Apr 08 2024
If you are a website owner, you know that there is a lot to think about to keep your site up and running.
Like a lot.
From scheduling your blog posts, optimizing your content to rank on SERPs, updating themes and plugins, to making your sire hacker-proof and spam-free, managing a website requires wearing quite a few hats at the same time.
As WordPress is by far the most popular CMS out there due to its accessibility and functionality add-ons, we at the WordPress agency DevriX decided to cast some light on effective site development.
In this article, we will define WordPress marketing automation of tasks every site owner needs to overlook on a regular basis. We will outline the The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Marketing Automationmost common tasks you can automate from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard, and also, suggest some helpful plugins to implement.
First things first, what is marketing automation?
And, most importantly, what does it have to do with running a website?
Well, in the fast-paced digital marketing world, with updates in core policies constantly coming out of the blue, marketers have to be able to quickly amend strategies according to changes. Thus, your site’s success is 100% dependent on agility and adaptability, and using technology to automate processes is the only way to avoid staying behind
Marketing automation refers to the use of software tools and technologies to streamline and automate repetitive marketing tasks and workflows. It allows businesses to effectively engage with their audience, nurture leads, and drive conversions without manual intervention, thereby saving time and resources while enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
The key thing that makes WordPress marketing automation special is its user-friendliness.
That’s right - anyone who has a WordPress website can make use of the free marketing automation in-built tools, as well as extra paid plugins you can download.
Marketing automation tools for WordPress helps enhance website flexibility and promotes modular business operations.
You can centralize all operations through the CRM system, enabling seamless integration with various WordPress plugins for managing eCommerce, memberships, learning systems, forums, and more. This way, you are fully in charge of content display across different plugins, streamlining sales processes and enhancing team productivity.
WordPress marketing automation is also unique because it grants website owners with a great deal of independence and ownership, fostering a modular approach. In a nutshell, this means that businesses can easily integrate and customize tools from the WordPress ecosystem to meet their evolving needs.
Such flexibility enables you to adapt swiftly to changes, such as dissatisfaction with CRM platforms or the desire for better features, without disrupting their operations.
Or, better yet, what can’t you automate on WordPress? The platform offers so many tools to streamline your marketing efforts that it is hard to think of a task there is no plugin for.
Still, bear in mind that WordPress automation tools and plugins are available for everyone and can indeed help you sustain a healthy website. However, if you are looking for a custom solution that will make your website unique, you should seek an experienced WordPress plugin developer to craft a one-of-a-kind tool.
In WordPress, numerous tasks can be automated to streamline marketing efforts and enhance productivity.
These tasks fall into several categories, including content publishing, social media sharing, content syndication, performance optimization, search optimization, comment management, lead generation, analytics reporting, sales conversations, and website maintenance.
With automation, you can also schedule content publishing, share posts across social media platforms, curate content from various sources, optimize website performance and SEO, manage comments efficiently, generate leads, analyze website data, facilitate sales conversations, and maintain website functionality effectively.
These automation processes save time, increase efficiency, and improve overall marketing effectiveness on WordPress platforms. Here is a breakdown:
WordPress is great for SEO.
But it’s only a CMS and can’t do it all without a setup.
Nevertheless, it is very SEO-friendly and with the right steps and tools, your website will crash the competition on SERPs in no time!
WordPress marketing automation plays a crucial role in facilitating SEO by streamlining various processes and ensuring that your website is optimized for search engines.
Firstly, choosing a quality hosting provider is essential as it affects your website's speed and uptime, both of which are critical ranking factors. By automating the selection process based on performance metrics and user reviews, you can ensure that your site remains accessible and responsive.
Next, using an SEO-friendly WordPress theme is paramount for ensuring that your website's design and structure adhere to best practices for search engine optimization. So, select and install themes that are optimized for SEO so you can save time and effort This way you can rest assured that your site's layout and code are conducive to high search engine rankings.
Ensuring that your website is indexable is another crucial step in SEO that marketing automation can help with. This way, you can control and prevent common indexing issues that can negatively impact your site's visibility in search engine results. By implementing automated checks and alerts to identify and resolve indexability issues, you can easily act on them and get on with other tasks that need your attention.
Additionally, setting up an SSL certificate is essential for securing your website and improving its search engine rankings. Automating the installation and renewal of SSL certificates ensures that your site remains secure and compliant with search engine guidelines, thereby enhancing its trustworthiness and authority in the eyes of both users and search engines.
WordPress has a number of lead generation tools available literally on your site’s dashboard, making getting new business more convenient than ever!
For example, you can craft custom landing pages tailored to specific audiences, enabling the capture of visitor information through lead-capture forms. These landing pages target particular segments, such as those clicking on pay-per-click ads, offering valuable content and increasing the conversion rate of visitors into leads.
Moreover, WordPress offers an array of lead generation tools and plugins, providing marketers with versatile solutions to suit various needs. Options like OptinMonster, Leadin, LeadBoxer, and SumoMe offer features such as A/B split testing, exit intent technology, and analytics, facilitating the conversion of website visitors into customers and subscribers. With these tools, businesses can efficiently acquire new leads and nurture them through personalized communication.
Another way you can automate generating new leads on WordPress is with personalized emails, enhancing customer engagement and communication. By automating email campaigns based on customer interests and behavior, businesses can deliver timely and relevant content to potential leads, fostering stronger relationships and increasing conversion rates. Additionally, email tracking features enable marketers to gain insights into customer preferences and behaviors, refining their strategies for optimal results.
Social media plays a huge part in today’s users’ attention span. If your brand is active on the platforms, consistently engaging with the audience, and helpful enough to drive up your account followers, it paints a picture of someone people would want to do business with.
WordPress marketing automation has simplified social sharing as it allows users to schedule and post content across various social media platforms. With the right plugins and site preparation, marketers can effortlessly manage their social media presence directly from their WordPress dashboard. These plugins offer features like auto-posting, scheduling, and customization, allowing users to tailor their posts for optimal engagement. By automating social media posts, marketers can save time and effort while ensuring consistent and timely content delivery to their audience.
Tools like generative AI assist in generating initial drafts, while considerations such as posting frequency, audience time zones, and multimedia content incorporation contribute to engaging social media posts.
Automation tools on your WP dashboard also help you with tracking and analyzing social media metrics, providing valuable insights into post performance and audience engagement. By tracking tangible metrics like engagement rate and impressions, and intangible metrics such as content relevance and narrative consistency, marketers can refine their social sharing strategies for optimal results.
In case you're wondering how to fit your new email marketing campaign into your super busy schedule, WordPress has already thought it through (it needs your input!)
This action will give you some peace of mind, allowing you to do better at email marketing, automate the mundane tasks within your campaigns, and increase revenue.
WordPress makes email marketing easy with its built-in plugins right in the dashboard. You don't need to switch platforms, just pick a plugin and start growing your audience. It's user-friendly and cost-effective, saving you time and money compared to external services. It integrates smoothly with popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, ensuring a seamless workflow.
Jay Murray, Founder of Jay Murray Personal Injury Lawyers, recommends that WordPress email marketing plugins cut costs and offer advanced features without extra charges. Unlike external platforms, you won't pay more as you add to your email list.
These plugins also ensure data security and easy integration with WordPress, reducing the risk of losing your valuable contact list. Plus, you can manage everything without leaving the WordPress dashboard, saving time and effort.
Most good email marketing WP plugins have essential features like A/B testing, analytics, autoresponders, and CRM integration. These help you manage campaigns effectively, personalize communication, and comply with regulations. Look for user-friendly options with transparent pricing to get the most value for your budget. With the right plugin, you can efficiently build and manage email lists, send targeted campaigns, and boost conversions—all within WordPress!
Or should we say WooCommerce?
Well, not necessarily, but WooCommerce is the most popular yet cost-effective open-source eCommerce platform within the WordPress universe.
Launched in 2011, WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin for WordPress, and boasts over 3 million active websites. Its standout features include flexibility and customizability, allowing easy integration into websites with a plethora of extensions and themes for modification. Its user-friendly interface caters to both beginners and advanced users, offering powerful features while remaining easy to navigate.
Furthermore, when combined with AutomateWoo for WordPress marketing automation, WooCommerce seamlessly integrates into WordPress for eCommerce, providing a comprehensive solution for online businesses.
As WordPress is big on variety and accessibility, rest assured that you are not at all limited to one eCommerce tool but have a great deal of plugins to choose from! For custom development needs, a white-label WordPress development agency can provide tailored solutions under your branding, ensuring seamless functionality for your clients. But more on that later.
WordPress is popular due to its power and flexibility but also attracts hackers.
According to the latest WordPress Vulnerability Report, the WordPress ecosystem has experienced a surge in vulnerabilities, with a notable increase in the number of reported issues. Over the past year, 255 new vulnerabilities were discovered, with 252 originating in plugins and 3 in themes.
Sagi Shaked, owner and principal of Shaked Law Personal Injury Lawyers, noticed that cyberattacks tend to focus more on small—to mid-sized businesses. This underscores the importance of staying vigilant in monitoring and updating your WordPress site to ensure it remains secure against potential threats. Hence, leaving security to chance isn't wise.
Using WordPress marketing automation can help. Plugins like Wordfence and iThemes Security automate security scans. Wordfence scans for code and acts as a firewall. It checks incoming traffic to block malicious visitors. iThemes Security blocks attacks, monitors activity, and bans threats automatically. Integrating these tools ensures proactive defense for website owners.
As savvy as you think you are, spammers are plotting new methods to trick you.
We’re sorry to break it to you but, when managing a website, dealing with spam is inevitable.
However, there are ways to automate discovering and deleting spam and malware to minimize its impact on your day-to-day operations.
Utilizing WordPress marketing automation tools like Akismet can effectively identify and remove spam automatically. Alternatively, if you prefer to review spam comments before taking action, Akismet offers the option to hold them for review. This allows you to maintain control over the moderation process and avoid mistakenly marking legitimate comments as spam.
Automating WordPress updates is crucial for maintaining the integrity of your website.
Security breaches and malware attacks often occur due to unpatched vulnerabilities in outdated software, making regular updates essential.
In fact, analysis shows that a significant majority of successful hacks (95%) happened due to human error/negligence.That’s why keeping your WordPress core, plugins, and themes up-to-date is a must for anyone that doesn’t like to pour time and effort into their websites in vain.
However, while WordPress updates are essential, they can sometimes disrupt site functionality and lead to downtime.
To mitigate this risk, it's advisable to test updates on a staging site before implementing them on your live site. This precautionary step helps identify and address any issues or conflicts that may arise, to reduce the risk of site crashes.
Another thing to keep in mind is that updates involve changes to the site's code. Incompatibilities between WordPress updates and installed plugins or themes can potentially lead to site crashes or loss of access to the admin dashboard.
Therefore, it's crucial to use plugins for reliable backups before performing updates, providing a safety net in case of any unforeseen issues.
As you can see, WordPress marketing automation is quite useful and can save you a lot of time. Here are some plugins to use for the functionalities we’ve discussed above:
Yoast SEO is a powerful plugin for WordPress that helps optimize your website for search engines. It offers a range of features to improve your site's visibility and rankings. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced user, Yoast SEO provides intuitive tools and guidance to enhance your site's SEO performance.
To get started with Yoast SEO and use it effectively, follow these bite-sized steps:
HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform renowned for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. A standout feature is its Workflows tool, which automates repetitive tasks, freeing up time for relationship-building efforts.
To get started and use HubSpot effectively:
Easy Social Share Buttons offers social sharing buttons that won't compromise your website's loading speed.
