Creative Mail for Jetpack: Is This the Future of Email Marketing?

Those looking to grow their business are making a mistake solely relying on new and established traffic. While traffic is one of the key signifiers of interest in a product or provider, if you really want to grow your e-commerce business, you have to collect information from visitors and connect to them on a regular basis. Jetpack is endeavoring to lead the way in the email marketing sphere, with a new suite of email marketing tools called Creative Mail. Creative Mail integration package dropped version 8.9 recently, but is it going to break new ground with any business looking to improve its email marketing tactics?

What Does Version 8.9 Do?

The latest version boasts a handful of nifty features, including the following:

Social Network Preview for Posts

While this is not groundbreaking, it is incredibly useful for those who need to think twice before publishing:

• A new social previews tab has been put under the Jetpack sidebar panel in the block editor, listing some social icons and a preview button.
• When you click the button a modal window pops up so users can preview what their post will look like. While it is only integrated into Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter currently, LinkedIn previews are currently being developed.

Although it isn’t an essential function, the social network preview can benefit Jetpack users who are solely relying on social networking to aid their marketing.

Newsletter Sign-Up Form

When creating a new form, the users will see the latest option to create a newsletter, which is great for many companies looking to keep everyone informed:

• By adding a name and an email field with a message, you are asking the visitor to grant permission to send emails.
• Users need to install and activate the third-party Creative Mail plugin for the newsletters to work, which can be fiddly, but is ideal for beginner businesses.
• To access the newsletter part, you need to create an account through the Creativ.email website.
• With up to 5,000 emails per month free, this is ideal for small-scale businesses, but if you need to upgrade, the costs go upwards of $4.95 every month.

While the integration of the plugin is straightforward and can be done from the Block Editor, the process of setting up and signing up may take time.

Donations Block

Jetpack’s Donations Block is another new addition to Jetpack:

• Users will need to be on a paid Jetpack plan to access this, but as they can integrate their Stripe account to collect payments, this makes it far simpler. This is where a paid account will help you reap the benefits, as its plug-and-play system makes it easy and straightforward for most end-users.
• For experienced marketers, the Donations Block may not be so sophisticated and appears to target users looking for a basic plugin.
• It is perfect for users already using Jetpack and are looking to start their marketing campaign slow and steady.

What Else Does Creative Mail Have?

Perfect for businesses relying on WordPress oriented email marketing services. As Creative Mail integrates with Jetpack and WooCommerce, this makes it an ideal starting point for those looking for a comprehensive and complete marketing mission:

• As it’s easy to create and reuse newsletter sign-up forms, as well as the option to customize it with pre-built options, you can collect subscribers quickly.
• You can use this with the Repeat Visitor Block to display or hide the form based on how many times visitors have been to your website. This is beneficial for someone who returns numerous times to the site without registering.
• An opt-in field can help you collect more subscribers.

But this is the tip of the iceberg. According to Jetpack, there will be a focus on more features as Creative Mail gathers steam. Some of the planned features include the following:

• The ability to create triggered, multi-step customer lifecycle marketing journeys, which will make for a personalized experience.
• Send WooCommerce abandoned cart emails which will act as a subtle reminder to the customer to return.
• The option to send post-purchase follow-up emails to continue the relationship with the customer.
• The opportunity to send emails about related products in an attempt to entice the customer back.

With more plans on the horizon to make it the key tool for WordPress and WooCommerce customers, it’s imperative to keep an eye on Creative Mail to see what they will have in store.

Is Creative Mail Worth It?

As a tool for those e-commerce stores using WordPress, it is the first step into a larger world. With no need for contact sync plug-in or an SMTP server, it makes for easy access from the WordPress dashboard. As email marketing is such a vital piece of the puzzle for e-commerce store owners that need to connect to their customers, it is a prescient time for email marketing, especially as a result of the pandemic. Statistics from Campaign Monitor highlight a 31% increase of email send volumes during the 30-day period after March 17, when the pandemic was in full flow. Therefore, the value of a fully customizable experience is more important than ever.

Now, with so many ways to connect with a customer, it’s more than the wide-ranging possibilities of marketing. With a company like Jetpack unveiling the latest version of Creative Mail, it highlights the importance of email marketing right now. While it’s easy to compare any email marketing tool to MailChimp, which has a wide variety of third-party plugins, Constant Contact, the company that built Creative Mail for Jetpack, are tailoring this specifically to WordPress and WooCommerce users.

Conclusion

It’s a good idea for potential users of Creative Mail to get in on the ground floor. It has the potential to be a contender among established plugins like MailPoet and MailChimp. The advantages of Creative Mail is, arguably, its wider range of features. Due to its sheer potential and ubiquity with Jetpack, we will rate this a whopping 4.5 stars. The future of email marketing is here, in its most subtle form.