How to Create Smart Coupons in WooCommerce

Several of our readers have asked us how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce to extend the default functionality.

If you want to go beyond the built-in WooCommerce coupons to add items like buy one get one coupon, free gift coupon, etc, then you’re in the right place.

In this article, we’ll cover how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce.

What You Can Do With Smart Coupons for WooCommerce

Smart coupons (or advanced coupons) are a great way to increase your sales and revenue.

Instead of simply giving your customers a blanket discount on everything in their WooCommerce cart, you can use smart coupons to do all sorts of clever things.

For instance, you can create a “buy one get one” coupon that lets customers buy one product and get another free. This can be a great way to boost sales, or even to clear out stock that you want to move faster.

You could even create a free gift coupon. This could be a great way to build your email list, reward loyal customers, and encourage people to try a new product.

You may think that creating these types of coupons for your online store would be complicated and require technical knowledge. The good news is that it’s really straightforward.

We’re going to show you how to create smart coupons using the Advanced Coupons plugin for WooCommerce.

Create Smart Coupons with Advanced Coupons Plugin

Advanced Coupons is the best WordPress coupon code plugin on the market. It allows you to create smart coupons to boost your sales and grow your business.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Advanced Coupons plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll find the new coupon functionality under WooCommerce » Coupons page in your WordPress admin dashboard.

To create any kind of coupon, you start by clicking ‘Add New’ and then enter your chosen coupon code at the top of the screen.

There are loads of different ways you can create smart coupons. In this article, we’re going to take you through some of the most popular and effective ways to use coupons on your WooCommerce store.

You can jump straight to each one using these quick links:

• Creating a Buy One Get One Free Coupon
• Creating a URL Coupon (Auto-Apply)
• Creating a Pre-Scheduled Coupon
• Creating a Free Gift Coupon

Creating a Buy One Get One Free Coupon in WooCommerce

Advanced Coupons lets you create all sorts of “buy one get one” (BOGO) coupons. You don’t necessarily have to give away something for free. You could instead have a “buy one get one half-price” offer.

A BOGO coupon could be a great way to encourage people on your email list to make their first purchase. It can also be a great way to encourage repeat purchase from existing buyers.

To create a BOGO coupon using Advanced Coupons, go to WooCommerce » Coupons and add a new coupon. Click on the BOGO tab and set the conditions for your deal.

You can create lots of different types of offers, including “buy two get one” or similar. The item that the customer gains doesn’t have to be free. Instead, you could discount it by any percentage you want.

Here, we’ve created an offer where customers can buy any t-shirt and get a green t-shirt for free.

Tip: BOGO coupons are most effective when you’re offering a free item that’s related to the one people are buying. For instance, if you sell winter clothing, you might offer a free pair of gloves with every hat purchased.

If you want more help creating your BOGO coupon, check out our full tutorial on how to create buy one get one coupons in WooCommerce.

Creating a URL Coupon (Auto-Apply) in WooCommerce

When you send out an email newsletter or social media post with a coupon code, sometimes users don’t know how to apply the coupon code.

This leads to increase in cart abandonment. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could auto-apply the coupon code with a click of a link?

This is where WooCommerce coupon URLs come in handy.

Instead of needing to remember a code, customers can simply click on a special URL. When they do so, Advanced Coupons will automatically apply the correct coupon to their cart.

This is really useful for social media marketing, where you might be limited in how many characters you can include in a status. Being able to give the coupon code within your store’s URL saves space.

To create a URL coupon using Advanced coupons, go to WooCommerce » Coupons and add a new coupon. Set the discount under the General tab.

You’ll need to publish the coupon in order to get the URL. After that, go to the URL Coupons tab, and you’ll see the coupon URL here.

It’ll be yoursite.com/coupon/couponcode, where couponcode is whatever you entered for your coupon code.

You can customize the coupon’s URL if you want, using the Code URL Override box. This will change the end of the URL (the coupon code part).

If you want more help creating your URL coupon, check out our full tutorial on how to create URL coupons in WooCommerce.

Creating a Pre-Scheduled Coupon in WooCommerce

Planning a holiday or special sales promotion?

If you run a lot of sales during the year, scheduling coupons ahead of time can make it easier. For instance, you could set up a bunch of coupons in January for your spring sale, your summer sale, and your Black Friday deals.

