How To Use WP-Fusion With Your Membership Website In 2024
Explore how to use WP-Fusion with your membership site in 2024. Maximize automation and enhance member experience effortlessly.
Discover the power of WP-Fusion for your membership site in 2024. This engaging video walks you through essential features and settings that can transform how you manage subscriptions and member interactions. From setting up automated emails to syncing with CRM tools, we’ve covered you with actionable strategies tailored for success. With regular co-host Haroon Q. Raja.
#1 – Introductions
#2 – Creating a Membership Website Using WP-Fusion
#3 – LMS Integration
#4 – Conditional Content Display Techniques
#5 – Syncing User’s Access Control
#6 – WooCommerce Integration
#7 – Connecting Your External CRM
#8 – Fluent CRM
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 88. In this episode, we will discuss one of the most powerful WordPress plugins to help you with a membership website. It’s mighty. It will allow you to do several things. I’ve got my regular co-host, Haroon, with me. He’s up for it. He’s eager, I can tell. Well, look, eager, Harun. There we go. You’ve got a smile for him. Harun, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers quickly?
[00:01:15.550] – Haroon Q. Raja
Certainly. Thank you, Jonathan, for having me here. And hi, everyone. I’ve been working in the tech industry for around two and a half decades in the WordPress ecosystem, almost over one and a half decades. And over the years, I’ve used pretty much every tool out there for WordPress. Not every single one, but everyone that matters. That puts me in a position to have an opinion on optimizing things in WordPress.
[00:01:50.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, and Harun consults with WP Tonic as well. So, in this episode, we will discuss WP Fusion, the plugin, what it does, and give you some ideas about its functionality and what it can and can’t do. It should be a great show. It’s a potent, impressive plugin with a lot of functionality for the membership owner. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the show, I also want to point out we’ve got some great special offers from the sponsors, a curated list of plugins and services, and a course that tells you how to build a membership website on WordPress from the beginning to the end. You can get all these goodies by going over to wp-tonic. Com/deals, wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you’ll find everything you need to build a membership website on WordPress in 2024 on that page. He’s starting to fiddle with his mic now, folks. He’s getting interested, I can tell.
[00:03:28.980] – Jonathan Denwood
So, Harun, How do we introduce WP Fusion? If you were trying to explain it to a client they asked you about it, how would you describe your understanding of what it is and what it offers?
[00:03:51.570] – Haroon Q. Raja
So WP Fusion, at its core and primary value offering, is a tool that bridges the gap between your WordPress website and your CRM and marketing automation system. So that’s what it primarily is. It does quite a bit more, but this is its core crux. Let’s say you’re using something like an active campaign, Infusionsoft, Drip, ConvertKit, or anything like that, or even a self-hosted solution like Motech, and you want your WordPress audience. WordPress is where your landing pages are. WordPress is where your e-commerce could be. WordPress is where your advertising campaigns land people, SEO, or whatever. They sign up over there, but if that user base signs up and stays in WordPress, there’s not much you can do with it unless you integrate a complete CRM and marketing automation system into WordPress. Not everyone wants to do that. There are solutions for that, but not everyone wants to do that. Maybe people are just tied into something like an active campaign, prefer its workflow, or the agency running their marketing campaigns all uses active campaigns. There could be lots of scenarios.
[00:05:18.290] – Haroon Q. Raja
But you’d utilize WP Fusion to ensure that actions that happen on the websites and with the associated data get synchronized to your marketing Marketing Automation CRM platform and vice versa. Some action gets taken in the CRM and Marketing Automation platform that could update the user in your WordPress user database. So, it’s a two-way synchronization.
[00:05:45.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Based on my experience, I don’t know if you agree with this; a lot of these SaaS marketing email platforms, like Active Campaign, Enfusionsoft, and Drip, are a number of them. They do offer a lot of plugins themselves. But I found that for a lot of the functionality you have access to by utilizing WP Fusion, you don’t always have that level of power in the solution the SaaS supplier provides. Would you agree with that statement?
