Building A Membership Website With FluentCRM And MemberPress

Membership website creation simplified! Learn to combine FluentCRM with MemberPress for powerful user management and growth strategies.

Ready to take your online community to the next level? This informative video will show you how to build a robust membership website using FluentCRM and MemberPress. Learn about essential configurations, effective email management strategies, and tips for maximizing user engagement. Whether you’re new or experienced in web development, this tutorial has something for everyone. Click play now and transform your vision into reality.

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 96. In this episode, we will discuss building your membership website using a couple of key WordPress tools, member press, and Fluent CRM. I’ve got my regular co-host, Haroon, with me. Haroon, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers quickly?

[00:01:14.260] – Haroon Q. Raja

Certainly. Thank you, Jonathan. Hi, everyone. I’ve worked in the tech industry since 2000, so almost two and a half decades, and with WordPress for over a decade and a half. I specialize in building advanced complex solutions using WordPress, primarily utilizing some of the best-in-class plugins but doubling into custom code where needed. So that’s me.

[00:01:40.890] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, I’m in Haroon’s hands with this particular episode because he’s a big fan of Member Press. I’m a big fan of Fluent CRM, but I think he likes Fluent, but he also likes Groundhog. So I don’t care what we talk about, but I think using a native WordPress CRM, something like Active Campaign. Haroon likes Member Press, so I thought we would discuss that. It should be a great show. You should get a lot of information from it. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this podcast, I’ve got a significant message from our major sponsor. We will be back in a moment. Give me a moment, folks. Three, two, one. I’m coming back, folks, or we are coming back, to be more precise. I want to point out that we’ve got some fabulous special deals from the major sponsors, plus a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services. If you’re looking to build a membership or community-focused website, it saves you a ton of time looking for the best solutions. They’re all mapped out. Plus, we got a great resource of a course that shows you how to build a membership website from A to Z, and you get 50% off the regular price.

[00:03:20.790] – Jonathan Denwood

To get all these goodies, you have to go over to wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there. What more could you ask for? That’s all that I would say. Oh, that got a grin from Haru. There we go. So I’m in your hands. So maybe we can start. Suppose you were trying to explain the benefits of mixing Member Press with something like Fluent CRM or Groundhog. What benefits would a person get from utilizing Member Press with a marketing optimization plugin? Do you think this is an excellent place to start, Harun?

[00:04:20.770] – Haroon Q. Raja

Oh, yes. Just a second. Let me pull up the page. Okay. So, just a membership website alone, Plugin can be a great resource. In many use cases, that’s all you need for small-scope use cases. But plugging in a CRM into the mix kicks things up a notch. It opens up so many possibilities. You can segment your members based on their interactions with your site. You can send them campaigns accordingly. You can send them text messages and emails using Groundhog text messages accordingly. You can have automation built in that grants them access to different areas of the site based on the interactions that they’ve done with the site. It opens up the possibilities in a way that just a membership plugin alone cannot.

[00:05:32.180] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, like some of the SaaS competitors like Kajabi Podia, there’s a number of them. If you haven’t received the landing page, see WP-Tonic, Karun. We utilize Cadence WP and provide our own starter themes for the Cadence production. But it’s a great resource to build landing pages. Then, we use Fluent Forms with Fluent CRM. And we also got our solution. So people can do their email marketing, build their landing pages, and develop their websites with a more unified solution. But you’re a bit confined if you don’t have these elements, right?

[00:06:36.850] – Haroon Q. Raja

Absolutely. I completely agree. You’re limited to just the run-of-the-mill membership site features where someone signs up, they get assigned a plan and they get access. That’s pretty much about it. They renew the plan and go about their business. With a CRM, you can combine with a robust form plugin. You can have different flows where you have a completely custom-built onboarding flow in which you find more and more information about your customers. Based on that information, you segment them, you add tags to them. Then based on tags, you can send them different campaigns, you can send them broadcast, you can add them to automations, and you get to really know your audience. You get to know who’s doing what on the site, who’s a high-value member, who’s just signed up and then forgotten about their membership in the first place. You can maybe send them custom-tailored emails to engage them. There’s no point in inviting all members to engage with the site in a blank manner. It’s going to annoy members who are already on your site every single day. So you want to send them different campaigns. You want to send IDler’s different campaigns. You want to send Engage ones different campaigns.

 

[00:07:56.540] – Haroon Q. Raja

This is where a CRM like Groundhog, which is my top choice, or Fluent CRM, which is also great, they really shine.

 

[00:08:05.100] – Jonathan Denwood

So if somebody was coming to you for consultation and they’re looking to build a membership website, And they bring up LearnDash, Lifter LMS, or Tuta LMS, and then they also bring up Member Press. How do you Can you explain what are the key things that you think they need to know to make an educated decision about? Are they going to use a learning management system or are they going to use member press? How do you attempt to explain this to them, Aaron?

 

[00:08:48.310] – Haroon Q. Raja

When it comes to a learning management system, if all they want to offer their users are just pre-recorded videos that users can just watch and then go about their business, then I know a full-fledged learning management system might be overkill. I mean, it is overkill then. Then all they need is a way for people to sign up and then gain access to resources, which in this case would be videos. In such a case, I’ll make the tech decisions for them. Usually, when people come to me, they want me to make the tech decisions for them based on their business requirements. If their business doesn’t require users to interact with full-fledged courses, just a bunch of videos, then, yeah, a bare bones membership plugin gets the job done. But if they need anything beyond that, if they need courses to be segmented further into lessons and topics, and then they want to add quizzes, they want to add certificates and whatnot, and they want to have groups around every particular subject or every particular lesson or topic in which the students can interact with the instructor or with each other. In that case, a more robust LMS solution is what I recommend and what I implement.

 

[00:10:07.150] – Haroon Q. Raja

So that’s the key distinction.

 

[00:10:09.740] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. There’s a lot, let’s say, through that consultation, the clients decided that it is member press. What are the key things that you really like about member press? Based on your experience, what are some of the key What means people got to know and understand that you think people get that would benefit people knowing, based on your experience about member press?

 

[00:10:44.340] – Haroon Q. Raja

Plugins like Member Press, which are dedicated membership plugins, in contrast to, let’s say, something like WhoCommerce memberships and subscriptions. I’ll start with that. So With a dedicated membership plugin which is built from the ground up to be a membership-first plugin. First and foremost, you get a very streamlined sign-up process which is like no frills. It’s not like a product-based It’s a shopping cart-based buying process. You don’t really have to add something to a cart and then check out. It’s just you’re shown the membership plans available, you select one, fill in your bare basic needed information, no shipping address needed, and you buy the membership plan. Secondly, particularly in case of member press, in my experience, it’s practically infinitely customizable. It gives you lots of defaults, lots of very sane defaults that you can use without having to really dig deep. But if you want to dig deep and customize every aspect of the sign-up flow, and then the upgrade path flow and pretty much every interaction with the plugin, it gives you all the resources to do that. It gives you excellent custom coding API It’s got really good actions and filters available, so WordPress hooks, using which you can customize it to your heart’s content.

 

[00:12:26.480] – Haroon Q. Raja

For any solution that require lots of customisation, my top choice is something like Member Press. There are scenarios in which I would prefer WhoCommerce-based WhoCommerce memberships and WhoCommerce subscription-based solution as well. If the client site is already using WhoCommerce for its e-commerce transactions, then might as well utilize that and build on top of that. Though one could make a case that even in such a scenario, having a dedicated plugin I handle memberships could be better. In my experience, that has been better as well. But where Woocommerce really shines is support for payment gateways. If you’re just using Stripe or PayPal or maybe to checkout or some of the most famous ones out there, it will either be natively integrated in tools like Member Press or you would be able to find an integration, third-party one. But with woocomers, no matter how obscure of a gateway of some country, It’s a perfect provider. It is generally you have way better luck finding an integration compared to something like Member Press. That’s one scenario in which I’ve had to utilize the Woocommerce memberships. When I otherwise would have gone with Memberpress.