Scheduling coupons can also help you improve your marketing communications with affiliate partners because you can share the coupon code with them ahead of time without worrying about it being used live.

To schedule a coupon, you simply create it in the normal way by going to WooCommerce » Coupons and clicking ‘Add New’.

Next, click on the Scheduler tab and enter a start and end date for your coupon.

Note: The coupon will begin at 12:00:00 am on the start date and end at 11:59:59 pm on the day before the end date.

You can also edit the default messages here, if you want to. These will be shown if the customer tries to use the coupon before it’s valid or after it expires.

If you want more help creating your scheduled coupon, check out our tutorial on how to schedule a coupon in WooCommerce.

Creating a Free Gift Coupon in WooCommerce

Do you want to offer your customers a free gift? You don’t need to set a product’s price to $0 to do this. There’s a better way, by using a free gift coupon.

Free gift coupons let customers add a product to their cart for free. You can set them up so that customers have to spend a certain amount in order for the coupon to work.

This is a great way to increase average order value on your online store.

For instance, you might create a coupon, so that customers who spend $20 or more can get a free mini teddy bear. If they haven’t got $20 worth of items in their cart, they can’t use the coupon.

You could also offer a free gift without any minimum spend. This could be a great way to reward loyal customers, or to get first-time customers to give your store a try.

To create a free gift coupon, go to WooCommerce » Coupons and add a new coupon.

Next, click the Add Products tab, find the product you want to giveaway, and select ‘$: Override price’ from the Price/Discount dropdown. You can leave the box blank or enter 0.

If you want more help creating your free gift coupon, check out our tutorial on how to create a free gift coupon in WooCommerce.

How to Promote Your Coupons in WooCommerce

Whatever type of coupon you’ve created, you’ll want to let your customers know about it.

Unless it’s an offer specifically for your email list or newsletter, it’s best practice to promote the coupon across your website.

The easiest way to do this is with OptinMonster. It’s a powerful conversion optimization tool that helps you turn casual website visitors into paying customers.

You can use it to create a coupon popup on your site like this:

For full instructions, just check out our tutorial on how to create a coupon popup in WordPress.

You can also use OptinMonster to display your coupons in lots of other ways such as a floating notification bar like this:

And even a gamified spin a wheel coupon where you can allow users to win different discounts.

Final Thoughts and Best Practices

Smart coupons are a brilliant way to drive more sales and make more money from your store.

It’s a good idea to experiment with different types of coupon to see which works best with your audience.

This will help you consistently tweak and improve your results.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce. You might also like our ultimate guide to WooCommerce SEO and our step by step guide on how to set up conversion tracking in WooCommerce.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create Smart Coupons in WooCommerce appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 02, 2020 at 05:00PM

How to Send SMS Messages to Your WordPress Users

Recently, one of our readers asked if it was possible to send SMS messages to their subscribers along with email newsletters.

The answer is yes. You can easily send text messages to your website users by using one of the many SMS plugins for WordPress.

In this article, we’ll show you how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users, step by step.

Why Send SMS Messages to Your Users?

Sending SMS messages can be highly effective in bringing back customers to your website. Particularly, when used with other marketing tools like an email newsletter, push notifications, and search traffic.

Text messages have a fantastic open rate. Some studies suggest that SMS open rates are as high as 98%.

Compare that with a typical open rate of just 20% for emails, and you can see why SMS messages are becoming a preferred marketing medium.

People check text messages much more quickly than they check emails. It takes an average of 90 seconds for someone to respond to a text and 90 minutes to respond to an email.

Of course, you don’t want to overdo it. Even when they’ve opted in, most users won’t want daily texts from you. Even weekly might be too much.

Important: Make sure you obey the law. Different countries have different legal requirements for text messages, particularly marketing messages.

You might also want to use SMS messages to send receipts or order updates. We’ll cover how to do that later in this tutorial.

Sending SMS Marketing Messages Using Sendinblue

Sendinblue is an email marketing service that also allows you to send SMS messages to your subscribers.

To get started, you’ll need to set up an account with Sendinblue if you haven’t already got one. On the Sendinblue website, click the ‘Sign up free’ button to start creating your account.

Once you’ve finished the account setup process, you’ll see your Sendinblue dashboard. If you didn’t complete your profile during the setup stage, you’ll be prompted to do so here.