[00:06:29.350] – Haroon Q. Raja
True, very true. Most offer you a very rudimentary opt-in system to integrate into your WordPress site, be it a direct plugin of their own or through some integration with a form plugin. So someone uses that form that opts in to register and provide an email address, and then the email address goes into your CRM and your marketing automation system. That’s pretty much what most offer. They don’t offer the ability to send more information based on user actions. For example, the user purchases a Whoomers product. You want to now tag that user as a customer in your CRM. You need to send that information based on user action. In eLearning, a user rolls into a course or completes a particular chapter of a course. You want to update the status in the CRM. You don’t get that integration from those SaaS providers.
[00:07:29.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, Another thing, which Haroon doesn’t… We had a pre-show chat, and one of the areas where we divert is the other area which WP Fusion can really help is access control, actually linking different packages. If you’re using But something like Lifter LMS or LearnDash, to some extent, not so much LearnDash, but Lifter gives you the ability to link various lessons and courses into actual packages that you can sell as subscription. But what WP Fusion gives you access to the concept of tagging. You using tags and linking tags to certain roles or certain elements or certain pages of your WordPress and only giving access to that bit of content or whatever it is. If the person trying to access that content has a certain tag, and it’s a very different Different concept than utilizing permissions, access permissions. What’s your thoughts? Because I got the impression is that you use another platform, a platform called Groundhog, to do something similar, or you don’t use it. But you can do that by utilizing WP Fusion. I am correct about this, aren’t I?
[00:09:33.230] – Haroon Q. Raja
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So maybe I didn’t communicate it the right way earlier when we were chatting about it. So I wouldn’t avoid using WP Fusion for access control. If it’s a site on which I am using WP Fusion for its other features and it comes to access control, I would utilize WP Fusion for it because it’s not-I’m sorry to interrupt.
[00:10:00.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Because I’m not saying… For what it does for a particular case, it’s fantastic value. But it’s not the cheapest solution either, is it?
[00:10:13.280] – Haroon Q. Raja
And it’s like, if access control is the only feature you want from it, then you can do better with so many other alternatives that are custom tailored for that. I wouldn’t use Groundhog if access control is the primary objective. But if I’m using Groundhog as a CRM and marketing automation system, then I would utilize that for access control to an extent. If I’m using WP Fusion already in the first place, then I would utilize it for access control if it fits the bill, of course.
[00:10:42.460] – Jonathan Denwood
But based on our experience, folks, We tend to… We provide it as part of our stack of technology that you get with WP Tonic as your hosting provider. We provide all these tools, and we provide WP Fusion as part of our stack. And in more complicated membership scenarios, folks, we tend to combine it with WP Fusion, not WP, I mean, Fluent CRM. Fluent CRM. And Fluent CRM has its own tagging, but we tend to switch it off, and we rely on WP Fusion. It’s tagging engine because we find it more powerful than the actual tagging engine of Fluent CRM. But we’re providing all this as part of our hosting package. We’re in a slightly different scenario than Harun, who’s dealing with people that host on all sorts of platforms and in all sorts of levels of their journey of building a successful membership website. So what’s the situation based on your experience about integrating WP Fusion with the leading learning management systems? And to me, there’s three clear leaders. There’s LearnDash, there’s Lifter LMS, and there’s Tutter LMS. Tutter LMS. They’re the clear, free leaders. So what’s your experience and how easy does WP Fusion?
[00:12:41.050] – Jonathan Denwood
If you’re utilizing a SaaS marketing email platform like ActiveCampaign or Convert kit, or let’s say, OnBeenSend, OnBeenSend, or Bravo, Bravo. If you’re using, which was Send Blue, wasn’t it? And then they renamed it.
[00:13:07.670] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yes.
[00:13:10.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Based on what you’ve known, how, based on what you’ve known, How does it integrate? Because the reason I’m bringing up is that learning management systems, they have to send out a number of transactional emails. Somebody finishes this course. So does it help with the management? And basically, what’s your experience basically on that?
[00:13:35.300] – Haroon Q. Raja
It helps immensely if you’re using a third-party marketing, automation, and CRM system. So whenever someone signs up for a course, whenever someone performs any activity, finishes a lesson, a quiz, enrolls in another course, all of that data can be synced across the CRM by adding the necessary segmentation to that particular contact in that CRM, because that’s highly valuable data. You want to know which of your students are more engaged in actually attending the courses so that you can market to them the next relevant course. You want to see where people’s activity is falling off. Maybe if it’s something that’s too difficult, you want to improve it. It gives you all of that feedback, and it can It can not just give feedback, not just the data itself. It can trigger automations. It can trigger sequences, trigger emails, and then not just trigger new ones. Maybe someone finishes a course, then you want to bring them out of a particular automation. That action can trigger removing them from a particular chain of automations and adding them to another one. It’s pretty brilliant at doing all of that. Then you can completely disable the emails that go out from from WordPress when users complete a course or complete a lesson or complete a quiz or do any of those actions.
[00:15:05.970] – Haroon Q. Raja
You can have all of that, all of the transactional emails taken care of using your CRM systems.
[00:15:12.710] – Jonathan Denwood
I totally agree with you. If you’re using a WordPress learning management system, we’ve named the free leaders, and then you’re utilizing the external marketing optimization platform, it’s best to switch off. You don’t want to get, this is based on my experience, you don’t want to get into the scenario that some of the emails being sent out by the learning Management System, the thing. And some of the marketing optimization has been sent out by your… Oh, boy. Because if you get this hybrid scenario, you’re going to start losing I can assure you. And I’ve lost enough. Harun, I am jealous. Harun’s got a lot of hair on top of his head, and he’s got a hamster on him as well. He’s a hairy beast. But if you get into this hybrid scenario where some of the… It makes it It’s really difficult to troubleshoot if there’s problems because you don’t know which email has been sent out by the learning management system and which emails are being sent out by the external. And this applies also to the internal. If you’re using something like Fluent CRM or Groundhog or whatever, if you’re utilizing the external, I also think it’s best to But then it’s more a lot of the native CRM email marketing plugins that they have compatibility built in to handle LearnDash, Lifter LMS, or Tuta.
[00:17:18.330] – Jonathan Denwood
The bigger ones, the ones that we named that are native, they have inbuilt functionality. What would you comment about what I’ve just outlined, Harun?
[00:17:31.010] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yes, that brings us to a major, I wouldn’t say point of contention between us. It’s more like with your target audience, one workflow may work better with my target audience or in my experience, or in my experience, and other- This is the difference.
[00:17:48.840] – Jonathan Denwood
There’s no one way of doing things on WordPress, is there? Yes. It just isn’t.
[00:17:55.130] – Haroon Q. Raja
Both ways are right if you do them the right way. If you set them up properly, if you utilize them to their fullest. In my experience, and in my opinion as well, when I’m using a WordPress native CRM and marketing automation system, I just haven’t come across the need to pair it with WP Fusion, no matter what other plugins are part of my stack, because generally, I use some of the best in the industry that we discussed, the likes of LearnDash, the likes of Lifter and all, and they integrate with the two leading CRM platforms native to WordPress, which are Groundhog and Fluent CRM. When there’s a native integration between your marketing automation and CRM system and your learning management system or your e-commerce system or your, you name it. What are the third types? Event management system, events calendar and whatnot. When there’s a native integration between the two, I haven’t felt the need to bring in WP Fusion to tie those together because they already tie together really well. But when it comes to a third party SaaS CRM and marketing automation system, then WP Fusion is the glue that is there to bind them together.
[00:19:15.330] – Haroon Q. Raja
As we discussed earlier. So yeah. And coming to your specific question, which was… Can you repeat it once more?
