled “The Four Week Ab Toning Method.”
What if you’re not sure that your course is something of value and has a market?
A good indicator is to ask. There are websites, such as Survey Monkey, where you can ask questions like, “How interested are you in a course on…?” and get answers.
Also, if you have an audience built-up already by social media, email, or possibly even a newsletter, ask if this would be something they’d be interested in. If it seems like something your audience would want, it’s a good way to start promoting your course – even before it’s put together.
Plus, if there are no other courses for you to teach, that might indicate there’s no market for it. The more courses that are out there about a subject means the more people that are interested.
2. Having a Domain Name
This one seems obvious, but yes, it’s part of the essentials to launching a course.
Choose a good domain name that’s relevant to what you’re teaching and one you’re not going to regret 6 months down the track. Short and to the point is usually your best bet.
You’ll soon be able to purchase domains from within WPMU DEV as part of an automated hosting setup. Keep an eye on our product roadmap for updates on this.
For now, you have the standard options like GoDaddy, Namecheap, and other localized registrars.
After a domain name is figured out, you’ll need to…
3. Set Up a WordPress Hosting Account
Considering this will be an online course, you’ll want managed WordPress hosting that’s reliable, safe, and can handle an ample amount of visitors. It’s not recommended to use shared hosting or anything that might affect your security or speed.
4. Including an eLearning Add On
We’ll be going over this more with detailed information on themes and plugins you can use for your courses. There are many good options when it comes to how your courses look visually, how your courses function, and much more.
Including the essential add ons will bring your course to life and create a good experience for your students.
5. Get Good Equipment
You’ll need a good computer to set up a course for WordPress. That’s a given. However, when creating the courses themselves, bring the quality of your classes up a few notches with some good equipment.
Good production quality will make you look professional. You need to look the part. This is assuming you’ll be teaching on-screen with videos.
A few things to consider include:
Lighting: Think of your own professional studio setup with quality lighting. A studio doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Relatively cheap studio lighting kits can be as cheap as $100 on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
Editing Software: Here again, this doesn’t have to cost much (in fact, you may already have access to editing software, like Apple iMovie or Premiere Pro). A decent video editor is worth having so you can trim, add images/sounds, titles, and more.
HD Camera: Today’s phone cameras can capture video in HD. Or, if you want to upgrade, you can opt for a professional HD camera. Even the video recorders on most computers record in HD. Just ensure that whatever you’re recording with, it’s in HD for the best quality production.
Script: It’s a good idea to map out your course videos with a script. It will help you stay organized and sound professional. There are some excellent teleprompter apps available for iPad that can help.
Good equipment can be a small investment but provide terrific value.
6. Marketing Your Course
Marketing is the final ingredient to ensuring your course success. We’ll get into this a lot more later in this article. Marketing is essential to getting your course out to the right audience.
However, keep in mind that you can start marketing your course before it’s completed! Get the word out, test your audience, build an email list, start generating a buzz, etc. Be proactive in gearing up for your launch.
Again, we’ll get more into this later on.
LMS Themes and Plugins
There are some great LMS plugins and themes out there.
Now that you have the foundation for your course figured out, you need to start considering the best theme and plugins to use to begin building it.
There are tons to choose from.
Here are a few choices to consider. They all have a solid rating, good reputation, and other websites recommend them. None of these are affiliated with us (we don’t do affiliate links – ever!). We consider these potential options.
Divi
Divi is very well known and can help you create an awesome online course.
Divi is the most popular WordPress theme builder, and you can create an awesome LMS using their Learning Management Layout Pack.
You’ll simply build your course from a pre-made layout. The layout includes links to specific course pages that you go in and edit to make them pertain to whatever you’re teaching. There are various subscription options, payment gateways, email marketing integrations, and more.
A great thing about Divi is its lifetime membership, so you won’t have to worry about annual/or monthly costs. Plus, you know you’re in good hands. Divi has a solid reputation, 24-7 support, and is always up-to-date to ensure that your courses get an A+.
Skillate
Skillate can help get your courses up to par and launched.
Skillate is a great modern LMS that focuses heavily on mobile devices, which gives it more of an app look and feel. It features a multi-instructor portal, teacher profiles, course reviews & ratings, plus more.
Additionally, it has some unique features, such as a deals countdown so that potential students can take advantage of discounts and special offers. You can also keep tabs on your LMS business with stats & reports.
The prices range, and currently, there is no offer for a lifetime membership. That being said, there is a free version – however, it may be a bit limited to what you’ll need. But even the free version comes with support, ensuring you can get set up and run your course in no time.
eLumine
eLumine is a theme worth checking out for your LMS.
With the help of eLumine, you can create your courses off of premade LMS layouts and have them ready for students quickly and easily. The layouts are compatible with WooCommerce, bbPress, LearnDash, Elementor, and other popular WordPress platforms.
Their layouts have designs catered to specific educational courses (e.g. music, culinary, etc.). You can also add multiple instructors, have a student-instructor messaging system, and quizzes.
eLumine also offers a lifetime purchase option, along with a subscription. They all provide various levels of customization.
Check out all of the positive reviews of this LMS theme.
Eduma is an LMS WordPress theme with a solid 5-star review and is highly ranked. It’s compatible with Elementor, WPBakery, Zoom Meeting, and more. Plus, it features over 20 demos for numerous course options.
This theme works well with LearnPress, a popular LMS plugin for WordPress (which we’ll be covering later in this article). It makes it easy to update, create, and sell courses.
The theme is highly customizable. It’s a premium theme, so it does come at a cost. However, for the creation of an amazing LMS, it is worth it.
Course Maker Pro
Coursemaker Pro is professional for a reason.
As the name states, Course Maker Pro can help you create professional online courses. This theme is highly customizable and includes a one-click theme setup, eCommerce, and more.
It works in conjunction with LifterLMS (another plugin we’ll get into soon). This theme’s benefits are a one-click setup for plugins (e.g. Social Proof Slider, WP Video LIghtbox, etc.), a featured article slider, and separate navigation menus for logged-in users compared to logged-out.
It’s a relatively cheap theme that offers a significant visual aspect to any online course that you have to offer.
MemberPress
MemberPress is a solid solution for your membership levels.
MemberPress is no stranger to WordPress – especially when it comes to membership plugins. It’s an extremely popular all-in-one membership plugin that allows you to accept payments, sell courses, and monitor who sees your content. Plus, the ease of use doesn’t hurt either.
It also integrates with MailChimp, Stripe, PayPal, and more. This helps tremendously when building an email list, communicating with students, and taking payments.
Numerous WordPress companies highly recommend MemberPress as a solid, reputable, and terrific membership option. It’s affordable, comes with support, and can keep control of who sees and doesn’t see your online course content.
