Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to send SMS messages to their subscribers along with email newsletters.
The answer is yes. You can easily send text messages to your website users by using one of the many SMS plugins and services for WordPress.
In this article, we will show you how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users.
Why Send SMS Messages to Your Users?
Sending SMS messages can be highly effective in bringing back customers to your WordPress website. For the best results, you can combine SMS messages with other marketing tools like an email newsletter, push notifications, and search traffic.
Text messages have a fantastic open rate. Some studies suggest that SMS open rates are as high as 98%.
Compare that with a typical open rate of just 20% for emails, and you can see why SMS messages are becoming a preferred marketing medium.
People also check text messages much more quickly than they check emails. It takes an average of 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email.
Of course, you don’t want to overdo it. Even when they have opted in, most users won’t want daily texts from you. Even weekly might be too much.
Important: Make sure that you obey the law. Different countries have different legal requirements for text messages, particularly marketing messages.
You might also want to use SMS messages to send receipts or order updates from your WooCommerce store. We will cover how to do that later in this tutorial.
For the sake of this tutorial, we will be using the Brevo platform. However, you can also use other email marketing solutions like Omnisend, HubSpot, and more.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to send SMS messages using Brevo.
To get started, you will need to set up an account with Brevo if you haven’t already got one. On the Brevo website, just click the ‘Sign Up Free’ button to start creating your account.
You can get started creating an account by typing in your email address and password. After that, you will need to click the ‘Create an account’ button.
Alternatively, you can use the buttons to sign up using your Google or Apple credentials.
This will bring you to a screen where you can complete your user profile. Simply fill in the form and then click the ‘Next’ button. There will be several pages to fill in.
During this process, an activation code will be sent to your phone in an SMS message to confirm the number is actually yours.
After that, you will be able to choose one of Brevo’s plans, including a free plan. The different plans include sending emails, starting at 300 emails per day. However, you will need to purchase credits to send SMS messages.
Once you have finished the account setup process, you will see your Brevo dashboard.
Before you can start sending messages, you will need to contact the support team. Go to the Brevo contact page and write a message that includes:
A note that you will be sending marketing messages
Once your account has been approved, you will get an email from Brevo. Note that this can take up to 24 hours.
Buying SMS Credits for Your Brevo Account
While you are waiting for your account to be approved, you can continue setting up your Brevo account. The first thing you need to do is activate the SMS app in Brevo.
From the Campaigns dashboard, click the ‘Create a campaign’ button.
You will see the different types of campaigns you can create. Notice that email campaigns are active while the other types of campaigns are not.
You just need to click ‘Activate’ next to SMS.
After a few seconds, you will see a message that the app was enabled successfully, and there will be a tick mark next to ‘SMS’.
You can now close the popup by clicking the ‘X’ icon at the top right.
Now that the SMS app is active, you can purchase some SMS credits.
To do that, you need to click ‘Usage and plan’ at the top of the page. This will show you how many emails and SMS credits you have to use in your campaigns.
Your current SMS balance is 0, so you will need to click the ‘Get more credits’ link.
Brevo defaults to selling you 100 messages at a time. If you like, you can purchase more credits by typing a larger number under ‘Number of messages’.
Note: It costs 1 credit to send a text message in the US, but you will need to pay more than 1 credit per message in other countries.
Once you have selected the number of credits, go ahead and complete your purchase.
Once you have bought your credits, you may need to wait up to 48 hours for them to appear in your account. You might also get an email from Brevo asking you for more details about what type of SMS marketing you plan to do.
This is to help you stay in compliance with SMS laws.
You will need to reply to them with answers to their questions before your credits can be added to your account.
Creating Your SMS Marketing List
In order to send out SMS messages, you will need to import your contact list.
You can get started by clicking the ‘Contacts’ tab on the left. Or if you are still looking at the Campaigns Dashboard, then you can click the ‘>’ arrow next to ‘Total contacts’.
This will display a list of all your contacts. Right now, you will be the only contact on the list.
Now you can click the ‘Import contacts’ button at the top of the page.
This will take you to the ‘Import options’ page. You will be given two options for importing your contacts.
You can either upload a .csv file from your computer or you can copy and paste contacts line by line. Whichever option you choose, Brevo will offer examples to help you.
Important: Your users need to have opted in for SMS marketing messages. You can collect website visitors’ phone numbers and consent using a WordPress form plugin like WPForms or a marketing popup plugin like OptinMonster.
Sending Your First SMS Campaign
Once your credits show up, you can start sending messages.
It’s a good idea to send a test message first so that you know that everything is working correctly. The phone number you use for the test message needs to belong to a contact in your list.
You can use the number you added when you first signed up. Or, if you want to use a different phone number for your test, then you will need to add a test contact in Brevo.
Simply go to the Contacts section in your dashboard and click the ‘Create a contact’ button.
A panel will pop up on the right of the screen where you can create a contact.
You need to fill in your details, including your mobile phone number.
After that, you need to add your test contact to a list.
You can use an existing list or add a new one.
Once you have done that, you need to click the ‘Create’ button at the bottom of the page. You should see a message telling you that the subscriber has been successfully added.
Now you can try sending a test SMS.
First, go to the Campaigns » SMS tab in your Brevo dashboard. Next, click either the ‘Create an SMS campaign’ or ‘Create my first SMS campaign’ button.
You can enter whatever you want for your Campaign Name. This isn’t seen by the recipients but should make sense to you when you look at your campaigns in the future.
You should also enter an SMS Sender. This will display for users in certain countries.
If you will be sending SMS messages to customers in the United States, then you must enable the ‘Manage compliance for the United States’ toggle.
This is important because it will help you follow United States laws for text messages.
This will give you two more options to fill in: an organization prefix so that your customers will recognize who the message is from, and unsubscribe instructions.
If customers in the United States or Canada will be receiving this SMS message, then you will also need to click the ‘this form’ link in the orange box to register for a toll-free number and comply with regulations.
Next, enter your SMS message. Beneath the message box, you can see how many characters you have used and how many SMS messages will be sent.
If you use more than 160 characters, then the message will be counted as 2 SMS messages.
At the bottom of the screen, click the ‘Send a test’ button when you are ready.
This will pop up the ‘Send a test’ box.
There is just one field where you should enter your mobile number, which you included when you added yourself as a contact earlier. After that, you need to click the paper airplane button to send the SMS.
You should see a message telling you that your test message has been sent successfully.
Now, check your phone to see if the text has come through. Here’s ours:
If your text hasn’t arrived, wait a minute or two, and it should appear. If not, double-check that you are using the right mobile number.
Once you know that everything’s working, you can continue setting up your campaign. Click the ‘X’ button to close the ‘Send a test’ window, and then click the ‘Next Step’ button in the top right corner of the screen.
Now, you will need to choose the contact list you want the message to go to. If you like, you can select multiple lists.
Just check all the lists you want to use, then click the ‘Next Step’ button.
Your SMS campaign is now ready to send.
You can review the details and change them if you want to, using the ‘Return to this step’ links. Once you are happy, simply click ‘Schedule’ in the top right.
You can either schedule your campaign so that your texts are sent out at a specific time, or you can send the messages immediately.
Just make sure you avoid sending the campaign early in the morning or late at night. Be mindful of time zones, too. Not everyone will remember to turn on Do Not Disturb mode overnight.
Sending SMS Messages to Your WooCommerce Customers
What if you want to send your customers notifications about their orders?
If you have decided to start an online store, then you might want to send text updates as well as emails to your customers.
Sending WooCommerce SMS Notifications Using YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications
The easiest way to do this is with a plugin like YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications. This plugin lets you use an SMS gateway, such as Twilio, to send SMS messages to your customers. They receive these texts when their order status changes, such as when it’s dispatched.
You can set up YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications so that it’s enabled for all customers, or you can let customers opt-in at the checkout.
Also, you can use it to get your own SMS notifications about new orders. This makes it easy to stay on top of things if you are away from your computer.
Sending WooCommerce SMS Notifications Using FunnelKit Automations
If you are looking for an alternative, then you can use FunnelKit Automations to send SMS messages to your WooCommerce customers.
FunnelKit Automations is one of the best marketing automation tools for WooCommerce sites. It allows you to easily set up automated SMS and email campaigns right from your WordPress dashboard.
It comes with pre-built automations for new customers, first orders, post-purchase sequences, shipment tracking notifications, abandoned cart reminders, anniversary coupons, and more. Or, you can create your own workflows using the visual automation builder.
Sending WooCommerce SMS Notifications Using Uncanny Automator
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Do you want to send automated birthday and anniversary emails in WooCommerce?
Birthdays and purchase anniversaries are great opportunities to get in touch with your customers. By marking these special dates, you can make customers feel valued, boost engagement, and even get more sales by offering incentives like personalized coupon codes and discounts.
In this article, we will show you how you can send birthday reminders and purchase anniversary emails in WooCommerce.
Why Send Automated Birthday & Anniversary Emails?
If you run an online store, then an email list allows you to promote your products and services to people who have already shown an interest in your business.
After building an email list, it’s important to keep subscribers engaged and interested in what you have to say. One option is to send automated birthday and anniversary emails.
Immediately, this makes customers feel more valued and appreciated, which can boost brand loyalty. However, you can often get even more engagement and sales by offering rewards such as discounts, coupon codes, and free gifts.
These email campaigns are often very popular with customers. In fact, according to Omnisend, birthday emails have a 45% open rate, a 12% click-through rate, and a 3% conversion rate, which is much higher than the national average.
With that being said, let’s see how you can send automated birthday and anniversary emails in WooCommerce.