[00:19:25.880] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I can’t because I’ve forgotten it myself, but I will comment on what you say. I think for about 90 % of websites that are utilizing WordPress for a membership, what Haroon says, I would totally agree. Where I would disagree, and if you’re utilizing a SaaS marketing platform and you really want it to work, I would switch off a lot of the automatic email that the learning management plugin does. And I would use Fusion with your external to manage it. Where I differ slightly is if you’re dealing with a very large membership website with a quite a large user base, it’s been migrated from a SaaS platform, or you’re building out a new WordPress website because you have been in track a bit by utilizing I’m using a membership plugin. I won’t name names. You’ve got a membership website that’s been running for a number of years, and you get sucked into a particular membership plugin and you outgrow it, and you find that it’s so embedded in the running of the membership website that you’re best off just building a new website on a new stack of technology and just telling the people that they can migrate to the new website.
[00:21:09.120] – Jonathan Denwood
And if that’s the case and you’re dealing with an established large where you You’ve got quite complicated course packages and you’re doing a lot of marketing optimization to a powerful level, I just think the tagging, the control of access, and controlling the marketing optimization, external a SaaS-based one, or utilizing even an internal marketing optimization plugin, you’re better off letting the logic, the brains of the site be based on tagging and based on WP Fusion. Am I explaining my position a bit better, Haru? Yes. How would you comment on what I’ve just outlined?
[00:22:14.260] – Haroon Q. Raja
I agree that, as you said, having a single source, the essence is having a single source of user segmentation.
[00:22:26.180] – Jonathan Denwood
Of knowledge, the brain, I call it the brain.
[00:22:29.100] – Haroon Q. Raja
The brain, yeah. A single source of all the workflows where your segment users. Because otherwise, you’re going to have some automations and some tagging set up in one tool, some in the other tool, some emails are going out from one tool, some from the other tool. It’s going to be a whole mess to maintain.
[00:22:45.000] – Jonathan Denwood
It becomes a Frankenstein. But the only per viso, where I totally agree with Harun, it’s only worth doing all this, folks, if you’re at a certain level, Because only 20% of websites get to that level. I’m not saying if you’re below that level, you can’t make a really good living out of running a membership because you can. But I’m talking about the bigger organizational level association that might have 20,000 members or that level. Based on my experience, you’re better off going to utilize WP Fusion as your, I call it your central mind of your membership, because otherwise, you have some bits controlled in one place, other bits controlled by another place, and it quickly turns into a little bit of a nightmare.
[00:23:51.840] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah.
[00:23:54.180] – Jonathan Denwood
But-go on.
[00:23:55.360] – Haroon Q. Raja
Another scenario in which, even if you have a native WordPress-based CRM, like Fluent or Groundhog, even then WP Fusion would come handy, is if you have a different WordPress installation, like a subdomain installation or something for your LMS and a different main marketing site, and maybe a third different installation that contains your CRM. You’re keeping all of those maybe even on separate servers to ensure that load on one doesn’t impact the other. You’re maintaining them as separate They just utilize WordPress native tools. That’s the only common thing. In that case, having WP Fusion would mean the activities on your landing pages, the signups and all, would get seamlessly sent over into the CRM. Then based on the CRM, they would update different areas of the LMS site. They would maybe control display logic in the LMS site, making certain parts visible to a certain level of user membership. So someone signs up on your main front site, and then they’re tagged in the CRM accordingly, and then they’re granted access to courses accordingly based on those tags. And then certain parts of the site are made visible to them accordingly based on their membership. Certain parts are hidden from them based on their membership.
[00:25:19.820] – Haroon Q. Raja
So all of that can be done using WP Fusion then.
[00:25:23.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And I will comment on that after the break because it’s a good place for us to have our middle break. We’re going to be delving even more into one of the most powerful plugins in the WordPress space, WP Fusion. This is an intro to give you some real insights about why you would look at this plugin around membership or community-focused websites. But we’re going for our middle break. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast A feast of techy conversation. Haroon has warmed up. The terms, the concepts are just flying. We’ve probably lost most of the audience, but we’re having a good time. But before we delve even deeper into WP Fusion and why you should consider using it, I want to say that we’ve got a fantastic free resource for you. That’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. It’s totally free. We have a great community there of WordPress professionals, junkies, and people trying to build a membership website on WordPress in 2024. Please go there, sign up. I’m posting content every day about building membership, and we have a great community, and it is growing, and we love you to be part of it.
[00:26:54.860] – Jonathan Denwood
So go over to Facebook and look up the Membership Machine Show Facebook group and join. So to comment on what we were saying in the first half of the show, yeah. But like, again, having on a subdomain, that normally You only really want to look at that if you’re looking at some of the bigger membership websites, because when you’re starting out, it’s really trying to keep things simple, isn’t it? Trying to keep things as simple as possible. And with either Bricks or if you’re going the Gutenberg Cadence WP, I think they’re two of the best solutions, non-Gutenberg and Gutenberg. I think it just depends where you are. Bricks has got some enormous power and attraction. But to the less professional developer, I think Cadence WP offers a lot. In the DIY, build yourself market. If you’re utilizing that and utilizing either LearnDash or Lifter or Tuta together with Fluent CRM or Groundhog, I prefer Fluent CRM. Haroon, Prefers Groundhog. I think the only thing with LearnDash is they provide their own membership plugin, and there’s a number of third-party membership plugins. I always want to get away from membership plugins. If I’ve got somebody that wants to use LearnDash, I suggest that they go and use WU commerce.
[00:28:56.570] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s going to make them future proof. Yes, LearnDash provides a free add-on that will work, and you do have to buy a subscription add-on. The only thing I normally recommend, but we also provide this. If you’re going down the LearnDash/WooCommerce route, is that I also suggest that they get cart flows so they can a one-page checkout page. But we provide all that at WP tonic as part of our hosting bundle. But I still think it’s worth, if you’re going to use LearnDash, it’s best to go down the WU commerce, and say you’re getting away from embedding yourself with a particular membership plugin. What’s your thoughts about what I’ve just said?
[00:29:56.160] – Haroon Q. Raja
Yeah, it does make a lot of sense But you have to take a look at the overall picture of what they’re building. If it’s just going to be, like primarily through and through a learn-site, it’s not a site with lots and lots of plugins required to do A or B or C. If the primary objective is to sell courses using LearnDash, be it direct course sales or be it course sales through course sales through membership plans. Then learnDash with their memberDash add-on. Also, you also have to consider your payment gateway options because Because wooCommerce gives you pretty much an infinite number of global payment gateway options because every single payment gateway wants to integrate with wooCommerce first and foremost. With a lot of other tools, with a lot of other membership plugins, you’ll be limited to PayPal Stripe, primarily. You have to consider this. If you want to keep the options open in terms of payment gateways, payment methods and all, then yeah, WhoCommerce memberships, WhoCommerce subscriptions would be the right route. Also, if you’re going to add WhoCommerce to the site, like a merch shop for your students, other particular features may be events, maybe webinar bookings and whatnot.
[00:31:28.360] – Haroon Q. Raja
In that case, having a single a cohesive e-commerce platform in Woocommerce would be a better idea. But if it’s just learning management system and courses through memberships, and it’s going to stay that way, then I would keep it least complicated with just using Learndash with a membership plugin, either the memberdash plugin of their own or something like member press.
[00:31:52.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think we do. But I totally understand. I just think adding a membership plugin to the mixture That’s the strength of Lifter LMS because they’ve got subscription engine in built. And for a basic website, it works perfectly fine. And then they provide an add-on which you have to purchase depending on what bundle you get with Lifter. But they provide a word, woocommas, add-on, and then you got the same woo commas, if you need more sophistication. That’s why I like Lifter, because if you’re just looking for ease of set-up, you get all that with Lifter LMS, and you just pay for the Stripe add-on, which is about $149, and you’re up and running. But it’s just… So when it comes… Let’s say you’re… How does WP Fusion work with Woocommerce then, And you’re going to be able to get a nice and experience. If you’ve not only got a membership subscription, but you’re selling digital, physical one-off products and you’re going to the WooCommerce, how well does WP How do you fusion work with WU commerce?