 

[00:13:48.380] – Jonathan Denwood

All right. So I think there’s a lot of membership plugins out there. I think, let’s just go through three that I think are direct competitors and just get what your experience are of them. So I think you got Restrict Content Pro, you got Paid Membership Pro, And you got Sure Member. And the reason why I bring up Sure Member is that it integrates with SureCart because it’s from the same people. And a lot of people are interested in using SureCart. And we provide SureCart as a solution at WP Tonic. So of those Are there any key things? I was coming for a consultation. I was looking at member press, but I was looking at Restrict Content Pro, Paid Membership Pro, or Sure member. What would be your reaction? How would you try and explain? Are there any of those that I’ve just mentioned that you think aren’t particularly as good as member press, or is it all swings and roundabouts, really?

 

[00:15:17.780] – Haroon Q. Raja

You can’t really go wrong with either of these three. All three of these are very, very solid products with great support, with a good track record, with seriously professional companies, development teams behind them. You really can’t go wrong with any of these three. I don’t have any gripes with any of them. It’s just that I’ve been using Member Press for so long and I’m so comfortable with it that usually when it comes to picking a membership plugin, that’s my first choice because I know that it’ll take me less time to implement something in it based on my experience with it. Although I’ve worked with the other two as well, but I’ll need to do more digging around, more reading the documentation with member press. I know it like the form of my hand. Is it the form of my hand or is it the back of my hand? What’s the idiom?

 

[00:16:11.060] – Jonathan Denwood

I don’t know. I’ve forgotten myself. When it comes What’s your attitude about SureCart, and SureMember, and SureCart? Especially SureCart, because it comes from the Ashto team. I think they’ve done it, but it’s a quasar SaaS WordPress solution, isn’t it? They’ve got it hosted. We’ve had a couple of clients recently that had digital and physical and courses mixture, but they just didn’t want to use WU commerce. And so they were looking at shortcut, and I think They’ve been reasonably happy. So what’s your attitude? Because it is a hybrid, isn’t it? It’s a little bit unusual because they got it hosted themselves. What’s your whole attitude about that?

 

[00:17:15.920] – Haroon Q. Raja

So SureCart itself has a hosted component where the actual checkout part is not handled on your server, it’s handled on their servers. When it comes to Sure members, I think that one’s a fully native solution other than the checkout process for which it relies on SureCart. I I personally don’t use that. I don’t know. I’m more of a keeping everything self-hosted guy wherever I can. It’s a personal preference, if you But the team behind it, both the ASTRA team, Brainstormforce, and Adam from WP Crafter, it’s their joint venture. Both of those guys are really solid. They’ve got a track record of producing excellent quality products, and based on community feedback, seems to be a great choice. If having the checkout on a Thursday Third-party service is something that you’re fine with, by all means, go ahead with it.

 

[00:18:39.170] – Jonathan Denwood

But another thing- Because you have got the reissue because on the shore car, they do offer a very attractive free plan, don’t they? And then the other plans, compared to other fully SaaS solutions, it still seems quite good value. But you also got the reassurance, I think Sure member will work with WU commerce. So if you ever feel you get disenchanted or whatever with the Sure card, you got the option to go and integrate the membership plugin with WU commerce, haven’t you? Because based on my experience, when you choose one of the reasons… I just want to put this and get your reply before we go for our mid-break. The thing is, you You need to have somebody like either WP tonic or have a consultation with Haroon. Because based on my experience, if you’re going to go down the membership plugin or the LMS plugin route, and then you choose Ron, but you’ve already got some traction. It’s painful having to drop a membership and move somewhere else. Unlike full SaaS platforms like Kajabi, it’s possible. It’s possible to get off Kajabi, but it’s even more painful because it really is a totally just copy and paste job.

 

[00:20:29.840] – Jonathan Denwood

Where depending if you go with a well-known plugin, they normally are some methodologies that allow you to export the data somewhere else. But it’s still painful, isn’t it, to some degree?

