Email Marketing for WordPress: Why is it Important and Which Newsletter Plugin to Use?

Ahh, email marketing.

It’s the oldest way to market your product. But has it also become old-fashioned? 

In this age of social media marketing and chatbots, the debate has heated up on the relevance of email marketing. And yet, marketers continue to use it and swear by its benefits.

So, should you include email marketing in your marketing strategy or not?

And if you do, which plugin or service do you use?

We’re going to answer both questions for you in this article.

First, we’ll take a look at 5 reasons why email marketing is still relevant for any WordPress website, and then we’ll introduce you to some popular email marketing plugins and services that are available for WordPress. So without taking any more time, lets jump straight into it:

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Reasons why Email Marketing is important for your WordPress website

There are more than enough reasons to believe that even in this age of social media and search engines, email marketing is still a very effective way to retain traffic and convert it. Here we’re going to tell you about 5 such reasons. Let’s begin:

1. It’s more effective than social media

First of all, email marketing is more effective than social media marketing from a conversion perspective.

Why? Because your social media posts might be missed by a lot of your fans and followers. What if someone doesn’t open up Facebook that day?

But when you send out an email it reaches every single subscriber.

So the reach is way higher than any of the social media platforms. When the reach is higher, the traffic you get is also higher.

Don’t get me wrong - social media marketing is important to generate new leads in any modern marketing strategy, but if you want to convert those leads into customers and repeat customers then email marketing is the way to go.

2. It makes you independent 

The second good thing about email marketing is that it makes you independent.

With Social Media marketing you depend on the rules of Facebook and Twitter, while in search engine marketing you depend on Google. If any of these companies change their algorithms (which they often do), your traffic takes a beating.

However, with email marketing, there is no such problem. Once you’ve built a list of subscribers, it’s completely up to you to use it any way you please.

3. It’s cost-effective

Email marketing is very cost-effective when compared to any other method of marketing. Once you’ve built a sizable list of email subscribers, you can share your content with them without spending a ton of time and money.

All you need to do is invest in a good email marketing automation plugin, and that’s all. Depending on the resources available in your organization you may also need to hire someone to create the content for email marketing, but still, your total money spent on it will be much less while your ROI is much higher than other marketing channels.

4. It’s customizable

Email marketing is also customizable. You can generate a variety of email lists from your site by serving different types of content to different audiences. Then each of those lists can be targeted with the help of customized emails and content to maximize the results.

For instance, if you run an e-commerce site, your customers can subscribe to updates about a product that has sold out. Then as soon as the product is back in stock, they can be notified of it automatically. Similarly, if you sell downloadable products (i.e. online course, ebook, etc.) then you can build separate lists for your free and paid subscribers, providing them access to different types of content.

5. It’s measurable

Finally, email marketing is also highly measurable. You can track the results of every single campaign that you run with email marketing and every single event that took place with your emails.

From the opening of mails to bounce rate to unsubscribe rate to links clicked, everything can be tracked with complete accuracy. You can also perform split tests or A/B tests on your emails, and their results can also be measured. There’s no guesswork involved, which helps you in optimizing your marketing campaigns effectively. 

Best Email marketing plugins

We just told you 5 of the many reasons why email marketing is still important in 2020 for any WordPress website. With that in mind, now we’re going to tell you about some email marketing plugins you can use to get started. This list is no particular order, these are just the widely used plugins.

#1. FluentCRM

FluentCRM has suddenly taken the WordPress space by storm. Unlike most email newsletter plugins, this plugin is a complete email marketing automation tool that aims to become a fully-fledged CRM soon.

FluentCRM allows you to segment your email list with lists, tags, dynamic segments, and advanced filters. It lets you send email campaigns and set up email sequences. You can also create customer journey workflows using its powerful automation builder.

The best part? –It costs just $129 per year!

#2. MailChimp (MC4WP)

First of all, we’ve got MailChimp. It’s unarguably the most popular email marketing service right now for WordPress based websites, and there are a number of reasons behind its popularity. The chief among them is its ease of use and flexibility, which allows you to create custom sign-up forms, landing pages, newsletters and other campaign elements. It also works well with WooCommerce and other e-commerce solutions developed for WordPress. The free version allows up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.

#3. SendInBlue

Next, we have the SendInBlue email marketing plugin that comes with a drag-and-drop email creation tool and pretty much every other feature that is offered by MailChimp. It provides you real-time statistics on how your emails are doing and also provides professional support for all those times when you need some help. However, you need to be using the SendInBlue email marketing service to use this plugin. The free version of the plugin allows you to send up to 300 emails per day.

#4. Newsletter

The functionality of this plugin is as simple as its name - just install it, and you can start collecting emails immediately without having to go through any complex setup. Newsletters can be created with the help of a drag-and-drop tool that comes built into it, and a central status panel can be used to monitor the performance of all your emails. A different thing about it is the 20+ extensions that can be purchased to make it even more powerful. The extensions are available as a part of its Premium service.

#5. Mailster

Now, let’s talk about Mailster. The difference between Mailster and other plugins mentioned above is that it doesn’t require you to use their own email marketing service. You can use any email marketing service, and it’ll work just fine with it. In addition to that, it’s a premium plugin and no free option is available. Some of its unique features include sending emails based on specific triggers, a large library of templates and more detailed analytics about your emails.

#6. MailPoet

MailPoet offers more than 50 templates to get you started. You can drag and drop sections to customize it to your liking. You can send out emails automatically whenever you make a new post on your blog. You can also send out welcome emails when on autopilot when someone new subscribes. However, with the free version, you are limited to 1000 subscribers. The premium version of the plugin is priced according to the size of your email list.

#7. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a popular email marketing tool that helps you generate leads. It integrates and works seamlessly for WordPress websites. It offers unique features like Geo-location targeting and targeted messaging by observing the user’s mouse behavior.  It also comes with conversion-optimized templates, a powerful segmentation engine that helps you target the correct audience and advanced insights into your campaigns.

#8. Bloom

Bloom is an email opt-in plugin for WordPress by Elegant Themes. It allows you to create highly targeted email marketing campaigns, based on the user’s location and interactions with the content. You can choose from over 100 templates and 6 different display types. Easily set up the pop-ups and Fly-ins to be triggered by different activities like ‘After inactivity’ or ‘After commenting’. 

#9. SendPress

SendPress is a WordPress newsletter plugin with no limit on the number of subscribers even with the free version. It comes with an easy to use Editor and email tracking. The pro version includes HTML Templates, Advanced reports, 3rd Party Sending, Custom Fields and Post Notification.

#10. MailOptin

MailOptin helps you grow your email list as well as automate your email marketing process. Lead Generation features include Lightbox Pop-Up, Floating Notification Bar, and Slide-in box. They help grab the user's attention without being disruptive. You can also choose to display the opt-in form in the Sidebar or any other widget space, before or after a post or embedded inline. As for automation, you can automatically send out emails when you publish content, schedule newsletters, and email campaigns.

Conclusion

So that was our brief introduction for you about the importance of email marketing, and 4 popular email marketing plugins available for WordPress. If you still have any questions on the subject, feel free to leave them in the comments and we’ll try our best to answer them. Also, share this post so others who may be having the same questions about email marketing can get their answers. 

Featured Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay