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Six Things I Like Best About MailerLite

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I’d been a long-time Mailchimp user, but I switched to MailerLite earlier this year and am very happy with that decision.

As I was trying to get more knowledgeable about automation and drip campaigns, I found Mailchimp to be more and more difficult to use. The interface was not as intuitive. There was confusing terminology (“Customer Journey Builder”) that threw me off. Support was less… well… supportive than it used to be, taking a lot longer to respond. And I was going to have to increase my monthly plan fee to access some of the features I now needed.

I was told about MailerLite in a group and signed up for their free trial. I was impressed right away with the simple, efficient user interface. And after the trial I signed up with no regrets.

Here are the six things I like best about MailerLite.

Great support. They have chat support that often answers right away, often even on weekends. Otherwise, they get back to you in email, and I’ve never had to wait more than a couple of hours.

Reasonable pricing. For 1,000 customers or less, their Premium plan is only $10 per month and includes all features.

Clean User Interface. MailerLite has a simple, straightforward user interface without a huge number of options or clutter. It’s a perfect fit for what WP Minder needs from an email newsletter provider, and is just all-around easy to use. Terminology is also as expected (such as “Automation” – it’s obvious what that menu link is for).

MailerLite's dashboard
MailerLite’s dashboard

Easy automation tools. As someone new to drip campaigns, I found MailerLite’s Automation section to be very intuitive.

You build your automation step by step in a flowchart-style interface. It made so much sense the first time I used it. You can include email content, delays, ecommerce purchases (if connected to your website’s ecommerce platform), and actions (like adding someone to a group) in the flow. Very cool.

MailerLite's easy automation workflow
MailerLite’s easy automation workflow

Simple WooCommerce integration. Connecting MailerLite and WooCommerce was very easy, and it opens up new default subscriber segments like “Repeat Customers,” “High-spending Customers” and “Subscribers with Zero Purchases.” These segments and custom fields can be used in automation tools and emails campaigns, too.

The drag and drop email builder is really good. The one in MailerLite works intuitively and includes many different types of content sections. I was never able to get the RSS feeds in Mailchimp’s builder to work correctly or look right, but in MailerLite they come in with no adjustment needed.

Drag-and-drop builder
Drag-and-drop builder

 

What provider do you use for email newsletters and/or drip campaigns? Share in the comments below if you have something you like.

The links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and make a purchase, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own. I only share affiliate links to high-quality, useful products or services that I’ve used for myself or for my clients.

Weekly Links Roundup – Membership Sites, Not Secure, Emailed Blog Posts, .com to .org

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This week’s WordPress and web marketing links.

Ever thought about starting a membership website? It can be a daunting proposition. Here’s a short but informative list of FAQs for starting a membership site from MemberPress that may help you gel your ideas before you decide to take the leap. Also: MemberPress is an awesome tool for running your new site. They have good support and the plugin itself is pretty intuitive to set up and use.

One more step in eradicating the insecure website – as of last week Google Chrome is now flagging all plain HTTP sites with a more prominent “Not Secure” warning in the address bar. If you’re still using HTTP you’ll see this warning before your site’s URL. Please, get an SSL certificate for your site and switch to HTTPS. If you don’t know how, contact me. You are hurting your business and your customers by not doing this.

A great way to reach more readers is to offer your blog by email. Basically, a blog produces an RSS (really simple syndication) feed that users can subscribe too with tools like Feedly. But you can make it even easier for your readers by having them instead subscribe to a blog mailing list and delivering excerpts of new posts to their email inbox automatically. The awesome email marketing tool Mailchimp offers a step by step tutorial in how to get your blog posts automatically into newsletter format. You can choose to send out notifications about new posts as they’re published or on a regular schedule. The Mailchimp RSS tools will provide prominent links to your post and blog to drive more vetted traffic to your website – which is what we all want, right?

Finally…. You may know that wordpress.com and wordpress.org are two completely different animals. If you started off with a wordpress.com site and quickly realized that it has too many limitations to function as a business platform, here’s a guide on moving from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. Please note that the quality of your host really matters. A $3-per-month host may sound like a great deal, but it will not be – you will pay primarily with poor performance. Do some research and find a solid host – it’s worth the effort.

Please let me know if this information is useful to you by commenting below. And let me know if there’s something in particular you’d like to know more about.

 

Set Up an Event Signup and Reminder with Gravity Forms and Mailchimp

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A client asked me to look into event plugins where we can set up a signup form for a webinar he plans to give soon. I did some research, but couldn’t find any (including the popular commercial plugins) that would let us automatically send out a reminder email a few days before the webinar; this was a surprisingly non-existent feature.

So… automation is something that Mailchimp excels at. We were already using Gravity Forms and Mailchimp on his website – it wasn’t a big step to use them together to make our own event signup and reminder tool. I had to write up documentation for him, and am sharing it here.