 

[00:20:46.640] – Haroon Q. Raja

What’s your-I’d say it’s more painful to migrate from a non-wordpress SaaS platform to another non-wordpress SaaS platform, or from a non-wordpress SaaS platform It’s also a WordPress-based solution like any of the ones that we’ve discussed. It’s way more painful because you don’t get full database access to all the raw data on their platforms. You just get the data that they allow you to export. With WordPress, you always have the assurance that no matter what, if there’s no GUI tool to let you export everything and import into another plugin, you can always, with the right skills or hiring the right developer, you can always dig into the database, you can export export everything from there, change the column labels to the desired ones, and then import it into the new system, and even do any processing that you need to before you import it into the new system. That That’s freedom. That is something you can’t really buy.

 

[00:21:50.710] – Jonathan Denwood

No, it’s possible. It will, but say what, Harun, I agree with what you think he’s just outlined, because if you’re on a SaaS system and you want to move to another SaaS system or you want to move to the digital sovereignty and ownership of WordPress, it’s going to be very painful. If you’ve got any size membership business, it’s totally possible, but it’s going to be painful to some degree and also in cost, where if you’re moving from one WordPress solution to the other, there’s some degree of difficulty, but it’s a lot less. I think that’s a good place for us to go for our middle break. In the second half of the show, I’m going to be asking Harun about the things that people might need to understand about choosing a marketing optimization solution on WordPress, and some of the SaaS solutions, and some of the hybrid solutions. It can get a little bit confusing, but hopefully with our Roon’s help, we can clarify things for you. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve hopefully given you some insights in the first half about choosing the right membership plugin and about some of the strengths of member press and some of the things you need to know.

 

[00:23:27.380] – Jonathan Denwood

Before we go into the second half of the show, I to bring to your attention a great free resource. And that’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook Group. It’s totally free. It has a mixture of membership entrepreneurs like you trying to build a membership business in 2024, plus a load of WordPress people. It’s a great mixture. It’s totally free. I’m regularly putting content almost every day onto that area. We love you to join, so please go to Facebook, find Find us on Facebook, and join. It’s totally free. So like I said, let’s have a look. So somebody comes for consultation and they’re looking at SaaS marketing optimizations. As we discussed in previous shows, there seems to be free buckets, but there’s a lot of grayness here. And the grayness is you have either got a native WordPress solution like Groundhog or Fluent CRM, or there’s about three to four out there native solutions. And then you got a load of SaaS solutions. But in between those two, clear, a lot of those SaaS solutions offer a WordPress plugin. And those plugins, some of them are quite good, what they offer, others are useless. They’re not worth bothering with.

 

[00:25:15.900] – Jonathan Denwood

And that’s where the gray light on me send who’s a sponsor of the show. That’s a SaaS platform. It does marketing, automation, and text, S SMS messaging. But their plugin, it seems pretty good for a SaaS provider, where there’s some other WordPress plugin from SaaS providers. And to some extent, I would apply that to ZOO. Some of Zolo’s plugins are quite good, but a lot of them are not that particularly good. Can you see where I’m… Would you agree what I’m trying to outline? And what would you add to… I think I’m struggling. Could you outline?

 

[00:26:11.050] – Haroon Q. Raja

I agree. Over here, I’d like to I would like to invite all of you to watch the video, maybe a bookmark it for later, that Jonathan and I did a few weeks ago on… What’s the name of that plugin? That Tye SaaS.

 

[00:26:29.090] – Jonathan Denwood

Wp Fusion.

 

[00:26:31.400] – Haroon Q. Raja

Wp Fusion, yeah. We covered this subject in a lot of depth in that one. You might want to have an in-depth look at that one as well. But to briefly sum it up, yes, Jonathan is in the right direction. With just the native plugins offered by these SaaS tools, you can’t really do much other than maybe sending email addresses into that CRM system when someone signs up. Usually, that’s pretty much the-We’ve lost your camera, Harun.

 

[00:27:04.360] – Jonathan Denwood

Wait a second. You’ve got an all-black, Harun.

 

[00:27:07.660] – Haroon Q. Raja

It says battery died, but it’s supposed to be plugged into my charger.

 

[00:27:17.240] – Jonathan Denwood

There you go. Technology strikes again. Especially when you’re live, folks, it always tends to go wrong when you’re live. But we do pretty good. So we’re continuing. Sorry, I just thought I had to tell you we’re not I’ve seen your handsome profile anymore, Haru.

