Are you looking for a newsletter plugin for your WordPress site?
Everyone is out there talking about newsletters. And if you have a blog already, you might be looking for a newsletter plugin for WordPress. In that case, I want to introduce you to a solution you might not have heard of.
It's called Newsletter Glue.
I know, it's a crazy name but give me a second and I'll explain it.
Initially I was confused by Newsletter Glue
What you need to know is that Newsletter Glue is appropriately named.
It doesn't send your newsletters. You do that with your normal Email Service Provider (ESP) – like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, etc.
You also don't write your newsletters in it. You do that in WordPress. Using the normal writing environment (Gutenberg).
Newsletter Glue is the “glue” that connects these two things. It provides the integration between your WordPress site and your ESP. It also provides extra Gutenberg blocks to make authoring your newsletter easier.
As you can see, it's perfectly named.
But I was confused because I thought, “Do I really need that glue?”
Part of this is because I don't like the “own your own stack” argument.
But the other part that confused me was because I haven't tried creating a newsletter template in a long time.
Let me explain.
I write daily. So my newsletter is just my daily post sent to you. It's RSS that converts to a lightweight template. I haven't messed with it in a long time.
I went back to create a newsletter template in MailChimp
I'm not picking on MailChimp, but it's the most used ESP out there. So go where people are at, right?
Here's what I got – a list of different layouts. I picked a 1 column full width layout.
Then I got the blank template. All I wanted to do was add a logo, and add three blog posts. I assumed this would be easy and fast. After all, I could see an “image card” on the right side, so I knew it would just be picking it and adding it three times to my newsletter template. Easy, right?
It was easy to add the image card. But that's where everything stopped. I would have to go back to my blog and find the three titles, the three urls, and download and upload three images.
That's when I stopped. I thought, you know what I would like right now? A little newsletter glue to make this much faster and easier.
Newsletter Glue is the easiest Newsletter Plugin for WordPress
Now I was ready and excited to try Newsletter Glue. I bought it ($76/year) and activated it on a site. As you'll notice, my site had almost no other plugins on it.
First it asked me to give it my license, and then the setup wizard helped me connect it to my MailChimp account (for delivery). This is what people want from a newsletter plugin for WordPress.
But it goes further.
It also adds a Newsletters item to your left-side navigation. When you click on that, you can start creating a newsletter template.
One of the blocks it adds to your site is the Post Embed block. This lets you type the beginning of a post title, and it will automatically create the entire post card. The photo, the title, the content excerpt, and link.
Additionally, it gives you a set of options. This is the stuff you'd normally do in MailChimp, but across multiple screens in a more complicated way.
If I were selling this plugin, here's what I would tell you
I know I've told you the plugin is simple and easy. And the good folks behind Newsletter Glue will tell you the same thing. They'll tell you that it's worth running it on your own stack too. And they'll tell you that your workflow connects faster because you're still in WordPress.
All of that is true. No question.
But it's not where I would focus. To be clear, I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong. I would just push you (their prospects) in a different direction.
Here's what I would tell you.
The biggest hurdle to growing your newsletter audience is you. Yes, you're the only thing standing between a larger audience and the small one you may have at this time. And it's size has nothing to do with your quality. It has everything to do with your quantity. You don't send out enough newsletters. And I know why. Because it's a pain. But that's where Newsletter Glue comes in. It makes it easier and faster for you to produce and send more newsletters.
It's a tiny shift away from just simple and easy. It connects to quantity and speed.
If you're looking for a newsletter plugin for WordPress, check out Newsletter Glue – it will help you produce more newsletter content faster.