LearnDash
LearnDash has a ton of resources to ensure the success of your online course.
LearnDash is another extremely popular LMS plugin. It has a drip-feed content feature that automatically delivers content by way of a schedule when students should receive it.
On top of that, it’s easy to connect numerous popular 3rd party applications, such as MailChimp, WooCommerce, Slack, and more. It’s effortless to integrate necessary features.
There is no lack of documentation and support for getting your courses set up with LearnDash. They offer video tutorials, live webinars, guides, and more. That being said, it’s simple to implement their features – even without all of the available help.
For a regularly updated, fair-priced LMS plugin, you can’t go wrong with LearnDash. They’re constantly innovating and ensuring the latest and greatest is available for online courses.
LifterLMS
LifterLMS will help your online courses takeoff.
LifterLMS is a highly customizable and affordable WordPress LMS that is also very popular. With their drag and drop course builder, you can create beautiful online courses, quizzes, and more.
You’re able to create membership sites and limit what students see. What’s nice about LifterLMS is how organized it is. You’ll stay on top of everything with its streamlined lesson plans, content integration (with numerous 3rd party applications), and course creation.
Plus, there is helpful support and plenty of tutorials if you get into a rough spot where you need some help.
LifterLMS is billed annually (no option for a lifetime membership), but it’s worth looking into, as it’s a solid course creator.
LearnPress
LearnPress is available directly from wordpress.org.
With over 100K active installations and a 4.5-star review, LearnPress was created to quickly and easily set up courses on WordPress. You’re able to develop a course curriculum – for free.
The fact that it’s free and offers such value is a big highlight. It works well with a premium theme (like Eduma – which we covered earlier), so keep that in mind. The plugin is free, but a premium theme might be helpful.
With LearnPress, you can manage your courses, sell courses, and work with BuddyPress to easily communicate with your students.
It’s constantly updated and comes with many add-ons – if needed.
Sensei
Sensei is from the makers of WordPress.com.
Sensei was created by the same folks who made WooCommerce and Jetpack – and WordPress.com. They offer a sleek and straightforward course management solution that is definitely designed for WordPress.
Like some of our previous plugins, Sensei offers a drip schedule for students, certificates, and the ability to include media (and attachments). You can offer free or paid courses and monitor each student’s progress (e.g., the progression bar).
They have a very simple and clean interface. There are plenty of options for free and paid extensions to work with Sensei, so you may have to juggle a few various 3rd party inclusions (e.g. WooCommerce), but at the end of the day, it may be worth it.
Course Catalog
The Course Catalog plugin might be all you need to create awesome courses.
Course Catalog is a premium LMS plugin that offers various features, such as several templates to choose from, detailed course descriptions, and multiple catalogs.
You can easily add courses, sort by categories & tags, and control access. It has a clean interface and is highly configurable and customizable.
The cost is a one-time charge that comes with 365 days of support and updates. This makes it an attractive solution for any budget-conscious person wanting to launch a course.
There’s More, of Course…
What is mentioned in this article in terms of themes and plugins are merely suggestions to look into. There are many other quality LMS systems available, and more appear regularly.
The important thing is you find the best solution for what you’re offering. And once you have that figured out, you can launch your course and learn…
How to Promote Your Online Course
As you’ll see, there are a lot of ways to promote your online course.
Promoting a course sounds like a daunting task to many. After all, you’re an educator, not a marketer, right? It’s not as complex and tedious as you might think. By simply implementing a few key things, you can be off promoting your course in no time.
And the good news? Most promotions you can do for free or at a very minimal expense compared to purchasing ads.
Here are some critical steps you can take to promote your course successfully.
1. Create a Landing Page: Creating a landing page is a way to turn visitors into students. Plus, it’s your chance to promote your course with a quick glimpse of what it has to offer.
Some of the course themes that I’ll be covering have a landing page option, which can be set up quickly.
Provide the URL to the landing page everywhere imaginable – social media, LinkedIn, websites, etc. This is the gateway to getting students and explaining what you have to offer. Your landing page can even offer a free mini-course, which we’re discussing next.
2. Build an Email List by Offering Free Mini-Course: Giving away a free course gives users a chance to further their education with a paid course. Plus, you can collect their email, so you can continue marketing out to that person.
Use a good lead-generating plugin like Hustle with an email service like MailChimp. Add an opt-in spot on your course website and landing page.
The free course doesn’t need to be elaborate. Just something simple. Or, you can also give away a free PDF, weekly email newsletter, or something else of value.
Just keep in mind that putting a face with a name is never a bad thing. If you can be on video and potential students get a chance to see you virtually, it can help attract them to your courses.
3. Setup Social Accounts: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Set them up and post regularly. Don’t go overboard with promoting your course, but relevant content. Adding an Instagram story a day with a useful tip is an example of being proactive on social media.
Social media is your opportunity to connect with students, share success stories, and engage.
4. Launch Email Campaign: Once you have roughly 1000 emails, that’s a good time to start an email campaign about your course. It’s a solid number of emails, and it’s a way of letting interested parties know that you are about to launch a course – or you have one already.
A good way of creating an effective email campaign is to offer a discount that will end at some point so that subscribers act on it.
5. Interview Experts: Want a good way to draw students into your course? Interview an expert in the niche you’re teaching. Not only will you provide awesome content, but there’s also a good chance that experts will link to your course as well.
6. Regularly Engage with Students and Potential Students: It’s incredible how far a personal interaction can go. It means you’re a REAL person – not just a bot trying to get students. Engage with your students and potential students regularly. By doing so, even if they don’t personally sign up, they’ll appreciate your course and recommend them to others. Personal engagement goes a long way.
7. Collect Testimonials: The best ad you can have for your course is testimonials. They show that real people took your class, liked it, and it has value. Collect testimonials and display them prominently on landing pages and your website.
Taking these vital steps will be an excellent way to get your course out to the world. It takes commitment and dedication, but the payoff and fulfillment from teaching can pay off.
Course Examples
Here are three good examples.
To give you an idea of what completed LMS courses look like for WordPress, we’ve pulled a few examples from the list we just went over. Each one has a link that will take you to the live demo, so you can play around and explore for yourself.
Hopefully, you’ll get some good ideas for your course by seeing these in action.
First up, we have a very cool demo site from Skillate.
There are lots of categories to choose from.
A real nice thing about this demo is they include a TON of what you can do. It’s great to have all the options for various courses, where you can see how they’re priced, what they look like, ratings, and much more.
LearnPress is another company with some great demos.
LearnPress has a great demo to give a trial run with.
They have several topics to choose from. Each demonstration gives you an inside look at what your site can look like using the LearnPress plugin. You can also see what the checkout and registration process looks like.