 

[00:27:33.800] – Haroon Q. Raja

Shall we just continue with my… With, without? Yes.

 

[00:27:40.660] – Jonathan Denwood

Okay.

 

[00:27:42.000] – Haroon Q. Raja

So, yeah, where was I?

 

[00:27:45.010] – Jonathan Denwood

So yeah, those native- You were agreeing with me, which I rarely hear. I was in shock and horror, actually, Eric.

 

[00:27:51.890] – Haroon Q. Raja

So yeah, in such a scenario, utilizing something like WP Fusion, if you have to use a third-party SaaS platform, makes a lot of sense if you’re going to do anything beyond merrily send email addresses of people signing up from your site into like opt-in form, basically, into the third party CRM. Beyond that, lots and lots of interactions happen on a site that aren’t just new opt-ins. For example, someone signs up for a membership and then takes a course, finishes a lesson in the course, or buys a particular product on a site. They’re already a member, they buy a product. So that integration is, in my opinion, best done utilizing a WordPress native CRM and marketing automation solution like Groundhog, my top choice, or something like Fluent CRM, Jonathan’s top choice.

 

[00:28:51.330] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, because apart from what we’ve seen, and I might be a bit unfair, I think a lot of the SaaS-provided WordPress plugins, maybe HubSpot might be a… But HubSpot is in a different league as a product that a lot of our listeners would probably want to go to. But the majority of the others, I think you’re going to be disappointed very quickly with the limited integration they offer, especially if you got a membership and multiple courses that they’re going to be providing through that plugin. I think Ommersend is one of the bet ones. I know that they are actively building direct integrations with Lyfter LMS And I think with LearnDash, I know definitely with Lifter LMS, and I think with LearnDash. I know, definitely with Lifter LMS. But also they invested a lot of money and time in marketing themselves in the WordPress space. But I think if you are seriously looking to have the power of marketing, optimization with your membership website, you’re going to have to look at a native solution. The question I’ve got with you is that if you’ve got a fair few plugins and quite a large email list, and let’s say you’ve You’ve got quite a few courses.

 

[00:30:33.200] – Jonathan Denwood

I tend to advise people to look at having something like Fluency RM or Groundhog on a website subdomain and not have it as part of the main website. But that can cause some technical problems. What’s your own thought about that? I just think at a certain stage, you’re better off on having it on a subdomain. But it’s another totally gray area. So I’ll be interested in your own thoughts about this.

 

[00:31:08.100] – Haroon Q. Raja

There are pros and cons to both. But one of the major con is that then you essentially have to consider syncing data between those two sites, those two installations, using something like WP Fusion. So it’s like another overhead, another complication added. When the core benefit of an open source platform like WordPress is that you can keep things consolidated into one system so that everything, all the data can be accessed by all tools involved from the same database without requiring external API calls or syncing data between two different databases. So one source of truth. That’s the primary benefit you lose. And in that case, without WP Fusion, I don’t think there’s a viable way to make those sites speak with each other.

 

[00:32:10.780] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, I know that there’s some- Unless you want to code everything using the API yourself. Well, I know there’s some other plugin that allow people to share data from one domain to the other, but I’m in total agreement with me. If you’re looking at that, you’ve got to really, in my opinion, use WP Fusion. I suppose the reason that we don’t shy away, only in the right circumstance, Haroon, I want to point out, is that we provide WP Fusion as part of our hosting package. So there’s no cost to the client. As long as they host with us, they get a full access to WP Fusion because we got a lifetime multiple site license with WP Fusion, which we bought. Well, actually, I think the owner many years ago was very nice to me and gave it to me, actually, because he’s a great guy, and we do sing the praises of WP Fusion. But unless you’re using WP Fusion, I’m in total agreement. I don’t think you should look at it.

 

[00:33:17.780] – Haroon Q. Raja

Absolutely.

 

[00:33:18.460] – Jonathan Denwood

But I think because of the quality of WP Fusion, I’m thinking if you’re using WP Fusion, based on your experience, do you think it probably works okay?