How to Send Automated Birthday & Anniversary Emails
The easiest way to send automated birthday and anniversary emails in WooCommerce is by using FunnelKit Automations Pro. FunnelKit is the best automation tool for WooCommerce websites. It allows you to customize your WooCommerce emails using a drag-and-drop builder, and create automated email and SMS campaigns.
First, you will need to install and activate the FunnelKit Automations Pro plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Now, you’re ready to create automated birthday and anniversary reminder emails. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the email campaign you want to create.
How to Send Automated Birthday Emails in WooCommerce
Personalized birthday messages can help you build a stronger relationship with your customers, while also encouraging brand loyalty.
Even better, you can add a gift to your birthday messages, such as a personalized coupon code, a free upgrade, or a complimentary digital download such as an ebook. These gifts can boost engagement, get customers to visit your website, and even get you more sales.
With that being said, let’s see how you can send automated birthday emails using the FunnelKit Automations plugin.
Step 1. Get the Customer’s Date of Birth
Before you can send automated birthday emails, you’ll need to know the customer’s date of birth. You can collect this information on WooCommerce’s checkout page, My Account page, or thank you page.
To get started, go to FunnelKit Automations » Settings in the WordPress dashboard.
In the left-hand menu, select ‘Birthday Reminders.’
You can now choose where to add the date of birth field.
The first option is to collect this information on the checkout page.
By making this field part of the checkout process, you’re guaranteed to get the information. However, this does add an extra step to the purchasing process, which may increase your cart abandonment rates.
To add a field to the WooCommerce checkout page, simply check the box next to: ‘Enable Date of Birth field on WooCommerce checkout.’
By default, FunnelKit will use a ‘Date of Birth’ label but you can replace this with your own custom phrasing like ‘Birthday’ by typing into ‘Field Label.’
You can also change where the field appears on the WooCommerce checkout page by opening the ‘Field Position’ dropdown.
Then, choose between After Billing Details, Before Order Notes, or After Order Notes.
Another option is adding the field to the ‘Account details’ section of WooCommerce’s My Account page.
This allows you to collect the date of birth without adding friction to the purchasing process. However, there’s no guarantee that every customer will visit the My Account page and enter their date of birth.
To add this field to the My Account page, just check the box next to the ‘Enable Date of Birth field on My Account’ option.
To change the label, simply type your custom messaging into ‘Field Label.’
Finally, you can add the birthday field to the thank you page using a shortcode.
In this way, you can collect the date of birth without adding more steps to the checkout process. The customer will also see the thank you page every time they make a purchase, so they’ll get multiple chances to enter their date of birth.
To create a shortcode, check the box labeled ‘Enable Date of Birth collection form shortcode on the Thank you page.’
By default, FunnelKit will show the following message when a customer enters their date of birth: Thank you for submitting your Birthdate!
To replace this with your own messaging, simply type into the ‘Success Message’ field.
After that, FunnelKit will create the shortcode.
Simply click on the ‘Copy’ button to copy the code to your computer’s clipboard.
In the popup that appears, click on ‘Birthday Reminder.’
Then, select ‘Done’ to add the trigger to your workflow.
The next step is configuring the trigger, so go ahead and click on ‘Birthday Reminder.’
In the popup that appears, you can choose whether to run the automation on the contact’s birthday, or before the contact’s birthday.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to create follow-up emails. For example, you might send the customer a personalized coupon code 7 days before their birthday, and then a follow-up email warning that their coupon is about to expire.
With that in mind, you may want to select ‘Before contact’s birthday’ and then type in the number of days.
Another option is to select ‘On contact’s birthday.’
This is a good choice if you’re simply wishing the customer a happy birthday, or you’re sending them a free gift coupon that doesn’t expire.
With that done, you need to tell FunnelKit when to send the birthday email. Typically, you’ll want to use the time when your customers are most likely to be online.
That said, it helps to know as much about your customers as possible. If you haven’t already, then we recommend installing Google Analytics in WordPress. This will help you learn more about your customers, including their location and time zone.
By continuously monitoring and fine-tuning all your custom WooCommerce emails, you should be able to improve your open rates and conversion rates.
To send the automated birthday email at a specific time, simply type into the fields that show ‘HH’ (hour) and ‘MM’ (minute) by default.
It is possible for a customer to be in the same workflow multiple times, simultaneously.
This may be a good idea for some automated workflows, such as upselling or cross-selling automations where multiple campaigns may be running at once. However, this doesn’t make sense for an automated birthday campaign, so make sure you select ‘Once.’
When you are happy with how the trigger is set up, simply click on the ‘Save’ button.
Step 3. Create a Personalized Birthday Coupon (Optional)
Many businesses send their customers a coupon code on their birthday. This can make customers feel valued, while also getting you more engagement and sales.
With that in mind, you may want to create a personalized coupon that you’ll add to the birthday email. To do this, click on the ‘+’ and then select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, click on the ‘WooCommerce’ tab.
Then, select ‘Create Coupon.’
Finally, click ‘Done’ to add the action to your workflow.
Back in the main FunnelKit editor, click on the action you just added. This opens a popup where you can customize the ‘Create Coupon’ action.
To start, type a name for the coupon into the ‘Coupon Title’ field. This is just for your reference so you can use anything you want.
After that, choose the type of coupon that you want to create, using the ‘Discount Type’ dropdown menu.
After making a decision, you’ll need to type the discount amount into the ‘Amount’ field.
FunnelKit automatically creates a unique coupon code for each contact. However, you can add a prefix to the start of the coupon, which can either be plain text or dynamic merge tags.
FunnelKit will replace merge tags with real text every time it creates a code, so this is a great way to create personalized coupons.
Since you’re creating a birthday email, it’s a good idea to include the customer’s name in the coupon. This can catch their attention and also makes your code easier to remember.
You can add the customer’s name using a merge tag, so click on the ‘{{.}}’ icon.
Note: Some products use other names for merge tags. WPForms, for instance, calls them smart tags.
This opens a popup where you can look through all the available merge tags.
When you find a tag you want to use, you might see either a ‘Copy’ or ‘Settings’ icon. If you see the ‘Copy’ symbol, then simply click to copy the merge tag.
With that done, you can go ahead and paste the tag into the ‘Coupon Code Prefix’ field.
As you can see in the following image, you can use a mix of plain text and tags.
When looking through the tags, you may see a ‘Settings’ icon instead of a ‘Copy’ icon.
For example, the following image shows a ‘Settings’ icon next to the Contact First Name merge tag.
This icon allows you to set a fallback, which FunnelKit will use if it doesn’t have access to the real value.
If you see a ‘Settings’ icon, then give it a click and type some text into the ‘Fallback’ field.
After creating a fallback, click on ‘Copy.’ With that done, simply paste the merge tag into the ‘Coupon Code Prefix’ field.
By default, the coupon will never expire. A sense of urgency and FOMO can encourage customers to use the coupon, so you may want to select the button next to either ‘Expire after Specific Days’ or ‘Expire on Specific Date.’
Customers love free shipping, so you may want to consider selecting the ‘Yes’ radio button under ‘Allow Free Shipping.’
When you’re happy with how the coupon is set up, make sure to copy the code under the ‘Coupon Title.’
You’ll need to add this code to the birthday email, so store it somewhere safe.
With that done, click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.
Step 4: Design the WooCommerce Automated Birthday Email
Now, it’s time to create the WooCommerce email that you‘ll send to customers.
To get started, click on the ‘+’ button and then select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, choose ‘Send Email.’
Then, click on ‘Done.’
You can now create an email by typing in a subject and previewing it.
You can use a mix of plain text and merge tags. To add a merge tag, just click on the ‘{{.}}’ icon next to the field where you want to use the tag.
You can then add merge tags by following the same process described above.
When you’re happy with the subject and preview, scroll to the small text editor.
Here, you can create the email body text by typing into the editor. You can also add dynamic tags by selecting ‘Merge Tags’ and then following the process described above.
To add your coupon code, simply paste or type in the {{wc_dynamic_coupon id='6'}} code you copied in the previous step. Double-check the ID number for the discount you’re sending the user.
The text editor has all the standard text formatting options, so you can add links, change the text size, change the font, and more.
To see how the email will look to customers, simply click the ‘Show Preview’ button.
When you’re happy with how the birthday email is set up, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save & Close’ button.
Step 5: Add Follow-up Emails to the Birthday Campaign
At this point, you might want to add one or more follow-up emails to the campaign. For example, you might send the customer’s birthday coupon in advance, followed by a simple greeting on their birthday.
When creating follow-up emails, it’s important to add a delay so the customer doesn’t get all the messages at the same time.
To do this, click on the ‘+’ icon and then select ‘Delay.’
On this screen, open the dropdown that shows ‘Minutes’ by default and choose a value from the list. When creating a birthday email sequence you’ll typically want to select either ‘Days’ or ‘Weeks.’
After that, type in the value you want to use, such as 1 Week or 3 Days.
With that done, you can set the time when FunnelKit will send the follow-up email.
It’s usually a good idea to send emails at a time when the customer is most likely to be online, or when you typically get the highest open rates.
To do this, just check the following box: ‘Delay until a specific time of day’.
You can now set a time using the new settings that appear.
By default, FunnelKit will use the timezone in your WordPress settings. However, you may want to schedule the message based on the customer’s timezone, by checking the ‘In Contact Timezone’ box.
When you’re happy with how the delay is set up, click on ‘Save.’
With that done, it’s time to create the follow-up email. Go ahead and click on the ‘+’ icon and then select ‘Action’.
In the popup that appears, select ‘Send Email.’
After that, click ‘Done.’