Before you can start sending messages, you’ll need to contact the support team. Go to the Sendinblue contact page and write a message that includes:

• A request to activate your account.
• Your site’s URL.
• A note that you’ll be sending marketing messages.

Once your account has been approved, you’ll get an email from Sendinblue. Note that this can take up to 24 hours.

Buying SMS Credits for Your Sendinblue Account

While you’re waiting for your account to be approved, you can start creating an SMS campaign in Sendinblue.

First, click the + button in the Sendinblue menu to go to the Apps and Integrations page.

Then, scroll down the page to find the SMS Campaigns app and click the slider to activate it.

Next, you’ll need to purchase SMS credits. In your Sendinblue dashboard, you’ll see ‘0 SMS Credits’ on the left-hand side. You need to click the ‘Get more credits’ link to purchase SMS credits.

You’ll be taken to the ‘My Plan’ area of the dashboard. In the SMS Credits section, click the ‘Get More SMS Credits’ link.

Sendinblue defaults to selling you 100 credits at a time. You can buy fewer, but the minimum charge is still $1.14 plus tax.

Note: It costs 1 credit to send a text message in the US, but you’ll need to pay more than 1 credit per message in other countries.

Once you have selected the number of credits, go ahead and complete your purchase.

Once you’ve bought your credits, you may need to wait for up to 48 hours for them to appear in your account. You may also get an email from Sendinblue asking you for more details about what type of SMS marketing you plan to do.

This is to help you stay in compliance with SMS laws.

You’ll need to reply to them with answers to their questions before your credits can be added to your account.

Creating Your SMS Marketing List

In order to send out SMS messages, you’ll need to import your list. You can do this by going to the Contacts tab in your Sendinblue dashboard. Then, click the ‘Import contacts’ button.

You can either upload a .csv file from your computer, or you can copy and paste contacts line by line. Whichever option you choose, Sendinblue offers examples to help you.

Important: Your users need to have opted in for SMS marketing messages.

You can collect website visitor’s phone numbers and consent using a WordPress form plugin like WPForms, or using a marketing popup plugin like OptinMonster.

Sending Your First SMS Campaign

Once your credits show up and your account is approved, you can start sending messages.

First, you’ll want to add a test contact in Sendinblue, so you can test your SMS campaign.

Simply, go to the Contacts section in your dashboard, then click the ‘Add a contact’ button.

Next, fill in your details, including your mobile phone number.

After that, you can either add your test contact to an existing list, or you can create a new one.

Once you’ve done that, click ‘Save and close’. You should see a message telling you that the subscriber has been successfully added.

When your SMS credits have been added to your account, you can test out sending a text message.

First, go to the SMS tab in your Sendinblue dashboard. Next, click the ‘Create my first SMS campaign’ button.

You can enter whatever you want for your Campaign Name. This isn’t seen by the recipients. You should also enter an SMS Sender. This will display for users in certain countries.

Next, enter your SMS message. Beneath the message box, you can see how many characters you’ve used and how many SMS messages will be sent.

At the bottom of the screen, click the ‘Send a test’ button.

Next, a popup box will appear. Enter your mobile number, which you included when you added yourself as a contact earlier.

You should see a message telling you that your test message has been sent successfully.

Now, check your phone to see if the text has come through. Here’s ours:

If your text hasn’t arrived, wait a minute or two and it should appear. If not, double-check that you’re using the right mobile number.

Once you know everything’s working, you can continue setting up your campaign. Click the X to close the ‘Send a test’ window, then click the ‘Next Step’ button on the top right of the screen.

Now, you’ll need to choose your contact list(s). Check all the lists you want to use, then click the ‘Next Step’ button.

That’s all you need to do! Your SMS campaign is now ready to send.

You can review the details and change them if you want to, using the ‘Return to this step’ links. Once you’re happy, click ‘Schedule’ on the top right.

You can either schedule your campaign so that your texts are sent out at a specific time, or you can send it immediately.

Important: Avoid sending your text messages early in the morning or late at night. Be mindful of timezones, too. Not everyone will remember to turn on Do Not Disturb mode overnight.

Sending SMS Messages to Your WooCommerce Customers

What if you want to send your customers notifications about their orders?

If you’ve decided to start an online store, then you might want to send text updates as well as emails to your customers.

