How to Change Sender Name in Outgoing WordPress Email

Do you want to change the default sender name and email address for outgoing WordPress emails? By default, WordPress uses ‘WordPress’ as the sender name for all outgoing WordPress notification emails. In this article, we will show you how to change the default sender name and email address in outgoing WordPress email.

Why You Should Change the Default Sender Information in WordPress?

The default WordPress sender name is ‘WordPress’ which sends emails from a non-existent email address (wordpress@yourdomain.com) as the sender email.

Many spam filters block your WordPress emails believing it to be spam. Sometimes it does not even make it to the spam folder.

For more on this topic, take a look at our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

The outgoing email notifications are important, and you should use your own brand and email address. This increases the authenticity of your brand and increases name recognition among your users.

Having said that, let’s see how to change the default sender name and email address in outgoing WordPress email notifications.

Method 1: Changing Default Sender Name and Email using a Plugin

First thing you need to do is install and activate the CB Change Mail Sender plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will notice a new menu item labeled CB Mail Sender in your WordPress admin bar. Clicking on it will take you to plugin’s settings page.

You will need to enter the name and email address you want to be used for outgoing WordPress emails.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

That’s all, all your WordPress notification emails will now show the name and email address you entered in plugin settings.

Bonus tip: You should use a professional email address. See our guide on how to create professional business email address.

Method 2: Manually Change Sender Name and Email Address

This method requires you to paste code into your WordPress files. If you are new to adding code in WordPress, then take a look at our beginners guide on pasting snippets from web into WordPress.

You will need to add the following code in your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

// Function to change email address

function wpb_sender_email( $original_email_address ) {
    return 'tim.smith@example.com';
}

// Function to change sender name
function wpb_sender_name( $original_email_from ) {
	return 'Tim Smith';
}

// Hooking up our functions to WordPress filters 
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from', 'wpb_sender_email' );
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from_name', 'wpb_sender_name' );

This code simply replaces the default WordPress sender name and email address with your custom sender name and email address.

You can test this by adding a new user, changing password, or any other action that sends WordPress notification email.

We hope this article helped you learn how to change sender name and email address in outgoing WordPress email. You may also want to see our guide on how to send email to all registered users in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Send Email to All Registered Users in WordPress

Have you ever wanted to send a mass email to all registered users on your WordPress site? f you run a multi-user WordPress site, then sometimes you may need to send notifications emails to your users. In this article, we will show you how to send email to all registered users in WordPress.

Why and When You Need to Send Email to All Registered Users in WordPress?

If you allow user registration on your WordPress site, then you may be automatically adding registered users to your email list as well.

In case you are not adding your registered users in an email list, or your email list is not segmented, then you would need an alternative solution to send a mass email to all registered users.

You can use this feature to send emails about important announcements, account status, password update requests, and more.

Let’s see how you can easily email all registered users on your WordPress site.

Sending Email to All Registered Users in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Email Users plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Email User’. Clicking on it will take you to the page where you can choose who you want to email.

You can send individual message to specific users, or you can send a message to user groups. Users with the same user role have the same user group for example, administrators, editors, authors, subscribers, etc.

You need to click on ‘Send Individual Message’ link to send email to specific or all users on your WordPress site.

Start by selecting a mail format for your email and then select recipients from the drop down list. You can use the CTRL (Command key on Mac) to select multiple users.

Next, you need to add a subject line and your email message. Once you are satisfied with the email message, click on the Send Email button.

The plugin will send your email message to all selected users.

Sending Email to User Groups in WordPress

User Email plugin also comes with a feature that allows you to send emails to specific user roles.

This feature is helpful if you have a lot of users, and you can’t select them all one by one in the individual message form. It is also helpful when you just want to email specific user roles like authors or editors.

You will need to visit Email Users » Send to Group(s) page.

First you need to select a mail format (Plain text or HTML) for your email message. After that you can select which user roles or groups you want to send this email to.

Next, add a subject for your email message and then add the email message that you want to send. Click on the Send Email button to send the message.

Turning Emails On/Off for Specific Users in WordPress

You can select which users will receive individual or group messages by visiting the Email Users » User Settings page.

