Are you worried about your transactional emails landing up in the receiver’s spam folder? This can prevent this by using an SMTP WordPress plugin.
Websites that run memberships, online stores etc. have to send multiple transactional emails to their users. These include confirmation emails, login details emails, password reset emails, and more. You can afford to let them land in the spam folder. This is where an SMTP plugin is useful.
An SMTP plugin represents a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which is used for sending and receiving emails.
In this article, we’ll see how you can prevent transactional emails from going to spam by using an SMTP plugin – WP Mail SMTP on your website.
- Installing and Activating an SMTP Plugin
- Establishing an API Connection Between a Mailer and Thrive Dashboard
- Connecting the Mailer to the SMTP Plugin
Installing and Activating an SMTP Plugin
The first step to prevent your website’s transactional emails from landing in your user’s spam folder is to install an SMTP plugin.
We’ll be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin as an example in this document.
To install the WP Mail SMTP plugin, open your WordPress website admin area, navigate to Plugins >> Add New, and start typing WP Mail SMTP in the search field on the top right.
When you start typing, you’ll see the plugin appear in the search results. To proceed, click the Install button.
After installing, click Activate to activate the plugin on your website.
The WP Mail SMTP plugin is now installed and activated on the website.
Establishing an API Connection Between a Mailer and Thrive Dashboard
After you’ve installed an activated SMTP plugin – WP Mail SMTP in this example, it’s time to ensure you have connected your Thrive Dashboard with a Mailing Service Provider.
In this example, we’ll use SendLayer as it works great with WP Mail SMTP and we should be done with the setting quickly.
To connect the Thrive Dashboard with SendLayer, you can refer to our document here.
Connecting a Mailer to the SMTP Plugin
Since we are using the WP Mail SMTP as the SMTP plugin and SendLayer as the Mailing Service, the next step here is to establish a connection between them.
Before we do so, please ensure you’ve installed and activated the SMTP plugin and established an API connection with the mailing service. In this article, we’ll be doing that with WP Mail SMTP and SendLayer.
To connect WP Mail SMTP with SendLayer, first open your WordPress admin area, navigate to WP Mail SMTP >> Settings, and click the General tab.
Under the General tab, scroll down to Primary Connection and click the Launch Setup Wizard button.
Clicking this button will launch the WP Mail SMTP wizard. On this page scroll down and click the Let’s Get Started button.
After you click Let’s Get Started, select the mailer you plan to use. We are using SendLayer for this article.
Once you select the mailer, scroll down and click Save and Continue.
Clicking the button will take you to Step 2 – Configuring Mailer Settings where you’ll be asked to enter the API Key, the From name and the Email address.
After you add all of this, click Save and Continue.
Clicking the Save and Continue button now will let you select the features you want to enable in this connection. The available features are as mentioned below.
- Improved Email Deliverability
- Email Error Tracking
- Weekly Email Summary
- Detailed Email Logs
- Complete Email Reports
- Instant Email Alerts
- Manage Default Notifications
Some of these are available with the Pro version.
After you select the features you want, click Save and Continue.
The following 3 steps will show some recommendations that you can opt for to improve your experience using WP Mail SMTP. You can also choose to skip them.
Finally, you’ll come across a screen that will let you send a test email to check whether the connection has gone through.
With a maximum number of emails from websites landing in spam, the use of WP Mail SMTP helps you prevent that. Furthermore, the use of WP Mail SMTP and SendLayer is as seamless as the connection we’ve seen in this document.
Next, if you are running an online school and would like to send out emails through Thrive Apprentice, WP Mail SMTP can also help there. Here’s our document that will help.