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How to Create a Free Membership Site With Integrated Email Marketing in WordPress

Building a membership site can seem daunting and expensive but with the right tools and guidance, you can create a powerful membership site without making holes in the pocket.
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Are you looking for ways to create a membership website with integrated email marketing without breaking the bank? 

You’re in luck! 

Building a membership site with robust email marketing features doesn’t have to come with a hefty price tag. 

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to create a functional membership website with integrated email marketing capabilities using only free plugins 😮

Let’s dive right in. 

#Free Plugins That Will Help Build Your Membership Site

To create a free membership site with email marketing capabilities, you will leverage the power of the following four free plugins

  • WooCommerce: Use this plugin to create products that are exclusive to paid members. 
  • Subscriptions for WooCommerce (by WP Swings): Set up recurring subscription plans and allow members to pay for access to your exclusive content. 
  • FluentCRM: Create a custom “Membership Access” tag and assign it to paid members and control who has access to exclusive content.
  • WP Fusion Lite: Connects FluentCRM with WooCommerce and ensures that only paid members with the “Membership Access” tag can access the exclusive content.

This isn’t the simplest way of setting up a membership website but it’s ideal for users who are trying to test a business idea without spending a fortune

Once you have a steady stream of customers, you can use the revenue generated to upgrade to a paid membership plugin as it will make running a membership website significantly easier and efficient. 

🚀 For instance, if you later upgrade to FluentCRM Pro, the plugin will allow you to trigger automation based on WooCommerce purchases and WP Fusion Pro will enable you to apply tags based on specific product purchases and subscription status changes in the Subscriptions for WooCommerce plugin. 🚀

With the pro plugins, you’ll have more options and flexibility to streamline your membership website and take your business to the next level 🔥

#How to Create a Membership Site With Integrated Email Marketing For Free 

#1. Prerequisite: WordPress Set Up

To create a free membership site with integrated email marketing you need to have a WordPress website up and running. 

There are plenty of great tutorials on how to set up a WordPress website, so we are not covering that here. 

We just want to ensure that you have these ready before proceeding with the next steps. 

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#2. Install WooCommerce & Add a Membership Product

To add exclusive content or products for paid members, you need the WooCommerce plugin. It’s a powerful WordPress plugin that provides essential e-commerce functionalities which include creating product listings, managing inventory, and handling transactions. 

There are many great resources on how to set up a WooCommerce store, so we won’t cover the setup process here. Kindly follow the guide and when the basic setup is complete, let’s start adding exclusive products for paid members of your membership site.

On your WordPress dashboard, go to Products → Add New and start adding details to the product page like product name, product description, short description, feature image, and gallery, among other things. Here’s a helpful guide on how to add WooCommerce products.

When the product page is ready, hit the Publish button to publish the product. Don’t worry! In a later step, we will show you how to restrict the page visibility to ensure only paid members of the website can access it. 

#3. Create a Recurring Subscription Plan 

Go to Plugins → Add New Plugins and search for Subscriptions for WooCommerce, and install and activate the free plugin in your WooCommerce store. 

After the activation is complete go to WP Swings → Subscriptions For WooCommerce

You will see a setup wizard where you need to fill in recurring subscription plan details such as subscription plan name, description, price, recurring payment internals, etc. If required, these details can be changed later. 

Now open the product page you filled in the previous page, then go to the Product Data section. You should be able to see a Subscription checkbox. Select that. 

After enabling the checkbox, a new section will show up: Subscription Settings. This is where you will configure the subscription plan for that particular product. 

You have options to set recurring payment intervals, expiry intervals, sign-up fees, and the free trial interval period.

When you are ready save the subscription plan by hitting the Update button. Open the product on a new tab to see how it looks on the front end. 

Here’s how the product page for paid members looks on our test membership site. 

Next, we suggest that you allow users the option to cancel their subscription plan whenever they want. 

This can be done by going to WP Swings → Subscriptions For WooCommerce → General Setting, enabling the Allow Customer to Cancel Subscription, and hitting the Save Settings button.

If you require more assistance setting up a recurring subscription plan, follow this help doc: Configuring Subscriptions for WooCommerce.

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#4. Install FluentCRM & Connect With WooCommerce Using WP Fusion

FluentCRM is an email marketing automation plugin built for WordPress websites. It allows users to manage leads and customers, segment contacts and create automated email campaigns directly from their WordPress dashboard. 

Go to Plugins → Add New Plugins, search for FluentCRM, and install and activate the free plugin on your website. 

