WordPress Wednesday: Ten Top Email Plugins
Despite predictions to the contrary, email is still the most popular way to communicate on the Web - and the competition doesn't even come close. There are more than 2.9 billion email accounts worldwide, which is three times as many registered Facebook and Twitter users combined.
Therefore, anyone trying to establish a presence on the Web should be using email marketing to build, inform and engage with their audience. WordPress provides some of the best tools available to achieve these goals.
Check out the list below for ten email WordPress plugins that can help site owners grow their contact lists, protect their lists from spambots, customize their emails and more.
This simple plugin allows for a newsletter sign-up checkbox to show on comment and registration forms, as well as a widget sign-up form to appear in widget areas. It also provides a shortcode that can embed newsletter sign-up forms in posts and pages. Currently this plugin has been downloaded more than 26,800 times, and it supports providers such as Mailchimp, YMLP, Aweber, iContact and others.
Thank new visitors by sending them an email when they leave a comment on your blog with this popular plugin that has been dowloaded more than 45,000 times. By thanking your active visitors, you are welcoming them to further engage with your blog in the future. This plugin is also customizable, allowing the user to create multiple email messages and schedule messages to automatically send - making the messages appear more unique and personable.
This plugin allows users to write and send emails, as well as gather and manage subscribers. Features include multilanguage options, the ability to select themes, manage subscribers, create mailing lists and batch send. The site owner can customize emails or set the plugin to pull content from a blog and send automatic emails. This plugin has been dowloaded more than 89,000 times and requires WordPress version 3.0 or higher.
In order to take advantage of this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 24,000 times, a user must have a MailChimp account for the plugin to sync with. The plugin can be set to update your mailing list when a new user subscribes, a user unsubscribes or a user updates his or her information. Additionally, users can set email campaigns to be automatically created from new blog posts.
BuddyPress Group Email Subscription
This plugin allows group members to receive email notifications for group activity and forum posts. Each user has the ability to choose how they want to subscribe to their groups, such as without email, a weekly summary email, a daily digest email, new topic emails or receive emails for all activity. This popular plugin has more than 42,000 downloads, and requires WordPress version 2.9.1 or higher.
Instead of sending plain emails, send customizable emails with this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 8,700 times. WP Better Emails uses a customizable HTML template and also lets users set their own sender name and email address. The template has been tested on popular email clients such as Gmail, Yahoo mail, Outlook, and more - to ensure that the email always displays properly. Additionally, users can send out sample emails to test and preview their own custom template.
Protect the email addresses on your site from spambots! This plugin encodes all email addresses so spambots can't read them. Features include protection of email and mailto links, as well as protection against scanning of posts, widgets, comments and RSS feeds. Additionally, your audience will be thankful that you are protecting their information with this plugin that has been dowloaded more than 6,000 times.
Easily send mass emails to your existing WordPress user database with this plugin. Features of this plugin allow users to choose newsletter templates, settings and content, as well as insert images. This plugin also allows for users to review past newsletters and campaigns. This plugin starts at $25 and is especially designed for Wordpress 3. Learn about plugins.
This plugin helps users build their email list. It comes with a plethora of features, including an opt-in form, registration subscribing, commenter subscribing, the capability to put a subscribe box in posts, Facebook connectivity, analytics and more. Users can customize all of these features in order to build better and larger email lists. The price of this plugin starts at $47 and is good to use on up to three WordPress sites.
According to its makers - maxblogpress - users can grow their email contact list by 300 percent or more with this plugin. Although not a free plugin ($147 introductory special), there is a money-back guarantee for users that don't double their subscriptions within 60 days. The plugin allows users to add an opt-in form anywhere on a WordPress blog. Additionally, a visitor's name and email is automatically filled within the opt-in form, which saves visitors time and can increase sign-ups.
Read Next: How to Use WordPress Plugins