Unlike default sharing buttons, which require users to download multiple files, including JavaScript, CSS, and images, these buttons are lightweight and efficient. Minimizing the number of downloads optimizes your website's loading time, preventing potential visitor loss and preserving your Google page rank.
With this plugin, you can easily add Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Email sharing buttons for your posts. You can display the buttons in the header or footer of your posts automatically or use shortcodes for customized placement within your content or template files.
Choose from two styles: minimal icon buttons or buttons with share counts, and enable share counts to showcase the post's popularity. Advanced customization options allow theme developers to disable default plugin styles and scripts, integrate the plugin's CSS or Sass into their themes, or customize the buttons' appearance using easily style-table HTML and class names.
To get started and use Easy Social Share Buttons effectively:
WP-CRM System is a WordPress CRM plugin designed to simplify client management for small businesses and freelancers.
With customizable fields, users can manage client information and track potential opportunities tailored to their specific business needs. The plugin ensures data ownership by storing all client information directly within the WordPress dashboard, eliminating the reliance on third-party applications and providing users full control over their data for as long as they own their website.
The system streamlines project management by centralizing all project details, allowing users to monitor the overall progress and delve into individual tasks and opportunities effortlessly. Invoicing becomes convenient with the plugin's integrated invoicing system, enabling users to send invoices and receive payments via Stripe without leaving their website. WP-CRM System facilitates easy data migration by allowing users to import critical data from CSV files, including campaigns, contacts, opportunities, organizations, projects, and tasks.
The plugin offers transparent pricing with no per-user costs or limitations, allowing users to add an unlimited number of records without additional charges. It seamlessly integrates with other apps such as MailChimp, GravityForms, Slack, and ZenDesk, enhancing users' existing workflows and productivity.
Additionally, WP-CRM System provides campaign management features, email notifications for upcoming projects and tasks, and developer-friendly customization options through hooks, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes and budgets.
BigCommerce for WordPress is yet another amazing WordPress automation plugin for eCommerce.
The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin revolutionizes eCommerce capabilities on WordPress by seamlessly integrating with the platform, allowing businesses to scale their operations efficiently. Users can harness the power of WordPress for content management while offloading resource-intensive eCommerce tasks such as catalog management, payment processing, and fulfillment logistics to BigCommerce. This unique approach streamlines operations, enhances user experience, and optimizes server resources, resulting in a robust and scalable eCommerce solution.
Unlike traditional plugins, BigCommerce for WordPress leverages the strengths of both platforms to offer unparalleled flexibility and scalability. By storing product catalogs as custom post types within WordPress, the plugin ensures seamless integration while providing access to advanced eCommerce features out-of-the-box. Users can manage complex catalogs, process orders, and access comprehensive analytics effortlessly, all within the familiar WordPress environment. Additionally, the plugin simplifies backend resource management, enabling businesses to maintain website uptime and speed without compromising on eCommerce functionality.
With features such as an embedded checkout experience, extensive payment gateway integrations, and comprehensive reporting tools, BigCommerce for WordPress empowers businesses to deliver a secure, streamlined, and personalized eCommerce experience. The plugin's compatibility with various WordPress themes and support for Gutenberg ensures compatibility with evolving design trends and content creation workflows. Furthermore, developers benefit from the plugin's open-source nature, extensive customization options, and developer-friendly architecture, allowing them to tailor the solution to meet specific business requirements and integrate with existing systems seamlessly.
Here are five steps for implementing BigCommerce for WordPress:
Wordfence Security is a comprehensive plugin for WordPress websites, offering essential security features such as a firewall, malware scanner, and login security measures. Developed by a dedicated team, Wordfence is recognized as one of the leading WordPress security solutions, providing real-time updates and robust protection against emerging threats. With a focus solely on WordPress security, Wordfence ensures that websites remain safe and secure, backed by a global incident response team available 24/7.
