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Need to manage events on your WordPress site? You could be launching some digital webinars or maybe hosting some local workshops. Either way, WP Event Manager is a freemium WordPress event plugin that might be able to help. It makes it easy to share events on your WordPress site, along with lots of filters and custom information to create a great experience for your visitors. With the premium features, you can even sell tickets to your events, charge people to list events on your site, and lots, lots more. In my WP Event Manager review, I’ll share more about this plugin’s features and show you how it works on my own test website. WP Event Manager Review: Introduction to the PluginWP Event Manager does exactly what the name says – it helps you manage events on your WordPress site. It supports both digital events, like a webinar, as well as physical in-person events. ![]() One of the most powerful features is that you, or others, can create/manage events from both your backend WordPress dashboard and the frontend of your site. For example, you could let other people register and submit events from the frontend of your site, like creating a sort of public event directory. You can also add custom fields to manage information about your unique events. You can add as many custom fields as you want and also edit/remove any of the default fields. This lets you customize your event pages to display the exact information that you need them to. To organize your events, you can add different categories and tags. You can also assign venues and organizers to events. Your visitors will be able to filter by all of this information and you can also create different event views, like creating a dedicated page for a venue that lists only that venue’s events. ![]() That’s all in the free version at WordPress.org. If you want more features, there are also lots of paid add-ons that give you advanced features. Paid Add-Ons
I’ll explain some of these premium add-ons in more detail later in the review. Who Can Benefit from WP Event Manager?I think WP Event Manager can benefit pretty much any type of business that runs events. For example, let’s say you have an online business and you run webinars. WP Event Manager can help you create “digital” events that link to your webinar platform, which lets you easily manage and display all your upcoming webinars on your site. It’s also useful for local businesses, though. For example, maybe you have a local restaurant and you occasionally have live music acts come in. WP Event Manager makes it easy to organize those acts and lets your customers quickly find out which artists are playing when. Or maybe you have a yoga studio and you want to showcase all your upcoming workshops – WP Event Manager can help there, too. You could also go another route and create your own event directory website based around a local area or a specific topic. For example, you could create a site that lists all of the events in your local city. Then, you could monetize your event directory by charging local businesses for featured events (a feature which WP Event Manager offers). Basically, WP Event Manager is useful for more than just typical “event” businesses. Now, let’s go hands-on and I’ll show you how WP Event Manager works. How WP Event Manager WorksWhen you first install WP Event Manager, it launches a simple setup wizard to help you configure the basics, like the default pages that you need to manage events. For example, it will automatically create the pages that list events and venues. This is a nice feature to get you up and running quickly. From there, you’re ready to start creating events right away. How to Create an Event in WordPressWP Event Manager lets you create events in two ways:
This is pretty unique as a lot of other event manager plugins require the premium version for frontend event submissions – WP Event Manager gives you this for free. On the backend, you can use the regular WordPress editor to add the event title and description. You’ll also get options in the sidebar to add event categories and types, which helps you organize events (and will help your visitors find the events that they’re interested in). Then, below the editor, you’ll get a meta box where you can add all of the event’s details including information like:
![]() If you create an event from the frontend, you’ll get the same options – the interface is just a little different: ![]() One really nice thing here is that people get a live preview before they submit the event. This helps them avoid silly mistakes and creates a user-friendly experience for your event organizers: ![]() And just like that, your event will get its own dedicated, SEO-friendly page on the frontend. WP Event Manager even adds social share buttons to give your event more visibility, along with an option for people to register for the event: ![]() How to Manage EventsJust like creating events, WP Event Manager lets you manage events from both the backend WordPress dashboard and the frontend of your site. On the backend, you’ll get a list of all events, along with icons to help you quickly see their statuses. For example, you can see that one event is pending approval, while the other is active: ![]() You can also see that information from the frontend. Users also have the option to edit their approved events or cancel them: ![]() How to Add Custom Fields to Your EventsWhile WP Event Manager comes with lots of fields to help you add information to your events, you might have specific information that applies to your use case. For example, maybe you host public speaking events and you want an option to list all of the individual speakers that will be speaking at your event. To help you capture this information and display it on your event pages (or venue and organizer pages), WP Event Manager comes with its own built-in field editor. Here, you can:
