Email Lock Free Content on Your WordPress Website

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How to Email Lock Free Content on Your WordPress Website?

Do you produce high-quality content on your website and want to use it to drive sales? Then you are in the right place as we help you turn it into gated content. 

But..What is Gated Content?

 

Gated content is the online content including articles, blogs, videos, books etc. that requires users to fill a registration form to access. The form is a simple user registration requiring what you need from them such as their name and email. Such forms are also known as registration walls or information gates.

The main purpose of such gated content is to generate leads and to attract potential leads through content marketing. It is made possible by acquiring the details of users and a way to contact them, commonly via email or contact number. Visitors of the e-learning platform can subscribe to download the learning content using the registration form shown in fig(a):

Fig a. Example of a user registration form for an e-learning platform

How to turn your content into gated content on WordPress?

 

If you want more signups and user registrations to convert them into leads on WordPress, you can offer free content downloads. It is implemented in the form of user registration through a form that requires email of the visitors. You can then use these emails for content marketing. This method is a win-win situation as you exchange your content for their emails. 

In this blog, we will enlist and compare ways to turn your content into gated content on your WordPress website. In the end, You will get to know our recommendation and ways that we can support you.

1. WordPress Download Manager Plugin

WordPress Download Manager is the most popular and effective plugin for this purpose and its Premium Version has features like email lock that can be used to make an awesome Email Lock Contact Form. Its Pro version is available for $59 with a support of 1 year. If you want to invest in content marketing of your website, you can purchase and download the premium version of this plugin from here .

Follow these steps to create an email locking form via this plugin:

  1. Download and activate the plugin with its premium version. 
  2. Go to Dashboard -> Downloads -> Add New.
  3. Give it a title. Now you can add an attractive and a relevant title for your content file for example “Get the latest marketing report” and upload the file in the Attach File section. Fig (b) is shown for reference.

Fig b. Title and Attach File section of the plugin

4. With this plugin, you can change the name of the file and even add a File Password.

5. In the Package settings, you can enable Email Lock feature (fig c) from the Lock Options.

Fig c. Enabling Email Lock feature in the package settings

6. You can change the settings of Email Lock shown in fig(d) as per your needs.

Fig d. changing the settings of Email Lock feature

Congratulations! That’s it. You have just made your Email Lock Form with a premium version of a popular plugin that supports 3rd party email list building platforms, like MailChimp to directly export the collected emails to their lists.

2. Formidable form builder plugin

In the pro-version of this plugin, you can build advanced forms with the ability to email lock your content file. Pro version basic plan is available for $99 .38 /year that you can get from here.

You can follow the following steps to build a free form to email lock the content on your WordPress Website:

  1. Download and activate the Formidable form builder plugin from WordPress Websites Plugins section or from your WordPress website Dashboard as of fig(e).

Fig e. Plugins dashboard of WordPress

2. Next, go to the Formidable section from the dashboard and edit the already created form. In our case, It is “Contact Us” as shown in fig(f). 

Fig f. Plugins dashboard of WordPress

3. Keep the fields that you need and delete the rest. Make sure that you enable the checkbox of “Required” form the filed options. In our case, the fields of Name and Email are required for our e-learning platform so we keep the filed as shown in fig(g). 

Fig g. Formidable Form for our e-learning platform

4. Next, Add a field of “File Upload” shown in fig(h) which is only available in the pro version.

Fig h. File Upload field in Formidable Form Builder plugin

6. To save the form, click on Create. Check the box Protect all files uploaded in this form and click on Update.

7. To display the file with a view, head over to the Formidable section on the dashboard and from its views subsection followed by creating a new view -> Call your new View “Display Protected File.” In the View Format, select Single Entry. 

