Last updated - March 28, 2022
Alerting subscribers about published articles is a great way to engage and draw traffic to your website. According to industry experts, the average email open rate is 22.71% and the average click rate is 2.91%. For a large subscriber base, this could mean a significant source of traffic.
In this article, we are covering the best email marketing software you can use to send newly published blog posts (or daily, weekly or monthly digests) to your subscribers.
Let’s get started.
How to Send WordPress Blog Posts by Email
To send WordPress blog posts by email, you need to first find an email marketing software that suits your needs. Having been in the business for many years, we’ve had the opportunity to try out various email marketing software. And we have come to conclude that these tools can be segregated into two types:
- WordPress plugins (like Jetpack)
- Dedicated email marketing software (like MailChimp)
Let’s find out which one is best for you.
WordPress Plugins
Plugins like JetPack Subscriptions, Email Subscribers & Newsletters, and Subscribe2 are some of the most popular WordPress email plugins. Using these plugins you can send published blog posts to your subscribers directly from the dashboard. They are easy to use but there are a few issues plaguing them.
For instance, low deliverability rates are a common issue among these tools. Over the years, developers have found ways to tackle this by installing an SMTP mail plugin. But the deliverability rates improve only slightly.
Moreover hosting providers like Kinsta and WPEngine prevent sending mass emails from the WordPress dashboard because it uses a good deal of server resources which causes the website to become extremely slow.
Other issues you are likely to face are – JetPack does not allow you to brand your newsletters. Subscribe2 is not user-friendly and requires a lot of customization to even make the email look professional.
Due to the number of issues one might face while using an email marketing WordPress plugin, we strongly recommend using a dedicated email marketing software. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular tools out there.
Dedicated Email Marketing Software
There are several dedicated marketing software to choose from. The main players are:
- MailChimp
- Convertkit
- Sendinblue
- Active Campaign
- MailerLite
Let’s take a look at their offerings.
MailChimp
MailChimp is the oldest and arguably the most popular email marketing platform right now. It offers tons of form templates, dedicated landing pages, detailed analytic results, and high deliverability. Mailchimp fetches new post information from your RSS feed. It’s a great tool for marketers but can be overwhelming for a novice. Learn more.
Convertkit
Converkit is very popular with creators like YouTubers, podcasters, and bloggers. Unlike other email marketing services that are built for traditional businesses, Convertkit is designed for the creator economy. With this email marketing tool, you have the ability to showcase the human behind the brand. To build a connection with your subscribers, Convertkit offers several text-based email templates. And like MailChimp, Convertkit also relies on the RSS feed on your website to send new blog posts to your subscriber base. Learn more.
Sendinblue
Sendinblue is more than an email software. It’s a powerful marketing toolkit that offers features like an intuitive drag and drop email editor, list segmentation, A/B testing, an array of responsive templates, among other things. You can scale your marketing campaigns with advanced features like Sendinblue Tracker that helps create emails based on how users interact with your website. As for sending WordPress posts by email, Sendinblue can definitely do that. Learn more.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a powerful platform with an advanced range of features ideal for advanced email marketers. It offers over 125 mobile-friendly templates along with the option to import your own email templates. Other impressive features include list management, spam testing, deep data reporting, and the ability to build sophisticated workflows for segmenting, scoring leads, sending emails, tagging data, etc. Like all the other email marketing software in this list, ActiveCampaign fetches information on published posts via RSS and then alerts the subscribers about it. Learn more.
MailerLite
MailerLite is a solid choice if you are looking for a simple, easy-to-use email marketing software. The tool offers a number of great features like rich text & HTML editor, drag-and-drop editor, segmentation, auto resend, autoresponder, simple automation sequences, etc. There’s an RSS email feature that automatically sends new content to subscribers. Learn more.
Send WordPress Blog Posts by Email Using MailOptin (Easiest Method)
As you can see there are some great email marketing tools to choose from. But learning how to operate a new software is a cumbersome process. Many of the tools mentioned in the previous section are complicated. It will require time and effort to master them.
If you want to keep working from your familiar WordPress dashboard then use MailOptin. It integrates well with popular dedicated email marketing software (like MailChimp, Convertkit, Sendinblue, etc). All you need to do is connect the tool with MailOptin. And you should be able to send blog posts by email from within your WordPress dashboard. We will show you the exact steps that you need to take.
We will first create a MailChimp account, connect it with MailOptin and then automate the process of sending emails to your subscribers. We will demonstrate not just how to alert subscribers as soon as a post is published but also how to create and send daily, weekly or monthly round-ups of published posts to your subscribers.
Let’s get started.
Create a MailChimp Account
Register with MailChimp, then go to Account > Extras > API keys > Create a Key. Within a second you will have an API key like the one shown in the image below.
The next step is to import contacts into MailChimp. Here’s a guide that’ll help you do just that.
Set Up MailOptin
Install and activate MailOptin on your WordPress website. Go to MailOptin > Integration > MailChimp and then insert the API to connect your site with MailChimp.
Now it’s time to set up the emails. Navigate to MailOptin > Emails > Email Automation.
Enter a title for the campaign.
Next, under Select Type you can choose any one of the following options –
- New Post Notification: For alerting subscribers as soon as a post is published on your website.
- Posts Email Digest: For automatically creating and sending daily, weekly or monthly round-ups of published posts to your subscriber list.
New Post Notification
After you select New Post Notification, you will find a simple pre-made email template. When you click on it you will be taken to a drag and drop email builder that looks like this:
Posts Email Digest
Selecting the Posts Email Digest option will also lead you to the pre-built template and the drag and drop email builder where you can configure settings like subject line, content length, custom post types, and much more.
That’s it folks. MailChimp will now email WordPress blog posts to your subscribers.
Conclusion
We used MailChimp to demonstrate how to send emails to your subscribers. But if you prefer to use a different tool, rest assured. MailOptin integrates with all the popular email marketing tools. Setting it up is super easy. Take a look at the guides below:
We hope you found this tutorial easy to follow. If you have any queries, leave us a comment below.