There are plenty more sample courses out there. You can even google a specific subject that you might be considering creating a course for, and chances are there’s one out there.
It’s worth seeing what others are doing so that when you are building your course, you can gather some ideas of what to include.
Class Dismissed
Creating an online course with WordPress is easier than ever with all the tools at your disposal. It just takes dedication, a niche, implementation of an LMS theme or plugin, and some good marketing. WordPress creates a solid foundation for any course creator.
Considering the growing popularity of remote learning, online courses are becoming an even bigger market. New updates and innovations are created regularly to help online educators make the best experience possible for their students.
Hopefully, this article helps in providing you with the tools, insights, and knowledge to launch your course with WordPress and make it a success.
Before we begin, we want to make one thing clear: this is not a sponsored post. We here at 1WD are simply excited about and impressed with this new platform that is a simple and affordable way for anyone to start selling digital products online, so we wanted to help our readers discover this new tool. The people over at Make Lemonade – a small team of makers, creators, movers, and shakers – have done it again, providing us with an easy, fast, and secure way to sell digital downloads, subscriptions, and software licenses. in this article we’re going to take a look at what Lemon Squeezy has to offer.
Overview
The concept is simple: easily create a beautiful “lemonade stand” for your digital products in minutes and start selling online. With pricing plans that range from free to $79 per month, anyone can take advantage of the platform and get started relatively quickly. No hosting fees, plugins, or any of the other hassles that typically come with setting up an e-commerce store. Whether you have one or one thousand products, you can get up and running with minimal elbow grease.
Getting Started
The sign up process is quick and painless. Fill out your name, email, desired store URL, and you’re good to go. Yes, it’s really that simple.
Once signed up, you’re greeted with the following screen:
From here you can add products, set up your account and payment details, and design your new store. It’s pretty simple and intuitive to accomplish each of these items, and no coding knowledge is needed. We only played around with the free version, so we don’t have any details or comparisons to offer details on what might be different about paid plans, but based on the feature differences they list on their pricing page (more below), we are guessing they are pretty similar.
Designing Your Store
The store design features are pretty limited. You’re not going to have a one-of-a-kind, stand out in the crowd lemonade stand, so if that’s a high priority then this may not be the best fit. But if you care more about getting your product(s) online and available for purchase as quickly as possible, then Lemon Squeezy is your answer.
The design capabilities are basically the choice of header image, showing your logo, store description and name, and product details. It looks like the yet-to-be-released “Juicy” plan – at $79 per month – will offer a drag and drop website builder and templates, but that option is not yet available. Still, the minimalist style of a store here is clean, crisp, and user friendly.
Payment Methods
Straight out of the gate, Lemon Squeezy accepts credit cards and PayPal when your customers are paying for products. More payment methods are in the pipeline, but these basic methods make it easy for most users. one important note is that Lemon Squeezy acts as the Merchant of Record, meaning the store owner does not have the burden and legal responsibility of collecting and reporting Tax and EU VAT.
Marketing
One of the features we especially like is the built-in email marketing tools. Your customers and visitors can become email subscribers, which then gives you the ability to reach out to them for future, data-driven campaigns. You can also offer freebies for an email address to grow your mailing list. All of this is built in to the platform, so you don’t have to utilize third-party email platforms like you would in other e-commerce solutions. Unfortunately, the marketing features are currently “coming soon” as of this writing, but whenever they arrive this adds great value to the platform.
Reports
Sales, Audience, and Analytics reports are another feature that is showing as “coming soon”. Since this is a common useful element of any e-commerce platform, it is disappointing to see that it has not been offered at launch. In our opinion it may have been wiser to hide these “coming soon” features (along with marketing) until they are actually available.
Pricing
Compared to other e-commerce platforms, selling your digital products on Lemon Squeezy is extremely affordable. The “Fresh” plan is free and offers many of the same features as paid plans. The biggest difference is in the percentage fee: 8% per transaction vs. 3.5% for the paid plans. The “Sweet” plan is $29 per month and the “Juicy” plan is $79 per month. The most expensive plan is still listed as “coming soon”, but it looks like that plan will include a lot of extra features once it’s available. Both paid plans are even cheaper when you pay annually – they give you 2 months free with this option. Be sure to check out the full features comparison on their pricing page.
Conclusion: Lemon Squeezy Is A Great Way To Start Selling Your Digital Products Online
This exciting new e-commerce platform is impressive, although there are still a lot of features that will be coming soon to it. While it’s nice to see what will eventually be, we’d prefer those unavailable features to be hidden until we can use them. Otherwise, the platform has a lot of potential and lots of reasons to start using it now if you’re in the market for your own…uh…market!
Businesses design sales funnels to lead prospective customers through the buying process. When built correctly, funnels can take a person who has never heard of your business and turn them into a paying customer.
Without a firm grasp of how sales funnels work, you’ll never be able to maximize the reach of your company.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling online, in-store, direct to consumer, or B2B—every business in every industry should have a sales funnel. This guide will teach you how to build a sales funnel that converts.
What to Expect When Building a Sales Funnel
Creating a sales funnel might seem complicated, especially if you’re a beginner. But with five steps, you can simplify the entire process:
Understand the Sales Funnel Stages
Use Software to Build Your Sales Funnel
Create a New Sales Funnel
Add a Deal to the Sales Funnel
Move Deals Through the Sales Funnel
The Good
Sales funnels are arguably the most crucial way businesses generate leads and convert them into paying customers. Once you can implement a successful sales funnel, you’ll quickly benefit from increased revenue.
While sales funnels can be complex and time-consuming to get right, once it is locked in and doing well, it will continue to work for you in perpetuity, making it key for scaling your business. After all, to be successful, a business must make a high volume and consistent sales to grow.
Your sales funnel will keep working 24/7/365. Sales funnels are key for turning leads into customers. The better your sales funnel, the better your sales. Ultimately, a great sales funnel will be predictable, measurable, and allow for unlimited growth.
Plus, you don’t have to create every sales funnel by hand. Many great software solutions make this process much easier for you, some of which come with sales funnel templates. So, if you’re stuck, in a rush, or just don’t want to create one from scratch, you can take advantage of industry-specific templates to get you started.
If you’re using software to create and manage your sales funnel, you will typically also benefit from a visual sales pipeline. These tools provide a complete overview of your sales process, so you understand exactly how many open leads are pending and which stage of the funnel they’re in.
Most sales funnel tools are user-friendly, and you won’t need a technical background to get started. In some cases, it’s as simple as dragging and dropping a sale from one stage to another.
The Bad
While sales funnels are crucial to your company’s success, the implementation and management process comes with its fair share of challenges.
The most significant issue with sales funnels is the breakdown of communication between marketing and sales departments. Since the marketing funnels and sales funnels overlap somewhat, those two teams must be able to work together to be successful.
