It is one thing to personalize your emails by using an autoresponder service like Aweber or GetResponse.  It is another to personalize your self hosted WordPress blog.

Personalizing your WordPress blog can be done using “shortcodes“.

So what are they?

Introduced in WordPress 2.5 is the Shortcode API, a simple set of functions for creating macro codes for use in post content. … It enables plugin developers to create special kinds of content (e.g. forms, content generators) that users can attach to certain pages by adding the corresponding shortcode into the page text.

Huh?  Does that make sense ?

Lets forget all the techy mumbo jumbo and talk about what shortcodes can do for you.

Increase Your Conversions

That’s a bold claim.

Lets say that you want to increase your conversions  as taught in Autoresponder Madness.

What do you do?  You segment your list.

You email your autoresponder subscribers a link to a page that has a signup form for a new mailing list.

This signup form is for people who have an interest in a particular subject.

You ask them to signup for that specific mailing list.

IMPORTANT:  If they signup for the new mailing  list, you keep them on the original mailing list – do not remove them from the original.

Just use a simple autoresponder form like this one from Aweber:

Name:

Email:

We respect your email privacy

Powered by AWeber email marketing

For those that have expressed an interest in what you are offering, i.e. – for those that signed up for the new mailing list, you talk to them, and only them, about what they are interested in.

If you have done your work – provided value to the people who have expressed an interest in the particular subject, then when you do make an offer related to that subject you would expect that your conversion rate would be much higher.

Or think of it this way, have you ever been on someone’s email list because you purchased one of their products … and from there on out you get pounded by offers – offers that you don’t really care about?

Wouldn’t you prefer to be asked if you would like to receive information about what they are promoting? If only they would segment their mailing list like I am showing, you might actually want to receive more emails from them …

Make It Drop Dead Simple

Here’s where the personalization comes in … and shortcodes!

See that autoresponder form I placed up above?

By using WordPress’s shortcodes, I am able to drop in a person’s email address and name in the form and only need the person to click the “Submit” button (or in CPA terms, “prepop” = pre-populate).

But, but, but … yes, people are lazy – me included.  If you can make it just that much easier for them to do something, then by all means, do so and expect that your conversion rate will be higher.

I Have Made It Even Easier

I have created a short – and I do mean short – email course on how to do this.

The first email includes a link to a 11 page PDF file that shows you how to:

• Add two shortcode functions to your WordPress blog
• Setup a redirect script
• Personalize your posts and pages
• Create and use your personalized links

The second email includes instructions on how to “prepop” your Aweber or Getresponse autoresponder form with name and email.

You can purchase this course by clicking HERE.

If you are into nanoblogging, then you will be using the WordPress Thesis theme.

Watch the video

In the manual, Peter Spaepen says the following:

Please, don’t second guess me on the things I try to teach you in nanobloggers – this works and it works very well, just stick to the plan.

Part of the plan involves building a WordPress blog using the premium, i.e. – paid, Thesis theme.

For some people who buy the Nanoblogger’s guide, this is going to be a stopping point.

That’s where I come in. I’m here to make sure those that purchase the Thesis theme through my affiliate link (yes, I make money) get their blog setup the right way, the way Peter details in the manual.

You’ll have access to my WordPress builder that installs WordPress.

This WordPress builder:

• sets up the Thesis theme with the correct number of columns (very important for nanobloggers) and width size
• loads up the custom.css file
• changes the size of the post box
• updates the “Update services” to the proper services
• modifies the Thesis options (Document Head, Home Page, Bylines, Administration), chooses one of the two recommended fonts, sets the color
• installs and configures the seven (not just the six mentioned on page 52) plugins
• sets what gets displayed on the front page along with setting “Blog pages show at most” and “Syndication feeds show the most recent”
• gets rid of the MAJOR footprint that this setup has

Peter says it usually takes him about a hour, “soup to nuts”, when he starts his nanobloggers WordPress. I suspect that for most people, this won’t be the case. In particular the first few times.

I have been through the process a number of times now and can have WordPress setup to the Nanoblogger specifications in less than 5 minutes on a brand new domain.