This opens a popup where you can create a subject and preview, and type in body text by following the same process described above.
When you are happy with the follow-up email, don’t forget to click on ‘Save & Close.’
To add more delays and follow-ups, simply repeat these steps.
When you are ready to make the automation live on your WordPress website, click on the ‘Inactive’ slider so that it turns to ‘Active.’
That’s it. FunnelKit will now send automated birthday emails to your customers.
How to Send Automated Anniversary Emails in WooCommerce
Purchase anniversaries are an opportunity to get in touch with customers, and remind them about your online store.
You can also use anniversary emails to get more conversions. For example, if you sell physical products, then you might encourage customers to reorder the item by offering them a buy one get one free coupon or free shipping.
If you sell subscriptions using a plugin such as WooCommerce Subscriptions, then you can encourage the customer to renew their annual subscription by offering them a complimentary upgrade.
Even better, you can present these coupons and special offers as an exclusive reward for being a loyal customer. This can make customers feel valued and encourages them to take advantage of their reward.
Step 1. Create an Anniversary Email Automation For WooCommerce
To start, you’ll need to create a new WooCommerce automation by going to FunnelKit Automations » Automations (Next Gen).
Here, select Add New Automation.
Now, you’ll see all the ready-made automation templates you can use.
To create an anniversary email, click on ‘Start from Scratch’.
You can now type in a name for the automation. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.
With that done, click on ‘Create.’
Step 2. Add an Order Created Trigger
The first step is adding the workflow trigger, so click on ‘Select Trigger.’
In the popup that appears, select the ‘WooCommerce’ tab.
Then, click on ‘Order Created.’
Next, click ‘Done’ to add the trigger to your workflow.
The next step is configuring the trigger, so go ahead and click on ‘Order Created.’
You can now choose the order status that you’ll use in the trigger.
Since you’re sending a purchase anniversary email, you’ll typically want to check the box next to ‘Completed.’
However, you may want to select ‘Draft’ or ‘Processing’ if incoming orders take a while to complete. For example, if you approve orders manually, then it may make sense to use the date when the order was created, rather than the completion date.
By default, FunnelKit will run this automation workflow for every product the customer buys. This is a good choice if your online marketplace only has a few products, or you sell more expensive and luxurious items.
However, if your customers often buy lots of small products, then running this workflow for every single purchase may create lots of anniversary emails. This can quickly become annoying and frustrating for the customer.
With that being said, you may want to run the automated anniversary workflow for specific products only. To do this, select the ‘Specific Products’ radio button and then type each product into the ‘Search by name’ field.
Next, you can choose whether the customer can be in this workflow multiple times, simultaneously. The default setting is ‘Once,’ so let’s look at how this might work on your WordPress website.
If a customer buys Item 1, then FunnelKit will add them to the anniversary automation for Item 1. However, if the shopper then purchases Item 2, they won’t be added to the anniversary workflow for Item 2, since they’re already in the workflow.
This can stop FunnelKit from sending lots of anniversary emails to the same customer, in a short space of time.
Another option is adding the customer to the workflow every single time they buy an item. This is a good choice if you sell more expensive or luxury items. For example, if you run an online boutique shop then it may make sense to celebrate every single purchase anniversary.
To make this change, select the button next to ‘Multiple Times.’ Then, click the following toggle: Allow currently active contacts in this automation to re-enter again.
When you’re happy with how the trigger is set up, click on ‘Save.’
Step 3. Add a Delay
Now, you need to set a delay. This is how long the automation will wait before sending the anniversary email to customers.
To get started, click on ‘+’ and then select ‘Delay.’
In the popup, open the dropdown that shows ‘Minutes’ by default and choose a value from the list. When creating an anniversary email you’ll typically want to select ‘Months’ or ‘Days.’
After that, type in the value you want to use. For example, if you want to mark the customer’s 1 year purchase anniversary, then you’ll need to set the delay to 12 months or 365 days.
It typically makes sense to send the anniversary email when the customer is online.
With that in mind, you may want to type a time into ‘Delay until a specific time of day.’
By default, FunnelKit will use the timezone in your WordPress settings.
However, you may want to use the customer’s timezone instead, by checking the ‘In Contact Timezone’ box.
With that done, click on ‘Save’ to store your settings.
Step 4. Create a Personalized Coupon Code (Optional)
You may want to encourage customer loyalty by sending a personalized coupon code.
This is a particularly good option if a customer’s subscription is due to expire. Instead of simply reminding the customer about the expiry date, you can congratulate them on being a loyal subscriber and offer them a discount if they renew their subscription in WooCommerce.
To create a personalized coupon code, click on the ‘+’ icon in the FunnelKit editor. Then, select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, select the ‘WooCommerce’ tab.
Then, click on ‘Create Coupon.’
Finally, click ‘Done’ to add the action to the workflow.
You can now click on the ‘Create Coupon’ action.
This opens a popup where you can create the coupon, and personalize it by adding FunnelKit merge tags.
For step-by-step instructions, simply follow the same process described above.
When you’re happy with how the coupon is set up, copy the small pieces of code under the ‘Coupon Title.’
In the next step, you’ll add this code to the anniversary email, so store it somewhere safe.
When you’re finished, click on ‘Save’ to add the coupon code to your workflow.
Step 5. Design the WooCommerce Anniversary Email
Now, it’s time to create the email that FunnelKit will send to customers on their anniversary, by clicking the ‘+’ button.
Then, select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, choose ‘Send Email.’
Then, click on ‘Done.’
You can now create an email by typing in a subject, preview, and body text.
You can also personalize the email by adding merge tags. For example, you might include the customer’s name, your store name, and other important information.
For step-by-step instructions on how to use merge tags, simply follow the same process described above.
If you’ve created an anniversary coupon, then you can add it using the code you copied in the previous step.
When you’re happy with the anniversary email, just click on ‘Save & Close.’
Step 6. Add Follow-Up Emails to the Anniversary Email Workflow
At this point, you might want to add one or more follow-up emails to the campaign. For example, you might remind customers when their anniversary coupon is due to expire.
When creating follow-up emails, it’s important to add a delay so customers don’t get all your messages at the same time.
To create a schedule, click on the ‘+’ icon and then select ‘Delay.’
In the popup that appears, set the delay by following the same process described above. When you’re happy with the delay, click on ‘Save.’
With that done, it’s time to create the follow-up email. Simply add a ‘Send Email’ action to your workflow by repeating the same steps described above.
You can now type in the subject line, preview, and body text.
When you’re happy with the follow-up email, just click on the ‘Save & Close’ button.
Simply repeat the exact same steps to add more delays and follow-up emails.
Step 7. Publish Your Anniversary Emails in WooCommerce
When you’re finally ready to make the automation live on your WordPress website, click on the ‘Inactive’ slider so it shows ‘Active’ instead.
FunnelKit will now send anniversary emails to all your customers and subscribers.
OptinMonster is one of the best email capture plugins for WordPress used by over 1.2 million websites. It has everything you need to turn visitors into email subscribers.
OptinMonster allows you to create eye-catching email signup forms including popups, floating bars, full-screen welcome mats, slide-in scroll boxes, inline personalized lead forms, gamified spin-to-win optins, and more.
OptinMonater comes with over 400 professionally-designed templates that you can customize using the drag-and-drop builder.
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Are you looking to add an express checkout button to your online store?
Express checkout helps streamline the checkout process and improves the overall shopping experience for your customers. It can also boost conversions and reduce cart abandonment.
In this article, we will show you how to add express checkout buttons in WooCommerce.
Why Add Express Checkout in WooCommerce?
Adding express checkout to your WooCommerce store provides a better shopping experience for your customers.
It allows customers to go directly to the payment page and skip the shopping cart or checkout pages. They also won’t have to go to a payment provider page or fill out a checkout form to complete their purchases.
Express checkout buttons make the entire buying process quicker. Customers can simply click the buttons and log in to pay for the products they wish to buy in an instant. As a result, you may see a boost in conversions and fewer abandoned carts.
Adding express checkout also helps mobile users where their screen sizes are small. Customers will just tap the buttons to quickly purchase the products.
However, WooCommerce doesn’t offer an express checkout option by default. You will need to use a WooCommerce plugin to add the feature to your online store.
That said, let’s see how you can add express checkout buttons in WooCommerce.
Setting Up FunnelKit on Your WooCommerce Store
FunnelKit is the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin on the market. It lets you add express checkout buttons and create different funnel pages for your online store.
The best thing about using the plugin is that it works with Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal Express, Amazon Pay, and other payment gateways for express checkout. This way, you don’t have to add each payment provider to your online store using third-party plugins or extensions.
FunnelKit also provides user-friendly templates and lets you do A/B testing. You can easily customize your funnels using different drag-and-drop page builders. Plus, there are multiple pre-built templates and automation features for your marketing campaigns.
Note: For this tutorial, we will be using the FunnelKit Pro plugin because it includes premium templates and more customization options. You can also use the free Funnel Builder for WordPress by FunnelKit plugin to add express checkout buttons in WooCommerce.
First, you will need to install and activate the FunnelKit plugin. If you need help, then you can follow our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you will see the FunnelKit setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Get Started’ button.
After that, you will need to enter your license key. You can find the key in the FunnelKit account area.
Simply click the ‘Activate’ button after entering the license key.
Once you have enabled your preferred payment gateways, you can head to the FunnelKit » Store Checkout page from your WordPress admin panel.
From here, simply click the ‘Create Store Checkout’ button.
On the next screen, FunnelKit will show you professionally-designed templates for your checkout page. It will also let you create a checkout page from scratch.
