What Is Convertkit: The Ultimate Handbook

What is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit, created by Nathan Barry, is a comprehensive email service provider (ESP) known for its user-friendly interface, automation capabilities, and rapid growth in the email marketing industry. It offers customizable sign-up forms and landing pages to effectively increase your email subscriber base.

What Sets ConvertKit Apart?

Unlike many other ESPs, ConvertKit distinguishes itself through its modern technology and design. Other popular email service providers often feature complex tools with steep learning curves, such as Keap, or fail to cater to contemporary use cases, like MailChimp. ConvertKit stands out with its user-friendly interface, considerable power, and reasonably priced paid plans. Additionally, ConvertKit provides a free plan for landing pages.

ConvertKit’s Target Audience

ConvertKit primarily caters to a specific target audience: online creators, including bloggers and YouTubers. As a result, it focuses on features essential to these content creators, omitting unnecessary elements typically associated with e-commerce-focused platforms.

ConvertKit’s Key Features

Overview of ConvertKit

ConvertKit organizes its interface into five tabs, each serving a specific purpose.

Here’s a brief overview of each tab:

1. Subscribers: This tab displays information about the individuals who have subscribed to your email list. It provides valuable data such as total subscriber count, subscriber growth over time, average open rate, average click rate, and total emails sent. It serves as a dashboard for monitoring list growth and subscriber engagement.

2. Landing Pages & Forms: ConvertKit offers an array of customizable and responsive landing page templates and forms that come with all pricing tiers. These tools assist in capturing more email signups, enhancing your conversion rates.

3. Broadcasts: Broadcasts refer to one-off emails sent to your entire list or specific segments. This feature is ideal for traditional newsletters or announcements.

4. Sequences: Sequences are multi-part email series, commonly known as autoresponders. They allow you to send a sequence of emails to your subscribers, automatically delivering valuable content over a period of time.

5. Automations: ConvertKit’s automation capabilities enable you to automate actions based on specific triggers. For instance, you can automatically send different emails to individuals based on their actions, such as clicking a link or opening a particular email.

Subscribers

While most email service providers charge based on the size of your email list, ConvertKit differentiates itself by billing based on the number of unique subscribers. This approach avoids double-counting subscribers who sign up through multiple forms or enter multiple sales funnels.

Here’s what you can do with the Subscribers tab:

1. Subscriber Overview Data: Gain insights into your total subscriber count, growth trends, and key statistics like open rate and click rate. This dashboard helps you track list growth and analyze subscriber engagement.

2. Segments and Tags: ConvertKit allows you to organize your subscribers using segments and tags. You can automatically tag subscribers based on their sign-up dates or interactions with your emails, creating segments for targeted messaging. For example, you can create a segment of subscribers who have opened newsletters on email marketing and send a specialized newsletter exclusively to them. Combining tags enables even more precise email targeting.

3. Sign-Up Form: ConvertKit captures the form through which each subscriber joined your email list. This information is permanently linked to their subscriber profile. It proves useful for tailoring content and ensuring that subscribers receive relevant information based on their interests.

Automations

Marketing automation is a prominent trend in email marketing, facilitating the automatic delivery of personalized content and offers to specific segments of your audience. ConvertKit simplifies the process of creating automations compared to more complex platforms like Drip. It offers a robust yet user-friendly automation tool.

ConvertKit’s automations consist of two main components: triggers and actions. Triggers initiate the automation based on specific events or behaviors, while actions determine what happens next. For example, you can set up an evergreen product pitch consisting of multiple email sequences. If a subscriber hasn’t purchased the product, you can automatically offer a more affordable alternative. Furthermore, you can send onboarding emails to purchasers and tag them accordingly.

ConvertKit provides six automation templates for various purposes, such as product launches, webinar hosting (including automated registration and follow-up emails), and personalized content based on subscriber responses. You can also create custom automations from scratch, utilizing triggers like form submissions or purchases.

Pro Tip: Chaining multiple automations together ensures a continuous flow of fresh content to older subscribers.

Landing Pages and Forms

ConvertKit offers a reliable and user-friendly built-in landing page and form functionality. These tools are particularly valuable as they come at no additional cost. Creating forms and landing pages is a straightforward process, taking only a few minutes and eliminating the need for third-party tools or expensive design services.

Forms are the entry points for subscribers joining your ConvertKit account. Whether you embed forms directly on your website or use external tools like Leadpages, WordPress plugins, or OptinMonster, you still need to set up a form in ConvertKit to link those subscribers to your account. Each form submission is saved, allowing you to track the source of your subscribers and personalize content accordingly.

Landing pages, on the other hand, are optional but highly useful. These standalone pages, separate from your website, offer responsive and customizable designs. They are particularly suitable for scaling up your email marketing efforts without the need to create individual landing pages for each lead magnet or content offer. ConvertKit provides landing page templates that can be personalized to match your website’s branding.

Broadcasts and Sequences

In ConvertKit, you have two primary options for sending emails: broadcasts and sequences.

1. Broadcasts: A broadcast refers to a one-time email sent to your entire email list or specific segments. For instance, when publishing a new blog post, you can send a broadcast to your entire list. However, during a course launch, you might choose to send emails exclusively to individuals interested in that particular course. These segmented broadcasts ensure targeted communication with your audience.

2. Sequences: Sequences are series of emails sent with time delays between each message, such as daily or every other day. They are ideal for onboarding sequences, email courses, and evergreen product launches. ConvertKit allows you to customize sequences based on subscriber names, tags, and other criteria, enabling personalized communication. Advanced options allow you to insert specific content blocks for subscribers with certain tags while excluding those without them.

ConvertKit facilitates the customization of your email communication, delivering tailored messages to engage your subscribers effectively.

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Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to me if you decide to purchase a paid plan or product. Rest assured that these are products I’ve personally used and stand behind.

Financial Disclaimer: The success or failure of any course or program I write about, is influenced by numerous factors beyond our control, such as individual effort, market conditions, competition, and other variables. It’s important to approach any earning endeavor with realistic expectations.