TL;DR
- The future belongs to creators – one of the easiest email marketing tools out there 😍
- Broadcast emails, create landing pages and forms, start email sequences, and more!
- Don’t worry about an overload of features getting in the way of your marketing strategy! 👌👌👌
- 4.7 stars from over 200 glowing reviews! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Trusted by Business Wire, The Daily Dot, Causeartist, and more!
Email marketing is a popular strategy for any business to have figured out, so if you don’t know of ConvertKit yet, get to know!
This email marketing tool offers the perfect amount of assistance for your business, without overcomplicating things with lots of additional features.
ConvertKit is the literal embodiment of simple yet effective, and we’re here for it! 😁
Today we’re looking at ConvertKit and the good, the bad, and the ugly surrounding it.
Read our in-depth review to see if this tool is the right fit for you. 🤑
What Is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit is an email marketing tool that offers excellent email deliverability and ease of delivering content upgrades.
If you want a tool to help build your email marketing list, this is a great option.
With so many email marketing tools on the market, it can be a little overwhelming to know which one to choose.
Most are now coming out with new features on top of the email marketing features, such as visual automation builders and advanced reporting. 😎
However, if you’re anything like us and have tried these fancy tools with hundreds of features, you might have been surprised to learn that the added features didn’t make that much of a better experience.
We found that a lot of these add-ons were too overwhelming for us to effectively use. 🤔
So, we found ourselves right back where we started – ConvertKit.
Sometimes less is more, and this is true with it comes to our email marketing tool.
One of the most appealing things about ConvertKit is its simplicity, although in recent years the platform has undergone a few interesting changes.
They have added a few more features (but not too many!) such as a visual automation builder.
ConvertKit offers a free 14-day trial for you to test the waters and see if it’s the right tool for you. What have you got to lose? 🤩
Using ConvertKit Effectively
If you want to make the most out of your ConvertKit account, you’ll need to set it up to your personal preferences and know how to use all of the features.
Luckily, that’s what we’re going to talk you through now.
ConvertKit offers an onboarding process that could not be easier for you to follow, with a checklist of what you need to do before making the most out of your free trial and account beyond that.
Through this part of our review, we’re going to walk you through each step of the process to make your life as easy as possible.
Not only that, but this process should help you to get the most out of ConvertKit, increasing engagement and subscribers! 👀
Targeting Your Account Settings
The first step in your journey is to create an account that perfectly matches your wants and needs from your email marketing software.
What’s the point in wasting time with something unaligned with your wishes? Next! 😒
‘As if ConvertKit had listened to our prayers, there are not too many important settings that you need to worry yourself with.
There are just a few important tabs to familiarize yourself with to get your emails running smoothly.
From Name And Email
First, this setting is the one that dictates which email address your emails are sent from.
We recommend using a brand email address rather than a personal one so that you’re not giving your subscribers access to your personal information.
Similarly, you also need to set who the email is coming from.
This could either be the name of your brand or, for a more personal touch, your name with your job title underneath.
Setting this allows all of your emails to be sent from the same place with the same name attached to them.
This gives each email a cohesive finish, making it easier for readers to pick you out from their inboxes and open your emails. Hello, engagement! 🥳
Address Details
It is a legal requirement that you put an address within your emails to show the recipient where it is coming from.
However, you do not need to put your personal address here, but rather a PO box. An office address would also work.
If you do not have either of these things, you can also use ConvertKit’s address.
Again, this could not be easier to use.
You’ll be able to keep each email above the law and cohesive – without any additional work on your part! 🤩
Default Time For Emails
Perhaps the most beneficial setting ConvertKit offers you is the ability to set a time for all of your emails to be sent out.
Choose the day, time, and even sequence that you want your emails to get to your subscribers.
You can override this when creating email sequences (more on this later!) but it is helpful to have a baseline.
Email Sequences
Now what you all came for!
Email sequences are the backbone of email marketing, and your tool is going to need to be effective at setting them up, delivering them to your subscribers, and improving your viewership. 😎
Bear in mind, before making your email sequence, that ConvertKit requires your account to be approved before you can publish your first email.
This might sound annoying, but it is to safeguard your delivery rates.
So, while you will have to wait for your first email to be approved in the short run, you’ll benefit in the future with higher delivery rates.🤗🤗🤗
Adding Emails To ConvertKit
If you already have existing emails, adding them to ConvertKit could not be easier. A simple copy and paste will do the trick.
The simple layout of the text box allows you to read your emails in detail and give them a quick refresher, ensuring that they’re the best they can be.
ConvertKit makes it simple to add triggers to any links in your emails.