[00:33:18.060] – Haroon Q. Raja
Oh, first and foremost, one of the most important things, segmenting your contacts, your customers, based on what they’ve purchased. So you’re going to associate tags with different purchases, and then based on whatever they’ve purchased, they’re going to get tagged in the CRM. You just want to take a look at all the customers who have purchased product A, and you want to send them an email blast, or you just want everyone who’s purchased product A to be added to a specific mailing list, which is different from mailing list aimed for product B customers. That’s where WP Fusion comes in. It lets you do all of that like a charm. Also, based They’re based on their purchases, they purchase a particular number of products, you tag them accordingly, and if they have that tag, you can send them an email with a discount. So providing them discounts based on their activity, based on their purchases, based on even logins. And it also has a great abandoned cart tracking system using an add-on. So using that, you can capture information from customers before they check out, and then based on that, follow up with them to offer them discounts and all.
[00:34:36.670] – Haroon Q. Raja
It lets you do all of that in cohesion with your marketing automation platform. Also, add-ons for things like their login add-on. Did I just discuss it or not? If they haven’t logged in for a while, you can send them an email. You can segment them based on They’re not logging in for quite a while, and you can segment them in your CRM based on that. And then the segmentation in that CRM, that tag in the CRM, could lead to an automation that sends them emails offering them to come back in for a 20% discount or something like that. So yeah, there’s a lot you can do. Sky is the limit. Your creativity is the limit. But these are some of the standard things that you can do when your e-commerce platform can speak freely and communicate all the data in a bi-directional manner with your CRM and marketing automation platform.
[00:35:33.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:35:34.770] – Haroon Q. Raja
And by the way, all of this applies to not just Woocommerce. It has easy digital downloads integration as well. So it also not just to EDD, not just to commerce alone.
[00:35:48.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they’re the two main players, and digital download and Woocommerce, they’re both well-established products.
[00:35:58.210] – Haroon Q. Raja
I wonder about Sure Short-Cart.
[00:36:01.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you got Short-Cart.
[00:36:01.830] – Haroon Q. Raja
Do you have an integration with it yet or no?
[00:36:04.710] – Jonathan Denwood
I think they do. Yeah, I think they’ve increased the integration to that. That’s another player. When it comes with We discussed it in the first half, connecting to external CRMs. And in the world of CRMs, there’s all different types, folks. There’s two buckets. There’s those CRMs CRMs that are really the business logic of the business and around sales, where you got professional sales teams. And then you got CRMs that are more around marketing, optimization. And then you have those that try and do both. And I find that normally they don’t do either that well. But we’re mostly concentrating on external CRMs that around marketing optimization rather than sales teams or the central hub of the business. When it comes to These marketing CRMs, based on my experience, there’s two leaders if you’re going to work with WordPress and then introduce WP Fusion, and the two is active campaign. I’ve Obviously, they’ve put their prices up, but it’s still one of the best solutions out there. The other one, I would say, is on this end as well. If you’re into text messaging, they had a big presence with Shopify. They are a sponsor of the show, folks.
[00:37:51.560] – Jonathan Denwood
I want to point that out, but I still think they’ve got a very mature platform. So what do you think of that? What I’ve just said, if you’re looking, if you want to use, or you are, or you’re looking to upgrade, because you get a lot of people that’s… The other one is Convert kit. I think they’re the main three. How would you, in your own mind, what’s the strengths of Convert kit, active campaign, and Omnicent? How would Somebody was coming to advise you, and they were looking to get that to work with a WordPress website using WP Fusion. What’s your general view of those three? Would you agree? I see them. I suppose you could add Bravo as well, Bravo as well, but I don’t know much about that one.
[00:38:51.560] – Haroon Q. Raja
So there’s a page on the WP Fusion documentation, wpfusion. Com/documentation-faq-crm-compatibility-table. I’m going to just share the link over here in chat.
[00:39:11.290] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes. Wait, just to Give me a second.
