written by
Jeremy Poland

ConvertKit Email Marketing Review 2019

8 min read

Hello marketers & dream builders! Today we're talking about ConvertKit, the email marketing platform designed specifically for bloggers & online business builders!

The ConvertKit Home Page

ConvertKit has been around for a few years now and has had a chance to really grow and establish itself as a major force in the online business space. Approximately three and a half years ago a major shift happened when ConvertKit came out and many, many people who make their living or aspire to make their living through blogging and online business building, including selling digital products etc jumped in to test the waters. Savvy digital types migrated from MailChimp, AWeber and other email service providers over to ConvertKit because it was designed specifically for the blogger and the business online business builder with clearly intuitive features! Let's take a look at some of these great features! I will mention here them here, and I will also cover pricing. Additionally, I'll cover one of the challenges I encountered with ConvertKit, which has affected my ability to personally utilize the platform. Plus you'll see a few interesting notes about the history of the product that I've observed as an early user, including the live conference, the potential name change and more...

ConvertKit YouTube Review on The Platform Shop Channel

Again, it is designed for creators and it presents this really nice dashboard for you to see your subscribers. You can see list growth over time, new subscribers added on certain days and it really does become a central stop for you to check and follow the development of your online business. Personally, I can say that it does make email list building. It actually to a degree gamifies the process and creates a desire to pursue these short rewards of new subscribers and chart tallies going up! I definitely enjoy checking my ConvertKit dashboard to see how many new subscribers had hit for the month. I like how on the dashboard you can actually see the emails and the names of the subscribers, along with the complete record of their interactions with each email sent. You'll be able to identify if they have opened attachments, click on links provided and much more.Sometimes I'd go and look up new subscribers on their websites or the web to confirm that these were actual humans engaging with my content (eek you will be thrilled when this happens for you). The bottom line is it really cool to realize there are real people subscribing to your email list.

The Features & Key Functions Of ConvertKit Email Tool

One helpful feature ConvertKit does is it provides ready tools to build email collection forms, which you can use as a URL landing page itself or you can embed them into websites. Here's an example right here of a form. They really are designed nicely and you can get an email collecting web form up in a matter of minutes, even if you are a first timer! In the very beginning, I felt like the form builder was a little clunky and difficult over time and more impressive landing page builder arose (see LeadPage & ClickFunnels) that increased the usability expectations. Since then, ConvertKit has rapidly improved the user experience with forms and building things like this. So you can really quickly build a form on your website that can directly integrate into your ConvertKit list reporting. Now this is where ConvertKit really starts to excel. ConvertKit has a set of automation features, with automated actions that you can employ to enliven the systems within your online business. And they use this nice little graphical logic path or flow chart, which you can drag and drop to create actions or triggers that happen at certain points.

When Someone Joins Your ConvertKit Lists

So for example, when someone joins your email list, they can be tagged, if they come from this page, give them a certain identifier which can then send them a targeted follow up email. Following that step, then you offer them this particular email product. So if a visitor comes from a different page, they would be tagged with a different tag because they're expressing interest in something different or arriving from a different path. With these customization or unique messaging streams, different followup emails, different product offers and more you really can create these amazing automated flows within your email marketing & your overall online business infrastructure. So again, if you're a blogger or an online business builder or that's your aspiration and road you are heading down, then you really can use these features to architecturally develop the flow of your business(es).

Source: ConvertKit.com

Building Email Sequences With ConvertKit

Of course ConvertKit has automated followup sequences and the process for constructing them is really nice and user intuitive. This is where ConvertKit really begins to shine and the differentiation between traditional email service platforms starts to widen. You can click on a little left sidebar tabs and move through your emails and order and check them and look at them all at the same time. Email one tab might be open and you can just quickly click on email two and then that will open without a load or a save necessary. With this multi-tab layout for your email sequence, you'll be able to quickly assemble and adjust your sequences, while seeing how they look together in the overall layout. And again, with automations, you can even customize your sequences depending on someone's interest or the path that they found your business. For example, say someone responded to a Facebook ad, you might have a different or a modified sequence for them compared with someone who came in off one of your existing blog posts, the potential is limitless. ConvertKit has created ways to organize and understand your subscribers. You can send messages to people at certain times. You are able to reach out to segments by using the tag, or other actions.

