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Are you looking to boost your email marketing email marketing game?
No matter what they say, email marketing remains to be one of the best marketing tools online. Unlike paid ads, email marketing can develop and maintain a meaningful relationship with customers over a period of time.
It’s not surprising, as studies have shown that people prefer getting emails from their favorite brands.
But not all email campaigns are created equal. Some of them work, while some don’t.
The key, it seems, is personalization. People respond to content that they find valuable. They don’t want to feel like they’re just a number in your email list.
If you’re looking to drastically improve your email marketing strategy this year, then perhaps you should consider an email marketing tool like ConvertKit.
About ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a versatile email marketing tool for any business. It’s marketed as a software for online creators — bloggers, influencers, experts — but it doesn’t mean those who don’t fall in this category won’t find this tool useful.
Whether you want to start a simple email series to a few subscribers or segment a huge list into smaller chunks to deliver relevant content, ConvertKit will do it without giving you a hard time.
ConvertKit offers a free 14-day trial. Monthly plans start at $29 for up to 1,000 subscribers.
What will ConvertKit do?
As its name suggests, ConvertKit is not just for collecting emails and growing a subscriber list. More importantly, this tool is made for your subscribers to buy or opt into an offer.
The basic features include:
- Collect and organize subscribers. You can collect subscribers using a form or import them from a CSV file.
- Create email sign up forms. There are several form templates to choose from, and you can edit these forms to blend in with your site.
- Send manual and/or automated emails to subscribers. Email messages can be a Sequence (email series) or a Broadcast (one-off).
Some advanced features are:
- Tags and segmentation. Tag your subscribers based on their behaviors
- Visual automation. Create a “map” that shows the path or funnel of specific subscribers
- A/B Testing. Test different email subject lines
Main benefits of ConvertKit
ConverKit’s set of features are not entirely new — a lot of other tools have them too. The difference is in how ConvertKit lets you do it. If you’ve used email marketing tools like MailChimp, Aweber, Constant Contact, you’ll notice that their interface looks similar.
This is not the case with ConvertKit. The ConvertKit dashboard is minimalist and straightforward which will let you get to work without distractions.
In addition to easily managing multiple email campaigns, ConvertKit is meant to deliver only relevant content to subscribers.
With the Tag and Automation features, it’s easy to identify different levels of interest in your subscribers.
Creating a form with ConvertKit
ConvertKit has its own form designer that you can use to collect emails from your site. You can choose how the form will be displayed on your site.
- Inline – part of a page or post
- Modal – a pop-up form triggered by exit intent or scroll percentage; can also be activated with a trigger link. This means that a form can pop up when a user clicks on a link.
- Slide – form appears from the left or right side
There are a few form templates to choose from and you can change its appearance (background image, button color, text size, etc.) to be consistent with your site’s color scheme.
If you offer a digital download like a free e-book in exchange for signing up to the email list, you can upload the incentive directly in ConvertKit and activate this option when creating a form.
Sending emails in ConvertKit
Once your forms are set up, it’s time to send emails to subscribers.
ConvertKit has two types of email content: Sequences and Broadcasts. Sequences are a series of email messages sent over a period of time.
Broadcasts are single emails sent to subscribers (you can exclude subscribers from the list). You can have two versions of the email subject with the A/B testing feature.
Using Visual Automation
ConvertKit’s best feature is visual automation. Unlike Sequences which is a linear path of emails, automations are more flexible and powerful.
Automations start with an Action or entry point, such as a user signing up for the email list. You can then add another step in the automation, such as adding the user to an email sequence.
It’s possible to start automation with more than one action (as seen below).
In between actions, you can add certain conditions before the next action happens. For instance, you can set a condition for subscribers to have a tag before proceeding to the next step in the automation.
Using ConvertKit’s integration, you can start an automation when someone makes a purchase from your store.
How can ConvertKit help your business?
ConvertKit focuses on converting subscribers to buy or opt into whatever it is you are selling.
In addition to letting you run an email series that aims to have a sales pitch toward the end, ConvertKit enables you to segment subscribers so you can customize offers based on their behavior.
For instance, you can separate subscribers who are customers and those who are not. From there, you can offer product upgrades or upsell to customers, and continue to make a sales pitch for non-customers.