[00:39:17.470] – Haroon Q. Raja
I’m adding it to the comments. Okay, the comment has failed to post. Okay, I’ll just add it to the private chat. This shows you the CRM compatibility list and the ratings that they’ve given to every CRM over there. What I do is I just look at what the customer’s implementation needs, what particular feature do they need, what integrations, the overall solution they need. Based on that, I’d see the one I’d pick, and not just need right now, also based on their future needs, where I see them expanding into. Based on that, I’d pick the leanest and cheapest option that offers every single thing that they need, because customers do have a budget, of course, especially those who are starting off, do have the budget as a constraint. But by cheapest, I don’t mean cheapest in terms of quality. It just needs to get all the things that they need done, and it needs to be budget friendly. That’s the goal. I’d look at that FAQ page. There You have a list of every single compatible plugin. For example, you may want to use the one that you mentioned last. No, not Brevo, the other one.
[00:40:42.360] – Haroon Q. Raja
Convert kit.Providers?
[00:40:45.250] – Jonathan Denwood
No. Providers?
[00:40:47.430] – Haroon Q. Raja
Let’s go with ConvertKit. With ConvertKit, you can’t really have ConvertKit trigger tagging in WordPress. You can only trigger segmentation and convert kit from the WordPress site using WP Fusion. And it’s also not compatible with their enhanced e-commerce and event tracking modules. So if you need enhanced e-commerce features, if you need event tracking features, then you’re better off with something like ActiveCampaign or Brevo. Brevo integrates with enhanced e-commerce and event tracking. But even with Brevo, you can’t do two-way tagging. The tagging segmentation can only go from WordPress site to Brevo, not vice versa. With Active Campaign, it flows in both directions. That’s their A+ integration with Active Campaign. Drip. Drip is also an A+ integration with all features supported. Hubspot is also A+ integration with all features supported. Then many are A, and then there are Bs and Cs, and then there are also a couple of Ds. You need to see what that particular site’s requirements are. I personally pick something like active campaign, usually, because it’s like the safest bet.
[00:42:01.600] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s got all your classes. It’s got everything.
[00:42:04.980] – Haroon Q. Raja
But then there would be cases where I know that there’s not going to be any flow of tagging from the CRM towards WordPress. The only tagging is going to go from WordPress. Because we’re gathering information in WordPress, we need to send it over to the CRM and not segment users in WordPress, but segment users in the CRM. And then I’m not going to use Active Campaign. Maybe I’d use Brevo because it’s more affordable and supports everything else. Just not this particular feature. It depends on case to case. But I would stick with the known names, usually. I wouldn’t pick some very obscure one, maybe something like Morrow Post, I wouldn’t pick that. I wouldn’t pick some corporate behemoth like Dynamic 365 either, because that’s going to I had a whole bunch of headaches to my workflow to no particular benefit, because something like Dynamic 365 is pretty much tailored for the corporate sector. Yeah. For the enterprise sector, rather.
[00:43:18.830] – Jonathan Denwood
Another sector, because we got about 5, 10 minutes, and then we got to wrap it up. But when it comes to more community-focused solutions, Like the leader is BuddyBoss mixed with a learning management system. Learndash is normally the favorite when it comes to BuddyBoss. Was there anything, based on your experience, when utilizing marketing optimization solutions with that mixture of Buddy Boss with LearnDash? Are there some things that people you think need to How do you think about it?
[00:44:01.570] – Haroon Q. Raja
If I’m building a site that is going to employ Buddy Boss in it, and LearnDash, both. If I’m doing so much in-house, I might as well keep the CRM and marketing automation in-house and not have to worry about having a separate dashboard and a separate provider for it. And then I’d use something like Groundhog or Fluent CRM with it. That’s That’s my priority.
[00:44:31.300] – Jonathan Denwood
They are the two leaders in the native space. Would you agree with that?
[00:44:35.760] – Haroon Q. Raja
That’s my priority, because then with that combination, I can handle pretty much every automation within these three natively in WordPress without even adding WP Fusion. Those three tools would get everything I need them to do when speaking with each other, utilizing their native integrations. And if there’s more to the picture in that you really want to keep… Or maybe if it’s a client that’s already pretty much decided on using active campaign, then yes. Then WP Fusion would speak with both Buddy Boss and LearnDash and make them speak with your active campaign system.
