Convertkit Email Platform - Visual and Effective
This podcast episode focuses directly on ConverKit. Be sure to read our comparison article - Mailerlite Vs. ConvertKit
If you are a podcaster check out 3 Best Email Services For Podcasters
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This week I talk about another email platform, Convertkit, and why it may be a good fit for your goals.
This site contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.
Are you a content creator? blogger, Youtuber, course creator, someone who does online lessons or other services. then Convertkit is a platform you should look at.
If you like easy to use visual flow charts, easy to use automation sequences, and a system that does this very well be sure to check out their demo online.
Recommended by some of the top leaders in the content creation space, myself included, I think this is an up and coming platform in the email marketing space.
**Transcript**
Speaker 1: (00:02)
This is digital marketing tool talk, never miss out or fall behind on the latest digital tools for social media, SEO content reviews, and the entire digital marketing space. I'm your host, Brandon Hughes. Welcome back everyone. I hope you enjoyed last week's podcast where we talked about MailChimp. I also reminded you to wash your hands and now we're onto social distancing and self isolation at home. I hope all of you are being safe out there and doing what you can to support your community, local businesses and your personal and family's health today. I promise we were going to talk about another email platform called convert kit. The first two that we did, constant contact and MailChimp. So many features, so many integrations, websites, events, donations, uh, various other types of integrations outside of just traditional email. With convert kit, we're almost taking a complete left turn convert kit is really geared to those who are blogging and have informational type of products or services that they're presenting.
Speaker 1: (01:24)
What I really like about convert kit is the visual presentation of what happens with your flow automation and your emails when people interact. If you're a visual type of person or likes to have things laid out in a nice chart and a nice flow so that you can see how your email is going to progress as people interact with you throughout the integration or throughout the flow of automation emails, then convert kit is definitely something you want to look to look at. If you are not and you need all of the features and some of these email platforms, I still encourage you to take a look at convert kit so that you can see how flows and automations work in a nice easy to understand way. So let's take a look.
Speaker 1: (02:20)
All right, so let's jump right into a question we all ask and I always bring out first cause I know that's what you want to know about and that's pricing. So yes, they have a free plan just like all the other email providers out there and then they have a paid plan. Right now it's starting at $29 a month for up to a thousand subscribers. They do a much better job of presenting their price and MailChimp, they just have a slide right there and you can just move it along depending on how many subscribers you have and you'll see the cost that you're going to run into on a monthly basis. They do have a discount if you do annual and most of these email platforms have that. So let's talk about some of the free free features with the free plan. Um, definitely they got landing pages, unlimited traffic.
Speaker 1: (03:11)
So you know people coming in and out, emails that you're putting out. They do have a customizable domain set up. So if you want to work with that, if you have some branding that you want to do, obviously mobile has to have that. One thing that I do like that's even available on the free plan that I haven't seen elsewhere is the Unsplash integration. I use Unsplash a lot. They have some amazing photos out there and the quality is top notch. Many times I have to actually reduce the size of the photo cause it's taken in such high resolution, which is not good for web speed. But it is good if you want a nice quality image and it really helps your emails pop, uh, you on the free plan, you can manage up to a thousand subscribers. You can go higher on that in the free plan if you refer people.
Speaker 1: (04:06)
But I want you to go to the website and check that out. There's some additional things that they have. If you go to the paid plan, then you get into the reporting, the visual automation funnels, automated email sequences and some API and integrations. So not really, I don't think worth it on the free on this one. If you want to utilize what convert kit does well and where they're really shining in the marketplace, you need to go straight to the paid plan, the free, it's just, it's just not offering enough. The paid plan is where they really shine because that's where you get into the visual automation funnels and the automated email sequences, which is really their strength in the email platform marketplace. So let's talk a little bit about the integrations that convert kit is. They have 90 plus, they got the big ones that are most important, like Zapier, Gumroad, WordPress, woo commerce, Shopify.