For example, you can see that I added two fields for speakers: ![]() Now, you’ll see those fields when you go to add a new event: ![]() WP Event Manager will also automatically add them to the frontend event page in an Additional Details box: ![]() Overall, this is an incredibly useful feature because it lets you really customize WP Event Manager to meet your needs. Overall, that’s most of what you can do with the free version, which is already quite flexible. But with the Pro add-ons, you can unlock a lot more features. What Can You Do With the Premium Add-ons?Everything that I showed you above is available with the free version of WP Event Manager that’s at WordPress.org. However, there are also 20+ Pro add-ons that give you a lot more flexibility. Let’s go through some of the most notable premium features… Sell Tickets to Your EventsWith the free version, you can let people register for your events, which would let you manually charge them in-person. However, there’s no way to charge people for a ticket automatically. The Sell Tickets add-on changes that, letting you sell tickets to individual events via WooCommerce. You can have multiple ticket pricing tiers and even mix free tickets and paid tickets together. The really cool thing is that each ticket gets its own unique QR code, which lets you verify attendees’ tickets at your event just by scanning the code with your smartphone. Attendees can download their tickets as PDFs which makes it easy to print them and you can also attach the ticket to an automatic confirmation email. Charge for Listing EventsIf you allow users to submit events from the frontend, another way to monetize your site is to charge them to submit events. For example, you could create a local event directory and charge people to list an event (which they would pay because it gets them access to your audience). To set this up, you’d need the WooCommerce Paid Listings add-on. Connect With Zoom EventsI’m writing this WP Event Manager review during the Coronavirus pandemic, so this feature is especially relevant. With the Zoom add-on, you can create virtual Zoom meeting events that embed right on your website. This also works with the other add-ons so you could, for example, sell tickets to give people access to a private Zoom webinar. This is a really great way to monetize your website/business during this period of social distancing. For example, if you have a local gym, you could use this feature to sell access to paid online classes that stream over Zoom. Display an Event CalendarUnlike some other event plugins, WP Event Manager doesn’t give you a calendar view for free. However, the Calendar add-on lets you display all of your upcoming events in a calendar view. This makes it easier for visitors to see all of your upcoming events. Create Recurring EventsIf you have events that repeat on certain schedules, it can be frustrating to have to manually recreate them each time. The Recurring Events add-on lets you simplify your administrative work by automatically repeating certain events on a schedule that you set. Note – if you’re on a tight budget, some other event plugins give you this feature for free. Explore the Other Premium Add-onsAgain, there are over 20+ premium add-ons, so the list above is just some of the most notable features. Click here to view the full list. WP Event Manager PricingWP Event Manager comes in a free version at WordPress.org, as well as various premium add-ons that you can either purchase individually or as a bundle. For most of this WP Event Manager review, I’ve focused on showing you what you can do with the free version at WordPress.org. However, if you need more features, there are 20 paid add-ons to choose from. Each add-on costs either $19 or $39 if you purchase it individually. Or, you can also get a bundle of all 20 add-ons for $235. Final Thoughts on WP Event ManagerIf your WordPress site deals with any type of events, WP Event Manager is a very interesting plugin to consider. One of the most unique features is that, even with the free version, you (or other people) can manage events from both the frontend and backend. Most other plugins only work from the backend, at least in their free versions. This opens up a lot of flexibility, especially around any type of event directory site. The ability to add your own custom fields also makes it very easy to customize WP Event Manager to your needs, even in the free version. However, while the free version is pretty flexible, you’ll need the Pro add-ons for many important features, especially related to monetizing your events. For example, you’ll need Pro add-ons to sell tickets or charge for event listings. However, the nice thing about the premium features is that they use a modular approach. If you only need a single feature, you can just pay for that feature. Or, you can also get a bundle if you want access to every feature. If you want to get started and learn more, here are some links to help:
Subscribe on YouTube ![]() What’s the Best Email Marketing WordPress Plugin? 15 Tools to Choose FromIn this post, you will know which among the plugins below is the best email marketing WordPress plugin that’s right for your website. Because here’s the thing: Email marketing is one of the best ways to build an audience and reach out to them directly for increased engagement and sales. And if you’re running your website using WordPress, then there’s no excuse for you not to build an email list. Using an email marketing WordPress plugin, you can simply click and install the plugin for you to use without any coding experience. If you’ve been keen on using email to grow your WordPress site but don’t know which plugin to use, below are some of the best ones you should consider using. 1. Icegram Email Subscribers & NewslettersIcegram understands the risks that attracting organic traffic to your WordPress site carries. You have to deal with bounce rates and abandoned carts that keep your website from hitting its goals. Using Icegram, you can generate more signups to your email list than just using the annoying signup form on the sidebar or footer. There are 12 different types of forms to choose from – popup, floating bar, full-screen overlay, and more. You can use the different types together on the same page to increase your email subscribers. But beware: use only the best combination of subscription forms on your page to collect more signups successfully. Arguably the best feature of Icegram is its selection of 120+ ready-to-use campaigns such as lead magnets, special offers, yes/no CTA, and more. Choose one that fits your needs, so you don’t have to start from scratch. Icegram has a free version with basic features like popups, action bars, basic retargeting rules, and others. For the paid plan starting at $97/year for one site, you also get exit-intent and user behavior targeting, top 5 message/campaign stats, and more. 2. MailPoet 3One of the most popular email marketing plugins for WordPress, MailPoet lets you store information about your email subscribers and send emails to them straight from your dashboard. The plugin lets you create a simple subscription form you can embed on your pages where people can sign up to your list. From here, you can set up MailPoet to send out welcome emails to new subscribers to give them a warm welcome as part of your subscribers. Take this opportunity to engage them and leave a lasting impression so they’ll keep coming back for more of your emails. You can also automatically dispatch your latest post to your list, so you don’t have to create an email to send out to them manually. Or, if you run weekly announcements to your audience, you can create newsletters using MailPoet’s email templates. This way, you can focus on your message and not worry about the design. MailPoet’s free version lets you store 1,000 subscribers and send unlimited emails to them using its beautiful templates. However, once you exceed a thousand subscribers, you will have to pay up starting at 13€/mo between 1,001-1,250 subscribers to beef up your email marketing strategy. 3. MailsterIf you run an e-commerce site using WordPress, any WordPress plugins for newsletter campaigns won’t do. It needs to give you the ability to send trigger-based emails based on user activity, so you can automate the process of generating conversions and sales. Mailster fits the bill as the email marketing tool for your WordPress online store. You can set up the plugin to automatically send emails to customers if they make a purchase, send feedback about your product, or on their birthdays. Upon sending the emails, you can track the process of your campaigns based on how recipients respond to them. You will see from the campaign insights how many of them opened the email, clicked on its link, unsubscribed after receiving it, and more. Finally, to achieve the best results for your email, you need to design the emails that you send to grab people’s attention. Thankfully, Mailster has over 80 stunning templates for you to choose from. Pick from the selection and tweak it to match your brand. To use Mailster, you must pay a one-time fee of $59, which includes future updates and six months of support from EverPress, its developer. 4. The Newsletter PluginThe Newsletter Plugin is another one of those all-in-one email marketing plugins for WordPress. Whether you’re a blogger or an agency managing the WordPress sites of clients, this plugin can get the job done for you. The free version of the plugin is as powerful as they come. You can create emails using its visual composer to achieve the look and feel that you want from your newsletters. Then you can send as many emails as you want whenever. Once you dispatch the emails, you can gather data and statistics to see how many of their recipients opened your email and clicked on its link. To unleash the full potential of the plugin, you need to unlock its premium features available in its paid plans starting at $92/year for the Blogger Plan ($174/year for Agency). You can create simple opt-in forms to generate more subscribers to your list. Then you can send marketing automation drip email marketing campaigns to your subscribers. This is perfect if you’re launching an email course and want to bring them down your sales funnel. Try out The Newsletter Plugin Here! 5. ALO EasyMail NewsletterA lot of the features the plugins featured in this post distract you from the fact that email should not be complicated. The goal is to send your message to subscribers the easiest way possible. As the name of the plugin suggests, ALO EasyMail Newsletter does exactly that. As a free plugin, you can write your newsletters in HTML or text format before