Now you need to connect FluentCRM with WooCommerce. 

The CRM plugin has a native integration feature but to access it, you need the FluentCRM Pro plugin which comes at an annual fee of $90 for the single website license. 

Luckily, that’s not the only way to connect FluentCRM with WooCommerce. You can use our free plugin, WP Fusion Lite, to connect the two platforms. 

Install and activate WP Fusion Lite on your website. Then navigate to Setting → WP Fusion and under Select CRM, choose FluentCRM (This Site) from the dropdown menu. Do not choose the FluentCRM (REST API) option. 

Hit the Connect and Save Changes buttons and a connection will be soon established between FluentCRM and WooCommerce. 

#5. Create Custom Field in FluentCRM & Map the Field in WP Fusion

You will create a custom field in FluentCRM called “User Role” and then in the WP Fusion settings, map this custom field to the “role” field. 

This will ensure that when the WordPress user becomes a member, the change is reflected in FluentCRM.

To create a custom field in FluentCRM go to FluentCRM → Settings → Custom Contact Fields → Add Field and select Single Line Field as Field Type, write user role as a label, and hit the Add button.

Next, go to Settings → WP Fusion → Contact Fields, navigate to the User Role field, and map the field to the custom “user role” field that you just created. 

If the custom field isn’t showing up, scroll to the top of the page and hit the Refresh Available Tags & Fields button to initiate a resync between WP Fusion and FluentCRM. 

#6. Create & Apply “Membership Access” Tag to Customers

On WordPress, after purchasing a membership plan, the user becomes a customer and their user role changes to “customer”.

As soon as that happens, you need to make sure that a tag called the “Membership Access” tag is added to the users. Adding this tag is crucial because it will grant access to protected content that is created for members of the website.

Now, let’s ensure that the “Membership Access” tag is added to users who become customers. 

First, download the FluentCRM’s Field Updated plugin and install and activate it on your website. (Go to the end of the GitHub page and download the plugin from the installation section)

Next, on your website, go to FluentCRM → Automations → New Automation → Create From Scratch → CRM → A Field is Updated

As Automation Name as New Subscriber, Field as user role, Field Value as customer, and hit the Save Settings button.

Add another step to the funnel by selecting the “+” sign → Add Action or Goal. 

In the Apply Tag to the Contact page that slides in from the left side of the screen, go to Select Tags, choose the Membership Access tag, and hit the Save Settings button. 

So now when users buy the membership plan, they are converted to customers, and immediately the Membership Access is applied to the user profile and the tag helps unlock the exclusive membership content.

#7. Restrict Access to Content

The most important part of a membership site is ensuring only members can access your premium content.

Thankfully, WP Fusion Lite makes this easy, with hundreds of ways to protect anything on your site— from posts and pages, to menu items and widgets, or even content within a page.

To ensure that only members with the “Membership Access” tag can access certain content or products, open any page in the WordPress admin, and locate the WP Fusion meta box in the right hand side.

Select the User Must Be Logged in to View This Page option and then, in the Required Tags (Any) option, add the Membership Access tag.

Update the page before exiting to ensure that the changes you made on the product page were saved. 

Learn more: Restricting Access Control With WP Fusion

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#8. Create an Automated Drip Email Campaign 

Using FluentCRM’s automation, you can nurture your new members with a series of pre-written emails. These could include welcome messages, important information about their membership, or educational content related to your website or business.

Here’s a drip email campaign we created on our test membership site:

As you can see, the first step of the campaign involves registering on our membership website. 

Following that, FluentCRM automatically applies the “Membership Access” tag to the user profile and then sends two emails with a few days gap in between. 

Here’s a quick look at the “Membership Access” tag automatically applied to a user who registered on our test membership website: 

Learn more: Setting Up Email Campaigns in FluentCRM

And that’s it, folks! You have now created a membership website with integrated email marketing capabilities without spending a dime. 

#Conclusion

Setting up a membership website allows you to generate a recurring revenue stream, encourages customers to engage with your brand regularly, offers valuable insights into your customers’ interests and behaviors, builds a loyal community of advocates who promote your brand, and differentiates your business from competitors, among other things. 

Building a functional membership website can seem daunting at first but with the right tools and guidance, it’s possible to create a powerful website without making holes in the pocket or requiring extensive technical expertise 🫡

In the above tutorial, we demonstrated how you can use the following four 🧡 free plugins 🧡 to create a membership website with integrated email marketing capabilities:

If you have any questions or require assistance, let us know in the comment section below 👇 

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