This shows you which email addresses are clicking on the links and engaging with you so that you can alter their emails however you see fit.
It’s a beneficial way to keep tabs on your subscriber list and make your email marketing plan more effective.
For example, you could link to a survey in your first email to subscribers.
Tag it to let you know how many subscribers actually fill it in.
Then, later in your sequence, you might remind them about the survey again.
If you’re reminding people who have already filled the survey in, they might feel unheard or even annoyed at this lack of awareness. 😱
Instead, tagging subscribers ensures that you don’t remind them if they’ve already completed the survey, keeping everyone happy.
Sequence Settings
You’ve already set your default settings for your emails in your ConvertKit account – but these can be overwritten for each sequence if you’d prefer.
ConvertKit gives you full reign over the sender’s email address, time and date when the emails are sent, and more.
The settings page of your sequence is also where you can change the templates of your emails, add exclusion rules, and duplicate your sequence – so it’s a powerful place to be! 💥💥💥
Sequence Monitoring And Reporting
The ConvertKit dashboard tells you how your sequences are performing in the form of top-level metrics.
However, if you need more insight into how your email sequences are working, you can see this in the reporting dashboard.
Here you can see the open rate, send rate, unsubscribers, and how many people received the emails.
This allows you to monitor the effectiveness of your current emails as well as show you what to do to improve the sequence.
If you’re getting lots of unsubscribers from a particular blast, you’ll know to quickly change it and never use it again in the future! 😲
Creating Landing Pages And Forms Through ConvertKit
ConvertKit has recently undergone some changes with its platform and has added new features.
Perhaps the most beneficial to us were the landing pages and forms so that we didn’t have to go through external sources to create these!
ConvertKit offers lots of form types with different templates to choose from, as well as templates for your landing pages.
Don’t worry though, you can easily customize whichever template you choose while using it as a baseline.
Get ready to WOW subscribers with your best landing page yet! 🤩
Creating Forms
When creating forms through ConvertKit, you have the option to choose between inline, modal, and slide-in forms.
While this might not have too much of an impact on engagement rates, it is a nice touch and we liked experimenting with each of the options.
A slide-in form was much more interesting to see than a static one! 😂
Anyway, once you have chosen which type of form you need, there are templates for all of them.
Choose the one most fitting for your business and edit it on the next page. Simple! The editor is so easy to use.
All you need to do is click on the element that you want to change and look through the options that come up on the side of the screen.
There is also the option to add custom fields to the template – make it your own!
Thank Your New Subscribers
Once you have finished customizing the template, click on the settings cog widget in the corner to edit these.
Here you can change things such as the action when someone subscribes to your form.
We love this part! Either create a success message, such as:
‘Thanks for subscribing! Check your email for a nice surprise!’
Everyone loves a token of appreciation, and a success message is an effective way of making your new subscribers feel seen. 😄
Alternatively, you could also redirect them to another page after they’ve subscribed.
Add An Incentive Email
An incentive email would typically be considered a confirmation email by most other email marketing tools, with only one confirmation message being allowed per email list.
That’s where ConvertKit comes in and puts all the other tools to shame!
You now have the power to customize the confirmation email on a deeper level, and you can do it for every single form and landing page you make.
An example of how to use this would be to offer a content upgrade or lead management – all without making a separate email list. 😍
Once this has been sent out, people will be more inclined to click on the incentive.
Once they’ve clicked through it will automatically confirm their subscription.
Advanced Settings
ConvertKit gives you the ability to add custom CSS to your forms and landing pages, although you might not need this.
Finally, the advanced settings menu is where you can choose the custom content you want to display for existing subscribers.
Now embed the form into your website or landing page and wait for your subscriber list to grow! 🤩🤩🤩
Creating Landing Pages
To make your landing page, the process is pretty similar to that of the forms.
First, you’ll choose your template – and there is more to look through than what the forms had to offer!
Again, you can customize this template however you want to make it your own.
There are a few extra things you can do here that you couldn’t do when making a form, such as altering some of the template-specific settings.
There is also an extra tab where you can optimize the page for SEO purposes, adding a title and meta description.
You can also add analytics integrations such as Google Analytics and Segment. Let’s get you onto the front page of search engines! 💪
ConvertKit will also host your landing pages and give you your URL – for no extra cost!
However, if you already have a website, you can also use the WordPress plugin instead.
Keeping Track Of Forms And Landing Pages
Within the forms dashboard, ConvertKit allows you to see a top-level report on how they’re performing with your subscribers and new visitors.
You’ll learn the number of visitors, earned subscribers, and conversion rate.
