Newsletter Easy Digital Downloads

If you sell digital downloads, you probably have two lists that never talk to each other: customers, stored in your shop, and subscribers, stored in your email tool. The result is the same newsletter for everyone, with unsubscribes, spam complaints and falling open rates. This plugin connects your Easy Digital Downloads shop with the Newsletter plugin so that what each customer buys decides which emails they receive.

What your catalog knows about each customer and your list doesn't

Someone who buys a hiking guide doesn't want to hear about your new accounting template, and vice versa. Your shop already knows that difference in every order; what's missing is carrying it over to your mailing list. That is the core idea of this integration: using purchase history as a segmentation criterion.

A walkthrough with a mountain guide shop, step by step

Imagine you sell digital sports and outdoor guides, and you regularly post news, tips and route reviews on your blog.

• Step 1, create the list: in Newsletter you create a public list called, for example, "outdoor news".
• Step 2, prepare the sending: with the Automated addon you set up an automatic newsletter that takes content from the outdoor categories of your blog and sends it to that list.
• Step 3, define the rule: in the EDD integration you link a specific download, or a whole category, to that list. You can configure 20 rules per download and 20 per category.
• Step 4, sell: when an order is completed, the plugin compares the purchased products against your rules and adds the customer (identified by email) to the matching lists.

The result: only customers interested in outdoor topics receive that newsletter.

Rules don't target people who aren't subscribers yet

This is the limit that causes the most confusion. Rules are applied to people who are already on your contact list; they don't subscribe customers who never signed up. There are two ways around it: offer the subscription at checkout (see below) or import your existing customers as subscribers with the free WP User Integration extension. You can remove that extension afterwards, but make sure you have set up the checkout subscription option properly for new buyers.

Also, the plugin doesn't work on its own: it needs Easy Digital Downloads installed and active, plus the Newsletter plugin. If it can't find EDD, it shows an error message. For the automatic newsletter in the mountain guide example you also need the Automated addon.

The checkout checkbox: ask or subscribe without asking

In the settings you choose whether a checkbox appears on the EDD checkout page or the subscription is forced without asking. If you use the checkbox, you can:

• Write your own text next to it, useful for adapting it to your country's privacy rules or to warn the customer.
• Leave it checked or unchecked by default.
• Choose one or several default lists where new subscribers will be registered.
• Decide whether to send a confirmation email. With "No", everyone is flagged as confirmed and starts receiving newsletters; with "Yes", they are flagged as "non-confirmed" until they respond to the opt-in email, which can be customized.

Subscribers who arrive from checkout appear in Newsletter, in the referrers statistics panel, with the source edd-checkout. That way you know how many come from the shop.

Newsletters with your latest downloads, manual or automatic

The plugin adds a block to the Newsletter visual composer to insert downloads from your catalog. You can filter them by categories, tags or IDs and choose the layout; if you add more blocks, you can mix categories and layouts in a single newsletter. There is also a block compatible with Automated to generate an email with your latest products, with options for what to do when there is nothing new.

Frequently asked questions

Can I translate the checkbox text?

Yes, with multilingual plugins such as WPML Strings, Loco Translate or Polylang. If you write a custom label, the same one will be used in every language, so leave it empty if you want to translate it.

Does it import my existing customers?

Not directly. For that you need the free WP User Integration extension and its import process.

Can I turn the integration off without uninstalling anything?

Yes, there is a global enable/disable switch.

Does it work without the Automated addon?

Yes for the checkbox, the segmentation rules and manual newsletters with the downloads block. Automated is only needed for automatic sends.