We’re very excited to introduce a new module today which will help sellers to maximize their sales!

Everybody knows that email marketing is king. It’s the most ubiquitous and powerful way to communicate with your clients or prospects.

We implemented a new module which makes it a breeze to set up various email campaigns.

To access it, click on “Sell” at the top (after login), and then on “Seller tools”. On the following page you’ll notice a new “Mailings”-tab:

Click on “Add new mailing” to set up your first email campaign. This will take you to a screen where you can define which emails shall be sent, and when:

Next, define the content of the emails in the sequence:

As you can see above, if you set up an email campaign a default text is already proposed (with variables pulling the relevant information), making it super-quick to set up.

The tool allows to send both automatic emails (“drip campaigns”) as well as one-time emails. For example:

• Remind prospects to buy: Set up a drip campaign to be sent to prospects who entered their email on the checkout screen, but didn’t complete their purchase.
• Send onboarding emails: Set up a drip campaign to onboard buyers and upsell them to other products.
• Announce new product features: Send an email to all your previous buyers to inform them about new features, products or services.

…and much more! Get started by setting up an offer.

Have any questions about setting up your email campaign? Give us a shout and we’ll be happy to help!

Up to now, sellers had to give their offer one fixed set of characteristics – e.g. a certain price, or a certain license duration.

Therefore, if sellers wanted to offer their codes under different conditions, they had to create the same offer several times. Not only was this cumbersome to set up, but it also made maintenance a hassle (e.g. a change in the offer description had to be made on all offers separately).

Starting today, sellers can create product variations (with different conditions) within the same offer. The following section has been added at the bottom of the offer set-up page:

This allows sellers to offer different variations based on the…

• • Pricing structure, e.g. offering a recurring license to buyers, as well as a lifetime license.
  • Duration period, e.g. the buyer can choose between a monthly payment of 10 USD, or a yearly payment of 100 USD (i.e. the yearly payment has a 20% discount). This can convince buyers to commit to a longer time frame.
  • License type, e.g. offering a cheaper option for non-commercial buyers vs. a slightly more expensive option for businesses – the latter make money with it, so they are capable to pay more, why not charge more 😉

If an offer has several variations, then buyers can pick the one they want from an addition drop-down menu on the quick purchase lightbox like this one.

To provide you – the seller – more flexibility, we also enabled the feature that you can link directly to a specific product option, i.e. when users open the quick purchase lightbox, that product option is already chosen (“pre-set values”).

In that case, you have the further option to show the product options on the purchase screen or hide them. We hope you’ll enjoy it! Get started by setting up an offer.

Have any questions about configuring your variations? Give us a shout and we’ll be happy to lend you a hand.

If you offer plugins in the WordPress plugin directory, then you don’t know who your users are, how they interact with your plugin, why they de-activate or uninstall it and so on.

Needless to say, this information would be extremely valuable for you. It would allow you to:

• Get clues on how to further improve your plugin
• Send notifications to your users in case of major security updates
• Send marketing-emails to your users (e.g. about new features in your premium plugin)
• Increase your plugin’s value (if your plugin should ever get acquired it will be more valuable if you have the user data!)
• Etc.

On Sellcodes we just released a new feature which makes it very easy to gather this information for free.

How to integrate it

Set-up couldn’t get any easier: after you logged in to your Sellcodes account, go to the WordPress feedback section where you’ll see this:

Simply upload your current plugin file & the new readme.txt and state the new version of your plugin. Click on “Start compiling!” and it will download the new plugin which is ready to be uploaded on WordPress!

How it looks for your users

Your users will see the following notification after plugin activation:

Once they agreed (approx. 60% do), the following information will be collected:

• Profile information: Name and email
• Site information: URL, WP version, PHP info, names of used plugins & themes
• Events: Activation, deactivation and uninstall

…and one more: when users de-activate your plugin they will get asked for Feedback why they de-activate it:

If they pick options 2, 3 and 5, a text field will appear where they can enter further information (e.g. what exactly didn’t work as expected, or which other plugin they picked instead).

It’s quick and hassle-free for the user – not too complicated so that it’s not annoying. Also, as they agreed to it, it is fully in-line with the WordPress Plugin guidelines.

How to access the data

Go again to your WordPress feedback section where you’ll see how many of your users opted in over time…

…and some key data presented in pie charts:

You can download more detailed data in CSV reports:

(Added:) Pattern recognition & alert system

We also help you to interpret the data by performing various analyses in the background, identifying patterns, and presenting significant/noteworthy findings to you such as:

• Benchmarking: How well your plugin is doing compared to others (e.g. in terms of how many users de-activate it again, how many users state they couldn’t understand how it works etc.)
• Improvement ideas: E.g. if an above-average share of non-English users deactivates your plugin quickly after installation you may want to translate it.
• Alerts: E.g. if the number of new installs declined sharply.

Your notification screen may look like this (click to enlarge):

Currently, our system is screening the data for over 50 noteworthy patterns and alerts you in case of any significant observations (based on a 95% confidence interval). We’re constantly adding more checks to provide as many useful insights as possible.