The easiest way to do that is with a suitable plugin such as YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications. This plugin lets you use an SMS gateway, such as Twilio, to send SMS messages to your customers. They receive these when their order status changes, such as when it’s dispatched.

You can set up YITH WooCommerce SMS Notifications so that it’s enabled for all customers, or you can let customers opt-in at the checkout.

Also, you can use it to get SMS notifications yourself about new orders. This makes it easy to stay on top of things if you’re away from your computer.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users. You may also want to see our list of best business phone services for small business, and our list of the best live chat software to grow your sales.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Send SMS Messages to Your WordPress Users appeared first on WPBeginner.

June 01, 2020 at 05:00PM

8 Best WordPress Notification Bar Plugins (Compared)

Do you want to add a notification bar on your website? A floating bar or “hello bar” can be an effective and non-intrusive way to alert users about a sale or coupon.

However, it could also get annoying if it’s not setup properly. For instance, a notification bar that takes half the screen on mobile is not a good user experience.

In this article, we’ll help you pick the best WordPress notification bar plugins to boost traffic, get more subscribers, and increase sales.

What to look for in a WordPress Notification Bar Plugin?

There are plenty of WordPress notification bar plugins available in the market, but not all of them have the right set features you may need for getting the maximum results.

For example, some notification bar plugins are too simple and does not come with proper settings for allowing users to hide the notification. Others may not have the ability to add dynamic elements such as call to action buttons or countdown timers to boost urgency.

Basically, you need to choose a floating bar plugin that aligns with your goal: increase traffic, show announcement alert, grow your email list, increase sales conversion, etc.

Here are some of the most important factors you need to look for when choosing a notification bar plugin:

• Targeting and Cookie Settings – Your notification plugin should have targeting option that allows you to customize the message for different sections, and also remember what user has seen in the past to improve user experience.
• Dynamic Elements – A good alert notification plugin allows you to add dynamic elements such as countdown timers, multiple call-to-action buttons, animation effects, etc.
• Newsletter Integrations – If your goal is to grow your email newsletter, then you need to make sure that the sticky bar plugin integrates with popular email marketing services.
• Support options – Lastly, you need to make sure that there are support options available. Good support can save you a lot of money in the long run.

With that said, let’s take a look at our comparison of the best WordPress notification bar plugins.

1. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best conversation optimization software that comes with several marketing tools to help you turn website visitors into subscribers and customers.

It also includes a notification bar feature with dozens of beautiful templates. Their drag and drop builder allows you to customize the design or even create completely custom templates to match your brand. You can include things like a countdown timer, too.

OptinMonster is great for notification bars that encourage action. It has advanced targeting features that allow you to personalize the message based on your goals and users’ past behavior.

You can also use OptinMonster’s notification bars to show an alert or message. If you’ve had to suddenly change your business hours, for instance, you can alert your website visitors to this.

Other use-cases include: creating a free shipping bar notice for WooCommerce, add a newsletter opt-in form, create a discount alert bar, redirect traffic to a landing page, and more.

Below are some real example screenshots from their floating bar gallery:

Aside from just notification bars, you can use OptinMonster to create all sorts of different popups and alerts including spin to win gamified opt-in forms, exit-intent popups, fullscreen welcome mats, and more:

Not to mention, there is no other solution that offers more personalization and targeting features than OptinMonster. Take a look at some of their targeting rules:

2. SeedProd’s Notification Bar Pro

SeedProd is best known for its ‘Coming Soon’ page plugin. However, they also have a floating bar plugin, called Notification Bar Pro.

You can buy Notification Bar Pro as part of the SeedProd bundle.

With SeedProd’s Notification Bar Pro, you can design your notification bar however you want. It shows a live preview of your notification bar as you design it. This makes it easy to tweak it to look however you want.

You don’t have to show your notification bar on every page of your site. Instead, you might choose to show it on just the home page. You could also allow or exclude specific pages.

It’s very quick to build and tweak your notification bar with SeedProd. If you want to go further than the wide range of built-in options, then you can also add custom CSS to style the floating bar.

There’s a limited free version available, too, called WordPress Notification Bar. This doesn’t offer all the features of the full version, but you might like to try it out if you’re just getting started.

3. TrustPulse

TrustPulse is a little different from the plugins we’ve looked at so far. It offers a real-time social proof notifications, letting your users know what’s happening right now on your site.