8. Type the following HTML code in the content box by replacing [x] with the Field ID of your file upload field and [y] with the Field ID of the File Name field (added in step 5): 

0

<a href="[x]">Open [y]</a>

9. Next, go to the Advanced Settings -> Filter Entries. Add a filter, change the option to “File Name” equal to [get param=filename default=0] as shown below and save the changes. It has been shown in fig(i).

Fig i. Filter Entries in the advanced settings

10. Go to the Form Settings > Show a Message. The View shortcode should look like this:

                                                                    [display-form-data id=123 filename=”Test File”]

where 123 stands for the ID of your View, and the Test File stands for the File Name. In case of multiple files, repeat the shortcode with a different file name.

11. Update the form, save all your changes and finally publish it.

Wohooo!! Now you should have a fully functioning form that requires an email to download a file, giving new users access to your gated content. 

3. Simple Download Monitor Plugin with Squeeze Form Add-On

The Squeeze Form addon for Simple Download Monitor Plugin enables WordPress websites to collect user’s name and email in exchange for a downloadable content file. For this, you need to have both the Simple Download Monitor Plugin and its squeeze Form Add-on activated. Preview of this plugin is shown in fig(j).

Fig j. Preview of Simple Download Monitor Plugin with Squeeze Form Add-On

You can get this Add-On for $39 here from a section shown in fig(k).

Fig k. Preview of the section to buy Squeeze Form Add-On

You can use the following shortcode to add a squeeze form by replacing X with the ID of the download file.

                                                    [sdm-squeeze-form id=”X” fancy=”0″ button_text=”Download Now”]

In this way, you will be able to Email Lock your valuable content with this plugin.

4. Download After Email Plugin

To use this plugin for the Email Lock feature, go to the Downloads section on your dashboard after installing and activating the plugin and then head over to Add New. 

Name your form with a relevant title, upload a file in the settings section and Publish it. We gave our file the title “Download File” as shown in fig(l).

Fig l. Naming the Form and uploading the content

Note the shortcode in the fig(m).

Fig m. Shortcode of the form

Next, create a Page/Post where you want to keep your file at and insert the shortcode. 

Hurray! You will be able to see a Page/Post with an email-opt in forms of fig(n) when you publish it.

Fig n. Preview of the form created with Download after Email Plugin

5. Email Before Download with contact form 7

Download and activate the following three plugins: 

  1. Email before Download
  2. Contact Form 7
  3. WordPress Download Monitor

Now, follow the following steps:

Go to Email before Download plugin settings and set it as per your requirements. Save Changes.

  1. Next, create a Contact Form by going to Contact-> Add New.
  2. Give a title to your form, remove unwanted fields and save as shown in fig(o).

Fig o. Title and Form Settings of Email before Download plugin

Note the ID of the form you just created.

3. For Download Monitor, Go to Downloads -> Add New.

4. Give it a title, add a file using its Downloadable Files/ Versions section and Click Publish.

5. Next, create a Page/Post where you want to keep your file at and insert the following code in it by replacing X with file id and Y with the Contact Form ID.

                                                       [email-download download_id=”X” contact_form_id=”Y”]

6. Save and Publish the Page/Post. 

Congrats! With this, You will get the form as previewed in fig(p).

Fig p. Preview of the Contact Form 7 with Email before Download plugin

Although both of these plugins are available for free, they are now archived plugins and hence, do not provide any support. It may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.Yes, sadly, it’s true. However, one of the reasons we love WordPress is that there is never only one solution to any issue. To get the support for these plugins, You can Contact Pookidevs Technologies at our website.

Our Recommendations

There are many ways you can Email Lock Free Content on Your WordPress Website not limited to the ways we mentioned in this blog post such as with Wpforms pro version, Weforms and Ninja forms etc. In case, you want to implement it for free, we recommend Email Before Download with contact form 7 with our support. For the paid pro version, the most effective and popular plugin WordPress Download Manager is highly recommended.

Also, let us know in the comments which file-download option works best for you!

2 thoughts on “Email Lock Free Content on Your WordPress Website”

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