Select the user you want to edit and then select an action from bulk actions menu. You can turn off notifications (individual messages) as well as mass emails (emails sent to multiple users or user groups).

When you have made your changes, make sure to click on the apply button to save your changes.

Individual users on your site can control email settings on their profile pages as well.

Upon login, users can go to their Profile page, and they will notice two new options to opt-in or out of email messages.

Troubleshooting Email Issues

If you are having problems sending email from your WordPress website, then see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Setup Email Notifications for WordPress Updates

Keeping your WordPress site up to date is crucial for security. Recently one of our readers asked if it was possible to get email notifications for WordPress updates. By default, WordPress only shows you update notifications when you login to the admin area. In this article, we will show you how to setup email notifications for WordPress updates.

Why and When You Need Email Notifications for WordPress Updates?

WordPress only shows you update notifications when you log into your WordPress admin area. Updates are highlighted for plugin and core updates. Theme updates are only visible on the Themes page or on the Updates page.

If you have a WordPress site, and you don’t login regularly, then you wouldn’t know when there is an update available to be installed.

One way to deal with this is by setting up automatic updates for WordPress core, plugins, and themes. It will allow your WordPress site to manage updates automatically.

Another way to manage updates is by setting up an email notification system for updates. Each time there is an update to WordPress core, plugin, or themes, you will get an email alert. You can then login to your website and install the update.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to easily setup email notifications for WordPress updates.

Setting up Email Notifications for WordPress Updates

First thing you need to do is install and activate WP Updates Notifier plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Updates Notifier page to configure plugin settings.

First you need to select cron method. By default, it is set to WordPress, and you don’t need to change that unless you know what you are doing.

Next, you need to select how often you want to check for updates. The default is set for once every hour, but you can change that to once or twice a day.

After that enter the email addresses you want to be notified. By default, the plugin will show the email address used in your WordPress settings. You can change it to a different address or add multiple email addresses separated by a comma.

WP Updates Notifier can also notify you about plugin and theme updates. Simply check Yes next to the plugin and theme update notifications.

Once you are done, click on the ‘Save settings with test email’ button to store your changes. The plugin will store your settings and send you a test email.

If you are having trouble receiving the email, then checkout our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

That’s all.

We hope this article helped you setup email notifications for WordPress updates. You may also want to check out our guide on keeping your WordPress content safe with BackupBuddy.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Block Disposable Email Addresses in WordPress

Recently, one of our readers asked if it’s possible to block disposable email addresses in WordPress? Disposable email addresses are temporary email accounts used by spammers to create fake WordPress accounts. In this article, we will show you how to effectively block disposable email addresses in WordPress.

What are Disposable Email Addresses and Why Block Them in WordPress

Most websites require an email address to create user accounts. This allows website owners to verify accounts by sending them a link to that email address.

Spammers found a workaround to that requirement in shape of disposable emails. These temporary email accounts are available for a short duration allowing spammers to verify an account.

If you run a WordPress membership site or allow user registration, then people can use those disposable email accounts to create fake user accounts on your website.

You can block spam user registrations using different plugins. However by blocking disposable email addresses, you can significantly reduce spam user registrations on your website.

Having said that, let’s take a look at how to block disposable email addresses in WordPress.

Blocking Disposable Email Addresses in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Ban Hammer plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Ban Hammer page to configure plugin settings.

Now you need to enter a custom error message to show when someone uses a disposable email address.

Next, you need to enter the domain names you want to block. You can find a list of the most commonly used burner email providers as a txt file on GitHub.

Simply copy the list of domains and paste them under blacklisted emails box on plugin’s settings page. You can also add any other domains that are not included in this list.

Don’t forget to click on the Update Options button to store your settings.

Any users who now try to register using a disposable email address will see the error message you defined earlier.

We hope this article helped you learn how to block disposable email addresses in WordPress. You may also want to see these 12 vital tips and tools to combat comment spam in WordPress

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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11 Email Marketing Mistakes WordPress Users Must Avoid

Thinking about building an email list? Beginner’s often end up making email marketing mistakes that are detrimental to their business. In this article, we will share 11 email marketing mistakes that all WordPress users must avoid.