The plugin includes an endpoint firewall that identifies and blocks malicious traffic, along with a malware scanner that checks core files, themes, and plugins for any signs of malware or security vulnerabilities. Additionally, Wordfence offers login security features such as two-factor authentication (2FA) and CAPTCHA to prevent unauthorized access to websites. With real-time updates and monitoring, Wordfence continuously safeguards websites from potential security breaches and attacks.
Wordfence Central provides a centralized platform for managing security across multiple sites, offering efficient assessment of security status, customizable alerts, and detailed security findings. Users can monitor live traffic, block attackers by IP, and track important security events such as administrator logins and breached password usage. Moreover, Wordfence Security Tools enable advanced security measures, including country blocking and IP-based rules, enhancing overall website security and protection against cyber threats.
Here’s how to use the Wordfence Security plugin in five easy steps:
Akismet is a powerful WordPress marketing automation plugin designed to automatically detect and filter out spam comments on your website, helping to maintain the integrity and quality of your content effortlessly.
Akismet Anti-spam provides top-tier protection against spam comments and contact form submissions, serving as the go-to solution for WordPress and WooCommerce users seeking reliable antispam measures. With a stellar rating of 4.7 and over 5 million active installations, it remains a trusted choice for safeguarding websites against malicious content.
This plugin automatically scans all comments and filters out potential spam, leveraging a global spam database to prevent the publication of harmful content. Users can conveniently review caught spam through the admin screen, benefiting from features like comment status history, URL visibility, and a discard option to efficiently block the most egregious spam and optimize site performance. Additionally, while free API keys are available for personal blogs, paid subscriptions offer enhanced protection for businesses and commercial sites.
Did we get you pumped up for the Akismet plugin?
Here are five bite-sized steps to start destroying spam NOW:
Jetpack is a versatile WordPress plugin designed to enhance your website's security, performance, and growth. It offers a range of powerful tools, including backup, malware scanning, and content optimization, making it a comprehensive solution for WordPress users.
Getting started with Jetpack is quick and easy, with a simple installation process that takes just minutes. You can unlock more robust features by upgrading to a paid plan, which offers additional security, design, and growth tools.
With Jetpack, you'll benefit from expert support provided by a global team of Happiness Engineers, ensuring that you always have assistance when you need it. Its array of features, from security enhancements to content creation tools, make Jetpack a valuable asset for any WordPress site.
Jetpack's security features include real-time backups, malware scans, and spam protection, helping to keep your site safe and secure around the clock. Additionally, its performance optimization tools, such as a free CDN and image optimization, ensure that your site loads quickly and efficiently.
For those looking to grow their site, Jetpack offers powerful tools for content promotion, audience engagement, and revenue generation. Whether you're a blogger, business owner, or eCommerce store owner, Jetpack provides the tools you need to succeed on WordPress.
Here is how to install and navigate through Jetpack:
Companion Auto Update is a WordPress plugin that automatically manages updates for plugins, themes, and the WordPress core.
Companion Auto Update offers a robust, free solution for efficiently managing updates across your WordPress sites, ensuring they stay current and secure.
With the hassle of manual checks eliminated, this plugin automatically handles updates for plugins, themes, core files, and translations, while keeping you informed every step of the way through email notifications.
For those who prefer more control, Companion Auto Update allows customization of update settings, including the ability to schedule updates at specific times and filter out certain plugins or themes from automatic updates.
Additionally, the plugin provides a detailed update log, empowering users to track and manage updates effectively, along with the option to delay automatic updates to mitigate potential issues caused by immediate installations of problematic updates.
Here is a breakdown of how to use Companion Auto Update:
And there you have it! WordPress offers a great variety of plugins you can use to make your life (and your website’s health) easier! With our list of functionalities and tools, you can really boost your online presence and enjoy the fruits that come as a result.
Author bio: Mariela Kashukeeva is an Outreach & Content Specialist at DevriX. With over 6-year experience in SEO, she is responsible for establishing collaboration opportunities with high-authority websites and creating amazing content.
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