A Duct-Taped Mess Of Tech?

For all of my U.S. subscribers, Happy Labor Day. Hope you enjoy the day. I know a lot of you probably have the day off. My wife does. But me?

Yeah, I’m laboring. 😜

So, let’s just dive right in, shall we?

Featured This Week

How To Increase Your Email Open Rates And Get Your Emails Delivered

It is one thing to build your email list. It is quite another to ensure the emails you send actually arrive and get opened. This guide provides multiple tactics to increase your email open rate and deliverability.

Created A Duct Tape Mess Of Tech For Yourself?

I recently did a call with somebody who had been following the world of online marketing for awhile. And he had himself a tech mess on his hands.

Basically, he was using a mish-mash of stuff. Somehow it worked, however it was clearly giving him a steady flow of headaches.

He had Thrivecart, ConvertBox, FluentCRM, Kartra, Zapier connecting things together… and much more. He had APIs talking to each other, 3 different WordPress sites trying to “talk” to each other, and more. And he was getting pretty frustrated with the whole thing. We spent the whole call together just answering questions about various tech constraints he was having.

I’ve come across this kind of thing many, many times. Over time, people end up buying into various flavors of the day. They see new launches of new software platforms that promise the moon…. and over time, they can get trapped by it.

And you know you’re in deep when you find yourself spending far too much time dealing with technical crap than actually growing your business. It is just the wrong focus.

A few thoughts on some of the tools he was using:

• ThriveCart is best avoided at this point. The software has stagnated and they’ve had more problems lately. And they’re still offering a lifetime subscription, which I think presents a cash flow problem that is limiting them.
• ConvertBox is now owned by the same people as ThriveCart. So, the story is the same. As nice of a tool as it is, I wouldn’t buy it today. Sad to say.
• Kartra. Nothing bad to say, really, but it is a remotely hosted piece of rented software. I’d much prefer to own my own platform.
• Zapier. Works well, but if you find yourself using a lot of these kinds of platforms, then you might have made things too complex for yourself by spreading your business all over the place.

Look, I’ve made every mistake in the book in my over two decades of experience doing this stuff. I know full well what it is like to over-complicate things technically and deal with the headache. I also know what it is like to have to unwind that crap to get back to simplicity.

Today, one of my nerdy joys in life with a client is helping them SIMPLIFY their tech stack.

It feels like doing a spring cleaning. Like remodeling an old home. I find it to be fun.

Today, I use a tech stack that works together beautifully. It is all on WordPress. The plugins I use are all available in the Concierge Toolkit and all available to Concierge clients.

The best thing about it is that the whole platform is in-house.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with an “all in one” platform, but you need to own it. And when you’re on WordPress, you own the platform. You can take it with you anywhere you want, to any host you want. And, if you want a new feature, you can just do it. You don’t have to submit a “feature request” and then sit there and wait forever. Anything is doable on WordPress, when you get right down to it.

Yes, it does require a certain level of understanding of WordPress, too.

And I get that some people don’t have that. And they might feel more comfortable with the seeming simplicity of some third-party platform.

But, that’s why I do Concierge.

Because I want to make WordPress for business simpler. And help my clients build and own their own platforms.

And if I get to help a new client simplify things and untangle a big mess of tech, then so be it. I’d done it many times now for people. I’ve helped many clients save themselves a bunch of money, too, by being able to cancel rented services they no longer needed. Heck, just had a client cancel his $140/mo Mailchimp plan. Didn’t need it anymore.

I love that kinda thing.

Got a duct taped mess of tech? Hit me up and maybe I can help you de-tangle.

This Week In Concierge

Here’s a little of what’s been in progress last week for clients….

• As mentioned before, moved a client’s active Mailchimp list into FluentCRM and got set up for his daily emails. It is going to save him $140/mo.
• Did a site performance audit for a new Concierge client
• Built a new form with integrated order form and user registration via Fluent Forms, with ability for client to log in, view past submissions.
• Working on a new credit purchase system for employers to purchase course spots for their employees.

Last week definitely had me getting my hands dirty into a little coding on behalf of a couple of clients. Not everything can easily be done by clicking a few plugins together. Sometimes, custom-coding a snippet of code is the way to make the site do exactly what you want.