1. Using WordPress to Run an Email List or Newsletter

WordPress is a robust platform with built-in capability to send email notifications. However, it was not designed to send out email newsletters.

There are plenty of WordPress plugins that allow you to send out newsletter without signing up for an email marketing service. Using such a plugin to build your email list is a terrible idea.

First, your WordPress hosting provider would consider this as a misuse of their terms and service. These mail servers are often poorly configured, have strict limits, and cannot send all your emails at once.

Almost all users who start out with a WordPress plugin or an email script, end up signing up with a proper email marketing service. The switch affects their existing subscribers as many email service providers will ask them to opt-in again.

If you haven’t already done so, then it is time to signup with a reputable email service provider like Constant Contact, AWeber, etc. This will ensure that you don’t lose any email address and that your emails always land into user’s inbox.

For more on this topic, take a look at our article on why you should never use WordPress to send newsletter emails.

2. Confusing Blog Subscription Tools with an Email List

Another common misconception among WordPress users is confusing blog subscription tools with an email list.

Plugins like JetPack or services like Feedburner allow your users to receive blog posts via email. However, this is not really an email list.

• You cannot send out private email newsletters to your users with these tools.


• You do not own your contacts list.


• There are no contact-management, advanced analytics, or any other features


• You cannot effectively use such tools to capture more email subscribers

For more on this topic, you may want to see our guide on how to switch from JetPack subscription to MailChimp, Aweber, etc.

3. Not Starting Email List Building Right Away

Many small businesses and bloggers don’t realize how important it is to use email marketing. They keep adding new content and reach out to audiences on social media, while ignoring the most cost effective marketing tool at their disposal.

Almost 75% visitors coming to your website from search engines will never come back again. Building an email list allows you to reach out to your users, bring them back, and boost your sales.

If you haven’t already started building your email list, then check out our article about why you should start building your email list right away.

4. Not Using a Lead Generation Software

Many users complain that their email list is not growing fast enough or that users are not signing up at all. Some users rely purely on guess work on what would work on their site.

You need to use a lead generation software like OptinMonster to quickly grow your email list. OptinMonster helps you convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers. See our case study of how we increased our email subscribers by 600% using OptinMonster.

5. Using only a Single Sign up Form

Many bloggers and small business owners just place a signup form on their website and then forget about it. Your users have a shorter attention span, and unless you are a celebrity, most users will probably not even notice your signup form.

You will need to improve your lead generation by placing multiple optin forms at strategic locations. Using OptinMonster, you can use smart popups, slide in forms, after post optins, and many more ways to make your email signup forms more noticeable.

6. Using Too Many Optins and Ruining User Experience

While using multiple optins boosts your email signups, using too many optins can have an adverse effect as well. You need to find a balance between a reasonable number of optins and good user experience.

For example, using a popup form, slide in optin, welcome gate, together on the same page can annoy your users. Bad user experience not only discourages users from browsing your website, it can also have a negative effect on your sales and SEO.

We recommend having a combination of a static form (sidebar or inline) and a dynamic form (slide-in, welcome gate, or popup).

7. Not Improving Lead Generation with Testing and Research

Often users turn on a sign up form and then leave it to be.

Without proper strategy and testing, your growth will be stagnant.

You need to regularly check which optins are working on your website and run A/B tests to see how you can improve.

8. Not Using RSS to Email Subscription

Collecting email addresses alone is not going to do anything for your business, unless you use it to engage with your users. You need to send emails to your users and stay in touch with them.

Connecting your blog’s RSS feed to your email list allows you to send email to your users whenever there is a new post on your blog.

It helps users check out new content and learn about your business / services. It also helps you build brand recognition among your users.

For detailed instructions, see our tutorial on how to add email subscription to your WordPress blog.

9. Buying an Email List

Buying an email list is undoubtedly the worst thing you can do to kill your whole email marketing. Those email lists are not real and even if some addresses are real, those people don’t know you and never signed up for receiving emails from you.