Start collecting feedback now

In summary: it’s easy, free, in-line with WordPress guidelines, not annoying for users, increases your plugin’s value, and helps you immensely to improve your plugin and reach your marketing goals.

Even if you don’t intend to use the data immediately – implement the feedback system now so that you don’t regret it later when you need the data, but didn’t collect it!

Next steps: Simply sign up on Sellcodes and then go to the WordPress feedback section where you can compile your new plugin version.

—
Added: FAQ

The following questions get asked frequently, so we decided to address them here:

• Is this service really free? Yes, we offer it for free. We do this to add value & build up a relationship with WordPress plugin creators, so that they consider selling their products on Sellcodes which has many benefits.

  We do not rule out charging for the service down the line, however whatever decision we take later, all collected data up until then will be free for you to download. So get on board as soon as possible!

• Is my collected user data safe? 
  Data security and integrity are our top priorities. Please have a look at our Privacy Policy which is in-line with all regulations, including GDPR.
• Which other plugins are using this feature?
  Plugins that use this feature include Ultimate Social Media, WP Clone, Enhanced Text Widgets,  HTTP/HTTPS Remover, RSS Redirect, Ultimate Posts, Social Share Pro, among many others.
• Is it heavily Sellcodes branded? 
  No, we limited it to an absolute minimum. Your brand is in focus, not ours. Just try it out yourself as a regular user to see 🙂
• Why cannot I build this feature myself? 
  Of course you can, however don’t underestimate the effort for coding, designing, testing (pre-launch as well as post-launch, as we integrated a lot of user feedback), ensuring backward-compatibility with earlier PHP and WordPress versions, as well as maintaining it and releasing new updates quickly to avoid conflicts and user complaints. With our solution, all this is ensured.
• How do updates work? 
  If you update your plugin (i.e. changes in your plugin not related to the feedback system) no special actions are needed. If we publish a new SDK version we’ll announce it here on this blog (so please follow this blog), and then you just need to replace the “analyst” folder in your plugin with the new one.

If you have any other questions we’re very happy to answer them. Just reach out to us.

Also, consider selling your codes/licenses on Sellcodes. It has many advantages!

Sell anywhere! In your email, on social platforms, e-books and now even directly from your website.

Simply link to your offers on Sellcodes.com or embed codes on your site to make it easy for your audience to buy your products.

As every additional step users have to take means lower conversion rates, we came up with a new technology which allows selling straight from your website.

After you’ve set up an offer, and clicked on the “Invite”-link, you’ll see a new section on that page:

Place a button, which when clicked will open this lightbox allowing you to collect credit card payments or payments from PayPal without asking your visitors to leave your domain and without any account creation prior to the purchase.

With our PCI compliant payment system, your customers will experience a friendly, safe, and easy checkout.

Don’t have an offer yet? Get started by setting it up now! ?

As of today, sellers on Sellcodes have the option to use an easy and effective license key system, allowing the managing of activation and de-activation of software products.

In addition to managing license keys via codes (API), sellers can also manage them on their License key management-dashboard when logged in on Sellcodes:

A typical process flow:

1. You (seller) build the licensing feature into your product
2. When a buyer purchases your product, a license key gets generated automatically
3. Buyer can enter the license key into your product which activates the software 

This way you have full control and transparency who uses your software and where (e.g. on which website). It is a robust solution against software piracy.

The license key management system can be used both for web- as well as for desktop applications and for any programming language. 

Implementation is easy – get started by reading the license key management documentation. If questions come up,  we’re happy to help!

Today we’re announcing a cornerstone enhancement of the Sellcodes platform: Recurring payments.

Every business who split tests one-time vs. recurring charges will come to the same conclusion: recurring payments (subscriptions) are immensely powerful, almost always outperforming one-time charges in the long run. It’s equivalent to creating a long-lasting revenue generation machine.

Therefore sellers now have the option to set up an offer which charges on a recurring basis. It can be selected – as usual – on the “About” tab of an offer:

After purchase buyers will be billed automatically when their subscription expires, making people’s laziness work in your favor! 😉

To get started, set up an offer now.

As of today, you (as seller) can set up discount codes for your products.

The discount code generator tool allows for some flexibility. You can:

• Set up a percentage (e.g. 20% off) or a flat amount (e.g. 5 USD Off)
• Select the start and expiry date
• Limit it to a maximum number of uses 
• Limit it to one use per customer

To do this, please navigate to the “About” tab of your offer, click on “Discounts > Add discount code” where you will see this entry mask:

If you don’t have an offer yet, get started by setting it up now! 🙂

Up to now, buyers had to login to Sellcodes before purchasing a product. That made buying a bit cumbersome, reducing conversion.

As remedy we reduced the multi-step buying process to the minimum: clicking on “Buy” will now show a single lightbox. After submitting the information buyers are immediately taken to their purchase.

Also want to allow your buyers this slick buying experience? Set up a new offer now!