Good thing is, once I’ve done the work to figure that out, I keep it handy in a library of code snippets here in my office. Then, I can bust it out when needed down the road and save everybody some time.

But, was able to stoke my little nerd fires last week. LOL! 🤓

WordPress Quick Bits

MemberMouse Gets Billing Reminders. Even though I don’t use MemberMouse anymore, it is still nice to see it developing. Especially since slow development was one of my complaints about it in the past. Well, MemberMouse is now getting built-in billing reminders. This will make it super easy to send out annual billing reminders and other similar things. Check out the announcement here.

Support Portal For SureCart. A new addon has been released that will add a support portal to SureCart. It will embed the support portal right into the Customer dashboard for SureCart. This one was developed and released by SurelyWP, not from SureCart itself. It is a paid add-on, but the price is very reasonable. Check it out.

SureCart 3 Preview. Speaking of Surecart, Adam has released a video showing what’s coming in the 3.0 release of SureCart. They’re releasing the public beta. It really looks good. I’m definitely a WooCommerce guy myself because I like total control, but I can definitely see the draw and power of SureCart.

Droip Content Manager. Sometimes I am reminded just how many tools are available for WordPress. Because, I’m in the business…. and yet never her of Droip. Apparently, this is another site builder. Looks interesting. And, well, it apparently now has a content manager for working with dynamic content, custom fields, etc.

Creating A Plugin With ChatGPT. I definitely use ChatGPT somewhat regularly for technical stuff like this. For instance, when I create code snippets for WordPress, I use ChatGPT. It won’t usually just do the work…. you still need to know what you’re doing. However, it does speed things up. Well, ThemeIsle has done a full post on using ChatGPT to create an entire plugin. No experierence and about 120 hours of work. Check out the post.

Astra 4.8. Astra 4.8 has been released and now includes a Style Guide. Basically, one central place to change all the main appearance options of your site, like colors, fonts, etc. This is actually a very convenient feature. Would be nice if Kadence implements this as it would definitely save a lot of clicking around.

Building An After Optin Survey

So, when people opt into your list by filling in an opt-in form, usually you just ask for their email address. In some cases, you may ask for the name, too. But, that’s it usually.

Then, they submit the form and they end up on some “thank you” page.

On that page, most people do nothing really useful. You might tell them to check their inbox. You might ask them to follow you on social media. In some cases, you could drop an offer there however you usually don’t want to come off as too pushy.

One option is to build a short survey.

The idea would be to thank them, welcome them, then ask them to answer a few really short questions. Then, those answers could help you do two things:

• Enrich their subscriber profile by adding additional segmentation information so that you can follow up with them more appropriately and be more interesting and relevant (and get better open rates). And…
• Use that segmentation information later to tailor followup email sequences and even potential promotional offers to things they’re interested in.

The questions should be short and not very many. Like, maybe 2-3 questions tops. You can always ask more later if you want, but this person just joined your list so you don’t want to be needy.

Now, let’s talk about the tech here…

You can use a forms plugin to build your quick survey. Personally, I use Fluent Forms. I also use FluentCRM for my email list, so this is the perfect combo. So, here’s the gist of it…

• Have your optin form route people to your “thank you” page as well as pass the email field on in the URL. You can pass variables along in the URL. It is a checkbox option on the form. This will pass the email field onto the next page where you survey will be.
• On the survey form, you have a hidden field for the email address. The default value for that field is pulled from the GET variable in the URL, so basically the form will just inherit the email address from the optin. This way you can update their CRM profile with data.
• Embed that form on your thank you page.
• Set the integration so that it will map the field inputs to the FluentCRM profile. You can map to custom fields if that is what is useful for you, or you could add certain tags to their profile based on their answers. Remember, fields are better used for data while tags are better used for segmenting into groups.

Once this has been set up (and it doesn’t take long), you’ll begin to collect more data about your new subscribers without complicating your optin forms.

If you’re not using FluentCRM, this same basic setup would work. As long as your forms plugin has a direct integration with your CRM of choice, you can do after opt-in surveys.

And BTW, there are also ways you can do this kind of thing at any time. From any email you send. You can always be surveying your email subscribers and do it so smoothly that it becomes effortless. It makes a lot richer email list than if all you have is a bunch of anonymous emails.

If you need or want any help setting this kind of thing up, let me know!