The Ultimate Guide to Automating Emails in WordPress (2023)

Are you struggling to keep up with sending emails to your WordPress site‘s users and customers? Maybe you‘re manually emailing new signups, following up with abandoned carts, or notifying customers of their order status. Doing this all by hand gets overwhelming fast, especially as your business grows.

The good news is that you can automate most of your crucial WordPress emails to save hours of time and effort. By setting up automated email sequences, your site will send the right messages to the right users at the right times, automatically.

Whether you run a WooCommerce store, membership site, online course, or blog, email automation is key to engaging and retaining your audience. In this complete guide, we‘ll walk through everything you need to know to automate your WordPress emails the right way.

Why Email Automation is a Must for WordPress Sites

First, let‘s look at some key reasons to embrace email automation in WordPress:

1. Email automation saves you serious time

Imagine you have an online course with 500 students. Manually emailing every new student to welcome them, share login details, and check in on their progress would take hours.

With email automation, you can set up sequences to handle all of this automatically, triggered when a new student registers. This frees up valuable time to focus on higher-impact tasks like creating content, supporting students, and marketing your course.

2. Automated emails get better engagement

Automated emails average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click rates than generic broadcast emails. Why? Because they‘re more timely, relevant, and targeted to each user‘s specific actions and interests.

For example, a personalized automated welcome email sent immediately after a new user signs up will get much higher engagement than a bulk newsletter blast to your entire list. Multiply this effect across your highest-impact emails and the gains in engagement and conversion can be huge.

3. Email automation drives more revenue

Whether you‘re selling products, services, or content, automated emails are one of the most effective ways to drive more sales from your existing audience.

Some of the highest-ROI email automations for boosting revenue include:

• Abandoned cart sequences to recover lost sales
• Post-purchase follow-ups to cross-sell related products
• Win-back campaigns to reactivate past customers
• Renewal reminders for expiring memberships or subscriptions

For example, a study by Klaviyo found that ecommerce brands generate up to 20% of their total revenue from automated abandoned cart emails alone.

4. Automated emails create a better user experience

Automated emails aren‘t just good for your bottom line – they create a better experience for your users and customers too.

Think about the last time you bought something online. Chances are you received an instant order confirmation email, a shipping notification when your order was on the way, and a request for feedback a few weeks later.

These types of expected transactional emails keep customers informed and build trust in your brand. Failing to send them (or sending them late) leads to a poor user experience and lost future sales.

How to Ensure Your WordPress Emails are Getting Delivered

Now that you know the why of email automation, let‘s cover the how. The first step to reliable email automation in WordPress is to check your site‘s email deliverability.

By default, WordPress sends emails using the PHP mail() function. However, many shared hosting servers aren‘t configured to use this method reliably, so your WordPress site‘s emails may not be getting delivered consistently (or at all).

To fix this, you can use a free SMTP plugin like Post SMTP Mailer/Email Log. This routes your site‘s emails through a proper SMTP provider to improve deliverability. Here‘s how to set it up:

1. Install and activate the free Post SMTP plugin
2. Go to Post SMTP » Settings
3. Select "SMTP" as your mailer type in the Transport section
4. Choose "Other SMTP" as the mailer under SMTP Options
5. Enter the SMTP settings for your hosting provider or email sending service (for example, Mailgun, Sendinblue, or your own G Suite account)
6. Save changes and send a test email to confirm it‘s working

With a proper SMTP setup in place, you can feel confident your WordPress emails are getting delivered consistently. For the full step-by-step, see this guide to configuring WordPress SMTP.

Top Email Marketing Services to Automate WordPress Emails

The next piece of the puzzle is choosing an email marketing platform to create and send your automated email sequences. While you can set up basic email automation using free plugins, a dedicated email service will give you more features and reliability.

Here are our top picks for email marketing automation in WordPress:

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the most popular email marketing services with over 500,000 customers. They offer a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop email builder, 100+ responsive templates, and simple autoresponder sequences.

Key features:

• Easy drag-and-drop email designer
• 100+ mobile-optimized templates
• Unlimited emails on all plans
• Automated email sequences
• Ecommerce integrations including WooCommerce and Shopify
• Built-in signup forms and landing pages
• Real-time reporting and analytics

Pricing starts at $20/month for up to 500 subscribers with a 60-day free trial. See our Constant Contact review for a full breakdown of features.

2. Drip

Drip is a powerful enterprise email automation platform built for ecommerce brands and online businesses. They offer advanced segmentation, multi-channel marketing automation, and deep integrations with WordPress and WooCommerce.

Key features:

• Visual drag-and-drop automation builder
• Multi-channel automations across email, SMS, and social media
• Advanced subscriber segmentation and targeting options
• Dynamic email content and personalization
• Robust API and third-party integrations
• Conversion tracking and revenue attribution
• Detailed analytics and engagement scoring

Pricing starts at $19/month for up to 500 subscribers with a 14-day free trial. See our Drip review for more details.

3. Sendinblue

Sendinblue is an affordable all-in-one marketing platform that handles email, SMS, chat, and more. Their email builder is beginner-friendly with 40+ responsive templates, and they have solid automation options.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop email designer with 40+ templates
• Transactional email sending via SMTP or API
• Email and SMS marketing automation
• Built-in CRM and live chat
• Signup forms and landing pages
• Workflow editor to map out sequences
• Real-time reporting and analytics

Sendinblue offers a free plan with up to 300 emails per day. Paid plans start at $25/month for up to 20,000 emails. See our Sendinblue review for more.

Once you‘ve chosen an email platform, you‘ll need to integrate it with your WordPress site. Most services offer a plugin or API integration to pass WordPress user and customer data to your email list.