If the two teams are not on the same page, leads get dropped, goals are missed, and deals are lost. And in most cases, neither team will want to take the blame. It may be cliche to say they will blame each other, but it is cliche for a reason. Marketing will say that sales lost the deal, the sales team will claim the marketing department didn’t do a good job qualifying them.
Unfortunately, this is not uncommon and can lead to a hostile work environment and a breakdown of the company culture, making it even more difficult for the two teams to work together moving forward.
To keep the two departments working together and avoid the unrest, it is essential to have clearly defined roles and goals. Both teams need to fully understand what their part of the larger funnel is and how it all works together. Have the two teams meet regularly and discuss the sales process, how the funnel works, how to improve it, and share successes.
The fact is that if marketing and sales are not working together toward the common goal of closing deals and growing the business, lead and customer acquisition suffer the consequences.
It’s also worth noting that just one mistake in the sales funnel can cause a ripple effect throughout your entire sales process. Even if the end of the funnel is perfect, few prospects will get to that point if there are problems at the top of the funnel.
Step 1: Understand the Sales Funnel Stages
Before we can dive into the details related to building a sales funnel, you need to have a firm grasp of the different stages of one.
The exact names of each stage might vary slightly depending on who you ask or the graphic you look at. But generally speaking, sales funnels can be broken down into four phases:
Prospect
Qualified lead
Opportunity
Closed
Sales funnels are not the same as marketing funnels, which focus on making potential leads aware of your brand and products and then capturing them as a lead to getting their information. Once a lead is captured, the next stage is turning them into a prospect interested in purchasing from your company. This is part of the marketing funnel and overlaps with the start of a sales funnel.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages in greater detail below.
Prospect
When a person is a prospect, they are part of both the end of the marketing team’s part of the funnel and the beginning of the sales team’s funnel. In the prospect phase, the potential customer is now aware of your brand and has expressed some interest in learning more, including giving your company their contact information, viewing a demo, or subscribing to a newsletter.
In the prospect stage, you are continuing to nurture and educate the lead on what your company does and how your product or service will benefit them. Email marketing is a big piece of this stage and continues to educate the lead on your business.
Qualified Lead
What takes a lead from prospect to qualified is digging into and screening the lead to make sure your offerings are a good fit for them. In most cases, both sales and marketing teams will qualify leads. The marketing team is attempting to qualify the lead throughout their process so that by the time the lead gets to the sales team and into the sales funnel, only minimal qualifying is needed.
When marketing is qualifying a lead, they are looking to see if the person seems like a good fit for your company’s product of service. Do they fit the ideal customer persona?
When sales is qualifying a lead, they are digging further into the specific lead to find out their needs, pain points, timeline for purchasing, budget, decision-making ability, and more.
Opportunity
Third is the opportunity stage of a sales funnel. This is the stage at which salespeople discover what specific opportunities there are to sell a product or service to the lead. To identify opportunities for sales, the team may send them special offers, discount codes, or start a negotiation with the lead to come to an agreement.
This stage is the one where any proposals are presented, negotiations are had, and there is often a lot of back and forth between the sales agent and the lead.
Closed Deal
The final stage in any sales funnel is closing out the lead. It is important to have a Closed Deal stage, and even more important to separate the leads into “Closed-Won” or “Closed-Lost” categories. Either you won and the lead made a purchase, therefore becoming a customer, or you lost the deal and the lead did not make a purchase.
If the lead becomes closed-won, they are no longer in the sales funnel and are one of your company’s customers. You will continue your follow up and renewal strategies as normal.
If the lead is closed-lost, it doesn’t mean they will never become customers, just that they aren’t right now. You will want to stay in contact with these leads and follow up with them regularly. Offer additional deals or discounts later and keep engaging with them. Just because they chose not to make a purchase now does not mean they will not become customers at a later date. Having been through the marketing and sales funnels, the lead is fully vetted and qualified, well aware of your company and its products, and has already shown an interest in them.
Step 2: Use Software to Build Your Sales Funnel
Now that you have a firm grasp of how the sales funnel works, it’s time to leverage technology to make your life easier.
Sales funnel software comes in all different shapes and sizes. I recommend using a CRM platform with built-in sales funnel solutions instead of a standalone sales funnel tool.
A CRM (customer relationship management) system is an all-in-one solution for managing customer communication before, during, and after the sales process. So it makes sense to build your funnels on your existing platform. It also makes it easier for your sales, marketing, and customer service teams if all customer touchpoints are in one place.
Pipedrive is my favorite CRM for sales funnels. But there are many other options to consider. Check our list of the best CRM software to see the top alternatives in this category.
Signing up for Pipedrive takes less than a minute. You just need to provide your name, business email, and phone number.
Pipedrive will ask a bit more information to personalize your experience, like your industry, experience level with sales tools, and how many people will be using the software.
Best of all, Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial and doesn’t require a credit card at sign-up—so there’s no risk to try it out.
Step 3: Create a New Sales Funnel
Creating a new sales funnel will look slightly different for everyone, depending on the software you’re using. But for the purposes of this tutorial, I’ll use Pipedrive as an example.
Navigate to the Deals Dashboard
Pipedrive gives you a default sales funnel when you first sign up. But to create your own from scratch, head to the Deals board on the left side of your menu—represented by a circled dollar sign.
Add a New Pipeline
On the Deals page, click on Pipeline at the top of the dashboard. Then select +New Pipeline from the dropdown menu.
Alternatively, you can use the Edit Pipeline option to modify the default template. But most businesses choose to start from scratch, and that is what I am showing you here.
Once you click to start a new pipeline, you can name each stage and change the order of your sales funnel. This process will look different for everyone, depending on their goals with their new sales funnel.
Step 4: Add a Deal to the Sales Funnel
Once you’ve created a new sales funnel, it’s time to put this tool to good use. Each time a new lead enters the funnel, you need to enter the information into the software.
There are ways to automate this process by connecting with third-party tools, email signups, or lead generation forms. But for now, I’ll show you how to do this manually.
Click the Plus Sign (+) on the Deals Page
There are two ways to add a new deal to the sales funnel, either by clicking the green + Deal button in the top left or by clicking the plus sign (+) underneath a specific stage in the middle of the screen.
The green button may be the obvious choice for most. But if a new deal has already advanced through the funnel, clicking plus sign (+) below that phase is a shortcut.
Enter the Deal Details
Next, populate the form with all of the details of the pending deal. Enter the lead’s name, phone number, email, business, deal size, expected closing date, and more.
Then click Save to officially put the deal into your funnel.
Step 5: Move Deals Through the Sales Funnel
Once someone is entered into the funnel, you will move them along through the funnel and sales process until they convert. Pipedrive has built-in tools to make this process easy for you.