You will be sending unsolicited email and risking your brand name to be included into spam filters. You can be banned or penalized by your email service provider. Most importantly, you will be spending a lot more money to get very little response.

10. Ignoring Google Analytics to Boost Signups

Google Analytics is the treasure trove of useful data that helps you make informed decisions. Many site owners aren’t aware of how they can use this information to build their email list.

If you haven’t yet installed it, then check out our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress. After that follow our guide on how to use Google Analytics to understand how to analyze reports.

More experienced users can jump directly to this guide on how to use Google Analytics to discover ideas for lead magnets.

11. Sending Too Many Emails

We mentioned earlier that not sending enough emails can be a big mistake. Sending too many emails can be equally destructive.

Your users should know how many emails they should expect to receive when they signup. Many sites, including WPBeginner, allow users to choose from weekly, monthly, or daily emails.

If you are not segmenting your list like that, then you will need to find out the balance between a healthy email frequency and an annoying one.

We hope this article helped you learn about the most common mistakes WordPress users make while building their email list. You may also want to see our list of 10 WordPress plugins that will quickly help you get more traffic.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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7 Best Email Marketing Services for Small Business (2016)

Is email marketing a priority for your business in 2016? Are you looking for the email marketing software? Choosing the best email marketing service can have a significant impact on the success of your marketing campaign. In this article, we will review the 7 best email marketing services for small businesses.

Why Choosing The Best Email Marketing Service is Important?

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing tool. It is easy to manage, gives you full control and allows you to establish direct contact with your customers. For more on this topic, see our guide on why you should start building your email list right away.

While you can use OptinMonster to easily get more email subscribers, the actual email delivery part comes down to your email marketing service provider.

If you aren’t careful, then you might end up paying a lot more money for fewer features and terrible deliverability (which causes you to lose even more money).

A good email marketing service enables you to create highly engaging emails. It also allows you to manage your contacts, segment users into groups, and track the performance of your email campaigns.

Most importantly, a good email marketing service ensures that your emails do not end up in the spam folder.

Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the best email marketing service providers and how they stack up against each other.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing service in the world. It is also the most easy to use and beginner friendly email marketing service.

You can easily manage your email lists, contacts, email templates, and more.

Each account gives you access to easy tracking and reporting, built-in social media sharing tools, an image library and 1GB of storage for your own files.

Constant Contact offers unmatched support with live chat, email, community support, and a vast library of resources.

They also offer online training as well as live seminars in your neighborhood. This allows small business to quickly learn the basics of email marketing and start using it like a pro.

For all the reasons above, we rate Constant Contact the best email marketing service for small businesses.

Constant Contact has a 60 day free trial (no credit-card required). After that their pricing starts as low as /month.

2. AWeber

AWeber is one of the most popular email marketing service providers in the world. They offer a wide-range of tools for small and medium sized businesses to manage their email marketing.

Getting started with AWeber is easy. It connects seemlessly to most platforms including WordPress. For detailed instructions, see our ultimate guide on how to connect AWeber to WordPress.

You get access to ready to use email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking with detailed insights.

Support options include live chat, phone support, email support, live webinars, and a vast library of how-tos and tutorials.

AWeber offers a 30 day free trial. After that, their pricing starts from /month.

3. ConvertKit

ConvertKit is a robust email marketing platform for professional bloggers, authors, and marketers. It is extremely easy to use and incredibly powerful.

ConvertKit allows you to easily offer content upgrades and incentives with email signup forms. It also comes with easy to manage auto-responders allowing you to send drip emails.

With ConvertKit, you can easily segment contacts into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. This is great for marketing automation.

ConvertKit offers email based support and have extensive knowledge base with great learning material.

Pricing for ConvertKit plans start from /month with a 30-day refund policy.

4. GetResponse

GetResponse is a hugely popular email marketing solution. It is extremely easy to use and simplifies email marketing for small businesses and absolute beginners.

It comes with some amazing marketing automation tools which allow you to create smart automated campaigns. With a drag and drop builder, you can create campaigns, segment contacts, and send content designed for specific groups. These tools help you create effective campaigns to boost your profits.