However, we recommend using a template and quickly customizing it according to your requirements.
Simply hover over a template you’d like to use and click the ‘Preview’ button.
For this tutorial, we will use the Livewire template.
Next, go ahead and click the ‘Import This Funnel’ button at the top.
Depending on the template you use, FunnelKit may ask you to install additional plugins like Elementor to edit the checkout page.
Next, you will need to enter a name for your store checkout and click the ‘Add’ button.
After that, you will see all the steps that are included in the template.
You can simply click the ‘Edit’ button for the Checkout page to continue.
Next, you can switch to the ‘Optimizations’ tab. From here, simply enable the ‘Express Checkout Buttons’ option.
FunnelKit will also let you choose the position of the buttons from the following options:
Top of the checkout page
Before/after the product switcher
Before/after the order summary
Above the payment gateways
When you are done, simply click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
That’s it, you have successfully added express checkout buttons to your online store.
If you want to edit the appearance of the checkout page, then you can switch to the ‘Design’ tab and click the ‘Edit Template’ button.
Once you have made your changes, simply visit your online store to view the express checkout buttons in action.
Additionally, FunnelKit helps you upsell products in WooCommerce. This way, you can boost sales by encouraging users to buy more products.
You can also set up automated emails in WooCommerce using FunnelKit Automations, a sister product of FunnelKit. This plugin lets you create automated workflows and send email campaigns to customers.
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Are you looking for a way to create WooCommerce subscription reminder emails in WordPress?
Customers who subscribe to your products may not always remember the renewal date. This can cause confusion and panic when you automatically take money from their accounts.
In this article, we will show you how to improve the subscriber experience by creating a WooCommerce reminder email in WordPress.
Why Create a WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email in WordPress?
Subscriptions are a great way to get consistent and ongoing revenue for your business. You might sell physical products such as subscription boxes or digital products like online memberships and digital courses.
After you have set up WooCommerce Subscriptions, it’s a good idea to create subscription reminder emails. These automatic messages let customers know that their subscriptions are about to renew.
In this way, you can give the subscriber a chance to update their payment details and contact information or make other changes before their subscription auto-renews. This can help you avoid admin headaches, refund requests, and customer complaints.
It also gives the customer a chance to cancel their subscription. Although you will want to get as many subscribers as possible, people who feel tricked into renewing their subscriptions may complain or leave negative customer reviews.
With that in mind, let’s see how to create a subscription reminder email in WordPress using the WooCommerce Subscriptions extension and FunnelKit.
How to Create a WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email in WordPress
FunnelKit lets you easily set up automated emails for abandoned cart recovery, lead nurturing, post-purchase education, next order coupons, subscription reminders, and more.
To start, click on the ‘WooCommerce’ tab and then select the following trigger: ‘Subscriptions Before Renewal’.
When you are ready, click on ‘Done.’
This will add a basic trigger to the FunnelKit editor. To go ahead and configure the trigger, click on ‘Subscriptions Before Renewal’.
Now, you can decide when to send the reminder.
Just be aware that you can also create follow-up emails. For example, you might send an email 5 days before the subscription renewal and a follow-up the day before.
To set a date, simply type a number into the following field: ‘Days before subscription renewal’.
You can also choose the time when the email will be sent. It’s a good idea to send reminder emails when the subscriber is more likely to be online and opening messages.
That said, it helps to know as much about your subscribers as possible. If you haven’t already, then we recommend installing Google Analytics in WordPress. It will help you learn more about your customers, including their timezone and when they are most likely to be online.
After setting up your reminder emails, it’s also a good idea to track your email open rates. You can even set up A/B split testing by sending messages at different times and then seeing what gets the best results.
By continuously monitoring and fine-tuning all your custom WooCommerce emails, you should be able to improve your open rates and conversion rates.
You can tell FunnelKit to send reminder emails at a specific time by typing it into the fields that show ‘HH’ (hour) and ‘MM’ (minute) by default.
After that, you can choose whether to send this email once or multiple times.
Later in this guide, we will show you how to add follow-up emails to this campaign. With that in mind, you will typically want to send this email once by selecting the ‘Once’ button.
When you are happy with how the trigger is set up, simply click on the ‘Save’ button.
Step 3: Design the WooCommerce Subscription Reminder Email
Now, it’s time to create the WooCommerce email that will be sent to your subscribers by clicking on the ‘+’ button.
You can then select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, choose ‘Send Email.’
Then, click on ‘Done.’
You can now create an email by typing in a subject and preview.
You can use a mix of plain text and merge tags. FunnelKit will replace any merge tags with real values every time it sends a subscription reminder email. In this way, merge tags can catch the subscriber’s attention with personalized content.
For example, you might use a merge tag to add the subscriber’s name to the subject line or the date when their subscription will auto-renew.
To add a merge tag, just click on the ‘{{.}}’ icon next to the field where you want to use the tag.
This opens a popup where you can look through all the available merge tags.
When you find a tag you want to use, you might see either a ‘Copy’ or ‘Settings’ icon. If you see the ‘Copy’ symbol, then simply click it to copy the merge tag.
With that done, you can go ahead and paste the merge tag into the email.
At this point, you may also want to add some static (plain) text by typing it directly into the field.
When looking through the merge tags, you may see a ‘Settings’ icon instead of a ‘Copy’ icon.
For example, this image shows a ‘Settings’ icon next to the Contact First Name merge tag.
This icon allows you to set a fallback, which FunnelKit will use if it doesn’t have access to the real value.
If you see a ‘Settings’ icon, then give it a click and type some text into the ‘Fallback’ field.
After creating a fallback, click on ‘Copy.’
With that done, simply paste the merge tag into the field where you want to use it. You can also type static text directly into the field.
When you are happy with how the subject and preview text is set up, just scroll down to the small text editor.
Here, you can create the email body text by typing it into the editor. You can also add dynamic tags by selecting ‘Merge Tags’ and then following the same process described above.
The text editor has all the standard text formatting options, so you can add links, change the text size, change the font, and more.
As you are creating the email, you can preview it by clicking the ‘Show Preview’ button.
When you are happy with the subscription reminder email, just click on the ‘Save & Close’ button.
Step 4: Create Follow-up Emails
At this point, you might want to add one or more follow-up emails to the campaign.
To start, you will typically add a delay between these emails by clicking on the ‘+’ icon and then selecting ‘Delay’.
On this screen, open the dropdown that shows ‘Minutes’ by default and choose a value from the list. When creating reminder emails for your online store, you will typically want to select either ‘Days’ or ‘Weeks.’
After that, type in the value you want to use, such as 1 Week or 3 Days.
With that done, you may want to set the time when FunnelKit will send the follow-up email. You will typically want to send the reminder email when subscribers are more likely to be online or when you usually get the best open rates.
To do this, just check the following box: ‘Delay until a specific time of day’.
You can now set the time using the new settings that appear.
By default, FunnelKit will use the timezone in your WordPress settings. However, you can also send the email based on the subscriber’s timezone by checking ‘In Contact Timezone’.
When you are happy with how the delay is set up, click on ‘Save.’
With that done, it’s time to create the follow-up email. Go ahead and click on the ‘+’ icon and then select ‘Action’.
In the popup that appears, select ‘Send Email.’
After that, you need to click on ‘Done.’
This opens a popup where you can create a subject and preview, as well as add body text by following the same process described above.
When you are happy with the follow-up email, just click on the ‘Save & Close’ button.
You can now add more delays and follow-up emails by repeating the exact same steps.
When you are ready to make the automation live on your WordPress website, click on the ‘Inactive’ slider so that it turns to ‘Active.’
Now, FunnelKit will now send automated subscription reminder emails for your online store.
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Are you looking for easy and smart ways to automate tasks and increase sales in your WooCommerce store?
By automating tasks in your online store, you can save time and money while growing your business and increasing sales.
In this article, we will show you how to use WooCommerce automations to increase sales.
Why Automate Your WooCommerce Store?
If you are running a WooCommerce store, then you probably spend a lot of your time performing repetitive tasks. These can be anything from sending marketing emails for your online store to processing customer invoices.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could automate all of those tasks and focus on growing sales and your business instead?
Luckily, you can use the best WordPress automation tools and plugins to automate WooCommerce tasks. By doing this, you will save time, offer a better user experience to your customers, and ultimately increase sales.
With that being said, here are 15 WooCommerce automations to increase sales:
1. Use Automation to Personalize Your Email Marketing
Are you keeping in touch with your customers using an email newsletter? You may not be taking advantage of all the automation tools available in your email marketing software.
For example, the best email services like Constant Contact, Sendinblue, and Omnisend all have integrations with WooCommerce. They allow you to personalize your emails by adding the customer’s name and more.
They also let you set up a Welcome email series using a drip campaign. This is a sequence of automated emails that will go out automatically to new customers.
You can learn how to get started by scrolling down to the automated drip emails section of our guide on how to send automated emails in WordPress.
Additionally, if you are looking for a complete tool that offers WooCommerce email customization and automation, then we highly recommend using FunnelKit Automations.
Apart from letting you fully customize your WooCommerce emails, it also lets you set up smart, automated follow-up emails and workflows to boost your sales.
You can get started with FunnelKit Automations by selecting an automation from a library of handy templates.
For example, you can automatically send an email series to new customers, recover abandoned carts, send promotional emails to selected audiences, and more.
There is also an option to create your own WooCommerce automation from scratch. You will then see a visual email automation builder where you can make any customizations that you need.
For example, the screenshot above shows the workflow for sending out a thank you email after a customer makes their first order. You can even see in-line analytics for each email.