sending them out to the chosen people on your list. You can also collect and manage people who join your list using its built-in registration form widget to be placed on any page on your website. The plugin also has a bounce management feature. It lets you monitor how many emails that you sent failed to go through because of incorrect email addresses. This way, you can delete these emails and keep your list clean. Try out ALO EasyMail Newsletter Here! 6. SendPress NewslettersIt’s difficult to stand out from your competitors nowadays with email marketing because they’re doing the same things you’re doing, if not more proficient. In this case, the plugin you’re using to implement your email marketing strategy can be a difference-maker. SendPress is one such plugin that strives to give you a better shot at making an impression with your subscribers. It has everything you can ask for a free version of a subscription WordPress plugin – send emails using its beautiful templates to choose from. You can then track the emails you sent to see if they’re performing as expected. If not, use the data here to improve your next batch of newsletters. The unique thing about SendPress is its emphasis on security and deliverability, which is available only on its premium version starting at $39/year. Spam Assassin grades the email you’ll be using so you can see the likelihood of your email to go straight to the spam folder. The Pro Autocron and WP Email Delivery ensure that your subscribers receive your emails fast and in a secure manner. It’s a plugin that makes email with WordPress much easier and convenient. Try out SendPress Newsletters Here! 7. RemarketyRemarkety is an email marketing platform for e-commerce websites looking to maximize their sales and conversions. The tool helps online store owners develop automated email, SMS, and social campaigns using website user behavior. For example, you can send a discount coupon to someone who was checking out a product on your site or recommend products similar to the one he or she just purchased. Using its plugin, you can manage Remarkety straight from your WordPress site. To make it work, however, you heed to have WooCommerce installed as well. From here, you can set up other email triggers like abandoned cart recovery to recoup potential sales loss. You can also segment your audience and send each of them emails using pre-made templates for your choosing. 8. MailChimp for WordPressIt’s impossible to talk about email marketing and not mention MailChimp in the discussion. It’s of the best and most popular email marketing platforms in the market for good reasons. One of them is you can build an email and create email newsletters to send out for free. You can also create landing pages and different email campaigns for e-commerce websites The slight issue back then is you had to access MailChimp outside of WordPress. However, thanks to this plugin, you can consolidate the information on your website and MailChimp account in one place! Therefore, instead of building subscription forms from MailChimp, you can do it from WordPress by adding the MailChimp block on the content body. Subscribers will go straight to your MailChimp list so you can send your email campaigns from there. You can also integrate the plugin with others like Ninja Forms, Contact Form 7, BuddyPress, MemberPress, and more. This way, you can collect user information even if they don’t fill out your sign-up forms. MailChimp for WordPress is a premium plugin starting at $59/year for a single site. Try out MailChimp WordPress Plugin Here! 9. SendInBlueSendinblue is another popular email marketing platform known for its generous pricing and top-notch deliverability rates. For the free version of the software, you only have to worry about sending 300 emails a day to your subscribers. You need to pay up starting at $25/month to send more daily email marketing campaigns and unlock more features. Other than that, you can collect as many people as you can to your list. Using its plugin, you can create Sendinblue forms and design beautiful newsletters straight from WordPress. When sending out your emails, the platform uses its state-of-the-art SMTP (instead of WordPress’ send mean function) to ensure that your emails get sent without problems. To get more subscribers, you can integrate the plugin with Ninja Forms and MailOptin and use their beautiful forms instead. You can also use Sendinblue to send MailPoet newsletters for better deliverability. Try out Sendinblue Plugin Here! 10. HubspotWhen it comes to anything marketing-related, Hubspot has you covered. Using its powerful platform, you can engage visitors via live chat and sign-up forms, manage your clients and customers, and send emails to them And with a plugin for WordPress, you can expect to improve your productivity on top of making even more conversions. You no longer have to log in to your Hubspot account to create forms and send out newsletters because you can access all of these from your dashboard. Regarding forms, you can integrate with our form builder plugins available to help you collect more subscribers along the way. Once you have subscribers coming in droves, you can segment them into lists and check their website activity. Doing so allows you to profile them much better so you can send them emails that they want to read. When it comes to sending emails, you can choose from 20+ editable templates for your newsletters. You can even set up emails that will be sent automatically to people who filled out a form or