GetResponse comes with beautiful responsive forms, landing pages, A/B testing, tracking, and autoresponders. It also integrates with third party lead generation software like OptinMonster, SalesForce, Google Docs, ZenDesk, etc.

Support is provided by phone, live chat, and email. Their help section is full of free learning material including videos, webinars, how-tos, guides, etc.

GetResponse offers a 30 day free trial. Their pricing starts from /month.

5. MailChimp

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. They offer a very easy to use interface with great tools and awesome support.

It integrates beautifully with WordPress, Magneto, Shopify, and many other platforms. If you are using WordPress, then see our ultimate guide to using MailChimp and WordPress for detailed instructions.

MailChimp also comes with easy email creator, merge tags, autoresponders, segmenting contacts into groups, and simple tracking and analytics. It also allows you to set up delivery times based on user’s timezones and setup segmenting based on geolocation.

Support is offered by email, live chat, and a huge knowledge base with how-tos, videos, and tutorials.

MailChimp offers a forever free plan which allows you to send 12,000 emails for upto 2,000 subscribers. Their paid plans start from /month.

Because of their free plan, we rate MailChimp the best email marketing software for nonprofits.

6. Campaign Monitor

Campaign Monitor is another popular email marketing solution. It gives you everything you would need to run successful campaigns and then some more.

They have a beautiful drag and drop email builder. It allows you to use professionally designed email templates and make them your own. They also offer a drag and drop segmenting tool to create different campaigns for different contacts based on behavior and actions.

You can personalize each message using the rich customer data. This makes your emails more personal and gives much better results.

Not to mention their easy to use A/B testing, tracking, optimization, and social sharing tools.

Support is available 24/7 via email and support forums. Premier customers can also avail phone support. They have extensive documentation step-by-step how-tos to help you get started and fix things on your own.

Campaign Monitor’s pricing plans start from /month.

7. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign combines your email marketing, automation, with CRM and sales. It comes with all the tools you will need to create smarter email marketing campaigns.

ActiveCampaign comes with a beautiful email template editor and mobile friendly signup forms. It allows you to segment contacts based on their actions, location, behavior, and social data. It can also fetch additional data about your contacts using only their email address.

It integrates beautifully with many third party software including WordPress. You can also send SMS messages to your contacts for follow up on campaigns.

ActiveCampaign’s plans start from /month. You can also request a demo with limited features for a test run.

Although the pricing on ActiveCampaign gets quite high, it’s totally worth the money if marketing automation is what you’re looking for.

We hope this article gave you a good overview of the best email marketing services for your business. You may also want to see our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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How to Email Authors When Their Articles are Published in WordPress

If you run a multi-author blog, then notifying the authors when their blog post is published can help them promote the post and participate in the discussion. Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to email authors when their articles are published. In this article, we will show you how to email authors when their posts are published in WordPress.

Method 1: Send Post Notifications to Authors using Edit Flow

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Edit Flow plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Edit Flow works out of the box for email notifications. As soon as you activate the plugin, it will start sending email notifications to authors when their posts are published.

However, it does not send those email notifications to site administrator. You can go to Edit Flow » Notifications page and select enable for ‘Always notify blog admin’ option.

Edit Flow is a powerful plugin, and it can do a lot more than just sending email notifications. For a full overview of what you can do with it, see our guide on how to improve your editorial workflow in WordPress with Edit Flow.

Method 2: Email Authors using Better Notifications for WordPress

This method is for users who just want to send email notifications to authors without any other editorial features of Edit Flow.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Better Notifications for WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Notifcations » Add New page to create your author email notification.

First you need to a enter a title for this notification, for e.g. ‘Post Published Notification for Authors’.

In the ‘Notification for’ field, you need to select ‘New post published’.

Under Additional Email Fields option, check the box next to ‘Send this notification to the Author only’.

Now you need to write a subject line and email body. Better WordPress Notifications comes with a handful of shortcodes that you can use in your email subject and body.

In the email subject field you should enter:

Post Published: [post_title]

For message body, you can use this template:

Hello [user_nicename],

We just published your post “[post_title]”.

