
MOTO transactions explained
What are MOTO transactions? Why is it worth accepting them? Are there any risks to look out for? Here’s all you need to know →
Are you frequently missing out on leads and sales because emails sent from your WordPress site are ending up in the spam folder? Well, we’ve got some good news: this issue can be fixed quite easily. The WP Mail SMTP plugin makes sure your emails are successfully reaching the inbox of your leads and customers. The most popular WordPress SMTP and PHP mailer plugin is used by more than 2 million websites worldwide to send their emails reliably. Today, we’d like to show you how it can help boost your business as well!
Table of contents
Before jumping right to the benefits of using the WP Mail SMTP plugin, let’s discuss first, what email deliverability is and why it matters.
Email deliverability is a term that describes where your email ends up once it is delivered. In other words, it decides if your email will land in the inbox, spam folder, or another folder.
Having strong email deliverability is crucial to running successful email campaigns. As a business owner or marketer, you might spend weeks or even months talking through your personas, target audiences, and messaging. Then, you’d spend hours planning every detail of your campaigns, crafting the perfect copy, choosing the right colors, fonts, and structure. You might even spend time on optimizing your email receipts to drive future engagement and sales.
With all the blood, sweat, and tears that go into your emails, discovering that they never reached the inbox of your leads is more than disappointing. Therefore, it’s imperative to make sure that deliverability doesn’t negatively impact your campaigns.
If you use any plugin for your WordPress site that sends emails, such as WP Full Pay, for instance, you need to make sure that your WP site is properly configured to send emails.
You can check this by using a tool such as the Check & Log Email plugin. All you need to do is enter your email address in the “Send a test email” field and click the “Send test email” button. Next, check your inbox if the email has arrived.
There are three possible outcomes:
There are three possible answers:
1) Your email looks like spam
WordPress sites and plugins send emails using the PHP mail() function by default. However, this mail() function doesn’t add any authentication to prove that the message is legitimate. With the rise of aggressive spam filtering, email providers check each incoming email to determine whether they were sent by a legitimate website. As a result, they may allow the email to reach the recipient’s inbox, send it to the spam folder, or block it entirely. One way for email providers to decide is to check if the email originates from the same location it claims to be sent from. The WP Mail SMTP plugin can help you fix this problem.
2) The PHP mail() function is disabled by your web hosting provider
A number of WordPress hosting servers are not configured to use the PHP mail() function due to security reasons. That’s why they simply disable PHP for sending emails. This way, your WordPress site won’t be able to send emails at all.
The WP Mail SMTP plugin can be configured to use SMTP instead of PHP which will fix this problem. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is an industry standard for sending emails. Proper SMTP configuration helps to reach your customer’s inbox by using authentication.
3) You’re testing on localhost You might test your WordPress site on your local computer or an offline server before going live. In this case, PHP mail() won’t work. However, using an external SMTP server and a WordPress SMTP mail plugin will help you test all email-related functions on your website.
The WP Mail SMTP plugin dramatically improves WordPress email deliverability.
How does it work?
The WP Mail SMTP plugin ensures your emails get delivered by improving how your WordPress site sends emails. It reconfigures the wp_mail() function to either use proper SMTP host credentials or leverage a built-in SMTP mail provider.
When using one of the built-in SMTP mail provider integrations of the plugin, emails are sent using the provider’s direct API. This helps your emails reach the inbox of your leads and customers even if your web hosting provider is blocking SMTP ports. This way, your emails will be recognized as legitimate and bypass aggressive spam filters.
Let’s see the features that make WP Mail SMTP the most powerful and user-friendly SMTP plugin:
In addition to the above, the WP Mail SMTP Pro version unlocks extra tools to help you measure email engagement and improve email deliverability:
Now that you’re familiar with the benefits of the WP Mail SMTP plugin and how it works, you might be ready to install it. Let us quickly walk you through the steps!
1) To download the WP Mail SMTP plugin, log in to your WP Mail SMTP account. Then click the Downloads tab:
2) This will direct you to a new page showing all of your available licenses. Here, click the Download WP Mail SMTP button next to one of your licenses. This will save a zipped file of the plugin:
3) Next, navigate to the WordPress admin area of the site where you want to install the WP Mail SMTP plugin. In the admin dashboard, go to Plugins » Add New. Then click the Upload Plugin button:
4) Next, you’ll be able to upload the plugin by clicking the Choose File button and selecting the WP Mail SMTP zip file. After the file is uploaded, click the Install Now button:
5) Once the WP Mail SMTP plugin is installed, click the Activate Plugin button:
And that’s it – the WP Mail SMTP plugin is set up!
Now, all you have to do is configure the plugin. The WP Mail SMTP WordPress plugin has dedicated configuration options and settings pages for popular mailers, such as:
If you’d like to use a custom SMTP host, your setup will be checked by the WP Mail SMTP plugin to ensure that all configurations are set correctly, not only on your SMTP host but on your website’s Domain Name Server as well. This way, custom hosts will work just as reliably as any supported SMTP provider.
If you already have an SMTP plugin installed on your website, switching to the WP Mail SMTP plugin will also be a walk in the park! When running the Setup Wizard, WP Mail SMTP will automatically detect your existing SMTP plugin. All you have to do is click Import to copy your settings over.
Having strong email deliverability is crucial to running successful email campaigns. The WP Mail SMTP plugin makes sure your emails are authenticated properly and sent via trusted third parties. This ensures that all your emails are delivered successfully so that you’ll never have to worry about emails going missing or ending up in the spam folder again!
Stay on top of the latest news about WP Full Pay
What are MOTO transactions? Why is it worth accepting them? Are there any risks to look out for? Here’s all you need to know →
If your online store is plagued with high cart abandon rates, using Link by Stripe can be a real game changer. This is how it works →