How to Set Up FluentCRM: Contacts and Email Marketing in WordPress

This article is a localized edition of the Japanese original. Read the Japanese original

FluentCRM is a plugin that adds a contact database and email marketing to WordPress itself. You can sort contacts into lists and tags and send newsletters (campaigns) and automated emails. The data is stored in your own WordPress database, and you don't need an account or API key for an external CRM service.

This article was checked against the WordPress.org plugin page (version 3.3.1) and the official FluentCRM documentation as of November 2026. Screen names are given as they appear in the English interface.

Free and Pro versions

Which features are included in Pro changes between versions, so check the official pricing page before you start.

1. Install the plugin

1. In the admin, go to "Plugins" → "Add New" and search for "FluentCRM"
2. Install and activate "FluentCRM – Email Newsletter, Automation, Email Marketing, Email Campaigns, Optins, Leads, and CRM Solution" by WPManageNinja

After activation, a "FluentCRM" item is added to the admin menu. As of November 2026, it requires WordPress 6.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later.

For Pro, download the file from your account with the developer after purchase and install it from "Plugins" → "Add New" → "Upload Plugin". Enter the license key under "FluentCRM" → "Settings" → "License Management" and click "Verify License".

2. Set your business and sender details

Open "FluentCRM" → "Settings" and start with these two sections.

In Japan, the Act on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail requires, for advertising and promotional email, the recipient's prior consent and a display of the sender's name and how to unsubscribe, among other things. Set your company name, address and the unsubscribe link in the footer correctly here.

3. Set up how mail is sent

FluentCRM is designed to leave the actual sending of email to an external SMTP service. If you keep WordPress's standard sending (the server's mail function), messages are more likely to be marked as spam or not delivered at all.

1. Get an account with an email delivery service (Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, etc.) and set up SPF and DKIM for your sending domain
2. Install an SMTP plugin in WordPress and enter the delivery service's connection details. You can use FluentSMTP from the same developer or another SMTP plugin
3. In FluentCRM, check the sending settings and the settings for receiving undelivered mail (bounces) under "Settings" → "Email Service (SMTP & Bounce Handlers)"

Choosing and configuring an SMTP plugin is covered in Comparing WordPress SMTP plugins and Sending WordPress email over SMTP.

Before sending a campaign, send a test email to yourself and confirm that it arrives and doesn't land in the spam folder.

4. Create lists and tags

Contacts are organized with lists and tags. If you create them before importing, you can apply them all at once during the import.

A single contact can have several lists and tags.

5. Import contacts

Import contacts with "Import" at the top right of the "Contacts" list.

Import from a CSV file

• A comma is the standard separator
• The only required field is the email address. Map the CSV columns to FluentCRM fields
• Dates must be in Y-m-d format, such as 2026-11-10, and countries as two-letter codes such as JP
• You can apply lists and tags during the import
• Contacts are identified by email address, so addresses that already exist are not duplicated and are treated as existing contacts

Save the CSV with UTF-8 encoding. A Japanese CSV created in Excel may be in Shift_JIS, which garbles names.

Import WordPress users

Choose "WordPress Users" as the source to import users from all roles or from the roles you select (such as Subscriber).

Don't send promotional email to people who haven't given consent. Choose the status (Status) used for the import according to whether consent was given.

6. Set up double opt-in

Double opt-in sends a confirmation email to people who sign up through a form, and only those who click the link in that email become subscribers. Under "Settings" → "Global Settings" → "Double Opt-in Settings", set the subject and body of the confirmation email and the page to show (or the URL to redirect to) after confirmation.

Until they confirm, the contact's status is "Pending". Put the confirmation link in the body of the confirmation email (#activate_link# for a plain-text email).

7. Add a signup form

To put a signup form on your site, the official approach is to combine FluentCRM with Fluent Forms, the form plugin from the same developer. Create the form in Fluent Forms and configure it to add submissions as FluentCRM contacts.

Fluent Forms has its own double opt-in setting, but if it is also enabled in FluentCRM, two confirmation emails are sent. Use only one of them.

8. Send your first campaign

1. Under "Emails" → "Campaigns", click "+ Add Campaign", enter an internal name (not shown to subscribers), choose an editor, and click "Create Campaign"
2. Write the content. SmartCodes such as {{contact.first_name}} insert the contact's name and other data
3. Click "Next", enter the subject and the preheader (the short text shown after the subject in the inbox), and send yourself a test with "Send a test email"
4. Choose the recipients by lists and tags, a segment or advanced filters. You can also exclude lists and tags
5. On the review screen, check the subject, the number of recipients and the content, then send immediately or schedule a date and time

While sending, the numbers of pending, processing and sent emails are shown, and you can pause sending.

Narrow recipients with segments

Under "Contacts" → "Segments" you can create "dynamic segments" that automatically collect contacts matching conditions. From "+ Create Custom Segment", combine conditions such as lists, tags, field values, and email opens and clicks.

The built-in segment types for WordPress users, WooCommerce customers and the like are Pro features.

Operational notes

• Scheduled tasks: Scheduled campaigns and automated emails are sent using WordPress's scheduler (WP-Cron). On low-traffic sites sending can be delayed, so set up a server cron job that calls wp-cron.php regularly.
• Sending volume: Delivery services and hosting companies limit how many emails you can send per hour or per day. If you have many subscribers, check the limits of your delivery service plan.
• Backups: Contact data is stored in the WordPress database. Make sure your site backups include the database.
• Personal data: Under "Compliance Settings" in "Settings", you can configure data retention and how to handle deletion requests from individuals. Also state in your privacy policy that you handle personal information to send email.

For building a newsletter site as a whole, see also How to build a newsletter site with WordPress.

Questions about WordPress? The publisher of this site is based in Japan and replies in Japanese. Contact (Japanese)