This can be a great way to take advantage of the FOMO effect while building trust around your brand.

When someone visits your site, TrustPulse will show a small notification bar that lets them know who’s buying your product right now, or who’s bought it recently. This is a powerful form of social proof that is proven to increase conversions.

It works with all top eCommerce platforms including WooCommerce. You can also set up TrustPulse to track other types of interactions. For instance, you could use it to show a notification when someone joins your email list.

TrustPulse is incredibly easy to use out of the box. However, there are plenty of features you can customize if you want to. You can easily change the message, colors, and images used in your notifications, for instance.

It also gives you lots of useful analytics, showing you which pages are delivering the highest conversion rate.

There’s even a free version, which lets you show notifications for up to 500 sessions (visits from users).

4. WP Notification Bar Pro

WP Notification Bar Pro offers multiple different notification types. You can use it to build your email list, grow your social media following, advertise sales, and more.

This is a great option if you want to show something a bit unusual in your notification bar. For instance, you can use WP Notification Bar Pro to show your latest posts or even posts that are related to the one the user is on.

You can even display a search form or social media buttons in your notification bar.

WP Notification Bar Pro lets you create multiple notification bars. You can set their priority so the most important one always displays on a given page.

You can also split test your bars to see which performs best. You can track your views and clicks, too.

5. Hello Bar

Hello Bar is a well known and popular notification bar plugin for WordPress. It’s easy and straightforward to use. If you’re a complete beginner, it could be a good option.

Like with OptinMonster, you can use Hello Bar to add users to your email lists, as it integrates with popular email marketing services.

As well as notification bars, Hello Bar lets you create other types of popups such as sliders and even popups that take over the whole screen.

There’s a limited free version of Hello Bar available. You’ll need to create an account with Hello Bar in order to use it.

The free version doesn’t give you as much control over your notification bars as the full version. You’ll still be able to make some basic design changes using it, though.

Note: You won’t be able to remove the Hello Bar branding unless you pay for a premium plan at which point OptinMonster is a much better option at the price.

6. Easy Notification Bar

Easy Notification Bar is a simple, free option. You can just install it on your site and get started straight away.

It doesn’t have all the options you’ll get from other plugins, but you can still do basic things like type in your text, choose a font size, add a link, and customize the colors.

Unlike many of the other plugins here, Easy Notification Bar only offers a floating bar. It doesn’t let you create other types of popup too.

If you just want to put an alert on your website, it could be a great option. For instance, if you run a restaurant and want to alert customers to a temporary closure or change in business hours, this plugin might be all you need.

It’s completely free, and there’s no premium version. If you’re on a tight budget after the other costs of building a WordPress site, then this could be a good plugin to start with.

7. WPFront Notification Bar

WPFront Notification bar is another simple plugin that lets you create notification bars in WordPress. You can place the bar at the top or bottom of the page.

You can set the bar to automatically close and/or have a close button for your visitors. You can also configure when the bar appears, for example you might set a start and end date for it.

WPFront Notification Bar is completely free and regularly updated. As with Easy Notification Bar, there’s no premium version. One key drawback with this plugin is that you can only create a single notification bar at a time.

8. Divi Notification Bar

Divi by Elegant Themes is one of the most popular drag & drop page builder for WordPress.

Aside from letting you create custom landing pages, Divi also allows you to easily create and add notification alerts in your pages with their easy drag & drop interface.

Although it doesn’t come with the powerful personalization and targeting features like OptinMonster, it is still a suitable solution for basic needs.

Expert Pick: Which is the Best Notification Bar Plugin for WordPress?

In our opinion, OptinMonster is the best WordPress notification bar plugin because of it’s large template selection, easy to use design customizer, advanced personalization / targeting features, and hundreds of integrations with popular email marketing services & CRMs. Not to mention, it also gives you a whole range of other marketing tools like popups, slide-ins, fullscreen welcome mats, gamified spin a wheel opt-in forms, and more.

If you’re looking to display social proof notifications, then TrustPulse is an ideal solution.

We hope this article helped you learn about the best WordPress notification bar plugins. You might also want to take a look at our expert list of the best business phone services and must have WordPress plugins for small business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 8 Best WordPress Notification Bar Plugins (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.

May 29, 2020 at 04:00PM