Tip: We recommend combining FunnelKit Automations with an SMTP service like WP Mail SMTP. This will make sure your emails are delivered to your customers and won’t get lost or end up in the spam folder.
2. Set Up an Automated Marketing Campaign With Push Notifications
You can also run an automated marketing campaign using push notifications instead of emails. These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device. This means they have a much higher engagement rate, similar to SMS messages.
The easiest way to set up automated push notifications is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software for WordPress, and over 10,000 businesses use it to send targeted messages.
For each notification, you can change the title, message, URL, icon image, and more by expanding it.
There is also a preview of how your notifications will look in the browser.
PushEngage also lets you choose when to send each notification. For example, you can immediately send the first notification and select a different time for the following one.
3. Let Customers Track Orders With Automated Transactional Emails
WooCommerce will need to send different transactional emails to your customers. These help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, and find out more information about your online store.
The FunnelKit Automations dashboard makes it easy to create a new automation. You can simply click on one of the plugin’s many templates.
You can filter the list to quickly find the WooCommerce automation you wish to use. For example, you might want to send automatic thank-you emails to repeat customers.
You can then customize the automation using the visual automation builder, including the content of the email.
SMS messages are an effective way to keep your customers up to date. They have a 98% average open rate, with 95% of messages being read in the first 3 minutes!
You can send automatic texts to your customers when their orders are dispatched or their status changes. You can automatically send SMS notifications to your customers or let them opt in at checkout.
As a business owner, there is a lot to manage. If you are still creating invoices manually, then you can switch to professional invoicing software that automates all invoicing and payment processes. Then, you will be free to focus on growing your business.
A plugin like WooCommerce PDF Invoices makes it easy to automatically generate invoices, collect orders, and manage your finances.
With automatic recurring payments, you don’t have to spend time manually sending invoices and waiting for payments from your customers.
Plus, adding subscription payments to your eCommerce business will give you a more consistent cash flow, fewer payment errors, and fewer payment delays.
6. Use Automated Store Activity Notifications to Boost Sales
Automated FOMO and social proof notifications can also increase sales in your WooCommerce store.
FOMO, short for fear of missing out, is a marketing technique used to create excitement about a product. It uses psychology to encourage customers to make buying decisions faster.
Plus, social proof shows visitors that other customers have purchased your products. This can convince users that your online store is trustworthy.
TrustPulse automatically monitors activity on your site. When potential customers are close to buying something, they will see a notification showing that another customer has just made a purchase.
By simply displaying social proof, you will give your visitors a small push to complete their purchase. To learn more, see Method 1 of our guide on how to use FOMO to increase conversions.
7. Automatically Display Your Best Product Reviews
Would you like to automatically display the best reviews of your products from across the internet? You could copy and paste them manually, but that is a lot of work. Plus, there would be a delay before they appear on your website.
Luckily, Smash Balloon has a Reviews Feed Pro plugin that lets you automatically show off your best reviews from platforms like Google Reviews, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more.
It comes with pre-designed templates, so you can display your reviews in different layouts, including showcases, carousels, grids, and more.
The Reviews Feed automatically copies your website’s design so that the reviews look like a natural part of your website rather than content embedded from another platform.
8. Use an Automated Sales Funnel to Boost Sales Conversions
A sales funnel is the path a user takes on your website to become a customer. It is made up of the specific pages a user may visit before making a purchase.
For example, a new visitor might land on a blog post, then view a product page, then go through your checkout flow.
Unfortunately, only 10% of shoppers, on average, will add anything to their carts. After they do, 60-80% of them abandon their carts without completing the purchase.
Luckily, you can use FunnelKit, the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugin, to change that. You can use the plugin to optimize each step, offer a better user experience, reduce distractions, and nudge users toward completing their purchases.
For example, it comes with a one-click Upsells feature, which allows users to add products to their carts on their way to the checkout.
FunnelKit also lets you customize the user journey with pre-checkout offers, custom checkout form layouts, beautiful templates, and more.
For instance, the FunnelKit Funnel Builder lets you add order bumps to boost profits if someone adds $X to their cart. You can also add one-click order bumps to your checkout page.
9. Reduce Cart Abandonment With Popups and Push Notifications
As we said earlier, 60 to 80% of people who add items to their cart don’t actually buy them. This means if you have an online store, then you are losing out on a lot of sales.
Luckily, you can use automatic push notifications to reduce cart abandonment rates. For example, you can pop up a notification when a user is about to leave your website and offer a coupon or free shipping.
Or, if the customer already has discounted items in their cart, they may just need some reassurance that they are making the right decision. Push notifications like these can help you recover 3 to 8% of abandoning cart sales.
But what if the customer leaves your site before they see the popup? Push notifications can also help you connect with your visitors after they leave your website. These messages will display in your subscriber’s browser even when they are not actively browsing your store.
The easiest way to do this is with PushEngage. It is the best web push notification software on the market, and it is used to send over 15 billion push messages every month.
You can also significantly reduce cart abandonment by simply improving your online store and checkout process. We share plenty of proven tips with real examples in our guide on how to recover WooCommerce abandoned cart sales.
10. Send Automated Coupons to Bring Back Customers
It costs 5 times more to get a new customer than to keep an old one. Over time, people may lose interest in your website, forget about your products, or start shopping with a competitor.
One way to bring those customers back is to automatically send them a coupon code via email. You can use automation tools to send a coupon to customers who have become disengaged, such as when they don’t place an order for 2 months or have stopped opening emails.
Another good use for automated coupons is recognizing and rewarding customers when they engage with your online store. For example, you might send a coupon after a customer reviews one of your products.
This builds loyalty to your store and can get you more sales. It also encourages shoppers to review more products in the future.
You can also schedule coupons in advance so that they go out automatically on popular holidays like Black Friday, Christmas, New Year’s, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day. This will leave you free to focus on promoting your offers and getting as many sales as possible.
Additionally, as we mentioned earlier, you can also offer a coupon in a popup. Showing a coupon at the right time makes a huge difference in converting your website visitors into paying customers.
You can also use automation to post your online store content to your social channels. This lets you keep your social followers engaged with fresh content.
Uncanny Automator has integrations with all popular social platforms. It will let you publish new blog posts on Facebook, show off your latest product images on Instagram, advertise your sales on Twitter, and more.
You can learn how to do this step-by-step by following our guides on how to automatically post to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
12. Automatically Display Social Media Content in WooCommerce
Are you looking for ways to show fresh content without doing any extra work? One way to do that is to automatically display your latest social media activity in your WooCommerce store.
This can save you time and keep your website content fresh and engaging for visitors. Plus, it can boost social proof by displaying your social media followers, comments, and like counts.
Smash Balloon automates your website content by displaying your latest social media activity. It is a popular social media feed plugin for WordPress that is used by over 1.4 million websites.
For example, you can add a Facebook feed to WordPress, and new posts will automatically appear in real time. Your customers can also like, share, and comment on your WordPress posts, which is a great way to get more engagement on Facebook.
You can change the feed’s color scheme, design a custom header, add ‘like’ and ‘load more’ buttons, and much more.
If you are posting beautiful photos and engaging videos to Instagram, then it makes sense to post that content to WordPress too.
You can even show other people’s photos on your site by creating a hashtag feed or displaying the posts that other people have tagged your account in.
In the following image, you can see an example of an online store that uses a custom Instagram feed to show user-generated content.
The best thing is that WPForms easily integrates with many other tools and plugins, so you can easily automate any action after someone fills out your form.
For example, when someone fills in an order form, you can use conditional logic to send an email notification to the correct department, depending on the product that was purchased.
You can also send a confirmation email to the customer who filled in the form to let them know you will be in contact soon. This a nice gesture that lets your users know that you have received their information.
In addition, by using the Google Sheets Addon, you can send any form fields you want to a spreadsheet. This will allow you to use spreadsheet features to analyze the data and collaborate with others in your team.
To automate your forms further, Uncanny Automator will let you connect WPForms and other form plugins to 100+ third-party services without having to pay fees to services like Zapier.
For example, you can create an Uncanny Automator recipe to send customer form data to Airtable. Then, your team will be able to access and use the data easily.
14. Automate Live Chat Using Artificial Intelligence
Automated chatbots are the future of live chat software because they allow you to engage with your customers 24/7. They can free up time by automatically answering common customer questions, generating leads, improving user experience, and making more sales.
Chatbot.com is the best AI chatbot software for WordPress. It lets you easily automate live chat on your website by setting up your own chatbot using a drag-and-drop builder. You don’t need to do any coding or have any special technical skills.
It even comes with pre-built templates that you can use as a starting point to quickly get your AI chatbot up and running. These templates include different scenarios like selling products, customer service, recruitment, bookings, and more.
For example, you can use the eCommerce bot template to walk your customers through the entire buying process. There are even templates for specific industries, including a coffee shopbot, recruitment bot, and restaurant bot.
If visitors want to communicate with a real person, then you can easily forward them to your customer support agent, phone support, or any of ChatBot’s live chat software integrations, such as LiveChat.
15. Use Uncanny Automator for Even More WooCommerce Automations
This article contains many specialist tools that do specific automation jobs very well. By contrast, Uncanny Automator is a Swiss army knife that allows you to create all types of automation workflows without having to write any code.
It acts as a bridge so that you can get different WordPress plugins talking to each other, as well as loads of third-party services.
You create automation by building Uncanny Automator recipes, consisting of triggers and actions. The action will be automatically run when a user or WooCommerce triggers an event.