For example, Constant Contact has an official WordPress plugin that syncs your WordPress users and WooCommerce customers as email subscribers. It also lets you add email signup forms to your site.

Sendinblue and Drip also offer their own WordPress integrations to sync subscribers and embed forms on your site.

How to Create Automated Email Sequences in WordPress

Now for the fun part: setting up your first email automation sequence in WordPress. While the specific steps will vary a bit based on your email platform, the general process is:

1. Choose an email trigger based on user actions like joining a list, making a purchase, filling out a form, etc.
2. Create a workflow to map out a series of automated emails to be sent after the trigger
3. Build each individual email using your platform‘s drag-and-drop designer
4. Activate your sequence and start capturing new subscribers to enter the automation

Here are a few examples of high-impact automated email sequences you can set up for your WordPress site:

1. Welcome series for new email subscribers

Trigger: New user joins your email list

Sequence:

• Email 1: Instant welcome message and download/content upgrade delivery
• Email 2: Introduction to your brand story and unique value proposition (day 2)
• Email 3: Links to your most popular blog posts or products (day 5)
• Email 4: Invitation to follow on social media and join community (day 7)

According to Campaign Monitor, welcome emails have an average open rate of 82% and 336% higher transaction rates than bulk promotions. Rolling out the red carpet for new subscribers pays off.

2. Abandoned cart recovery sequence

Trigger: Logged-in user or customer adds items to cart but doesn‘t complete purchase

Sequence:

• Email 1: Gentle reminder of items left behind (1 hour after abandonment)
• Email 2: Urgency-inducing reminder with time-limited coupon code (24 hours)
• Email 3: Last call reminder with expiring coupon and support contact (48 hours)

According to Salesforce, 60% of abandoned cart emails are opened, 50% are clicked, and 30% lead to a recovered purchase. Considering the average online cart abandonment rate is close to 70%, this automation can have a huge impact on your bottom line.

3. Post-purchase cross-sell sequence

Trigger: Customer completes a purchase in your store

Sequence:

• Email 1: Order confirmation with receipt, products purchased, and support info
• Email 2: Product usage/care tips to get the most out of their purchase (3 days later)
• Email 3: Request for product review or social share (7 days later)
• Email 4: Recommendation of complementary products to cross-sell (14 days later)

Marketing Metrics found that post-purchase follow-up sequences see 90% open rates and 60% click-through rates on average.

Strike while the iron is hot by recommending related products customers are likely to buy based on their initial purchase.

Best Practices for Higher-Converting Email Automation

To get the most out of your WordPress email automations, keep these tips in mind:

1. Use double opt-in to maintain list hygiene

Using double opt-in for new email signups ensures you‘re only adding real, engaged subscribers to your list. This extra confirmation step of clicking a link in an initial email filters out fake or low-quality leads, improving your deliverability and engagement rates.

2. Segment subscribers based on behavior and interest

The more you can segment your email list based on each subscriber‘s unique attributes, the more relevant your messaging can be. Most email platforms let you apply tags to subscribers based on their actions, such as:

• Viewing specific website content
• Clicking links in an email
• Completing a purchase
• Filling out a form or survey

Use these tags to personalize your email content and send more targeted automated campaigns.

3. Test and optimize every automated email

Just because email sequences are automated doesn‘t mean you can set and forget them. Regularly test different subject lines, content, calls-to-action, and timing to see what gets the best response.

Use A/B testing to try out variations and progressively improve open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Small tweaks can lead to big increases in engagement over time.

4. Focus on helping over selling

While it‘s tempting to promote your products or services in every automated email, resist the urge to make every message a hard sell.

Focus on providing genuine value through helpful content, resources, and support first. Then sprinkle in relevant offers and calls-to-action where appropriate.

Automated emails should nurture subscribers and build long-term brand affinity, not just go for the quick sale.

Level Up Your Email Automation With WordPress Plugins

For even more control over your automated emails, consider investing in a premium WordPress plugin. Some of the best options to supercharge your email sequences include:

1. AutomateWoo

AutomateWoo is a marketing automation plugin built specifically for WooCommerce stores. It allows you to set up automated emails, SMS, and actions based on order, customer, and product data.

You can use AutomateWoo to create abandoned cart recovery emails, send personalized product recommendations, ask for reviews, and more. Pricing starts at $99/year.

2. WP Fusion

WP Fusion is a powerful plugin that connects your WordPress site with all of the top email marketing services and CRMs. It lets you leverage advanced email platform features like tagging and segmentation based on website activity.

For example, you could apply a "Prospect" tag in your CRM when a user views your pricing page to trigger an automated sales sequence. WP Fusion also integrates your email list with WordPress plugins for memberships, online courses, affiliate programs, and more. Pricing starts at $247/year.

Putting Your Email Automation Strategy Into Action

We covered a ton in this guide, so here‘s a quick recap of how to get started with email automation in WordPress:

1. Make sure your WordPress site‘s emails are getting delivered by configuring a plugin like Post SMTP
2. Choose an email marketing service that fits your needs like Constant Contact, Drip, or Sendinblue
3. Integrate your email service with WordPress using their API or an integration plugin
4. Set up your highest-impact email sequences like welcome series, abandoned carts, or post-purchase follow-ups
5. Regularly clean your email list and run re-engagement campaigns to maintain healthy engagement rates
6. Continue testing and optimizing your sequences over time

If you made it this far, you‘re well on your way to putting your WordPress email strategy on autopilot. It takes some work upfront to plan and build your sequences, but the long-term time savings and revenue gains are more than worth it.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with email automation on your WordPress site today and start reaping the benefits.

For further reading, check out our other guides on choosing the best email marketing services and growing your email list faster.

And if you found this guide helpful, please consider sharing it with your network. Happy emailing!