You can view it here: [permalink]

Thanks,

Finally, you need to click on the save button to store your new notification.

The plugin will now send a notification email to authors when their posts are published in WordPress.

For more detailed instructions, see our guide on how to add better custom notifications in WordPress.

Method 3: Manually Send Email to Authors When Their Articles are Published

This method is for users who are comfortable adding code snippets in WordPress.

You need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

function notifyauthor($post_id) {

$post = get_post($post_id);
$author = get_userdata($post->post_author);
$subject = "Post Published: ".$post->post_title."";

$message = "
      Hi ".$author->display_name.",
      
      Your post, \"".$post->post_title."\" has just been published.
      
      View post: ".get_permalink( $post_id )."
      
      Thanks"
      ;
      
   wp_mail($author->user_email, $subject, $message);
}
add_action('publish_post', 'notifyauthor');

This code runs when a new post is published in WordPress. It sends an email notification to the author using the subject and message defined in the code. Feel free to change the subject and message fields to meet your needs.

Troubleshooting Tip:

If your authors complain about not receiving email notifications, then check out our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

We hope this article helped you email authors when their articles are published in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of 21 plugins to efficiently manage WordPress multi-author blogs.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today!

Are you thinking about building an email list, but not sure why it is so important? Many bloggers and business owners don’t see the importance of building an email list right away until they see the impact email lists can have on website traffic and revenue. In this article, we will show you the top reasons why building your email list is important (with real case studies). We will also show you how to start building your email list – step by step.

By the end of this article, you will have answers to all your questions about building an email list.

What is an Email List and Why is it so Important?

An email list is a list of names and email addresses of people who gave you permission to send them updates and promotions from your business via email.

Why is this so important?

Because these subscribers joined your email list from your website and verified their identity by clicking on a link (double-optin). They are extremely interested in what you have to offer.

According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in USA.

In our business, email lists get 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns. This makes sense if you think about these five advantages of email as a communication channel:

Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct, personal, and casual.

Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products / content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

You Own Your Email List – You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platform change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by decisions of other businesses.

Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

Big name brands learned this lesson a long time ago, and that’s why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

They understand that email marketing is the best long term investment with a much higher return. Because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Social Media vs Email Marketing

Now you’re probably thinking, wait a minute. What about social media?

A lot of social media experts and consultants, in an attempt to sell their services, downplay the importance of an email list.

In fact, we have even been asked isn’t email marketing kind of dead with social media taking over everything?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the information Twitter and Facebook ask you before you create an account:

Yup, it’s an email address. Because these companies know that emails are the most direct and reliable way of getting in touch.

All social media platforms are building an email list because they are smart business owners. This helps their valuation when selling their business.

While social media is a great way to reach your audience, it’s important to keep in perspective the timely nature of social media platforms.

They come and go.

Not too long ago we had MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Plurk and countless others. Most of them are either dead now or irrelevant.

Today we have Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone is as hooked up on these sites. Some prefer other places like Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, etc.

But studies show that at least 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis.

We are not saying that social media is not important. It is, and you should explore every opportunity to reach out to your audiences.

However you should spend more time and effort into something that guarantees much higher results.

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

Hopefully by now, you should know why building an email list is so important, and why ignoring it would be a HUGE mistake.

So let’s take a look at what you need to start building your email list.

3 Things You Need to Build an Email List:

1. A website or blog.


2. An email marketing service.


3. High-converting opt-in forms

All three of these are fairly easy to setup, and none of them require you to know how to code.

For the sake of this article, we will only be focusing on the last two items in the list. If you don’t have a website or blog yet, then see our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

There are tons of email marketing services online. Often beginners use the free options to save cost, which is understandable. However, some of those free platforms are not the best option. Why?

Services like FeedBurner or Jetpack Subscriptions offer blog subscription via email. This allows your users to receive an email update every time you publish a new blog post.

The downside to a blog notification service like this are:

• You will have to create a blog post to send an email. This means that information you want to share will have to be publicly available first. You can’t send out private email newsletters.


• You can’t personalize the email message. It will be delivered in the same format often with no branding or personalization.