Here’s what I did…

1. Make a new list in Mailchimp to collect subscribers for your event.

When you create your list, you’ll need to add a hidden Date field to the default signup form. To do that, go to Signup Forms and open General Forms. You’ll see the default form with First Name, Last Name and Email Address.

Click on Date in the right menu and the field will be added to the form. Click the field and in the Field Settings to the right, add a Field Label and tick the Hidden circle under Field Visibility, then click Save Field. See below for an example.

Hidden field in Mailchimp signup form

2. Make a new form in Gravity Forms for your event signup (let’s say you’re also having your own webinar).

Gravity Forms hidden fieldYour form needs to contain these fields (keep it simple and don’t ask for more than this): First Name, Last Name, Email, and Event Date. The first three will need to be required, but the last one, you’ll set as a Hidden Field, and you’ll put in the date of your webinar.

To hide the date field go to the Advanced tab and click ‘Hidden’ under Visibility. This is the trigger that will drive your automation. See the example at right…

3. Connect your new form to your new Mailchimp list.

Assuming you’ve already installed the Mailchimp addon for Gravity Forms, go to Settings > Mailchimp in the form editor. Add a new feed, name it as you like, match the dropdown field names between the form and the list, and select Double Opt-In if it’s not already selected (this asks the recipient to confirm they really want to be added to your list of subscribers). Then click Update Settings at the bottom.

4. Add your Gravity Form to a page or post on your site.

This is as simple as clicking the Add Form icon in the menu. Choose the new form and place it where you want it – this is where people will sign up for your webinar. Don’t forget to add content describing your event – the date, time, location or URL, topic, etc.

This is a good time for an initial test – try signing up and see what happens. You should receive an opt-in notice, and in Mailchimp you should see 1 new subscriber for your list.

Okay – now we’re mostly set up. People can sign up for your webinar on your website and they’re automatically added to your new mailing list at Mailchimp, after they approve the confirmation email they receive. Now we need to set up the automation.

5. Go back to Mailchimp and click Automation.

There are a ton of automation options, but we want to go to Date-based and choose Specific Date. Give your new automation a name and choose your mailing list.

To keep this simple, we’ll use just one Trigger. You can set up any number of emails though – like maybe one to follow up the day after your event. Delete the second and third triggers and click Edit Trigger for the first one. Change the number of days to whatever you like and click Update Trigger.

Then click Design Email. You’ll be shown the available templates – choose whatever you like, but just remember to do the test to see how it looks in a phone. Add a subject line that will get attention – “Your event starts in 3 days!” or something similar. In your email body you’ll want to edit the title and the content – put in the event date, time, location/URL and any other info to help the attendee.

Then use the built-in test, confirm you like the way it looks in both desktop and phone, and as the last step Start Workflow to set your automation running.

That should do it – you may want to set the number of days to a bigger number to test the autoresponder before you announce your event, just in case.

 

Use Mailchimp to Send Subscribers New Blog Posts via Email

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If you’re already using Mailchimp for your email newsletter, did you know you can also use it to send subscribers your latest blog posts in their email inbox?

While there are a few WordPress plugins that manage email subscriptions, I like using Mailchimp so I have all my email campaign information – and mailing lists – in one place.

Here’s a quick guide on how to set this up…

  1. In Mailchimp, create a new list.
  2. If you have an existing mailing list you want to import, you can do that via a CSV or Excel file. See more information on importing users who have already opted in.
  3. Then, you’ll need to create a signup form. You can do this in a few ways:
    1. Use a WordPress plugin that works with Mailchimp like this one.
    2. Use a form plugin like Gravity Forms that has a Mailchimp connection through an addon.
    3. Create a form using the Signup Forms tools in Mailchimp itself (it’s in the Lists section).
  4. Once you’ve added your new form to the site and connected it to your new mailing list. you’ll need to create an RSS (really simple syndication) campaign. This will send new blog posts to your subscribers via email so you can keep in touch with them more easily. To do this go to Campaign, click on Create Campaign and choose ‘RSS Campaign.’
  5. Add the feed URL for your blog – typically this will be ‘http://yourdomain.com/feed/’ but if you’re not sure, try that and Mailchimp will let you know if it’s incorrect.
  6. Choose your new mailing list for the recipients.
  7. Then you’ll need to choose a theme – I leave this to you, it might take awhile. Be sure to preview the theme you choose using both the Desktop and Mobile buttons to make sure it looks nice in a mobile device.
  8. Once you’ve chosen your theme, you’ll need to consider how to present your blog posts. These RSS merge tags allow you to really customize what’s displayed and can be pasted into your new theme’s content areas. Us the Preview and Test tool to see what it’s going to look like – this is important! Mine looked awful when I first set it up. If you get stuck, check out these examples of  RSS merge tags in action.
  9. When you’re satisfied with the layout, send yourself a test email. If it looks good in both desktop and browsers, you’re done.

If you have more questions, check out this article by Mailchimp, it has info on troubleshooting your RSS campaign.