Have you ever felt confused or frustrated when trying to understand how to set up “email” for your learning management system (LMS) website? It sounds easy, but it’s not. The fact is that there is not one email system to meet all the needs of modern online education companies, so you need to use several email systems together. In this video we’ll explain the exact email systems you need and recommend specific email tools…
People ask Chris all the time how to “set up email” for their online learning websites with WordPress fast and on the cheap. We recently had someone who knew one email system really well, a mid market and enterprise CRM email platform this case, get understandably frustrated trying to put all the email pieces together for their new online learning website. We’re making this video to help remove the friction people have with setting up email.
Perhaps you’re struggling with one of these challenges …
- It’s overwhelming how many different email systems are available and you’re getting conflicting advice
- A lot of email tools have great marketing, and it’s hard to choose which ones are actually the best
- After deciding on an email tool, it’s hard to learn how to use it effectively
We’re going to help you solve all your email questions faster than you ever thought possible so you can…
- Understand the exact 5 email systems you need for an online course, coaching program, or remote school
- Discover the top email tool recommendations in each email system category
- Uncover how to learn how to “drive” these tools fast.
The 5 key email systems for an online course or training based membership site are …
1) Transactional email is basic website email like password reset, invoice receipts, comment notifications, etc. Use a SMTP service for this like WP Mail SMTP, Sendgrid, MailGun, or MailHawk
2) Behavior based learning email is where the LMS system sends personalized email based on things like course enrollment, lesson completion, quiz pass, quiz fail, course completion, membership enrollment, section completion, etc. LifterLMS is the best in the industry at this.
3) Marketing and broadcast email is when you are sending one to many broadcast emails. This could be marketing to people whose email you have who are not yet enrolled, or communicating in mass to people who are already enrolled on your platform (or to just the people in a specific course or membership). Use an email broadcast tool like MailChimp, ConvertKit, or Groundhogg for this. Another WordPress option is Fluent CRM. You can also integrate with 50+ other email broadcast tools by using WP Fusion.
4) Marketing automation and CRM email is where you automatically send emails based on a trigger (like enrollment in a free course where you attempt to upsell a paid course). This can be done with LifterLMS by itself or you can use one of the integrations mentioned above with broadcast email systems.
5) Company email is for 1:1 communication between the website owner and their team with each other, learners, and anybody else they need to communicate with as a representative of the education company. Google Apps (ie gmail for businesses) is the best option here, and it’s quite affordable.
Chris Badgett has been building WordPress LMS websites for a decade. He’s seen way too many projects end up where people get stuck on email issues. LifterLMS users like Julia was able to get through all the email Stumbling blocks by following Chris’s advice and choosing tools that were either free or low cost to start out with. We’ll describe this low cost “perfect email kit for bootstrapped education entrepreneurs” in just a moment …
There’s a myth that you just need to choose an expensive email marketing automation tool, and all your email problems go away. This is simply not true. Take a moment to understand the WordPress LMS website 5 email systems fundamentals and choose “best in breed” tools.
It’s truly amazing what you can build with the free LifterLMS plugin and 1 payment gateway (like Stripe or PayPal) PLUS some free to low cost tools email tools. The email tools we recommend that combine power and no to low cost are LifterLMS, MailChimp or ConvertKit, Groundhogg, WP Mail SMTP, and Google Apps. That’s all 95% of LMS website projects require.
SOFTWARE TOOLS MENTIONED IN VIDEO:
