In the last few days we've introduced various features of our BeliefMedia plugin. The plugin is made available to our clients upon commencement of our relationship and includes a number of features that might be considered necessary for the success of their website and/or marketing efforts. While individual premium plugins can be used (as is the case with virtually all our competitors), this simply adds adds complexity to the plugin system, ongoing licencing and support issues, and potentially provides conflicts and speed issues.
Note: This post details our basic plugin. Details on our advanced plugin designed to support online lead generation is detailed here.
Our Mailing List WordPress Plugin was born from absolute necessity. Back in the early days we'd send out an initial survey to clients asking a range of questions relating to their online experiences. One of the areas that consistently indicated issues was that of mailing list management and the creation of mailing list subscription forms. As a result we built a plugin that would generate a mailing list subscription form in the style of your choosing in less than a minute.
At the time of writing (December, 2017) the plugin only works with our own mailing list software but we have plans of integrating the self-hosted PHPlist product and a few other commercial mail providers. The self-hosted versus commercial mail argument is best left for another time; needless to say we tend to lean towards the former in almost all cases.
To connect the plugin to our mailing list installation requires a BeliefMedia Platform API Key and an Email System Token (and username). The latter is used for almost all mail functions. The former key - our platform key - is used to check an email when downloading or gaining access to subscriber-only areas. When those changes are saved, navigate your way to the BeliefMedia plugin and select BeliefMedia -> Email Forms. Selecting the Option of 'Update Lists' and clicking 'Save Changes' ports all your required mailing list data over to your WordPress website. Whenever a new form is created on our mail platform you'll have to go back and save changes again to update the mail options in the WordPress database.
Once you're connected it's a simple process of creating a subscription form via the intuitive mailing options.
Once the form is created to your liking, click 'Save Changes' and you'll be presented with two shortcode options - one for use in your WP website and one for use in popups.
Multiple Form Styles
Note the option for 'Form Style'. It's here that you may select a single row, multiple rows, sidebar mail forms, email-only forms, and so on. The system is template based so we tend to update the options regularly.
The form can be styled in virtually any manner of your choosing, and the messages displayed at various times throughout the subscription process are determined by you. After a user is subscribed you have the option of showing a small progress bar before a redirection to another URL, performing a redirection immediately, or not redirecting at all.
For each form you create you'll obviously have to select an appropriate mailing list and give it a unique name. You may create as many forms as you like for as many mailing lists as you like.
Mitigating Spam Submissions
Without an annoying CAPTCHA image there's the likelihood that automated bots will make attempts to submit details via your form. We've integrated WordPress' Akismet and our own spam API to ensure that only minimal (if any) spam submissions are made.
Video Demonstration
Like many of our videos, this one is already a little outdated, but it does provide sufficient information for general use of the plugin.
Our mailing list plugin is just another reason why BeliefMedia is Australia's best kept marketing secret. If you're interested in learning more about our highly effective marketing strategies, you may call us in Australia on 1300 BELIEF (1300 235 433). Outside of Australia you can email us via our contact form. Simply put, we're the best at what we do.