talked to you via live chat. 11. OptinMonsterAs one of the best email list building plugins, OptinMonster needs no introduction. If you want to effectively grow your subscribers, then this tool will help you create forms optimized to increase your conversions. It was exclusively a WordPress plugin back in the day but has expanded to accommodate people using other website platforms. OptinMonster was one of the first tools to introduce exit intent forms that pop up on the screen when the mouse cursor leaves the window. Its powerful behavior automation feature helps site owners show the right form at the right time to the right people, thus increasing the sign-up success rate. To be clear, as a list building plugin, you will need a newsletter tool to send out the emails. OptinMonster is available starting at $14/month (billed annually) for one site with 3.5k page views. 12. Sumo List BuilderSumo, along with OptinMonster, is one of those marketing plugins dedicated to helping site owners build an email list successfully. Sumo popularized the Welcome Mat, which is a type of pop-up form that scrolls down the page and covers the entire screen with your offer. It’s been adopted by other marketing plugins to help people increase their subscriber count. There are other types of forms you can choose from and customize to match your site’s brand. You can even use multiple forms on a single page to increase the chances of people signing up. Aside from its email list builder feature, you can send them welcome emails or build campaigns to be sent to them over time. You can also set up social media sharing buttons on your posts to get more shares from them on Facebook, Twitter, and others. Suno has a free plan with unlimited contacts nad 10,000 monthly emails. The paid plan ($49/month) offers 50,000 monthly emails and advanced email integrations, to name a few. 13. WP Subscribe ProA more affordable alternative to OptinMonster is WP Subscribe Pro. Granted, you can download the plugin for free but you will be hamstrung by its limited features. With the premium account starting at $29/year for one site, however, you can create animated forms to guarantee that visitors won’t miss them. Designing the forms is also a breeze as you can choose from different colors and show the right text in the right place. You can also integrate the plugin with tools like Aweber, GetResponse, and others, so all subscribers go straight to the lists or segments on these platforms. The cool thing about WP Subscribe Pro is you can use the pop-ups for other purposes. Instead of putting a form in the pop-up, you can show related posts to the current page to decrease your bounce rate and keep visitors engaged. Try out WP Subscribe Pro Here! 14. Ninja KickUnlike the other email marketing plugins in this post, Ninja Kick is more of a contact form plugin with MailChimp integration. While some people might want the more eye-catching approach that most of the aforementioned plugins offer, the beauty of Ninja Kick is its non-intrusiveness. You won’t scare away visitors with ill-timed pop-ups and forms that appear without warning. Ninja Kick has the option to hide the form on the page. The only way for people to see it is to click on the floating button so they can fill out their details. The forms are available in three themes for your choosing. There’s also a social bar if you want to get more shares from your posts. The plugin is available for a one-time payment of $19 that includes six months of support. 15. OnePress Opt-In PandaRounding out the list is Opt-in Panda. Building off from what Ninja Kick started, the last thing you want for your new visitors to do is leave your site faster than they came in because of your pop-up forms. With Opt-In Panda, you can get people’s emails from within the body of a post. But what makes this WordPress email plugin different than the rest is you can lock certain parts of your content. And the only way they can unlock it is if they sign up to your form. For example, if you want people to get their hands on your free ebook, they have to enter their email address to reveal the link to the ebook. Using the plugin, you can create gated content on your site to get more people to join your email list. You can also integrate it with other email marketing platforms like Aweber, MailPoet, and others. Opt-In Panda costs $26 for one site. ConclusionNow that we’ve blazed through the different WordPress email plugins for you to use, it’s time to pick out which one is the best for you. If you want to manage your email marketing inside WordPress, you can’t go wrong with MailPoet and SendPress. They have all the features you need to run a successful marketing campaign using emails. If you are using an email platform already, then you’re better off using its native plugin instead like Sendinblue or Hubspot. This way, you can manage your contacts under your dashboard. But if your focus now is to grow your email list, then you should use Icegram, OptinMonster, and Sumo instead. The suggestions above are to simply give you an idea of which tools to test. In the end, it’s up to you to choose the right WordPress email for you from the marketing plugins above. By Christopher Jan Benitez Meteora Automation Tool to Boost Instagram Engagement and SalesBy now, it’s been clearly proved that Instagram isn’t something of a wet squib. It has exploded on the social media scene like a big bomb, and gone on to become one of the fastest growing social networks. 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