Here are some of the WooCommerce triggers you can use to run a recipe:
A customer viewing a product
A customer adding a product to their cart
A customer paying for a product
A payment failing
A customer reviewing a product
And much more
Then the recipe can automatically run any of these WooCommerce actions:
Creating an order with a product
Changing the price of a product
Generating and emailing a coupon code
Giving an order a specific status
There are dozens of recipes that you can create, allowing you to save hundreds of hours while running your online store more efficiently.
For instance, you can use Uncanny Automator to automatically create a new customer account when someone submits a contact form on your website, or send notifications to Slack.
Bonus: Track Conversions to Learn How to Increase Sales
To use any marketing automation platform effectively, you will need easy-to-understand reports that tell you exactly what is working for your business and what isn’t.
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you get a clear picture of what is happening on your site and what you can do to bring in more sales.
It comes with WooCommerce conversion tracking, form submissions, outbound link tracking, and user tracking.
Its Reports page has an ‘eCommerce’ tab that shows your most important conversion metrics, including the conversion rate, transactions, revenue, and average order value. Below that, you will see a list of your top products with quantity, sale percentage, and total revenue.
You will also see your top conversion sources. You can use this report to attract more customers and offer exclusive discounts for customers from specific sources.
You can also connect Google Sheets with WooCommerce to easily record and manage your orders and customer data. Once the information is in a Google Sheet, you can easily filter it based on factors like the order total, the customer’s location, coupons used, and more.
You can then share this information with your team, even if they don’t have access to the WordPress dashboard. For example, you can easily send this data to your suppliers, marketing departments, or other team members.
You are even able to turn this data into charts and graphs. All of this makes it easier to analyze the information and then use these insights to fine-tune your business and get more sales.
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On the other hand, if you only want to move products, then this tutorial will help you learn how to properly export and import WooCommerce products with images and other product data.
We’ll show you two methods, you can choose one that works best for you.
Method 1. Import & Export WooCommerce Products without a Plugin
WooCommerce comes with built-in functionality to easily import and export products with images, but without using any additional plugins.
First, you need to visit the Products » All Products page in your WordPress admin area. There, you will see two buttons at the top to ‘Import’ or ‘Export’ products.
Let’s first check out how the export feature works.
Exporting WooCommerce Products without Using a Plugin
Simply click on the ‘Export’ button at the top to continue.
On the next screen, you’ll see a bunch of options to choose what data you want to export.
For instance, you can choose to only export certain columns from product data. You can also choose to export specific product types or products in specific categories.
To export all products with images and all other data, you can leave these options unchecked.
Optionally, you can check the ‘Export custom meta.’ If you are unsure, then it’s better to check it so that you have the data.
Go ahead and click on the ‘Generate CSV’ button to continue.
WooCommerce will now prepare a CSV file and download it to your computer.
What is a CSV File?
CSV is short for Comma Separated Values, and it is file type of plain text that separates different columns or fields of data with a comma.
You can open it with any spreadsheet software like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Here is how it would look:
Importing WooCommerce Products without Using a Plugin
Simply go to the Products » All Products page and click on the Import button at the top.
If your WooCommerce store is empty, then instead of the buttons at the top, you will see buttons at the center of the page.
Click on the ‘Start Import’ button to begin the import.
This will bring up the import wizard.
First, you need to click on the ‘Choose File’ button to select the WooCommerce export CSV file you downloaded earlier.
Click on the continue button to upload the CSV file.
WooCommerce will now check to see if your CSV file is in a compatible format. After that, it will ask you to map that data to existing WooCommerce product data.
The default settings here will work for most WooCommerce stores.
However, you still need to review and if a column is missing, and then click on the drop-down menu next to it and select a matching field if available.
Particularly, if you are using variations attribute for products, then make sure to scroll down to the attributes columns and match fields.
This will allow you to ensure that the fields in your CSV file match the corresponding WooCommerce fields.
Click on the ‘Run’ the Importer button to begin.
WooCommerce will now start importing data from CSV file. It will also download any images attached to your products.
Once finished, you can visit the Products » All Products page to see the imported products.
Make sure to visit your shop and product pages to check that everything is working as expected.
Method 2. Import & Export WooCommerce Products with a Plugin
For this method, we’ll be using a plugin to import and export WooCommerce products.
The advantage of this method is that it offers more flexible options and also allows you to export / import product reviews.
Plus, it allows you to import / export WooCommerce products in batches which comes in handy if you have a large store with many products and images.
After that, go to the Webtoffee Import Export (Pro) » Import page and select ‘Product’ as the post type you want to import.
Click on the ‘Step 2: Select import method’ button to continue.
Next, you need to select an import method and upload the exported file you downloaded earlier to your computer.
Click on the ‘Step 3: Map and Import Columns’ button to continue.
On the next screen, you’ll see a list of fields and the matching fields from your import file. If you see an empty field, you can choose a matching field for it in the next column.
If you are using product variations like sizes and colors, then make sure to click on the Attributes tab to match attribute fields.
However, if you are not using any products with variations or custom attributes then you can use the default settings.
Click on the ‘Step 4: Advanced Options / Batch Import’ button to continue.
On the final screen, you’ll see advanced options. For instance, you can choose to match products by ID or SKU, choose what to do if a product already exists, and more.
If you are importing products into an empty WooCommere store, then you can use the default settings.
Finally, click on the ‘Import’ button to run the product import process.
You’ll see the progress of the import on screen. Once finished, you can click on ‘View Products’ to check if everything has been imported correctly.
The plugin also allows you to import and export Product Reviews.
If you want to import or export the product reviews too, then simply choose ‘Product Reviews’ post type on the import or export page.
Improve Your WooCommerce Store with Automations
If you find yourself doing a lot of manual work around your WooCommerce store and want to save time, then we recommend using Uncanny Automator for workflow automation.
Uncanny Automator helps you connect over 100+ plugins and apps with a simple no-code visual builder. You can use it to create automated workflows for things that you normally do without writing any code.
There’s a free version that you can try out, and it’s already used by over 20,000 websites.
Aside from workflow automation, if you’re looking for a marketing automation tool for WooCommerce, then we recommend using FunnelKit Automation. It will help you grow your sales and improve conversions without the high costs.
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Do you want to send automated coupons in WordPress to bring back customers?
By sending the right coupon to the right person at the right time, you can re-engage customers who are losing interest. This can get you more sales, create brand loyalty, and help you keep your best customers.
In this guide, we’ll show you a few different ways to send automated coupons in WordPress, and bring back customers.
Why Send Automated Coupons to Bring Back Customers?
You may have heard the saying that it costs five times more to get a new customer than keep an old one.
While lead generation will help grow your business, you also need to keep your existing customers happy. Over time, people may lose interest in your website, forget about your products, or start shopping with a competitor.
That’s where automated coupons come in.
The best WordPress automation tools and plugins can watch your customers for signs they’re becoming disengaged. For example, a customer may not place an order for 2 months or stop opening your emails.
One way to bring those customers back is to automatically send them a coupon code via email. By creating this automated workflow in WordPress, you can retain customers without having to do all the hard work yourself.
Pro Tip: If you send coupons via email, then you’ll need to make sure those messages land in the customer’s inbox and not in the spam folder. Here, a good SMTP service provider is essential for improving your email deliverability. We also recommend using WP Mail SMTP as it allows you to easily send WordPress emails using any SMTP service provider.
With that being said, let’s see how you can send automated coupons in WordPress and bring back customers. Simply use the quick links below to jump to the method you want to use.
FunnelKit is a WordPress sales funnel builder and optimization plugin that allows you to create powerful customer winback campaigns. It also lets you create unique, personalized coupons, which can really catch the shopper’s attention.
FunnelKit integrates with WooCommerce and has lots of features that are designed to grow your online store. With that in mind, FunnelKit is a great choice if you already use WooCommerce to sell products and services online.
How to Create an Automated Coupon Workflow for WordPress
Now, we’re going to create a workflow that will generate a personalized coupon and send it to the customer via email. This workflow will run once 30 days have passed since the customer’s last order.
To create the workflow, go to FunnelKit Automations » Automations (Next Gen) in the WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the ‘Add New Automation’ button.
You’ll now see all the different automation templates that you can use.
Since we want to create our own workflow, select ‘Start from Scratch.’
In the popup that appears, type in a name for the automation. This is just for your reference, so you can use anything you want.
With that done, click on ‘Create.’
Now, we need to choose the action that will kickstart the workflow, so click on ‘Select Trigger.’
In the left-hand menu, choose ‘WooCommerce’ and then click to select ‘Customer Win Back.’
With that done, click on ‘Done’ to add the trigger to your automation workflow.
Back in the main editor, click on the ‘Customer Win Back’ trigger.
In the ‘Customer Last Ordered Period’ section, you can type in how long FunnelKit will wait before running the workflow.
For example, in the following image the workflow will run when 30 days have passed since the customer’s last order.
FunnelKit will repeat this automation once every 24 hours, so it’s important to only run it for a short period of time. For this reason, we’ve set the workflow to stop when 35 days have passed since the customer’s last order.
In this way, you won’t annoy customers by sending them dozens of emails.
Next, you can set the time when the automation will run, using the ‘Schedule this….’ fields. FunnelKit will use your store’s timezone, so you may want to change your online store settings if you want to use a different timezone instead.
With that done, click on ‘Save.’
Back in the main workflow editor, click on ‘+’ and then select ‘Action.’
In the popup that appears, select ‘WooCommerce’ and then click on ‘Create Coupon.’
Simply click on ‘Done’ to add this action to the workflow.
Back in the main FunnelKit editor, click on the action you just added. This opens a popup where you can customize the ‘Create Coupon’ action.
To start, type a name for the coupon into the ‘Coupon Title’ field. This is just for your reference so you can use anything you want.