• You can’t categorize subscribers by interests, demographics, or content type.


• There is no reporting. You don’t know how many people got email, what percentage of users opened it, and how many of them clicked on links.


• If you later tried to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm their subscription. Many of them will not do it, and you will end up losing subscribers.

This is why we ALWAYS recommend using a professional email marketing service. Yes, they cost a little bit of money, but they are an investment in your business which pays huge returns.

The benefit of professional email marketing services are:

• You can send private mass emails to your subscribers.


• You can see subscriber activity and group your subscribers based on actions they take.


• You can run A/B split tests to see which email subject line, content, and offers work best with your subscribers.


• With reporting tools, you can see which country you have the most subscribers from. You can adjust your timezone preferences, and send emails at the right time.


• Last, but definitely the most important, you can see the email addresses of all your subscribers.

There are hundreds of professional email marketing services available, but we have compiled a list of the best email marketing services.

For small businesses, we recommend using Constant Contact because they are one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services in the world.

They offer a 60 day free trial. This gives you plenty of time to setup and start seeing the results. At the end of 60 days, your email list would likely be paying for itself (cost / month). Start your free trial.

Because we know people often like to see options before they make a decision, we also recommend AWeber. They are another popular email marketing service provider, and they offer our users a 30-day free trial.

Once you have signed up with an email marketing service, the next step is to add opt-in forms to your website to allow your users to subscribe.

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

While choosing the right email marketing service is important, getting more subscribers is even more important because this is how you make money.

The biggest mistake beginners make is not strategically placing high-converting opt-in forms.

While some WordPress themes come with built-in sidebar widgets, they don’t convert as well. Your email marketing service may also provide you with codes to embed in your theme, but that requires you to know how to code.

This is why we recommend our users to use OptinMonster. It is the most powerful conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can easily create high-converting optin forms such as lightbox popups, floating header and footer bars, slide-in scroll boxes, fullscreen welcome mat, after post and inline forms, and more.

But what makes OptinMonster really powerful is the behavior automation and personalization features. OptinMonster allows you to automatically show different opt-in forms based on where the user is coming from, which page they are visiting, and what they are doing on your website.

For example, the Exit-Intent® feature track your users mouse behavior and show them a targeted opt-in form at the precise moment they are about to leave. This helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

This is important because over 70% of people leaving your website will never return.

That’s why influencers like Michael Hyatt, Neil Patel, and Social Media Examiner use exit-intent on their websites. It helped Social Media Examiner add over 95,000 new subscribers in 7 months.

But for smaller businesses, this is even more crucial. Nicolas Gagne, a small business owner, combined Constant Contact with a single exit-intent optin to grow his email list by 500%. This helped him triple his revenue from his online store (see the full case study).

There are tons more case studies and OptinMonster reviews that you can read as well.

Get started with OptinMonster today — Use the coupon WPB10 to get 10% off.

Note: OptinMonster was started by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, because he wanted to get more email subscribers, faster. It helped us increase our email signups by 600%. Due to popular request, we released this tool for public, and now it’s the most recommended lead generation software in the market.

List Building Strategies and Resources

Having the right tools is crucial, but knowing how to use them properly is what makes the most difference.

In your email marketing strategy, the most important thing you should plan out is segmentation. This is the process of grouping your subscribers, so you can better personalize your emails based on interest. It helps you get higher open rates and click-through rates. This definitive guide to email marketing has all the information you need to segment your email list like a pro.

Content Upgrades are the highest converting opt-in forms. It’s a technique where you give your users bonus content at the end of your popular blog posts. These usually convert 5 times higher than a regular opt-in. Here are some content upgrade ideas that you should check out. We have written a guide on how to add content upgrades in WordPress.

If you’re not sure how to create an opt-in form, then use this 63-point checklist for creating a high-converting optin form.

You may want to check out Kevin Duncan’s article on 16 ridiculously simple ways to get more email subscribers in less than 5 minutes.

In case you want more ideas, Mary Fernandez also shared 73 proven and simple ways to grow your email list that should get you going.

Conclusion

It does not matter what kind of business you run, what kind of website you have, or what industry you are in.

