The Problem
MemberPress automatically sends welcome emails to your new members via WordPress but it only does so when your members purchase through the built-in MemberPress checkout form.
If you're using another checkout system like ClickFunnels or ThriveCart and adding members to MemberPress through an integration, the welcome email (for whatever reason) doesn't go out.
The Solution
That's fine because all you need to do in order to make sure your members get the welcome email is to add a step to your integration zaps, which is demonstrated and detailed below.
*Note: while Zapier provides a built-in email app, Email by Zapier, it will shut off your zap the minute anybody clicks the unsubscribe link on an email it sends, and typically won't have the same deliverability that your email marketing app will. So, it's better to simply use your email marketing app to send your welcome emails to begin with.
Here's what you'll need:
- A paid Zapier account (or, if you hire us to set this up for you we'll host the zaps for you on our account at $3/zap/mo)
- The MemberPress WordPress membership plugin (at least the mid tier so that you can use the developer tools)
- An email marketing app like ActiveCampaign, Drip, or similar (we use and ❤ Drip).
Adding an Email Step to your MemberPress Integration Zap
1 – Set up your MemberPress integration zap using one of our existing tutorials.
2 – Add a new action step in your zap and select your email app is the trigger.
In this case we'll use ActiveCampaign but the process will be quite similar for other email apps.
3 – Go into your ActiveCampaign account and create a new list.
This is a “dummy” list that doesn't serve any purpose other than meeting the zap's requirement to have a list selected.
If you're already adding buyers to a specific list, even better because you don't have to create this dummy list. Just use the list you planned to use in the first place.
4 – Select the list from the dropdown in Zapier:
5 – In the Email Address field select the contact email address from step 1 of your zap.
6 – Go into your ActiveCampaign account => Lists => Manage Fields:
7 – Create a new field called MEMBER_PASSWORD
8 – Go to ActiveCampaign => Automations => Create a new automation=> Start from Scratch.
9 – Select the Subscribes to a List trigger:
10 – Select the list you created earlier from the dropdown:
11 – Leave all other settings as default and click Add Start.
12 – Add a new action to Send Email:
13 – Click Create an Email
14 – Title the email anything you want (e.g. “Welcome Email”)
15 – Select whichever email template you prefer, or use a plain text template (my preference because it gives better deliverability).
16 – Fill out your sender details and email subject line in any way you want.
17 – Now write your welcome email however you want.
Just make sure to include these three things:
- The login URL
- The username (which is the contact's email address)
- The password (which is the password field we just created in step 7
*Note: You can insert the correct merge tags for the username and password fields by clicking on personalize and scrolling down to find each merge tag that you need.
18 – When you're finished creating your welcome email click Save & Exit.
19 – Add an extra step immediately after the trigger action => conditions and workflow => wait => 5 minutes
*This is so that the zap has enough time to populate the password field before sending the welcome email. Otherwise it might send a blank password.
Your automation should look like this:
20 – Activate your automation by toggling the button in the upper right hand corner of the automation edit screen so that it goes green and says “Active”.
21 – Return to your zap, scroll all the way down, and click refresh fields.
(This will pull and populate the new password field you created earlier in your AC account).
22 – Now scroll down and find the Member Password field:
23 – To populate the Member Password field you'll want to select a field from a previous step in your zap whose value will be unique for each member.
Basically, you just need a random alphanumeric string that's different each time a transaction goes through.
In this demo I'm using ClickFunnels as the source app and I selected the Contact ID field to populate this value.
Each member's contact ID in ClickFunnels is unique and unknowable to other members, so it's as good a password as any.
Other fields that make for good passwords might include transaction IDs, timestamps, and so forth.
24 – Click continue, test the step, and you're all set.
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As I said, this process will look a bit different if you're using Drip or MailChimp, or another email app.
If you have any questions or need some help, just leave a comment below and I'll be happy to lend a hand!