This shows you how each form is performing, again allowing you to determine which is working and which ones aren’t.
You can make your email marketing strategy much more effective by using ConvertKit’s reports to your advantage.
Visual Automations
ConvertKit offers more than one method of automation for you to choose from.
You can create one that includes rules such as cause and effect, but we found that visual automation is much more effective. Plus, they’re easier! 😋
Visual automation shows you what your subscribers go through within your marketing strategy.
You can start automation wherever you want, such as when someone joins a form, purchases a product, is added to a tag, or more.
Once your visual automation is in front of you, it is much easier to alter it to be the best it can be.
You might choose to add events, such as allowing a subscriber to miss a step or more.
For example, if your automation is showing you that your subscribers are going to be shown two emails – one offering a product, and two offering a discount – you might want the subscriber to be left out of the second email list if they’ve already purchased the product.
The visual automation feature from ConvertKit allows you to do just that, with clearly drawn-out pathways that your subscribers will travel through.
Broadcasting Emails
Now that you have your email marketing scheme laid out and ready to go, let’s send some emails!
Broadcasts are emails that are not a part of an email sequence, such as newsletters.
ConvertKit’s broadcast feature is a great benefit for anyone who likes to send emails out of sequence sometimes.
You can choose who you send the emails to, depending on subscribers, tags, and more.
This feature also contains A/B testing which compares two emails against each other to show you which will perform better. 😎😎
Again, you can see the reports of your broadcasts from the ConvertKit dashboard.
What We Loved About ConvertKit
Okay, now let’s discuss what we loved about this email marketing software. Spoiler alert – we liked it a lot! 🤣
Impressive Interface
ConvertKit is incredibly easy to work with.
Thanks to its simplicity and lack of useless features, the interface is perfect for beginners and advanced users alike.
In our experience, it’s one of the easiest email marketing tools to work with – by a long shot! 🤩
Everything You Need Is Right In Front Of You
Forms and landing page builders ensure that you can entice subscribers and add them to your email sequences all in one swoop.
You won’t need to use any third-party apps unless you want to use fancier features such as webinars.
ConvertKit also comes with plenty of templates that you can alter to your personal preference, which is a great touch.
ConvertKit contains everything you need to get your email marketing scheme up and running quickly.
Reporting Is So Helpful
We loved that we could see exactly how our emails were performing, as well as our forms, broadcasts, and more.
This allowed us to swap out anything that wasn’t working and focus on the elements that were raking in new subscribers.
ConvertKit offers reporting for many things – you’ll be impressed with how much insight you can get within seconds! 🤗🤗🤗
What We Didn’t Like About ConvertKit
There are a few things that you might not enjoy from ConvertKit as much, so here are the areas in which we thought the tool could be improved. 😕
Limited Number Of Templates
There are not that many email templates up for grabs on ConvertKit, although you can add your own templates if you have the time.
This means that you might have to spend more time perfecting the look of your email if branding is important to you. 🧐
No Option For Spam Testing
Other email marketing providers tend to use spam testing to see the probability of the email being sent to a spam folder.
This is a great feature as some trigger words can increase the likelihood of your email being sent to spam.
Unfortunately, ConvertKit does not offer this feature. 🤔
Comparison: ConvertKit Vs Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a similar email marketing tool to ConvertKit – but which is better? 🤔
Both ConvertKit and Mailchimp offer similar features in automation, email sequences, templates, forms and landing pages, and more.
However, Mailchimp does fall into the category of email marketing tools that offer just a few too many features that aren’t useful.
Many people we know have made the switch from Mailchimp to ConvertKit due to the latter’s simplicity and ease of use. 🥳
Remember when we talked about ConvertKit’s need to approve your account to keep delivery rates high? Mailchimp does not do this.
While you might be excited to learn that there is no waiting process and you can start sending emails right away, Mailchimp’s delivery rates will diminish over time because of the lack of safeguarding. 👎
Both of these tools offer a free plan, and Mailchimp’s offering is for 500 emails sent every day.
ConvertKit’s free plan only offers 300 emails to be sent a day, although the paid version offers unlimited emails to be sent.
ConvertKit is slightly more expensive than Mailchimp, but for the high deliverance rate that won’t diminish, we think that it is well worth the extra money. 😎
Summary
Overall, ConvertKit is an excellent tool – as long as you’re its target audience.
This tool focuses on the needs of bloggers and content creators, and all of its features are perfect for these people. 🤗
We might have preferred a few more templates or some smaller features added in, but for the most part, this tool is everything we need without overwhelming us.
If you’re looking for a simple yet effective email marketing tool, we definitely recommend ConvertKit!