Schedule an Activity
To make sure nobody gets lost in the shuffle, schedule an activity to follow up with leads. Just click the deal icon card and select + Schedule an Activity in the pop-up window.
Activities include things like a call, meeting, email, lunch, or another task.
Pipedrive syncs with your calendar to see all of your activities in a single source of truth without double-booking anything. Add notes and information to the activity to have a point of reference when it is time to make the call or go to the meeting.
Move Deals Through the Sales Funnel
As you complete different activities, such as follow-up emails or video calls, you’ll continue moving a deal through your sales funnel.
With Pipedrive, it’s as simple as dragging and dropping a deal card from one column to the next.
In the example above, I’m dragging a deal from the Qualified Lead column to the Contact Made column after making that hypothetical call.
As you send a proposal or finalize the contract, you’ll continue moving deals through the sales funnel until they’ve ultimately converted into a paying customer.
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 …
It’s nearly impossible to run successful email campaigns without an autoresponder. These tools send time-based messages to specific people on your email list.
When set up correctly, you can use an email autoresponder to segment your contacts based on behavior and other categories. It all begins with finding the right email automation software.
Constant Contact makes it easy to automate emails and track the results without the need for you to write one single line of code. Talk about a breeze. Within just a few clicks, your autoresponder will be up and running with key emails such as a welcome series, an abandoned cart notification, a drip campaign, and more.
The best part? You don’t have to create these emails from scratch. Take advantage of Constant Contact’s wide variety of templates to work from, which were all designed with care to translate well both on desktop and mobile.
If you do choose to build your own autoresponders, however, you will get a lot more control over how and when the different sequences deploy. Once you choose your trigger type and the email list you want the autoresponder to go to, you have the option to set additional criteria as well.
Setting up an email series with Constant Contact is as straightforward as possible.
That can entail anything from traditional demographics to custom attributes that you’ve set or had subscribers select when they joined.
This lets you fine-tune messaging and get as close to a personally written email as possible for everyone.
Then, all that’s left is to create or assign emails. If you’re drafting a welcome series, perhaps the first email is just a warm welcome, the second can be sent six hours later with a special deal, and a third can be sent the next day to encourage new subscribers to take action.
You can make it as complex or involved as you’d like, even stretching out this welcome sequence to several emails across a couple of weeks.
There are no constraining limitations on what you can do and how you can customize these automated email sequences. Constant Contact also lets you do the same for behavioral triggers, setting off automated emails when a list member opens, clicks, visits, or anything else.
You can even set some elements of your email content to change based on the recipient. Have dynamic content that adapts to people’s location, job title, age, or anything else.
You can get all of this email automation capability, plus one of the email marketing platforms in the business, with Constant Contact’s Plus plan. That runs $45/month for up to 500 contacts, with the price scaling upwards the more contacts you have.
You can also reach out to Constant Contact about pricing for over 50,000 contacts.
GetResponse is my pick for sales teams in the market for an email autoresponder. It’s a great all-around email marketing tool, but the built-in sales tools really stand out.
This software has everything you need to manage the complete life cycle of email subscribers. You can generate leads and add people to your subscriber list with GetResponse landing page tools and webinars.
Once a new subscriber has been added to your list, simply use automated workflows to welcome, upsell, and target individuals by predefined categories.
Start with GetResponse for free and start converting customers right away.
Some of the top features of GetResponse’s autoresponder include:
Unlimited daily messages
Advanced timing settings
Cycle management tools
Day-of-week selection
Quick edits
Drag-and-drop editor
GetResponse makes it easy to manage your sales funnels and lead magnet funnels. Use this platform to create signup forms and target new subscribers with social media ads.
GetResponse seamlessly integrates with other tools that you’re already using, like WordPress, Facebook, Stripe, Salesforce, Shopify, Etsy, and more.
Pricing is based on the features you want, plus the number of subscribers on your list. Here’s a look at the starting rates based on 1,000 subscribers:
Email Marketing — $19 per month
Marketing Automation — $59 per month
Ecommerce Marketing — $119 per month
GetResponse offers a Free tier, but it does not include email autoresponders.
Every plan comes with email autoresponder functionality, marketing automation, and 180+ landing page templates. You can get an 18% discount with an annual contract and a 30% discount with a 24-month contract. Try any GetResponse plan free for 30 days.
ConvertKit is an email marketing tool designed for online creators. The software has everything you need to grow your list and drive conversions at scale.
For those of you who aren’t very technically inclined, it’s easy to set up your autoresponder with ConvertKit’s visual automation builder.
ConvertKit’s easy-to-use funnel builder helps you visualize while you write your emails.
Even for advanced automations and complex funnels, the visual editor is surprisingly easy to use. You can even use ConvertKit to monetize your emails with built-in sales tools.
Additional features include:
Sign up forms
Landing page templates
Email designer
Subscriber segments
Reporting tools
Third-party integrations
ConvertKit has one of the best free plans on the market today. It’s free forever, up to 1,000 subscribers. The free plan includes unlimited landing pages, 30+ premium landing page templates, subscriber tagging, custom CTAs, unlimited signup forms, and more.
Paid plans start at $25 per month. Pricing is based on the number of subscribers on your list. You’ll need a paid subscription to benefit from the visual automation features.
For beginners and advanced marketers alike, Moosend is an easy-to-use and feature-rich autoresponder. The software is trusted by industry leaders like Domino’s, Gucci, Vogue Magazine, and more.
It comes with core email marketing tools, like a drag-and-drop editor, A/B testing, list segmentation, and data analytics.
But Moosend specializes in marketing automation at scale. You’ll benefit from automation templates, advanced reporting, and website user tracking.
Moosend is the ultimate tool for personalization at scale.
Put your campaigns on autopilot with specific workflows based on triggers, actions, or and conditional controls. Run an automated sequence for things like onboarding, lead scoring, abandoned carts, VIP offers, and more. Moosend provides preconfigured messages that you can personalize, or you can create your own email campaigns.
Additional features include:
Unlimited emails
Sign-up and subscription forms
Landing pages
AI-powered product recommendations
Knowledge base, email, and live chat support
100+ integrations
GDPR compliance
Advanced segmentation
The lowest-priced subscription tier starts at $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers. Multiple pricing tiers are available, depending on the number of subscribers. Moosend also has a free forever plan for basic use. The free plan even includes the autoresponder and automation features. Try Moosend for free now.
SendPulse is more than just an email marketing tool. It’s actually branded as an all-in-one marketing automation platform. It’s trusted by 1.3+ million users worldwide.
In addition to email, you can use SendPulse to deliver messages via web push (browser notifications), SMS messaging, and chatbots. Setting up an autoresponder campaign with SendPulse is easy. Simply add an event to track and create an automation.