After that, choose the type of coupon that you want to create, using the ‘Discount Type’ dropdown menu.
FunnelKit supports percentage discount, fixed cart discount, and fixed product discount. Most of the time, you’ll want to select ‘Percentage Discount’ to make sure all customers get a similar benefit, no matter how much they spend or what products they buy.
After that, type an amount into the ‘Amount’ field. For example, you might offer customers 20% off, or a $5 discount on all purchases.
FunnelKit automatically creates a unique coupon code for each contact. However, you can add a prefix to the start of the coupon, which can either be plain text or dynamic tags. FunnelKit will replace these tags with real text every time it creates a code, so this is a great way to create personalized coupons.
Since we want to bring shoppers back in, you may decide to include the customer’s name in the coupon. This can catch their attention, and also makes your code easier to remember.
To add plain text as a prefix, simply type into the ‘Coupon Code Prefix’ field.
To add one or more tags, click on the ‘Merge tags’ icon.
This is the button that has curly braces.
Now, you’ll see all the tags that you can use in the automated coupon.
We’re going to use the {{contact_first_name}} tag, but you can use any tags you want.
Simply copy each tag and then paste it into the ‘Coupon Code Prefix’ field.
As you can see in the following image, you can use a mix of plain text and tags.
By default, the coupon will never expire. A sense of urgency and FOMO can push customers to use a coupon, so you may want to select the radio button next to ‘Expire after Specific Days’ or ‘Expire on Specific Date.’
You can then use the controls to specify when the coupon will expire.
Shoppers love free shipping, so you may want to consider adding this to your coupon by selecting the ‘Yes’ radio button under ‘Allow Free Shipping.’
When you’re happy with how the coupon is set up, make sure you copy the small pieces of code under the ‘Coupon Title.’
You’ll need this coupon code for the email we’ll be creating in the next step, so store it somewhere safe.
With that done, click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.
Now we have a coupon, it’s time to create the email that FunnelKit will send to your customers. To add an email action, click on the ‘+’ button and then select ‘Action.’
If it isn’t already selected, then click on ‘Messaging’ in the left-hand menu.
Then, select ‘Send Email’ and click on ‘Done.’
You can now create an email by typing in a subject and preview, and adding body text.
Similar to creating a coupon, it’s best to use a mix of plain text and tags. To add dynamic tags, click on the ‘Merge Tags’ icons that appear next to the To, Subject, and Preview Text fields.
If you want to add tags to the email body, then you can click on the ‘Merge Tags’ button.
To add your coupon code, simply paste or type in the {{wc_dynamic_coupon id= code we copied in the previous step.
When you’re happy with how the email looks, click on ‘Save & Close.’
That’s it. When you’re ready to make the automation live, click on the ‘Inactive’ slider so it turns to ‘Active.’
Now, FunnelKit will automatically send the coupon to any customer who hasn’t purchased from you in the past 30 days.
Method 2. Using Uncanny Automator (Over 100 Integrations)
Another way to send automated coupons in WordPress, is by using Uncanny Automator. It is one of the best WordPress automation plugins on the market and lets you create powerful workflows to save time and help you respond to customers more quickly.
Uncanny Automator works seamlessly with WooCommerce, plus all of the must have WordPress plugins and third-party tools. If you’re already using lots of different software on your online store, then Uncanny Automator may be a good choice for you.
There is a free Uncanny Automator plugin that lets you automate many common tasks. However, we’ll be using Uncanny Automator pro because it works with WooCommerce.
To start, you’ll need to install Uncanny Automator pro, plus the free plugin as it provides the base for the premium version. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, go to Automator » Settings and enter your license key into the ‘Uncanny Automator Pro license key’ field.
You’ll find this information under your account on the Uncanny Automator website.
Uncanny Automator is a powerful and flexible plugin, so there’s lots of different ways that you can bring customers back to your site. Let’s take a look at a few options.
Automatically Send Coupons to Logged-Out Customers
It’s smart to let customers create an account with your online store, as it encourages brand loyalty and makes it easier for shoppers to buy from you in the future.
User registration can also help with lead generation. If you get the shopper’s email address, then you can target them with email marketing, personalized ads, an email newsletter, and much more.
If you’re using WooCommerce, then this plugin automatically creates all the pages customers need to create and manage an account. WooCommerce also adds a new Customer role, which it automatically assigns to any shoppers who register with your store.
If you allow user registration, then you can track when a shopper logs out of their account, as this suggests they’re losing interest in your store. You can then send a coupon to encourage them to log back in.
To create this recipe, simply go to Automator » Add new in the WordPress dashboard.
Uncanny Automator will now ask whether you want to create a recipe for logged-in users, or everyone. Go ahead and select ‘Logged-in users,’ then click on the ‘Confirm’ button.
Next, you can give the recipe a name by typing into the ‘Title’ field. This is just for your reference so you can use anything you want.
Once you’ve done that, click on ‘WordPress’ in the ‘Select an integration’ area.
You can now choose a trigger, which is anything that kickstarts the recipe.
In the dropdown menu, start typing the following ‘A user logs out of a site’ and then select the right option when it appears.
We only want to run the workflow when someone with the ‘Customer’ user role logs out of their account.
With that in mind, click on the ‘Add filter’ button.
In the popup that appears, click on ‘WordPress.’
Next, find ‘The user has a specific role’ in the dropdown menu.
Open the ‘Role’ dropdown and select the role you’re using for your customers.
After that, go ahead and click on ‘Save filter.’
Now it’s time to specify the action that Uncanny Automator will perform every time this workflow runs.
We’re going to send the customer an email containing a coupon, so go ahead and click on ‘Add action.’
Since we want to send an email, select ‘Emails’ as the integration.
In the dropdown that appears, click on ‘Send an email.’
This adds all the fields that you can use to create the email.
To start, we need to make sure the message goes to the right user, by clicking on the asterisk next to the ‘To’ field. Then, select ‘Common’ and ‘User email.’
You can now create the email by adding a subject line and body text.
Here, you can use a mix of plain text and tokens, which are placeholders that Uncanny Automator replaces with real values automatically. For example, if you want to use the customer’s name, then you can click on the asterix and select ‘Common.’
Simply select the ‘User first name’ token to create the personalized greeting.
You’ll also need to create a coupon and add it to the email.
The easiest way is by using the Advanced Coupons plugin, which is the best WordPress coupon code plugin on the market. It lets you create lots of different advanced coupons to get more sales and grow your business.
After creating a coupon, you can simply add it to the email.
When you’re happy with how the email looks, click on ‘Save.’
After that, it’s time to set a delay. This is how long Uncanny Automator will wait after the customer logs out, before sending them the coupon.
To add a delay, hover your mouse over the ‘Email’ action. When it appears, click on ‘Delay.’
You can then add your delay in the popup that appears.
Once you’ve done that, go ahead and select ‘Set delay.’
When you’re happy with how the recipe is set up, it’s time to make it active.
In the ‘Recipe’ box, click the ‘Draft’ switch so that it shows ‘Live’ instead.
That’s it. Now, when a customer logs out of their account, Uncanny Automator will wait for the specified amount of time before sending them a coupon code.
Automatically Send Coupons for a Specific Product
Sometimes a shopper may look at a product multiple times. This suggests they’re interested in the item, but something is stopping them from making a purchase.
In this case, you may want to send them a coupon, which will encourage them to splash out on the product.
To get started, create a new recipe for logged-in users following the same process described above. After that, click on ‘WooCommerce’ in the ‘Select an integration’ area.
Next, choose a trigger by typing the following ‘A user views a product.’
When the right trigger appears, give it a click.
By default, this trigger is set to ‘Any product.’
If you want to link the recipe to a specific product, then open the ‘Product’ dropdown and choose that product from the list.
Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Number of times’ button.
By default, the recipe will run every time a customer looks at a product. You should change this, so the customer has to look at the product multiple times before triggering the recipe. To do this, type a different number into the ‘Number of times’ field.
When that’s done, click on ‘Save’ to store your settings.
This recipe should only run when a customer views a product, so click on ‘Add Filter.’ In the popup that appears, click on ‘WordPress’ and then choose ‘The user has a specific role.’
After that, open the ‘Role’ dropdown and select the role you’re using for your customers.
When you’re ready, click on ‘Save filter.’
Now it’s time to add the action. There are a few different ways to send automated coupons from your WordPress website.
To email a code to your customers using Uncanny Automator and Advanced Coupons, simply follow the same process described above.
Another option is to generate the code using WooCommerce. To do this, click on ‘Add Action’ and then select ‘WooCommerce’ as the integration.
In the search bar, start typing ‘Generate and email a coupon code to the user.’
When the right option appears, give it a click.
This will add some new settings where you can create the coupon code.
To generate a code automatically, simply leave the ‘Coupon code’ field blank.
In the ‘Discount type’ field, choose the kind of coupon that you want to create, such as a fixed cart discount or percentage discount.
For this guide, we’ll select ‘Percentage discount’.
After that, type the percentage discount into the ‘Coupon amount’ field.
In the following image, we’re offering customers a 30% discount on their purchase.
In the next field, you can set an expiry date for the coupon, either by using the YYY-MM-DD format or typing in the number of days until the coupon expires.
For example, in the following image the coupon will expire after 7 days.
You can also set a minimum and maximum spend for the coupon. We’ll leave these fields blank so the customer can use the code with any purchase.
You may also want to check the ‘For individual use only’ box so customers can’t use this code in combination with other coupons.
Next, scroll to the ‘Usage limit per coupon’ section. The shopper should only be able to use the coupon once, so type in ‘1.’