If you have a website, and you want to turn your visitors into returning customers, then you need to get them in your email list.

We hope this article helped you understand why building an email list is important and helped you get started on the right foot.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today! appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Protect Emails from Spammers with WordPress Email Encoder

Do you want to share your email address on your website without getting caught by spam bots? When you add an email link or plain text email address, it will most likely be copied by an spam email harvesting bot. In this article, we will show you how to easily protect emails from spammers with email encoder.

Why is Email Encoding Important?

Most website owners don’t realize that pasting their email address into their posts, pages, or on a contact page can put you at risk for a lot of email spam.

Spammers use email harvesting bots that automatically browse the web to collect email addresses. These email addresses are then sold to spammers all over the world.

This is why we almost always recommend creating a contact form instead of sharing an email address.

Now the problem is that sometimes you may really need to add an email address that users can copy or click to email.

Thankfully there is a way to do that and protect your email address from spammers. It’s called email encoding and it’s quite easy.

Let’s take a look at how to do that.

Protecting Email Addresses from Spammers

First thing you need to do is instal and activate the Email Address Encoder plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

Once you activate the plugin, Email Address Encoder simply starts encoding email addresses in WordPress posts and pages, custom post types, widgets, etc.

What that means is that it converts the plain text email addresses into decimal and hexadecimal entities.

If you see the page source of your page, then you will see the email addresses encoded looks like this:

This way when an email harvesting bot visit your page source, they will not be able to see the email addresses.

However, real human users will see the plain text email addresses in their browser window.

That’s all. We hope this article helped you protect email addresses in WordPress from spammers. You may also want to see our guide on 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Protect Emails from Spammers with WordPress Email Encoder appeared first on WPBeginner.

How to Disable Automatic Update Email Notification in WordPress

Do you want to disable automatic update email notification in WordPress? By default, WordPress sends an email notification to inform you that your WordPress site is updated after security updates. Recently one of our readers asked if there is an easy way to disable that. In this article, we will show you how to easily disable automatic update email notification in WordPress.

About Automatic Updates in WordPress

WordPress is an open source software which is maintained by a community of developers. It is regularly updated to fix security issues, bugs, and to add new features.

This is why you should always use the latest version of WordPress to make sure that your website is safe and up to date.

WordPress automatically installs minor updates as soon as they are available. After the update, your WordPress site sends a notification to the WordPress admin email address.

The purpose of this email notification is just to inform you that your WordPress site is updated.

If you maintain multiple WordPress sites, then you will get an email from each website. This can be a bit annoying.

Let’s see how to easily turn off the automatic update email notification in WordPress.

Method 1: Disable Automatic Update Email Notification Using Plugin

This method is simpler and does not require you to add any code to your WordPress site.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Disable WordPress Core Update Email. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

Upon activation, it simply disables email notification sent after WordPress automatic update.

Method 2: Disable Automatic Update Email Notification Using Code

This method requires you to add code to your WordPress files. If you haven’t done this before, then take a look at our beginner’s guide on pasting snippets from web into WordPress.

You will need to add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.

add_filter( 'auto_core_update_send_email', 'wpb_stop_auto_update_emails', 10, 4 );
 
function wpb_stop_update_emails( $send, $type, $core_update, $result ) {
if ( ! empty( $type ) && $type == 'success' ) {
return false;
}
return true;
}

This code simply adds a filter to disable email notification after automatic core update.

Managing Notifications and Updates in WordPress

By default, WordPress does not allow you to automatically install updates. Many site owners find it a bit annoying to update themes and plugins, especially if they maintain multiple WordPress sites.

Luckily, there are plugins that allow you to more efficiently manage WordPress updates. For detailed instructions see our guide on how to better manage automatic WordPress updates.

Similarly, WordPress by default has no unified interface to manage notification emails. It may not even send email notifications and you wouldn’t notice it.

There are plugins that allow you to manage and control emails sent by WordPress. You can even customize default WordPress emails. For detailed instructions take a look at our guide on how to add better custom notifications in WordPress.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you learn how to disable automatic update email notification in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Disable Automatic Update Email Notification in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.