Start selling digital products and subscriptions through MailerLite

MailerLite now has a Stripe integration. Anyone with the SitesPro add-on can start selling products and subscriptions immediately. People's buying habits are shifting online, and more businesses are finding success selling to their online audience. 

You put your heart and soul into creating something of value—now you can use the power of email marketing to share it with the world (and make some money while you’re at it)!

Our integration with the popular payment processing software, Stripe, enables you to accept payments from your customers. Are you ready to turn your pages into e-commerce opportunities? 

Let’s get into the details of how you can get started.

Stripe is a secure, third-party payment software that enables you to accept most payment types including major credit cards and digital wallets like Google and Apple Pay. You’ll also be able to accept over 100 different foreign currencies.

Setting up an account is fast and free. We like their transparent and straightforward pay-as-you-go fee structure. You can get more information by visiting the Stripe website.

This first version of our Stripe integration supports the selling of digital products and subscription services. Digital products and services are anything that you sell online that doesn’t have a physical form, such as an ebook, a web app, or an online course. 

There are two types of purchases a customer can currently make in MailerLite: 

1. A one-time purchase of a digital product such as a download
2. A recurring purchase such as a subscription or membership

One-time purchases are exactly what they sound like. You sell a product that someone will buy one at a time. For example, if you sell an eBook, the customer will make the purchase once to download the book. In MailerLite, you can have as many one-time purchase products as you want. There are no limitations.

Recurring purchases are for products or services that require a subscription or membership model. The customer signs up and makes a purchase that is automatically set to renew at a specific time period, such as monthly or yearly. For example, you might have a paid newsletter or a music service that the customer wants to continue receiving indefinitely.

Both of these purchasing options are already built-in to MailerLite’s drag & drop editors and templates, so you can simply choose one and start adding the product details.

If you have digital products to sell, you can create as many web or landing pages as you need to sell your products. Before you start, don’t forget to check if you have activated the SitesPro add-on in your MailerLite account. 

When you go to create a new web page or landing page, you can add the One-time purchase block located in your drag & drop editor. You can find the block in the Sidebar in the Blocks tab at the very bottom.

The next step is to add your product to the page. If you’ve already integrated MailerLite with Stripe, your product list from Stripe will automatically appear within the content block. You can simply select your product and add it to the page. To add a new product not currently loaded in Stripe, you can link to Stripe from the content block to add the new products in the Dashboard.

At this point, your product page is looking good, but you are not done. The next step is to select an action that will occur after a successful purchase. This can be done in the editor as well. 

To get the most out of your email marketing capabilities, we recommend that you select the post-purchase action to add your customer to a unique subscriber group (Add to group) or to add purchase information for future targeting (Updating custom field). These actions will let you target specific customers in the future. 

For example, you can create a subscriber group of people who purchased your ebook. When it’s time to sell your next ebook, you can send those customers a targeted email with a special promotion or incentive. 

Customize your after-purchase messaging

A successful purchase is not the end of the journey. Every new customer is a potential long-term customer. To nurture your new relationship, you can set up an email campaign to stay connected.

Within MailerLite, you will see the Stripe tab where you can find an email notification that is sent after each successful purchase. This email includes the download link to your digital product that you previously added to your success page.

While this email includes a default title and text, we encourage you to add personal touches and any additional information needed. Use it as an opportunity to continue the engagement. 

Recurring revenue models are the favorites of mega-successful digital businesses like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple iCloud. You offer an ongoing product or service, and your customers set up an automatic payment on a recurring basis.

We’re super excited to offer this same capability through MailerLite. You can set up a recurring payment for your customers that is completely automated through Stripe. Whether you offer online courses, weekly content or want to monetize your newsletter, it is now possible to set up a subscription business with a few easy steps.

Select the Recurring purchase block in your editor where you can set a specific time period for the automatic payment renewal. The design settings are the same as the One-time purchase block. 

There is one additional step that you’ll need to take with recurring purchases to anticipate when a customer cancels their subscription. You’ll find two settings in the sidebar after the product list option called: Action after successful checkout and Action after cancel.    

Action after successful checkout is triggered after a successful payment. Similar to the one-time purchase process, we recommend that you select a post-purchase action like Add to group or Updating custom fields.

For recurring purchases, your success page will automatically generate and include a link to the Stripe billing information. You can edit the design settings of the page if you want.

Action after cancel is triggered after a failed payment or cancelation of the subscription. This is an important notification to make sure your customers stop receiving your product. We recommend that you set an action to remove the subscriber from the group or update the custom field with the new information. For example, after a canceled subscription, the customer field changes to “Inactive”.

3 types of subscription purchase emails

There are three types of transactional emails you can set up for your subscription-based business.

Subscription started is the automatic email notifying customers that their subscription has successfully started. The email automatically includes a link to your Stripe billing page where the customer can see their subscription information and cancel at any time. 

Subscription canceled email is sent when the customer cancels their subscription or their payment fails. Keep in mind that the timing of a canceled subscription depends on your Stripe settings. For example, you can have the subscription cancel right away or after the end of a billing cycle. 

Invoicing email can be sent with every successful recurring purchase, but you have to set this up in your Stripe account. This can be a clever way to remain top of mind with your customers and even add some branding to build the relationship. 

All of the digital products or subscriptions that you sell through MailerLite are managed in your Stripe Dashboard. You can add new products or revise your current product details in Stripe. 

The MailerLite integration then enables these product details to automatically populate within your drag & drop editor product blocks. The information, including the product name, description, image, and pricing are all transferred to your product blocks within MailerLite. If you need to edit any of this information while you are creating a page, you’ll need to go to Stripe to make the changes.

We also recommend that you configure your customer settings within Stripe to anticipate the customer actions taken in MailerLite. For example, when you allow your customers to cancel their paid subscriptions, you must configure the settings to determine whether that subscription is canceled immediately or at the end of the current billing period. You can read more about Stripe configuration here.

Once your products are loaded in Stripe and your web pages are built in MailerLite, you’re ready to share them with the world. When people visit your pages, they’ll be able to make an easy purchase. Your landing pages and website have transformed your business with e-commerce capabilities.

You can view your customer reports in MailerLite to see how the business is doing and which customers are the most active. Use this data to target your customers when they might need a new incentive to stay engaged. 

This is just the beginning! We are preparing lots of new content to help you find the digital products that are right for your business and share ways you can promote your new product pages to get the word out. 

Until then, get the ball rolling by testing some product ideas and setting up your product pages to see what works!