Purchase the Thesis through my affiliate link and I’ll give you access to the WordPress Thesis Nanoblogger builder or I’ll build the site for you.

Shoot me an email via the contact form on this site with your purchase information and I’ll get back to you.

Update (29 December 2009):

The WordPress builder now works with addon domains that follow the public_html/addon.com/ format. I verified that this works with Hostgator.

Keep in mind that this works on an empty domain in the root directory (or the addon directory). Does not work on subdomains.

You’ll need at least 50M of free disk space.

cPanel passwords need to be alphnumeric.

Dave

P.S. – It takes 5 minutes or less to get setup

1) Start with an empty, standalone domain – can NOT be an addon domain. – UPDATE: works with addons that follow the public_html/addon.com/ format such as Hostgator.

2) Enter in your WordPress details; title, tagline, cPanel username, cPanel password, url, first name, email, hosting (hostgator or other), theme (x3 is default these days)

3) Click “Submit”

4) Done

If you are into autoblogging, feeds, rss, atom, aggregation, content, syndication, WordPress, plugins, then you have likely heard of the WP-o-matic plugin.

This handy plugin takes a feed (rss or atm format) that you provide the link for and posts the contents on your self hosted WordPress blog.

Here’s what you do to use WPomatic.

Download the wpomatic plugin

Visit the download page (or download the “fixed” version I provide … keep reading) at worpdress.org, extract the contents to your computer, then upload the plugin to your plugin directory on your web server.

Setup the plugin

Login to your WordPress blog, click on plugins, Activate WP-o-Matic, click on Settings->Wp-o-Matic and go through the 4 step setup.

The setup includes testing that your web server has all of the necessary components for using this plugin.  Setting up a cron job to run the script on a scheduled basis (or letting a page load of your blog kick off the script).  I don’t recommend using the page load option as it might slow down the page load for the person visiting your site.

Add campaign

Now you are ready to add your first campaign.  Click on Add Campaigns and you are presented with tabs that say “Basic”, “Feeds”, “Categories”, “Rewrite”,  and “Options”.

Basic

Select a title related to the subject of interest.  This will also auto insert the same information into the campaign slug text box.  Leave the Active? option checked.

Feeds

You will need to provide the url of an rss or atom feed.

As an example, go to Google’s blog search and type in a keyword phrase.  Once results are returned, you will want to get the address of the feed associated with that keyword phrase.

You can use either the Atom or the RSS feed address.

wpomatic

You can find either of those two links on the left side – copy either link.

RSS link should look something like this:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=iphone&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=rss

The Atom feed looks like this:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch_feeds?hl=en&q=iphone&ie=utf-8&num=10&output=atom

Take one of the two feed addresses and paste into one of the four the Feed URL text box under Add Campaign.  You could also add more feeds and WP-o-Matic will “blend” the results when it posts to your blog.

Categories

I recommend using the Quick Add option to create a category with the exact same name as the keyword phrase you titled this campaign with.

Rewrite

Skip unless you want to get fancy.

Options

Change the default frequency to fit your needs.  I typically change the Max items to create on each fetch to something less than 10.  Check the box for Post title links to source to give credit to the original source.  For discussion options, I typically choose Closed and uncheck the Allow pings option (just my preference).

Now Submit.

Done

That’s is how you setup your first wpomatic campaign.

Once you clicked on the submit button, you were given the message that said Campaign added successfully.  Edit it or fetch it now.

Click on the fetch it now link.

What happened?

Unfortunately, you probably received a message that said Campaign processed. 0 posts fetched.

So what gives, you would expect up to 3 posts to be made, but zero?

There is a piece of  code missing.

If  you are willing to mess around with some php code, then dig into the wpopmatic.php file and include the htmlspecialchars_decode command.

If you would rather skip the editing, at the end of this post is a download to the fixed version.

If you are interested in more details, the following video shows what was described previously.

[6:30] – the problem – wp-o-matic does not properly format the url.

[8:30] – the solution – edit line 1011 in the wpomatic.php file and add htmlspecialchars_decode to the line that formats the url.Or, save yourself the explanation and download wpomatic with the fix.

Here’s where you can download wpomatic plugin with the fix.