Several WordPress Membership Plugins have the capability to integrate with Autoresponders. But the new MemberPress 1.1.0 (which is still a release candidate at the time this article is being published) not only integrates with your autoresponder … but goes above and beyond other WordPress membership plugins because it keeps your mailing lists synced with the membership products your members have purchased.
At this time MemberPress supports the ability to integrate with either MailChimp or AWeber. Each of these services have pretty extensive APIs and in the new release we've taken full advantage of that.
A list for each of your membership products
As with other WordPress membership plugins, you'll be able to setup a mailing list in MailChimp or AWeber and then configure MemberPress to add subscribers to that list when members signup … but with 1.1.0, MemberPress adds the ability to select a mailing list to keep in sync with each product. So, if a member signs up, they will still be added to the global list but will also be added to your product's mailing list. If that member then decides to cancel her subscription to that product then she'll be removed from the mailing list for that product. This even works if the member is upgrading … she'll be removed from the list for the product she was on and added to the list associated with the product she's upgrading to (if there is one).
The power of the per-product mailing list
If you haven't already started thinking of the possibilities of this yet, that's okay … but I can tell you right now that this is huge. Now, not only can send targeted emails to each group of members on your site … but you can effectively create a premium, members-only mailing list for each product the member can purchase.
Here are some of the ways people are already using this new feature:
- To Increase Conversions — Some of our customers have a product that is a “Free Trial” and have a mailing list associated with it. Once the trial comes near the end they have an automated email that is set up to fire to only members who have purchased the free trial product that encourages them to upgrade.
- Premium Mailing Lists — One of our customers runs a weekly meal planning site and she uses the per-product mailing list to send different types of recipes out depending on what type of meals the member has subscribed to receive.
- Manual Re-bills — We have customers that are also using this feature in conjunction with our new “Limit Cycles” feature to automatically email members reminders when their subscription is about to expire (rather than setting up an automatic billing profile).
We feel like there are a plethora of additional uses for this feature … many that I'm sure we haven't thought of yet but that our customers will show us over time.
How it works
Effectively, the autoresponder integration works the same way with both MailChimp and AWeber … with only a few differences. Here's how you'll be able to set it up:
- You'll connect MemberPress with your autoresponder. MailChimp does this with an API key and AWeber uses a login to authorize the connection (OAuth). Either way, once they're connected, MemberPress will be ready to be configured.
- Configure your global list … MemberPress will automatically pull in and provide a dropdown of the mailing lists you've created on your autoresponder … all you'll have to do is select one.
- In your global options you'll then be able to specify whether you want an opt-in checkbox present on the signup form (and you'll be able to customize what the checkbox says). If you specify that you don't want an opt-in checkbox on your signup form then MemberPress will just automatically add the user to the global mailing list on signup.
- With MailChimp can specify whether or not you want to perform a double opt-in (the user receives an email with a confirmation link that must be clicked before they can be added to the list) … this is only available with MailChimp though … unfortunately AWeber requires the double opt-in for subscribers who are added via the API.
- On the advanced tab on your Product's edit page you'll now see a dropdown of lists … just select one and it will stay in sync with
Enjoy!
MemberPress 1.1.0 should be out soon … but until then, you can always download and install the 1.1.0 release candidate from your memberpress.com account page and take advantage of these features today.