There are lots of other settings you can change for the coupon. It’s a good idea to look through these settings to see whether you want to make any more changes.
When you’re happy with how the coupon is set up, scroll to the ‘Email’ section. To start, find the ‘To’ field and then click on the asterisk next to it. Then, click on ‘Common’ and select ‘User email.’
With that done, you can add a subject line and change the text in the email body.
To create a more personalized email, it’s a good idea to use a mix of plain text and tokens, by following the same process described above.
When you’re happy with the email, click on the ‘Save’ button to store the recipe.
After that, you can make the recipe live by clicking the ‘Draft’ switch so that it shows ‘Live.’
Now, every time someone views a product multiple times, it’ll trigger the recipe workflow.
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Your small business or online store relies on email. However, keeping up with marketing emails, transactional emails, email notifications, and engaging with users can become overwhelming. Automating these emails can save you time and effort while delivering you better results.
In this article, we’ll show you how to send automated emails in WordPress to streamline your workflow and grow your business.
For example, you can use email to welcome new users and let them know when new content or products are available. Email is also useful for marketing campaigns and updating your customers on the progress of their orders.
You can even use email to notify yourself when there is a new post waiting for you to review, or that a WordPress update needs to be installed.
Since email is used for so many tasks on your WordPress website, it only makes sense to save time and effort by automating as many emails as possible.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to send automated emails in WordPress. Here are the topics we’ll cover in this tutorial:
Making Sure Your WordPress Email Is Being Sent Reliably
Before you start automating your emails, it’s important to make sure that emails from your website are being delivered reliably.
By default, most WordPress hosting companies do not have the mail function configured properly. To prevent their servers from abuse, many hosting companies even turn it off completely. In these cases, your WordPress emails will fail to reach users.
Luckily, you can fix this easily by using WP Mail SMTP. This plugin lets you send your WordPress email through a reliable SMTP platform which is configured specifically to send emails like SendLayer, Gmail, Outlook, etc.
The free version of WP Mail SMTP should be more than sufficient for most websites. For more details, see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email.
Sending Automated Drip Emails Using Constant Contact
A good place to start thinking about email automation is the way you market your store or business. And one of the best ways to automate marketing is with a drip campaign.
What Is an Automated Drip Campaign?
Automated drip campaigns are email messages that automatically guide your users along a specific journey. They’re great for boosting user engagement on your WordPress site.
For example, these messages can welcome new users, promote important content, upsell products, target specific geographic regions, and encourage users to register for events.
To send automated drip notifications by email, we recommend using Constant Contact because it’s the best email marketing service on the market. However, you can use any other major email marketing platform, including Sendinblue, HubSpot, and others.
To start, you can visit the Constant Contact website and create an account. The software gives you a 60-day free trial, so you can try it out before committing to a premium plan.
Once you sign up, you can visit the Constant Contact dashboard to create a contact list.
Constant Contact has already created a default list for you. However, you can create your own list by going to the ‘Contacts’ tab in the top menu, and then clicking the ‘Create List’ button.
A popup window will appear where you can enter a name for your list.
After that, simply click the ‘Save’ button.
You can add contacts to the list by going to the ‘Contacts’ tab and then clicking the ‘Add Contacts’ button.
A popup window will open with multiple options for adding new contacts.
Now you can add your contacts manually, upload them in a spreadsheet or CSV file, or import them from other apps.
Creating an Automated Drip Campaign
Once you’ve added your contacts, you need to create the drip campaign.
To do that, head over to the ‘Campaigns’ tab and then click the ‘Create’ button.
Next, Constant Contact will show you multiple options for creating a campaign.
Go ahead and select the ‘Email Automation’ campaign.
From here, you can select single-step automations or multi-step automation.
Single-step automations send just a single email, such as a welcome email. Multi-step automations let you create a series of emails that are automatically sent to your subscribers so you can let them know about your products and services, send special offers, and more.
In this tutorial, you’ll create a multi-step automation for when new subscribers join your email list. Go ahead and select the ‘A contact joins a list’ option.
Next, you will have to enter a name for your campaign.
Make sure you click the ‘Save’ button.
Constant Contact will then ask you to choose what activity will trigger the email. For example, the drip series is automatically triggered when a user joins your email list, opens an email, clicks a link, or buys a product.
You can use the default ‘Contact joins a list’ option as the trigger type. Then you can choose the email list you created earlier. Go ahead and click the ‘Save’ button when you’re done.
Creating the Emails for Your Drip Campaign
Now you need to create the emails to send in your automated drip campaign. The first one you create will be sent automatically when the user signs up.
To begin, simply click the ‘Create New Email’ option.
Constant Contact will now show different email templates to choose from.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the ‘Agent Welcome’ template.
You can customize the email template using the drag-and-drop email builder.
You can choose multiple elements from the menu on your left and place them on the template.
You also need to add the email’s content by removing the placeholder text and adding your own. Once you’ve done this, simply click the ‘Continue’ button at the top right of the editor and the email will be added to the drip series.
Next, you can add a second email by clicking the ‘+ Add to series’ button and then the ‘Create New Email’ button.
You’ll need to select a template and customize the new email as you did earlier. You can set the delay before the drip campaign sends its next email.
By default, this value is set to 4 days. You can change this by clicking the ‘Edit’ button in front of the section titled ‘Wait 4 days.’
This will open the ‘Time Delay Editor’ where you can choose when the next email in the drip campaign will be delivered. You can click the ‘Confirm’ button when you’re done.
Now, you should see all your emails in the campaign summary area.
Go ahead and click the ‘Activate’ button in the upper-right corner to launch your campaign.
Constant Contact will then show a prompt to verify whether you wish to activate your campaign.
Simply click the ‘Continue’ button, and the tool will check if everything is working properly and activate your campaign.
You’ve now successfully launched your automated drip email campaign.
Sending Automated Transactional Emails With FunnelKit Automations
If you are running a WooCommerce store, then your customers will receive different transactional emails. These help them get order confirmations, track their order status, get invoices, and find more information about your online store.
You can customize and automate these emails using FunnelKit Automations, a popular WooCommerce plugin for marketing automation. It is a sister product to FunnelKit (formerly WooFunnels), a powerful sales funnel builder for WooCommerce.
Creating Email Automation Workflows With FunnelKit Automations
Upon activation, you need to go to Campaigns » Automations (Next-Gen) to add a new automation from your FunnelKit Automations dashboard. Here you will see a library of email types that make it simple to create new automations.
You can import an email automation workflow with a single click, then use the visual email automation builder to make any customizations that you need.
Automating Marketing Emails Using Uncanny Automator
Of course, you’ll also still need to send marketing emails outside of your drip campaign. These are most effective when they are personalized and timely.
For example, you can use automated emails to showcase products similar to what your customer has already bought. Or you can automatically send users an email as soon as you publish a new article on your website.
The free version easily connects with popular email marketing services such as Mailchimp, HubSpot, and others, making it easy to automate your email.
For this tutorial, we’ll use the free version of Mailchimp because it’s popular and they offer a free forever plan where you can send up to 10,000 emails per month to 2000 subscribers.
Upon activation, head over to the Automator » Add New page to create your first recipe. In this tutorial, we’ll send an automated email to subscribers whenever we publish a new post.
You’ll be asked to select which type of recipe you want to create. You should choose ‘Logged-in users’ and then click the ‘Confirm’ button.
Setting Up the Automation Trigger
Next, you need to choose whether the automation will be triggered by Uncanny Automator or WordPress.
Since you will be sending an automated email when a new WordPress post is published, you should click on the ‘WordPress’ option.
Now you can choose from a long list of available WordPress triggers.
You need to select the trigger labeled ‘A user publishes a type of post with a taxonomy term in a taxonomy.’
You can use the search feature to find this trigger more quickly.
If you like, you can get specific about the types of posts that will trigger the email. You can choose a post type and a specific category or tag from the drop-down menus.
For this tutorial, we’ll go with the default settings.
Make sure you click the ‘Save’ button when you have finished setting up the trigger.
Setting Up the Automation Trigger
Next comes the action part, where you choose what action will be triggered. To get started, simply click the ‘Add action’ button.
Now you will be shown a long list of integrations that are available for the action.
You should click the Mailchimp icon to connect it to your website.
This will bring up a popup where you need to follow the on-screen instructions to finish the connection by logging into your Mailchimp account or creating a new one. Once connected, you will be able to choose what action you want to perform on your Mailchimp account.
You should then choose the option ‘Create a send a campaign’.
Now you need to type a name for the campaign. You might like to use tokens so that the Mailchimp campaign name for each new post is different.
For example, you can click the ‘*’ button to the right of the field and select the ‘Post title’ token.
After that, you can use the drop-down menus to choose your audience and segment and fill in the subject and other details of your email.
You can compose your email in the ‘Email contents’ field. Make sure you use tokens so that the content is updated for each email campaign.
For instance, you can include tokens for the post title, post author display name, post excerpt, post URL, and featured image URL.
Once you are finished, you can switch the recipe from ‘Draft’ to ‘Live.’
From now on, when you publish a new article on your website, Mailchimp will automatically send an email to your subscribers.
You might also like to see our guide on how to automatically send a coupon to users who leave reviews in WooCommerce. It’s another good example of how you create automated emails using Uncanny Automator to build customer loyalty.
Bonus: Sending Automated Notification Emails
Now that you have set up automated emails for your users, you can do the same for yourself and your team.
For example, you can create automated email notifications to keep track of issues that require your immediate attention, such as when an author submits a post for you to review.
You can also stop the WordPress notifications you don’t need from filling up your inbox, such as comment notifications.
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