Another useful tool is the Tag feature. Tags from other apps can be used when these apps are connected with ConvertKit. ConvertKit integrates with content management and e-commerce apps like WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce, Kajabi, Thinkific, LeadPages, and more.
For example, you sell cooking courses on Kajabi and you tagged one of your courses as “cupcakes.” This tag will become visible in ConvertKit. Because of this simple feature, you can now send emails specifically to students who enrolled in your “cupcakes” course.
Below is an example of an automation with a purchase as the entry point. In this case, ConvertKit is already integrated with Shopify.
The action here is sending a customer a thank you email after purchasing any product at the store.
Not all tools are perfect. While ConvertKit is generally a great tool, it does have its pros and cons.
Pros
- Simple, minimalist interface
- Features are focused on making sales
- Integrates with commonly used apps
- User guides are well written and organized
Cons
- Limited reporting information
- Limited A/B testing functionality
- Few options for customizing forms
Ease of use
ConvertKit is a user-friendly email marketing tool that anyone can use regardless of technical skill.
The ConvertKit interface is simple enough to focus on creating content, but advanced enough to implement complex email funnels.
If you get stuck, there is detailed user documentation available (just click on the question mark on the top right). You can also join ConvertKit’s community forum to learn from other users.
WordPress integration with ConvertKit plugin
WordPress works seamlessly with ConverKit via the ConvertKit plugin for WordPress.
After installing the plugin, you have to find your ConvertKit API and paste the information into the plugin form.
Here are a few things you can do with the plugin:
Add a default form
In the ConvertKit settings page, you can select a default form from the drop-down box. This form will appear on the bottom of every post. If you don’t want this option, then just select None from the list.
Customize forms on single posts
If you want to enable sign up forms on single posts, just scroll down the Post Editor screen and find the ConvertKit section. Select the form you want to appear after your blog post.
Add a signup form using widgets
If you want to add forms on other parts of your site, you can do so with widgets. After installing the ConvertKit plugin, you will see the ConvertKit Form widget when you go to the Widget section.
Drag the ConvertKit Form widget to the sidebar to activate it. On the drop-down list, select a form you want to display.
Tag website visitors
You can monitor which pages your subscribers visit in your site with the ConvertKit plugin.
In the Post or Page Editor in WordPress, you will see the option to add tags. Add a tag that describes the post or page.
When a subscriber visits this page, the tag is added to him/her and any automation with that tag will be activated.
Real-life examples
ConvertKit has been making waves and getting positive reviews especially from popular bloggers. Here are some of them and how they used ConvertKit for their business.
Jacob McMillen
Jacob used ConvertKit’s incentive email feature to collect emails for his blog. He placed the signup form on the bottom of his posts, tweaking some elements as he goes.
The result? 600 email subscribers with only two blog posts.
Paige Brunton
We often forget that not everyone uses WordPress. So this example from Paige Brunton is a breath of fresh air.
Paige also used ConvertKit’s incentive email feature when she created her sign up form for her Squarespace blog. She even wrote a step-by-step guide on how she did it.
Elna Cain
Elna Cain, who owns a parenting blog, switched to ConvertKit from Mailchimp and saw her subscription rates double. Here’s how she used ConvertKit’s form builder to offer a digital download to encourage visitors to sign up to her email list.
She says that three ConvertKit features she finds useful are being able to resend broadcasts, personalizing an email intro, and segmentation.
Mariah Coz
Mariah also switched from Mailchimp to ConvertKit for a number of reasons. According to her, she felt limited with Mailchimp’s features and wanted to do more with her email marketing campaign.
When she discovered ConvertKit, she fell in love with the interface. She used the email sequence feature to deliver email courses to her subscribers.
She also maximizes the tag feature in the best ways possible. She set up tags that trigger automations when someone downloads an opt-in, clicks a link about a product, or subscribes for a webinar.
Conclusion
Email marketing does not come easy for everyone. It also can be time-consuming, which is a deal-breaker for people who have more important things to do. Still, these people also understand the importance of growing an email list – so they’re willing to make it happen.
On the other end of the spectrum, people opt in for email lists because they truly believe they will get the help and guidance they need. Their time is precious and only the most valuable content deserve a fraction of it.
ConvertKit is the ultimate email marketing tool for making sensible email marketing campaigns. You create the content and ConvertKit will help you send it to the right people.
When done right, a thoughtful email campaign with ConvertKit can help you build an email list who will love your content and become raving fans.