Hi,
I’d like to create an email course/sequence as a lead magnet. I’m wondering if and how this is possible with Ghost and Mailgun.
Regards
Hi Tobias,
I think you can’t use Ghost for automated email sequences.
From what I know, Ghost allows you to send emails for users based on tags, but there are no email sequences and workflows like on dedicated email service providers like Convertkit.
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Thanks for your reply.
For anyone who’s using email sequences: How do you do it?
Because basically, you’d need to maintain two email lists: The email provider’s list which serves the sequence(s) and the ghost list.
If I use the sequence as a lead magnet, subscribers to the sequence don’t become free members of ghost and aren’t, therefore, included in the newsletter.
If you copy the sequence subscribers over, there are some pitfalls:
- it is extra work
- it is extra cost (opportunity, time or zappier fee cost)
- having multiple providers and lists increase admin cost (time and cost) and it is (at least) problematic from a GDPR compliance point of view
Therefore, I’d really like to know how people implemented an email sequence with ghost.
Plus, I kindly as the @Core @Ghost.org team to think about implementing email sequences as a built in functionality.
It could be (for the beginning) as simple as:
User A clicks on a button to sign up for a sequence
(+- User A becomes a free Member, if not already)
+- User A gets a user tag, e.g. {#email-seq-how-to-xyz}
+- Ghost sends the posts tagged with {#email-seq-how-to-xyz}
in chronogical order with a one day delay in between
+- Ghost saves the post id which was sent last in a private
note field (same as the admin note, which is already there,
it just need to be duplicated)
It will be probably a bit more complicated as pictured above, but this could be a way to do this.
Regards
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Email sequences are complicated to implement, from what I’ve read.
I don’t use email sequences at the time. But if I were to start using right now, I would use Convertkit.
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If you were to start a email sequence, how would you deal with having basically two email lists?
I would use Integromat to sync Ghost with Convertkit (I like Integromat more than Zapier) and I would send all emails through Convertkit.
My reasoning is that I wouldn’t force Ghost to do something that is not good/ capable.
For me, it’s better to use 2 tolls that shine at different things than force 1 to do a mediocre job.
And for the argument that it would cost more money, yes it will. But Convertkit costs $9/ month for up to 300 members and for that many subs you should probably make more than in “sales”.
3 Likes
I have tried this. My recommendation is to avoid it.
Yes, you would need two lists, and the deal-breaker is: the user would have to unsubscribe from either, or both!
Consider this, the user gets an email and decides they don’t like it. They unsubscribe.
A few days later they get your regular or drip email. “What? I unsubscribed. I’m marking this as spam.”
You would need Zapier or some other automation to keep the lists in sync. If you can shell out $$$ to pay for this it might be OK.
But in 90% of cases it just doesn’t work well.
5 Likes
Hi @Tobias newsletterkit.co solves this problem. You can create an email sequence for new subscribers with delays between each emails you want to send. It feature a text editor as well to create your emails. It integrates with Ghost seamlessly so no need to manage 2 emails lists or dealing with sending emails with Zapier. If you’d like to give it a try head over to newsletterkit.co 
Disclaimer I am the creator of NewsletterKit
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Does ghost 5’s “multiple newsletter” feature somehow help with this? (I couldn’t find any info on how the feature works exactly)
Right now we are using Zapier and ActiveCampaign for sending a course or intro sequence to new users. But this is not convenient, especially not if we wish to include more writers and authors to our website.
So being able to send this email sequence would really be great for us too.
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- Determine the sequence’s purpose. …
- Identify the enrollment criteria (or trigger) for the sequence. …
- Determine the duration of the sequence and the number of emails required. …
- Write the emails for the sequence. …
- Build the emails using email software. …
- Set up the automation. …
- Test the sequence.
There is no integration to keep members synced. Zapier is not good for serious about scale companies
But my issue is that I can’t figure out how to get a members email to change when and if they change their email address within ghost, Because I only know how to use zapier to send as I cant code middle wear, and Zapier and my email software (Send In Blue) requires me to find the lead using the email they signed up with, of which I can do and i can pass any data from ghost to Send n Blue but there is no option to then change their email,
The only thing I can think of is to pass the new email as a random data variable and then 1 time per week, filter that variable and manually change everyones email after seeing who has an email address in that variable.
Is there a simple solution or does this require one to make an application to keep your list synced.
I’ve also simply thought about exporting my ghost data, but thats an issue uploading it as they hate when people didn’t grow their list on their platform, but dedicated IP would get around it.
What does it cost on avg to have some integration built that will keep it all synced. All email providers like active campaign provide api docs for developers but have no clue what a simple application to keep emails synced would cost
I haven’t worked with Sendinblue in about a year or so, but you can update contact data, of course. It is also a use case for their API they specifically described here: Update a contact
All of that should also work with Zapier:
If you run into specific issues while connecting these two, I’d suggest opening a new topic here in the forum (feel free to tag or DM me then).
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I’m truly a lover of Ghost, but this is shit.
Lead magnets are esential for 99% of blogs.
Having a sequence helps you build automatically a relationship with your reader.
What a miss from Ghost’s team.
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[self promotion] You can try Outpost.pub, which has a Ghost native autoresponder that covers most situations - new free sign up, trials, new paid sub that skips being free, thank yous, retention emails and more. That’s available on the Space Station plan that doesn’t require any theme modification.
I hear you. And, Wordpress doesn’t offer sequences. Ghost is for newsletters - I run a Google Apps Script to two-sync with MailerLite so I can send sequences as needed.