In the following post you’re going to discover 5 of the best WordPress mailing list plugins available, these will help super charge your list and take your website to the next level.
They say “the money is in the list” – which is so true, so if you are not building a mailing list then now is the time to start.
There’s another phrase that you may have seen floating around the internet – “the money isn’t in the list, it’s in what you do with the list”.
So remember that just installing a plugin and clicking – GO, isn’t going to give you instant access to a magic red button that gives you money whenever you press it.
It will, providing you’re patient and build up your list in the right way – I’m digressing now, that’s more for another day because you need to start somewhere and the place to start is with a VERY good WordPress plugin of course.
Premium Mailing List Plugins
1. Hybrid Connect
I’m very fond of premium WordPress plugins, and I prefer them to free plugins due to better support, more frequent updates and overall better functionality.
Hybrid Connect is one of my more recent plugin purchases and it’s the mailing list plugin that I’m using here on Blogging Wizard.
This is one of those plugins that I can’t really say a bad word about.
You can create squeeze pages, video squeeze pages, lightbox and slide in pop over optin forms and there’s the option to use short codes too.
A really cool feature is the split testing functionality so you can add multiple variations of your opt-in forms and test them to see which performs best.
The thing I like most about Hybrid Connect is how easy it is to customise, there’s no coding required so it’s just tweaking controls – there are other plugins that have come with the ability to customise without coding but I’ve found that I could never get most of them to look right and there was always limitations with the customisation options.
This is a problem that you won’t have with Hybrid Connect because there are so many customisation options and the other great thing is that the plugin is also responsive – we’ll be seeing more and more themes that are responsive in the future so it’s an important feature and looks great when everything is responsive.
On a side note, referring back to the reason I buy premium plugins; I recently had to call upon Hybrid Connect’s support (not due to an issue with the plugin, it was a poorly coded WordPress theme) and Paul, the developer who works on the help desk went above and beyond – sorted the issue out within a few minutes and we were good to go.
Just goes to show that when you invest in quality, you get looked after.
That isn’t it for features though, there’s a lot more so take a look at the plugin page for more details.
2. Optin Skin
Optin Skin is a another powerful premium mailing list plugin that makes it easy to add optin forms below posts, as sidebar widgets or as pop overs.
There are quite a few nice designs to choose from and some good customisation options but if you’re not really into the designs that come pre-loaded then you will need some coding knowledge to get the layout that you want.
Optin Skin works with a large number of different mailing list providers so compatibility won’t be an issue here.
There are some great features in Optin Skin including unique “skin” placement settings and special effects.
Free Mailing List Plugins
3. WP Email Capture
This is a really straight forward “no frills” mailing list plugin that allows you to add an opt-in form to your blogs sidebar.
You can customise email fields and which page you want to redirect the user to on sign up or after email confirmation.
This plugin doesn’t support any mailing list providers such as Aweber for example, but it does store them in WordPress and allow you to export to CSV file at any time you like.
Please note that this plugin defaults to a “powered by” link, although you can easily disable this in the settings if you like – or leave it in if you prefer.
There is a premium version of this plugin which offers priority support and extra features.
4. Subscribe2
This plugin gives you a full mailing list management system that’s contained entirely within WordPress.
There’s no need for an external mailing list provider as Subscribe2 will take care of all of that for you and also provide you with an easy way to export all of your data should you need it.
You can use Subscribe2 to send new blog posts to your mailing list subscribers at an interval that suits you and using a customisable template.
If you don’t want to send blog posts automatically to your mailing list subscribers then that’s not a problem, you can send emails directly to your subscribers from within your WordPress dashboard and there’s a widget you can use to add an opt-in form to your websites sidebar.
This plugin works best for small numbers of subscribers in most cases because certain web hosts have limits on the number of emails that can be sent from their servers in a particular time frame. This is something that your web host will be able to advise you better on so it’s well worth asking them or taking a look at their terms and conditions.
5. Optin Revolution: WordPress Popup
If you’re wanting to use a popup on your blog to grow your mailing list then this is a really easy way to get it done.
You’ll be able to easily integrate with a number of popular mailing list providers such as Aweber, iContact, Mail Chimp and more.
Customisation is straight forward as there’s no code that you need to mess with and the popover that you’ll be able to create will do a great job of making your opt-in stand out to your visitors.
What about mailing list provider?
I personally use Aweber – you can try other services but if you want a service that’s easy to setup and does the job right then you need Aweber. I tried a bunch of other mailing list providers but they just weren’t straight forward to setup and seemed overly complicated, well more so than they needed to be really.
This is why my own mailing list is running on Aweber, don’t settle for second best.
Summary
List building, mailing list and opt-in form plugins have been the bane of my life, I’m not a developer or programmer, I consider myself pretty technical but as soon as CSS comes into the picture that’s game over for me.
So if I could recommend just one of these plugins then I would say, get Hybrid Connect – I’ve bought a lot of different mailing list plugins for WordPress over the years and I couldn’t do what I wanted to with any of them. I was just throwing money down the drain.
Then, I bought Hybrid Connect and it all changed.
I could say good bye to frantically searching through CSS tutorials that I didn’t understand and throwing time and money down the drain or using 3-4 different plugins… and say hello to a single plugin that was easy to use and did what I wanted it to do.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great plugins on the market and if I was a developer then things might be different, but I’m not so that meant struggling until I found Hybrid Connect.
What’s your list building weapon of choice?
@adamjayc
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