Fluent Forms with Thrive Apprentice

I recently featured a robust tech stack for creating a funnel to sell courses built in Thrive Apprentice. In this tutorial I want to showcase a simpler option that will allow you to spend quite a bit less money while still maintaining a very workable and reasonable solution. 

Using nothing more than a form processor, you can sell your course, gather your customer's contact information, grant access to your course, and even drop them into an email marketing automation sequence in your favorite ESP.

The form processor I'm talking about is WP Fluent Forms, and we'll be using the Pro version for this tutorial since it adds all kinds of awesome integrations. Fluent Forms is now my new favorite form processor for WordPress because (on top of being fast and customizable) it integrates with all of my favorite tools.  It also has a lifetime deal right now, so goodbye expensive recurring forms!

For a video walkthrough of this tutorial, check out the video below.

What makes using Fluent Forms with Thrive Apprentice possible?

  1. Stripe integration
  2. User registration
  3. Email integrations with tools like SendFox, ConvertKit, MailChimp, etc.
  4. Embed the form anywhere in a Thrive Architect landing page

Let's dive into this setup a bit.

Using Fluent Forms with Stripe Payments

Integrating Stripe with Fluent Forms is on par with any other Stripe integration. Grab your two keys from Stripe, drop them into the Payment settings of Fluent Forms, and you're good to go.

Building Your Course's Payment Form

Inside the Form Builder you'll find four new fields: Payment, Custom Payment Amount, Item Quantity, and Payment Method.

For our purposes here of selling a course at a set price, you just need to bring over the Payment Field and the Payment Method Field. Let's look at these two:

  • Payment Field - This is how much your course costs. Pretty simple.
  • Payment Method Field - If you've enabled Paypal as a payment options along with Stripe, you can let your customers choose their preferred method. Even when only using one method, you have to have this field on your form. It's hidden if you only have one option.

Keeping Track of Payments Made Through Fluent Forms

Inside of Fluent Forms you can also see all payments received, pending, etc. I really like this feature.

Instead of just dropping the payments into your Stripe and calling it a day, Fluent Forms lets you go in and look at how much was paid, the device used, transaction id, submission logs, and add your own notes to that transaction. This could be handy for customer service needs.

Registering Users with a WordPress Account

This step is really important. We're not just collecting money using Fluent Forms because that could be done in a plethora of easier ways. We're actually going to create the user's account in your WordPress site at the exact same they pay.

Simply enable the module under 'Modules' on Fluent Forms add a Password field to your form. 

Now just follow these steps to enable the user registration:

  1. Go to your form and click on 'Settings'
  2. Navigate to 'Marketing & CRM Integrations'
  3.  Click the 'Add New Integration' button in the upper right
  4. Select 'User Registration'

Now we map the fields the user will submit to the necessary WordPress user fields. You'll want to map Email to Email, Name to Name, and of course Password to Password. You can also choose what default user role the person will inherit. This can be left as Subscriber for most people, but if you're selling multiple courses you will want to get a User Role Editor and create a new User Role for each of your courses. They'll be listed here. 

Don't forget to check the 'Enable This Feed' box at the end, then save.

Note: Whichever role you choose here will need to be added as an access rule inside of Thrive Apprentice.

Integrating with Email Marketing Providers

This is yet another step that will set your Fluent Forms funnel for Thrive Apprentice apart from other solutions. Similar to how we enabled the previous modules, simply enable the module that corresponds with your preferred email marketing service provider. You'll need to do all of the usual API key pasting here too.

The process for integrating with your Email provider is identical to enabling User Registration. Go back to 'Marketing & CRM Integration' and now add the integration with your provider.

Why Using an Email Marketing Service Provider Matters

Simply put: Marketing Automations. Now you drip emails out to your students, segment them into other lists for cross-promotions, and provide a much better email experience to them.

I highly recommend SendFox for this integration -- be sure to check out my SendFox review. Their connection to Fluent Forms is super easy, so you won't struggle making that connection.