Once the event has been triggered, the flow will start automatically.
SendPulse’s email flows are logical and easy to follow. And since they’re automated, you won’t have to worry about a thing.
Other highlights of using SendPulse as an email autoresponder include:
130+ free templates
Adaptive messages
Subscription forms
Personalization tools
List segmentation
A/B testing
40+ integrations
Pricing starts at $6.40 per month for up to 500 subscribers and $9.60 per month for 1,000 subscribers. Rates increase as your list grows. There’s also a free plan for up to 500 subscribers, but it comes with a 15,000 email limit.
The automation features are limited in the free plan as well.
If you don’t want to pay a monthly or annual subscription fee, SendPulse has a unique pay-as-you pricing structure as well. This starts at $32 for 10,000 emails and could be a viable option for smaller email lists.
Unfortunately, there’s no bundle pricing available for email, chatbots, SMS, and web push. Each communication method must be purchased separately. Learn more and try SendPulse today.
Benchmark Email is a robust and feature-rich solution for email marketing, lead generation, marketing automation, and landing pages.
This powerful autoresponder is scalable and streamlined for unlimited growth, regardless of your company size or industry.
Benchmark Email is marketing automation made easy—and its features are all included in one paid subscription.
So many email autoresponders have complicated plans and pricing. But Benchmark Email simplifies this process by providing all of its premium features in a paid subscription.
When you sign up for Benchmark Email Pro, you’ll benefit from features like:
A/B testing
Targeted emails
Drag-and-drop landing page builder
Conversion tracking
Landing page templates
Behavior-based automation
Email engagement automation
Website engagement automation
Facebook audience automation
Pre-built customer journeys
Cart abandonment automation
The list goes on and on. This plan supports up to 100,000 subscribers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come with unlimited messaging. Benchmark Email limits you to messaging 14x your list size per month. For most of you, that should be plenty.
Pricing starts at $11.99 per month. There’s a free plan for unlimited contacts, but limits you to just 250 emails per month, which obviously isn’t sustainable. Learn more and try Benchmark Email today.
Omnisend — Best Email Autoresponder For Ecommerce Businesses
Omnisend is a niche-specific email autoresponder. This marketing automation tool is built specifically for ecommerce websites. More than 50,000 ecommerce businesses in 130+ countries rely on Omnisend for email and automation.
With Omnisend, you can integrate multiple channels into the same automated workflow.
Custom auto-response workflows can be triggered based on everything from shopping cart abandonment to post-purchase engagement.
Omnisend makes it easier for you to target people based on various categories within the customer journey. Leverage email automation with segments like:
Website visitor
Subscriber
Shopper
Buyer
Repeat buyer
Each of these unique categories can enter a predefined autoresponder campaign. For example, a buyer would be sent an order confirmation followed by cross-selling messages. A website visitor would be targeted with signup boxes and landing pages to incentive a subscription.
Omnisend makes it easy to collect visitor information with fully customizable forms. This makes it easier to automate email campaigns based on preferences and categories.
Rather than creating new automation from scratch, Omnisend has pre-built workflows specifically designed for ecommerce sites. I’m referring to things like cart abandonment, order confirmation, shipping confirmation, product abandonment, upselling, and welcome messages.
Pricing starts at $16 per month, which includes up to 6,000 emails and 60 SMS messages. For businesses with higher send volumes and omnichannel communication, the $59 Pro plan offers unlimited emails and up to 3,933 SMS messages per month.
In addition to its competitive pricing and impressive suite of tools and features, Sendinblue has a great range of automation and integration options.
One of those is an automation workflow editor, where you can build your email campaigns and then set triggers by clicks, opens, webpage visits, and more.
Sendinblue’s all-in-one email automation doubles as a sales and marketing suite.
Other autoresponder options include a double opt-in series, sending out welcome emails to new subscribers, reminder and abandoned cart emails, discount and sale emails, and even birthday emails.
While Sendinblue is a good email autoresponder, it is also a powerful marketing tool at affordable pricing, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. Unlike some autoresponders, Sendinblue has a full suite of solutions for customer acquisition, management, and retention.
With other tools like a CRM system, SMS marketing, live chat, analytics, and more, Sendinblue is a top option for those businesses looking to run transactional email and SMS marketing campaigns. Plus, every plan comes with email and SMS marketing and live chat, even the free basic plan.
Sendinblue knows that email autoresponders help businesses increase revenue and makes customers feel more engaged and connected with their brand.
Sendinblue’s pricing is very straightforward:
Free forever plan – $0/month, includes unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day.
Lite – $25/month for 20,000 emails with no spending limit, removing the Sendinblue branding, and advanced statistics.
Premium – $65/month for 20,000 emails with marketing automation, landing pages, multi-user access, and Facebook ads.
Enterprise — Contact Sendinblue for a quote.
With the Lite and Premium plans, you can upgrade how many emails you want to send per month based on your business’s needs. The price goes up as the emails do. For example, if you need to send 60,000 emails per month and want to keep the Lite plan, it will be $45 per month. On the Premium plan with its additional features, sending 60,000 emails each month is $94 per month.
Lots of email autoresponders can be confusing, especially if you’re new to the world of marketing automation. So if you’re looking for something simple, try Autopilot.
The dashboard is clean and easy for anyone to use. Even though the software feels like a simplified version of other email autoresponders, don’t mistake its simplicity for a lack of functionality.
Some of the top features of Autopilot include:
Email A/B testing
Segmentation
Website tracking
Marketing automation
Lead generation
Lead scoring
CRM integrations
Sales pipeline automation
The software integrates with third-party tools like Facebook, Pipedrive, Twilio, Salesforce, Google Adwords, and more.
Here’s a closer look at the plans and pricing:
Autopilot’s pricing plans include powerful features like enterprise system integration, ad retargeting, and omnichannel marketing.
Autopilot supports multi-channel marketing via SMS marketing, in-app messages, Facebook retargeting, Google Ads retargeting, and more.
For larger lists of 10,000+ subscribers, you’ll need to contact the sales team for a custom quote.
More than one million businesses worldwide trust VerticalResponse for email automation. The autoresponder can be used across a wide range of industries, regardless of your business size.
VerticalResponse’s email autoresponder is perfect for welcoming new subscribers, nurturing leads, re-engaging with inactive subscribers, and automating custom campaigns.
VerticalResponse makes it easy to create rules-based series for automated responses.
Here’s a look at some of the other top features and benefits of VerticalResponse:
Simple email editor
Automated follow-up messages
Advanced reporting
A/B testing
Landing page builder
Surveys
Testing kit
While most email autoresponders have landing page tools for lead generation, the custom lead capture forms from VerticalResponse are outstanding.