 

[00:33:31.220] – Haroon Q. Raja

No, it works brilliantly. Not just okay, it was great. When you utilize it, it gets a job done in a remarkable way. You get to sync all the necessary information from one site to the other. For example, a user interaction happens on one site and that can trigger an action on the CRM installation, which is on a subdomain or a separate domain altogether. It happens, depending on On the latency and all, it happens very quickly. There’s not a lot of delay in it.

 

[00:34:05.610] – Jonathan Denwood

So when it comes that they decided that maybe they’ve been using something like active campaign or Convert kit, I get a lot of people that have been using WordPress with Convert kit. They’ve rebranded themselves recently with kit called Kit now. And I get a lot of people use the old name Convert kit, or they’re using Active Campaign. And they love Active Campaign. And I love Convert kit. They’re both very good platforms, but they get very… If you’re in that getting traction, you’re really building a membership website. Based on my experience, they get quite expensive quite quickly. And then When they look at… They already got a WordPress website. Because one of the attractions of Convert kit is that for a long time, there wasn’t a good landing page solution like you get with something like Cadence or one of the other page builders. There wasn’t a CRM systems like Groundhog or Fluent. They just weren’t available. So Convert kit felt was really aimed at the blogger, the creator, the influencer. These are the type of people that are attracted to WordPress. So they filled the space. And then you had the more corporate that also utilizes in WordPress, like associations, nonprofits, medium-sized businesses, up to 100, 200 people, organizations.

 

[00:35:56.850] – Jonathan Denwood

And they tended to look at active campaign, but then it got expensive. So would you agree what I’m outlined? And then how do you explain? So they’re looking at Groundhog, they’re looking at Fluent, they’re looking at WP Funnels. They’re the three main players.

 

[00:36:24.570] – Haroon Q. Raja

There was another one as well, something Flowmatic or something, something to do with flow? Yes. Something to do with flow? Yes. So when clients come to me from something like active campaign or get, previously convert, get- Sorry to interrupt. Do you, sorry, you Groupe, do you think I was on the right track?

 

[00:36:47.170] – Jonathan Denwood

The outline? Yes, I agree.

 

[00:36:50.580] – Haroon Q. Raja

So when they come to me seeking alternatives or just prospecting for options that may provide them with more control, less of a Frankenstein funnel mess. Also, many of them are looking for better pricing as well. When I tell them that with a native solution, they’re never, ever going to pay based on the number of subscribers they have or the number of team members they have on the account, they’re like, Whoa, does that exist? It’s like some of them aren’t aware of something like this even being in existence because they’re so used to paying based on the number of subscribers on all these platforms. It’s not like you pay for 10,000 subscribers and then you get to send unlimited emails to them. Pretty much all of these plans, these platforms, have some cap on the number of emails you can send as well, like some cap, some policy. When I tell them about that, and generally it calculates to Depending on the type of business, you could call it substantial savings or you could call it pocket chain savings. But the control they get and the peace of mind they get and the full access, full ownership of data they get, that’s priceless.

 

[00:38:14.290] – Haroon Q. Raja

That’s something always to consider because, with a native solution, like Beat, Ground Dog, Beat, Fluency RM, Beat, and other alternatives based on WordPress, there’s no charging for the number of subscribers. It’s all Mailpoets does it. Mailpoets charges by the number of subscribers if you use their sending service. But hey, that’s like automatic territory, and we don’t want to stop there these days. Since I automatically bought Mailpoets, I think it was a pretty decent tool back in the day. It’s like a little sibling of a jet pack, but I digress. Back to the likes of Groundhog and Fluent CRM, users pay for the features you need in the tool, and then you pay for the emails they send to the actual email-sending service you use, which is another third party. It could be like Brevo, previously Sendinblue, which is a great option. It could be what Jonathan uses, Sendgrid. It could be my top option, my top priority because of how well-acquainted I am with it and because of how much of an industry it is. It is very standard in the development world and reliable, robust, and cheap, such as Amazon SES and AWS SES.