Source: Shout Me Loud

Sending Broadcast Messages With ConvertKit

You should definitely send broadcast messages. You can integrate RSS feeds to send out your blog posts, for example instantly. Each sent broadcast message will display clear stats about open rates, responses, unsubscribes etc. I appreciate the feature which allows you to resend a broadcast email message only to those recipients who haven't opened the message. We all can related the email inbox slide and know how often messages can stream by us without our ability to open and properly check them out. This feature will grant your subscriber broadcasts a second chance with your list.

Integrations For ConvertKit

Definitely ConvertKit was built to integrate with some of the major email or online marketing tools like Gumroad, Zapier, Shopify, Instapage, Wordpress. At one point they all, they debuted a highly, uh, built an Insta page, um, integration and it sounded really amazing.

A Snapshot Of ConvertKit Integrations From ConvertKit.com

I almost thought they were offering Instapage, a high-end landing page builder, to us for free or a stream discount, but the truth was still at that point had to pay for the full price to Instapage subscription, which was kind of pricey. And that made me mad a little bit. I thought it was rolled out in a way that was a little bit less than clear.

ConvertKit Name Change?

Another note is that ConvertKit changed their name to Siva a year or two ago and actually went through an entire whole rollout campaign and then ended up reversing course quickly back to the original name (ConvertKit). I was so glad about the return of the original name, mainly because it just seemed like a chore as a customer and to adjust to a whole new name. I was used to the name ConvertKit, bought into the potential of the name ConvertKit and appreciated how the initial naming scheme spoke clearly to what the business does. So anyway, now it is back to convert kit and that seems to be entrenched and that is a very good thing.

ConvertKit Challenges

A challenge for me with ConvertKit is that I find it hard to manage multiple platforms or client sites all within one account. Attempting this is really difficult. In order to manage multiple platforms inside one account, I tagged subscribers differently according to the site that they were subscribing to. And so essentially I was attempting to manage multiple sites or multiple online platforms inside of ConvertKit of with one account and I really wished it had been built to do that better. After visiting with support and considering options for a workaround I found out the bottom line. The truth is is that ConvertKit is built specifically to manage one platform per account and you'll definitely get the best results using it for one platform with one account.

With both several personal niche sites and client sites, it got a little clunky to use ConvertKit and this challenge did slow me down. If you are managing multiple platforms or client multiple clients sites, then think carefully about ConvertKit. There might be other email providers that are more user friendly for that use case. In fact, I would say MailChimp.

ConvertKit Plans & Pricing

Now let's review plans and pricing information. From zero to 1000 subscribers is $29 a month. One to Three thousand (3K) subscribers is $49 a month. And Three to Five Thousand subscribers currently costs $79 a month. As with all email marketing plans you essentially get penalized for growing, though of course revenue should have increased concurrently making pricing tiers like this here completely palatable.

The ConvertKit team will definitely help you integrate or bring over an existing list you have with these pricing models. ConvertKit does have a really robust blogging operation and training apparatus. Take a look at Tradecraft, a magazine publication that developers have produces to improve the profitability of their user base. ConvertKit also has a conference that they are promoting. And then live event has been held at least twice now. And I really do recommend ConvertKit for further training in blogging and digital business. They certainly are serious about helping online creators succeed. The founder, Nathan Berry is an online creator himself. He sold guides on UI and design and he has walked this very path that many of you are treading down. The bottom line is that ConvertKit is a fantastic tool for online business builder focusing on a single platform!

Please Note: This article contains affiliate links from which I receive referral compensation at no additional cost to you.

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