VerticalResponse has two plans, starting at $11 and $16 per month, respectively. The final rate depends on the size of your subscriber list. VerticalResponse also offers pay-as-you-go pricing, nonprofit discounts, and plans for high-volume senders.
What makes a great email autoresponder? It depends on your needs. The best option for me might not be the best for you.
There are certain factors you need to evaluate when shopping around for an email autoresponder. Use the following methodology to make this process easier as you consider different options.
List Management and Segmentation Features
Email autoresponders will only be effective if you can easily manage your list. Automated responses sent to the wrong subscribers won’t drive conversions.
The best autoresponders let you manage lists using multiple tags and segmentation features. This allows you to send highly targeted content and helps ensure that your message is sent at the perfect time.
If you want some of these processes automated for you, look out for software that automatically segments subscribers based on actions or behavior. These responses can also trigger different messages within an automated campaign, making your autoresponses more relevant for the people who receive them.
Lead Generation Tools
The best email autoresponder software will also provide you with tools for growing your email list. One of the most common ways to do this is with a landing page builder and custom forms.
Some software takes this one step further and allows you to create website pop-ups or additional opt-in forms.
But it’s definitely in your best interest to find an autoresponder with built-in lead generation. Otherwise, you’ll need to get a lead gen tool elsewhere.
Sending Limits
Not every email autoresponder allows for unlimited messaging.
Some platforms will cap the number of messages you can send per month. It’s important to take a closer look at this number. Certain campaigns will trigger a series of 3-5+ messages per subscriber. So make sure the limit will accommodate your sending needs.
Otherwise, you might need to upgrade to a higher tier or look for software with unlimited emails.
Subscriber List Size
How many subscribers are on your list?
There’s a big difference between managing 500, 5,000, and 50,000 subscribers. Some choices are suitable for smaller lists, while others are built to scale.
Make sure that your email autoresponder and plan have the ability to accommodate your needs as you grow your email subscriber list over time. If not, you could be forced to switch providers in a couple of years.
The Top Email Autoresponder in Summary
What’s the best email autoresponder? Constant Contact is my top pick, and my research shows that it’ll be an excellent option for most of you.
Adding automation to your email marketing strategy is the best way to scale your campaigns. You can use email autoresponders for welcome sequences, lead nurturing, shopping cart abandonment, omnichannel marketing, and so much more.
Are you thinking about starting a blog but not sure which topics or niche to choose?
Choosing the right niche for your blog makes it easier to create engaging content and even make money online.
In this article, we’ll explain how to easily choose the best blogging niche that will eventually help you start earning online.
What is a Blog?
A blog is a website that’s updated regularly with new pieces of content, which are normally written articles. These are called “posts” and appear in reverse chronological order, with the newest at the top of the list.
When blogs first started, they were mostly personal diaries, sharing information on a range of topics of interest to the person writing.
That’s still how some blogs work today, but a large number of blogs now focus on specific niches that interest the blogger and their target audience.
For instance, WPBeginner is a blog focused on helping non-techy users do more with WordPress through helpful tutorials, how-tos, and other articles.
How to Make a Blog?
To start a blog, you need three key things:
A domain name: the address of your site (ours is wpbeginner.com)
Web hosting: online storage for your site, so visitors can access it
A blogging platform: special software that lets you easily create a blog without needing to do any coding
Normally, a domain name costs around $15-20 per year and web hosting starts from $7.95 per year.
That’s a significant investment, especially when you are just testing the waters.
Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and a generous discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
When it comes to your blog platform, there are plenty of choices available, including many great free ones. See our list of the best blogging platforms for detailed comparison.
However, if you want to make money from your blog in the near future, then WordPress.org is your best option (this is what we use on WPBeginner).
It is easy to use and comes with thousands of design options and add-ons. Most importantly, it gives you the freedom to monetize your blog in any way you want.
The following are just some of the most popular monetization methods used by blogs all over the world.
Advertising: Running ads, often through an advertising network like Google AdSense. Some bloggers sell ads directly to companies instead.
Sponsorship: Running sponsored (paid for) content from an advertiser. This is often in the form of sponsored blog posts, but could also include social media posts on Instagram or other social networks.
Affiliate marketing: Linking to products or services that offer commission when someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase. This is a great way to monetize your blog. We have lots of affiliate marketing tips and tools to make it easy for you.
Digital products: By selling digital products like Ebooks, online courses, printables, apps, software, music, and more. Digital products generally have low overheads and can work for almost any niche.
Services: If you’re a writer, photographer, coach, or similar, that can be a great way to monetize your blog. You might even start a blog to help you market an existing service you offer, like logo design or freelance writing.
Physical products: Although they have higher costs than digital ones, physical products can be a great way to make money. It’s easy to add an online store to your WordPress blog and start selling.
Things to Consider When Choosing Your Blogging Niche
Many new blogs die within a few weeks and most don’t even make it to a couple of months.
Whatever blogging niche you choose, make sure you are genuinely interested in that topic. This would make it easier to stick to it and keep yourself motivated.
It’s also important to consider:
Do you know enough about your niche to be able to write confidently? You don’t need to be an expert, but it’s best to start a blog on a topic that you’re able to write about without having to do loads of research.
Can you easily make money from your niche? While blogs on all sorts of topics can and do make money, some niches are a lot easier to monetize than others. A blog about a little-known or uninteresting topic might not get enough readers to make much money.
Have you chosen an appropriately sized niche? It’s best not to go too broad. If you’re aiming for an audience of “everyone”, you’re likely to end up with “no one”. Try to find a sub-niche that’s a great fit for you.
Are you happy to have your name associated with your niche? While it’s fine to blog anonymously if you want to, however you might find it difficult to monetize.
Top Blogging Niches That Will Make Money
You might already have a topic in mind for your blog, or you might not have any ideas at all. All the niches below are great ones to try, so long as you pick a topic that you’re truly interested in.
These are all big, popular niches that have been around for years and that can make a lot of money.
1. Health and Fitness
Health and fitness are huge topics, and you’ll definitely find an audience if you’re blogging about something in this area.
Health and fitness is one of the most popular blogging niches. It is a lucrative niche which means there are a ton of blogs that will be competing with you.
The easiest way to build your voice is by narrowing it down to your general interest.
There are lots of different angles that you could take:
A particular diet: paleo, gluten-free, raw food, 5:2, keto…
A particular type of exercise: running, weight-lifting, CrossFit…
A specific audience: women, men, young, old, geeky…
A particular approach to health: homeopathy, acupuncture, wellness…
Sharing your progress: if you’re on a health journey of your own, you could update readers on that and share your lessons learned
Tip: We’ve got a list of the best WordPress themes for CrossFit gyms. A lot of those could work well for other health or fitness topics too, so take a look and see if one would be right for your blog.