[00:45:26.570] – Jonathan Denwood
Pretty much for us. Yeah, I think, based on my experience, If you want this Buddy Boss Learn Dash or Lifter LMS to work and you are using external, it’s best that it’s active campaign. That will probably work reasonably well. If you’re utilizing something else, you’ll probably be better off migrating it into Fluent CRM or Groundhog because it just doesn’t have the APIs that Some of these SaaS space, they just don’t offer the amount of access that ActiveCampaign does. But even then, if you can… But if you’ve got a very large marketing set up an active campaign, migrating all that into a native and getting all the flows sorted out and everything is normally a big job. So you’re better off using WP. It’s probably going to save you money and see how it goes because it’s a big job, basically, folks.
[00:46:40.900] – Haroon Q. Raja
And if it’s not broken, then don’t bother fixing it. If you are already on the active campaign and it’s working great for you, Then use WP Fusion.
[00:46:54.250] – Jonathan Denwood
If you utilize some of the others, go to this chart, which I will ensure is in the WP-Tonic website’s show notes. If you’re dealing with something that’s only marked with a D or C, I don’t think you’re going to be a happy bunny. It’s probably not worth the effort. It depends on where you are. You’ll probably be better off migrating the setup into a native WordPress CRM because you’re constantly hitting a wall with what you want to do and what the API of the SAS offers you. You’re always going to be hearing no instead of yes. Keep that in mind. Not all SaaS-based CRMs offer… Not all API systems are equal. That’s the strength of an active campaign. Another notorious one is Infusionsoft, now called Keep. It’s a bit of a nightmare. I don’t know if they’ve improved the situation with Keep. Have they? Or is it still a bit of a dog, Haru?
[00:48:19.920] – Haroon Q. Raja
I haven’t used it in a bit.
[00:48:23.010] – Jonathan Denwood
He’s been diplomatic. I won’t, folks. It’s a bit of a dog, so avoid it. I’ve lost most of the audience because I enjoyed this chat. Same here.
[00:48:34.160] – Haroon Q. Raja
I’ve added something, by the way.
[00:48:35.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Go on, off you go.
[00:48:37.810] – Haroon Q. Raja
I’ve added another link that Jonathan can add to the show notes. It’s wprefusion.com/recommends. They’ve got this whole recommendation article. Their pictures show what they think in their experience works best in what scenario. For example, the CRM/marketing automation section recommends Brevo for basic requirements as a competent and budget-friendly choice for businesses needing marketing automation on a budget. Then, for mid-range, they recommend an active campaign that gives you everything you need in a marketing automation tool while being comparatively budget-friendly, starting at 79 a month for 5,000 contacts. Another mid-range option is Omnisend, but then Cadillac. The best they recommend for those with that level of requirements is HubSpot Marketing Hub, which starts at 800 a month for marketing automation plans.
[00:49:41.970] – Jonathan Denwood
I also want to point out that I’ll find the link and put that in the show notes, that the WP Fusion themselves were used in an active campaign, and they dramatically increased the costs. The owner of WP Fusion about six months ago, I think I’m pretty sure about this; he moved to WP Fusion himself, and he’s using his marketing with WP Fusion. That’s a good sign that Jack, who developed WP Fusion, uses it. I think he wrote a detailed post about his experience moving his company’s marketing optimization from active campaigns to Fluent CRM. And I will dig that link in. I think we’ve had a good feast here. Harun looks a little bit tired. I’m a bit tired. So, Haroon, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and get some advice?
[00:50:54.930] – Haroon Q. Raja
They can visit my website, hqraja..com, hqraja..com, and contact me using the contact form.
[00:51:05.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the links to the Haroon website will also be in the show notes. So go over to the WP-Tonic website. If you want to talk to our room or Haroon, and if you’re going to talk to us, have your site hosted and provided with all the tools, plugins, and best WordPress technology. Have a look at what WP-Tonic has to offer. It’s a fantastic value proposition, and we specialize in membership and community-focused WordPress-powered websites. We will be back next week with another marketing or WordPress-focused topic to help you build a successful membership website on WordPress in 2024. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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