Integrate Fluent Forms with Thrive Architect

Now you need to take this highly-functional form with robust integrations and put it to use. I recommend building a landing page using Thrive Architect.

For this integration, all you need to do is grab the Shortcode (found throughout your form editing experience -- typically in the top right) and paste it into your Thrive Architect page inside of either a Text or WordPress Content element. The form won't render perfectly on the backend of TA, but a simple preview will show the form works great.

Conclusion

Fluent Forms can create a surprisingly connected yet straight forward avenue for selling your courses built using Thrive Apprentice. Going this route cuts out the need for a tools like a membership platform and a cart solution, which can be quite a savings if you're looking to go the simpler route.

If you have any questions about Fluent Forms and how you can use it as the centerpiece of your Thrive Apprentice funnel, feel free to reach out in a comment below.

  • Alfonso says:

    Hello Doug, this looks great. Then using Fluent forms I can get rid of any shopping cart, right? Can you integrate Fluent forms with Thrive Leads or TA lead generation element? Because I think customizing the form will be easier and faster with Thrive Themes than Fluent forms, am I right?

    • Doug says:

      You won’t have much luck editing Fluent Forms using Thrive, but using Fluent Forms you can definitely get rid of a shopping cart.

  • Dave says:

    Hi Doug,

    Have you seen the new FluentCRM plugin? I’d be interested to know your opinions on that.

    • Doug says:

      Hey Dave,

      I have! I picked up the 50 site license after testing it on my wife’s ecommerce site. It’s fantastic. So much so that I’m considering ditching my ConvertKit account to save me $150/month. It’s that good.

      I’ll create a video on it if you think there’s interest.

      • Dave says:

        That would be great. I assume that it doesn’t actually integrate with Thrive Leads at the moment. Is that correct? I’m using SendFox at the moment, which is good, but has some limitations. That it looks like FluentCRM would be able to do.

        • Doug says:

          Right now there’s no integration with Thrive Leads, but based on how it works I don’t see why an integration couldn’t be made by them in the future. For now, there might even be a work-around to get them to work together. I’ll explore that.

          • Dave says:

            I would have thought that the Thrive team would get an integration at some point. They’re very good at adding new integrations with autoresponders and have one of the most extensive lists that I’m aware of. My other reservation with FluentCRM is how it will play with Thrive Cart. Again at the moment I suspect there is no simple integration.

          • Dave says:

            Hi Doug, do you think it would it be possible to get Fluent CRM to integrate with Thrive Cart via a webhook?

          • Doug says:

            ThriveCart sends its data via webhook a little different than most tools I work with. They send the data in an array which doesn’t line up neatly with Keys and variables. I’m currently playing around with it to see what I come up with, but for now I think something like Integromat is needed.

          • Dave says:

            Is that like Zapier?

          • Doug says:

            Yes, but reasonably priced. Not a great solution, though. I’m personally going to either figure out a way to make them work together without a 3rd party tool like that, or wait for an official direct integration.

          • Dave says:

            Yeah, I think I’m with you. I can continue to use Mailster for purchases through Thrive Cart and then add them manually to Fluent CRM. But not directly integrating with Thrive Leads is more of a headache. It would be nice to know if these integrations are on their roadmap. But I guess I won’t find that out before the LTD finishes tomorrow.

          • Doug says:

            I’m using Uncanny Automator and WishList Member to handle a lot of my automations like adding contacts to Fluent CRM. I’m not willing to manually do it, purely on principle. I’m stubborn like that.

          • Dave says:

            Does WL-Member integrate directly with F-CRM? If it does that could be problem solved for me.

          • Doug says:

            Yes, FluentCRM has a direct native integration with WLM.

          • Dan Kelly says:

            Does the WLM FCRM integration do adds and removals? I saw an old video on YouTube that shows you can add new WLM customers to FCRM, but there’s no way to unsubscribe if a person refunds or gets removed from a membership.

          • Dave says:

            It looks like the only WLM trigger in FCRM at the moment is “A member added to a membership level”. I can’t see any triggers to chose for removal from a membership level.

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