2. Personal Finance
We all need money, and many of us want to earn more, spend less, or save more. Blogs on personal finance have found huge audiences, and again, there are lots of different angles and approaches you can take.
You might choose to write about:
Frugality: money saving tips, using coupons, anti-consumerism…
Investing: market tips, best index funds, angel investors…
Fashion is another immensely popular blogging niche and one that could be a great money-maker. It’s a particularly good fit if you love posting on Instagram, which is where some fashion bloggers have become especially influential.
Many fashion blogs focus on the blogger and include lots of photos. If you want to remain anonymous, or if you hate being photographed, then this type of fashion blogging probably isn’t for you. Instead, you might want to blog about particular trends within fashion, or share fashion-related news.
Although you might associate fashion blogging with female bloggers, this niche isn’t just for women.
There are plenty of men’s fashion blogs (often called “men’s style”) out there too. These tend to focus more on tips and product suggestions than on personal photos.
What’s the “lifestyle” niche in blogging? It can be a little confusing if you’re new to blogging, so let’s break it down.
Lifestyle means writing about a range of different topics that are connected through having the same audience.
For instance, you might have a lifestyle blog where you write about food, fashion, and motherhood. The connection is that you’re writing for women in their 30s and 40s who want to eat well and look great while raising young children.
Alternatively, you might have a lifestyle blog aimed at single women that focuses on travel, beauty, and hair. Or you might have a blog aimed at men aged 20 to 40 that’s all about style, fitness, and music.
The mix of topics is up to you, but it’s important to make sure your blog has a very clear brand to give it focus and direction.
Tip: Many fashion WordPress themes or fitness WordPress themes can be a good fit for lifestyle blogs. As with fashion blogs, design is really important in this niche, so invest in a premium theme if you can.
5. Business and Marketing
There are loads of blogs out there that cover business and marketing related topics. If you’ve been reading a lot about blogging, you might feel like every popular blog talks about something to do with blogging, marketing or building a business!
If you’ve got a business or marketing background, then starting a blog in this niche could be a great idea. As with the other niches on our list, this is a huge one, so you’ll want to find a clear focus and voice for your own blog.
Depending on your expertise and interests, you might choose to blog about:
B2B (business-to-business) marketing
B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing
Entrepreneurship: starting and growing companies
Small businesses: more and more people are moving into self-employment, so this is a great area to target
A particular type of marketing or area of marketing: networking, social media marketing, copywriting, direct response marketing…
Tip: Almost any of these multi-purpose WordPress themes could work for your business or marketing website. Divi is an especially good option as it’s fully responsive and you can customize it however you like.
6. Technology and Gaming
The fast-paced technology niche is great for making money from affiliate income, either directly from manufacturers and software companies, or through a website like Amazon.
Your best monetization routes are likely to be through advertising and affiliate marketing. Even if you’re not writing in-depth product reviews, a technology or gaming blog will give you lots of chances to link to products or software using affiliate links.
You might not be able to break industry news or share insider information, but there are still lots of things you could write about in this niche:
Specific equipment or gadgets: phone handsets, digital cameras, fitness trackers, Chromebooks…
Games: for consoles, PCs, mobiles, Facebook…
Tutorials: either for a specific piece of software (e.g. Photoshop) or more wide-ranging
Latest news: usually about a particular company or type of product
Technology or gaming for a specific demographic, such as teens or boomers
The final niche on our list is travel. Again, it’s a hugely popular niche, both with bloggers and with readers, and there are a lot of different approaches you could take to build a successful blog.
Blogging about your own travels could be monetized through affiliate links to hotels, recommended travel buys, and so on. It might even give you opportunities for free vacations.
Great photos are, of course, an important part of your travel blog. Even if you’re just writing about local attractions, people will want to see pictures.
You could focus your travel blog by writing about:
Specific countries or continents: things to do, restaurants to visit, ways to get around…
A particular type of traveler: families, solo female travelers, digital nomads…
Travel deals: for flights, hotels, packages…
Your own travels: having a key theme or brand can make this easier to monetize
Of course, these aren’t the only ones you could make great money from. There are bloggers out there with successful blogs on almost any topic you could think of.
Maybe none of the ideas we’ve looked at sound like a good fit for you. Don’t push yourself to start a blog on a topic that you’re not interested in.
Here are some other good options to try. They all have the potential to make plenty of money.
Crafts Blog
If you love to knit, paint, sew, make jewelry, or engage in some other type of craft, why not blog about it? There are lots of great crafty blogs out there, and they tend to do really well on Pinterest.
As with other highly visual niches, like fashion, lifestyle, and travel, you’ll need to be able to include great photos. You could monetize by using affiliate links to any crafting tools and supplies that you want to promote or by selling your crafted items through a marketplace like Etsy.
DIY Blog
Do you enjoy decorating and remodeling your home? Or maybe you’ve gone further and redesigned or even rebuilt your home. There are plenty of DIY blogs out there, and this can be a great type of blogging to try if you enjoy writing tutorials and “how-to” articles.
Parenting Blog
Do you have kids? There are thousands of blogs out there about parenting, covering all sorts of different angles. While you might think the niche is already full of mommy bloggers, the audience for parenting blogs is so large that it’s definitely worth considering.
To help your parenting blog stand out, you’ll want a clear angle. You could write about a stage of parenting (like parenting toddlers) or you could write for a certain group of parents (like older parents or teen parents).
Educational Blog
Is there a topic that you know well and that you could teach others about? That could become a great niche for you.
For instance, perhaps you’re a keen amateur photographer and you could write detailed tutorials for beginners. Or maybe you’re an experienced developer and you could offer tips for people learning to code.
Sites that teach people how to do something can almost always be monetized through selling ebooks, online courses, or other information products.
We all need to eat! Blogs about food can be hugely popular. In this niche, you’ll almost certainly be sharing recipes, so you’ll want to take photos that make your food look great.
Again, it helps to have an angle or specific area that your blog focuses on within the broader niche. Perhaps you’ll be writing about quick and easy meals that taste great or about gluten-free or dairy-free recipes.
Advertising, affiliate links, or your own recipe book could all be great ways to monetize your food blog.
Final Thoughts on Choosing the Best Blogging Niche
You could spend forever trying to pick the very best blogging niche. Or you could start your blog and, six months or a year from now, you could be making good money from it.
First, choose a niche that interests you and make sure you have a clear idea about how you can monetize it.
Finally, sign up for a hosting account and register your domain name. We recommend Bluehost, which will cost you just $2.75 / month, with a free domain name included (this is a special offer for WPBeginner readers).
That’s all you need to do to get started with your blog.
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