[00:39:44.120] – Haroon Q. Raja

The overall cost often comes down to a fraction of what they’re paying. But hey, for some businesses, if they have 50,000 members and they’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in revenue from those members, whether they’re paying $800 a month or $200 a month, that difference, that saving of $600 a month for a business, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month is pocket change, it’s jump change. Many of them Don’t do it to save those few hundred bucks. Many of them do it because of the flexibility, ownership of data, and lack of restrictions based on the number of subscribers they have. So, it’s like freedom.

[00:40:34.320] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. I think the theme with Amazon is fantastic, but you must send out many emails to make it worthwhile. The other one is WP Funnel with their Melmin because we offer that. They seem still to be doing a good job, but WP Funnel’s a bit confusing. Then you got the Melmin. It’s not that confusing if you host with WP-Tonic because we provide both. But I tend to forget about them. But you put me on them, and I think they’re still doing a good job.

[00:41:18.180] – Haroon Q. Raja

Yeah, they are.

[00:41:20.310] – Jonathan Denwood

I think they’re still doing a pretty good job. And there’s another one called WU Funnel, but I think I will remove that. And I bought a lifetime deal with them as well. So you’re well-covered, I invested. We’ve also built our solution at WP-Tonic, which integrates building landing pages. So, our add-on provides the Convert kit environment to our hosting environment. But I think I’m right about Convert kit because they aimed at that blogger, influencer, YouTube creator, and TikTok creator who also had a WordPress website. And there wasn’t an easy-to-use solution, was there, Harun?

[00:42:18.090] – Haroon Q. Raja

Yeah, back in the day. But now, I would pick a native solution over them any day.

[00:42:25.240] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And then, like I say, you got the active campaign, especially if they’re on HubSpot. Hubspot’s active campaign is not quite enterprise but infringing on an enterprise level for the organization between 50 and 500 people. It gets costly if they’re doing a lot of… They also tend to look at WordPress native solutions. Would you agree? That’s great. I agree with that.

[00:43:00.610] – Haroon Q. Raja

They were agreed, 100 %.

[00:43:03.350] – Jonathan Denwood

So they come from different backgrounds. But it’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast, and I’ve been doing it for almost 18 months. I can’t believe that. Many people weren’t aware that email marketing optimization functionality is now natively available on the WordPress platform. And I think we’ve done a reasonable job of promoting it. I think it’s time to wrap it up. We’ve provided good information and insights about Harun’s options. What’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:43:51.090] – Haroon Q. Raja

So before we wrap it up, I also wanted to share one more insight with people. Sure. That’s the primary subject of the show. With something like member press and fluent CRM or… Actually, no, I don’t think you can do it. I’m not 100% sure if you can do it with fluent CRM, but with Groundhog, you sure can. You can use the CRM’s features to filter your members by the total amount they’ve spent on the site, by the count of subscriptions they have, if you’ve got multiple, multiple types of subscriptions, by the total number of transactions they’ve had, by what kind of active membership they have, and by the count of their membership. If you’re selling multiple types of memberships and people are buying various membership plans, their membership is for physical products that get sent out to members every month or periodically. You can segment filter contacts by all that and then send them targeted emails. Also, you can give them a gift membership plan based on member interaction. Now, coming to what you asked, what is the best way to reach out to me?

[00:45:14.870] – Haroon Q. Raja

It’s Hqraja..com. What you see on my screen, because you can’t see my face, it’s hqraja. Put a. com at the end, and you’ll reach my website. Over there, you’ll find the contact form for reaching out to me.

[00:45:26.200] – Jonathan Denwood

Next time Harun’s on the show, he’ll put more money in the meter so we can see him throughout the show. But I think we’ve covered some fantastic stuff, as usual. Thank you, Harun, for coming on the show. I think between the two of us, we do give some great value to the listeners. I’ve got some fabulous feedback. As I said, if you have any questions, you can always leave a comment with a question by going to the WP-Tonic YouTube channel. You can watch the whole episode and ask any questions, or you can go to the WP-Tonic website and book a free chat with me or Harun. Go to him as well. We will be back next week with another subject around WordPress, SaaS, and anything that we think would be helpful to you in your journey to build a successful membership community website in 2024 and 2025. That’s rapidly coming up. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

 

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