Speaker 1: (05:11)
They work with lead pages, even though they have landing pages as well. And teachable. The convert kit is really a geared and set up for people who are creators. So if you're an online creator, what is an online creator that's a blogger, a podcast or a YouTube, YouTube or a course creator, you know, a freelance type of coach, musician, you know, you're doing lessons online. This is definitely a platform you want to look at because of the automation, the simplicity and the ease of using it correctly. So you can really leverage your email list and get some ROI off of it or get some increased engagement or feedback from people. Um, the sticking with that, sticking with the these automations. And for those of you that aren't aware of it, you know, what am I talking about with this automation, these events and these triggers.
Speaker 1: (06:13)
So basically when you, you know, you're putting out your email, you might have an event that takes place, a product is purchased, um, maybe it's a, some sort of tag is added or removed because of some function with convert kit and most other platforms, you can then create an action based on that event. So if someone buys a product, signs up for your newsletter or signs up for your webinar or a course or wants to see the course calendar or course description, you can create all of these actions that take place afterwards in the form of various types of emails. Let me dig into that a little bit more in detail for you so that you really understand where convert kit can shine for you. Here's an example. You want to survey your audience. So you send out in your newsletter, right on there you have a survey and in the survey you have three different possible answers that they can give you.
Speaker 1: (07:28)
You know, a, B, and C. you can set this up so that depending on what answer they give you, you know, what's my pain point? What do you want to see me improve on? What uh, what don't you like about the product? What do you love about the product? What do you like about my lessons? Anything that you're doing. If you have a certain number of answers, depending on the answer that they give, it then triggers a separate email depending on the answer. So everybody is getting a custom followup response to it. That's powerful. And you can set this up on automation. So if you're ongoing with courses and you want ongoing feedback, or you have a product that you're always selling or you're always reaching out to people to get feedback on your content, you can have this running all the time on, um, uh, automatically.
Speaker 1: (08:28)
So that would be like surveying your audience. Let's say you want to launch a product. Maybe you have a, uh, course launch form, you know, or a course, uh, each tagged, right? You're promoting this new course as a product. And as soon as people sign up or they engage in a sign up for your course, instead of having to email each one of them, you can have all of that automated, you'll get, they'll get a product launch warmup email, then the date of the product launch, they'll get another. And when that's completed after the course, then you can split your email up depending on did they buy my product, did they not buy it? So people who bought it now move into a separate list and get a separate list of emails. Those that didn't, maybe you need to educate them more, provide more value or explanation of value in that process.
Speaker 1: (09:32)
So you will literally create an automation, uh, stream or flow based on what you're doing. If you're hosting a webinar that you might, there's a separate thing for that. If you're selling a service, they have all these examples in here. So if you're a total newbie to it and you're wondering, okay, what should I do? What can I do? What options do I have? It's all there. Um, it's important to remember that. What I really like about the convert kit is it's all visual and it's really nice to see the layout. What's an event, what's a trigger? And it's just easy to piece it together so you can visually look and see what's the flow and what questions am I asking and is everybody going to be headed in the right direction. In addition to that, on the visuals that you're getting, you're going to be able to see how many subscribers are coming in at the beginning and where they are.
Speaker 1: (10:37)
So if you're bringing in a thousand subscribers, you'll know, okay, how many of them have answered the question in the survey? How many of them have responded to the service related optin form or whatever it is you're putting out there. So not only can you see the flow of your emails, you can see the flow that the customers are taking within it. So that's the strength of convert kit is if you're one of those types, the blogger, the YouTube, or the person selling a service or a course, then you want to lay that out. You want to see it visually, you want it to be easy to use and understandable and you want to be flexible and be able to gear up pretty quick. I really think this is where convert kit shines, so if you're looking for an email platform that's simple, visually easy to digest and can really ramp you up quick in your email marketing journey, I would highly recommend convert kit.
Speaker 1: (11:48)
Next week we're going to take aU turn and we're going to look at a different email platform called Clavio. Totally different than convert kit, steep learning curve, all kinds of crazy functionality in there, different people, different products, different fits. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you guys next week. If you like what you heard today, please rate review and subscribe to this podcast. If you have a digital marketing tool that you like or you use or even one that you've created, let me know in the comments or send me an email@brandonmarketing.com I'll see you on the new school. Flip side.
