In today’s time, creating awareness about your brand or company among the potential customers is of utmost importance for the growth of your business. Creating awareness among millions of customers is a very tedious task. We now live in a world where catching someone’s attention has become harder than ever, this list of newsletter WordPress plugins can help you, for free!
How do you build this valuable list? Well, it all starts by collecting (with permission!) the email addresses of folk who visit your website. Unfortunately, this is a tricky business, because we now live in a world where it’s harder than ever to catch someone’s attention!
As marketers, we need to try to grab and hold, as much of our visitors’ attention as we can. However (and here’s the hard bit), not only must we attract their attention, but we must also persuade them that whatever we have to say/offer is worth listening to/receiving.
Lead Generation
Traditionally, marketers place the subscription box in the website’s sidebar, footer or sometimes even within an article itself (usually somewhere in the middle). Such methods are mostly passive ways of collecting emails. That is to say, they don’t prevent the visitor from continuing whatever it is they’re doing on the site, such as reading an article or simply browsing.
However, when newsletter popups arrived (the kind you occasionally see ‘pop up’ in the middle of the screen) — the game changed. Popups are active ways of collecting emails, whereby people have to literally stop what they’re doing and either (a) subscribe, or (b) close the popup.
Instead, you need to first show value, i.e. give something to the user (such as great content!), and then ask for something in return — in this case, their email address.
The term ‘showing value’ depends on your website’s domain. ‘Value’ may be a great article, free reports with great visualizations, ebooks, guides, resources Photoshop files, icons, images, audio samples, video effects — the list is endless.
Once a visitor has benefited from your content — he/she will then be naturally more inclined to share his or her email address with your business.
But how do you collect these emails? Below, we’ve put together a list of the top 15 WordPress plugins for doing exactly that: A list of the best newsletter plugins for WordPress.
Free Newsletter WordPress Plugins
Newsletter
The newsletter is one of the best free newsletter plugins available for WordPress — currently boasting well over 200,000 downloads. This plugin lets you have unlimited subscribers and send unlimited emails.
Here are the plugin’s most exciting features:
- Feature-rich drag-and-drop responsive email composer — which you can use to craft beautiful mobile-ready newsletters.
- Double opt-in subscriptions — thereby making sure you abide by EU anti-spam laws.
- Email tracking with advanced statistics — so you know who’s opening your emails.
- Easy segmentation to fine-target your campaigns — so you can target specific groups of people on your list.
Rather than having to rely on third-party services, such as MailChimp or AWeber, this plugin uses your web host to send emails. Although this sounds good at first, this could actually be a problem if you have a lot of subscribers, because your web host may not be able to support email delivery to such a system.
To counter this problem, the developers have a premium module that seamlessly integrates the plugin with Amazon SES — a cloud-powered email delivery service that’s offered as a part of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Along with a number of other useful extensions, such as email automation and full reporting, such add-ons are available in the premium version of the plugin, which starts at $45 a year.
Icegram (Free) Newsletter WordPress Plugin
The developers of Icegram describe their product with the tagline ‘grow your subscriber list, In addition, engage and convert visitors, decrease bounce rate’.
To be honest, I wouldn’t categorize it as a completely free plugin, though. Since the free version doesn’t offer triggers such as time delay, or common lead generators such as header action bars. Toast notifications (such as the ones you get on an Android phone) and slide-in messages.
Plugmatter Optin Feature Box
One of the most interesting features in Plugmatter’s Opt-in Feature Box plugin is its capability to target specific user groups. For example, you can create custom popups for individual pages that line up with your content. You can also assign a different popup for returning visitors to your site.
The free version of the plugin enables you to turn off the popup for already subs-users. Which is a pretty neat feature for a free plugin.
With the premium version of the plugin. So, you can also visually customize its look and feel to uphold your brand’s identity. Apart from this, it also supports A/B testing and Google Event Tracking for all your hardcore data buffs out there!
WordPress PopUp — Popover Maker (Free)
A freemium plugin from WPMU DEV, WordPress PopUp offers most of the good features. Such as eight popup animations, 20-plus conditional behaviors, various popup trigger options, and more. You can also design responsive popup forms using the free form builder, or use any of the prebuilt customizable templates.
The premium version of the plugin also includes more popup trigger options and ad-blocker bypassing. While the free version is a great option for beginners. Moreover, the premium version includes access to WPMU’s library of multiple plugin lists.
SumoMe: Newsletter WordPress (Outdated – Honorable Mention)
SumoMe is far from just a free list-building plugin. Rather, it’s more of a full-blown marketing solution that’s used by more than 430,000 websites around the world. Including the likes of Airbnb and Social Media Examiner. Further, it’s actually one of the most popular free marketing plugins in the WordPress store. With well over 100,000 active installations!
With regards to the newsletter-specific features of the plugin, first off. You have the popular opt-ins such as the welcome mat scroll-in popup, coupled with exit-intent technology. The free version also includes a form customizer to reflect your brand’s identity.
Premium features include customizable templates and A/B testing, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your signup boxes, and so on. Advanced display rules enable you to show the popup on a mobile, desktop or home page. The SumoMe product suite is an excellent starting point for a data-driven content marketer. For more information.
Conclusion
Starting off with email marketing is a good step toward your overall marketing goals. However, it’s important to have a content marketing plan (i.e. a solid strategy in place) before you take the plunge. To get started, ask yourself questions such as: How often do I send emails? What will I be promoting in my emails? Should I consider a drip-email strategy? Let us know in the comments! and also feel free to share your favorite newsletter WordPress plugins.