What is the best email marketing tool? – Why I switched to ConvertKit, and why you will too!
I’ve been in marketing and startups for a long, long time now and one thing I can say for sure is that the great products stick around! Email automation, email marketing, email newsletters, and drip emails have been concepts for as long as I can remember. And, streamlining this process to make it as efficient and effective as possible has been the bane of many a marketing managers existence!
I’ve tried a few different email marketing software systems to alleviate the pain of communicating with my hard earned audiences over the years, Mailchimp, SendGrid, Constant Contact and ConvertKit and I’ve come to rest on one product that I genuinely feel is the best fit for small businesses and bloggers is without a doubt, ConvertKit. I wanted to do this ConvertKit review to help out my fellow bloggers and business folks who might be looking to upgrade their email provider. So, let’s dive in… what IS the best email marketing software platform?
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What is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit is email marketing software – their main aim is to help grow your business and turn your customers into raving fans. Yes! I love that!
Gone are the days when we used to simply send out a monthly newsletter to our users, crossed our fingers and hoped they …
a. opened it… and
b. read it…
Now as bloggers and small businesses we want an email automation system that allows us to follow our customer journey from end to end.
We now look to platforms that help us drive do three things
- Drive more leads into our funnels
- Convert those leads into paying customers or clients, and
- Delight our customers, so they turn into fans and evangelists
We want to be able to take strangers who may have never heard of us… and turn them into not only paying customers but also raving fans who spread the work about us far and wide. An email platform that enables us to not only communicate with our audience but also attract a whole other set of eyes to our offering is one that we should be paying attention to.
ConvertKit literally helps you make money.
What is ConvertKit used for?
ConvertKit has so many features that are massively useful for bloggers, creators, makers and small businesses.
What I love most about ConvertKit is that it helps me build my marketing funnels with the ability to add highly specific landing pages, forms and pops ups on my website that allows me to build my email marketing list easily.
ConvertKit features I love
- Sign up forms – the ability to add newsletter sign up forms to my website or blog in various places
- Landing page builder – You can easily create new landing pages for your product or service offerings to ensure that when people are clicking on your links they are hitting a page that is highly relevant to them – meaning – they will more likely convert to a paying customer for you
- Popups! Popups are forms that literally popup on your website or blog pages when a visitors performs a certain action. Pops ups are a super useful way to entice your audience to sign up for your newsletters, sign up to download a useful lead magnet or even participate in a survey or quiz.
- Email marketing – ah this one’s simple. ConvertKit lets you create your monthly or weekly content or marketing newsletters to send to your mailing lists.
- E-commerce – the ability to sell digital products – you can literally sell your digital products with ConvertKit! Forget Teachable… this is the way to go!
- Email sequences/ drip campaigns/ email automation – this one’s a biggy for me! This simply means you can set up sequences of specific emails for certain subscribers to take them through a journey of education and insight- so hopefully they become customers … and if they are customers- hopefully they start to promote you!
Is ConvertKit Better than Mailchimp?
I first meet Mailchimp a very long time ago. Back then- it was basically a system that could send out email newsletters to your audience. Usually an audience that you had collected through somewhat nefarious means! The rules don’t really apply back then and email inboxes were fair game for all.
Mailchimp was useful… and new… and served its purpose … it was one of the few systems around…
But – as I’ve grown as a marketer, a business owner and a blogger, Ive come to need different things from my email system. Marketing has evolved dramatically over the years and as inbound and content marketing has taken shape, so too have the tools that we look to to make our lives easier.
The benefits of ConvertKit vs Mailchimp are pretty easy to see. ConvertKit has a super simple user interface and I find that its really intuitive to use, even for someone who perhaps isn’t that familiar with martech.
I love the fact that I can see my progress so easily on their super clear dashboard and I can literally see my progress day by day! Their metrics and analytics tools are really, really good, without being too complicated.
One of the best things about ConvertKit is that they make email design and editing super simple. Even if you’re lacking in creativity! You can simply and easily create beautiful, engaging emails with their intuitive editor. And… if you absolutely want to … you can also add custom HTML, if you’re that way inclined!
They also have a custom, direct integration with Unsplash, a kick ass photo stock website – which allows you to instantly add images to your content with the click of a button. No more hunting for images!
And, if you make digital products like downloads, courses or ebooks… you can literally sell your digital products using ConvertKit. SO amazing! There are plenty of platforms around that allow you to sell your digital products, however… this ones in ONE PLACE! how easy is it to customize your finnels in one spot.. without having to use podia or teachable or any ofgh the other platforms out there as well!
I also love their A/B testing for email headlines! This lets me see what headline gets opened more by sending two headers to a total of 30% of my overall audience – and then chooses the right one for me after an initial 4 hour testing period. Then send the rest of my emails with this winner header so I get more opens and hopefully more clicks! This feature is totally unique to ConvertKit!
The other things with Mailchimp is that you can’t have multiple forms per list… which is a complete nightmare! AS creators- you’ll know the benefit of providing opt-ins and freebies for your audience. This is a huge part of digital marketing. So, if you’re looking at ConvertKit vs Mailchimp… hands down ConvertKit wins.
ConvertKit Pricing
Convertkit pricing is so incredibly simple. You pay depending on how many subscribers you have. It’s that easy. And, you get to go free for the first 1000, which amazing.
ConvertKit plans start at $29 per month for their creator plan, which I highly recommend you start with – as this offers you email sequences which are the key to converting your audience to paying customers, and after all… that’s what we’re here for right! creating profitable businesses that allow us financial freedom! Mailchimp pricing is fairly similar but I reckon you get way more bang for your money on ConvertKit.
The ConvertKit free plan includes:
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited, customizable CTAs & signup forms
- 30+ premium landing page templates
- Unlimited traffic
- Customizable domain setup
- Mobile responsive designs
- Manage up to 1000 subscribers
- Unlimited Email broadcasts
- Subscriber tagging
- Seamless Unsplash integration
- Creator community
You can start for free here
Wrap up
Mailchimp has certainly kept pace with the many advances in digital marketing strategies over the years, however I’ve found that Convertkit has just simply done it better and with a far better user interface and user experience.
ConvertKit seems to tackle content marketing and inbound marketing with a sense of uniformity. It allows creators, bloggers and entrepreneurs to easily and seamlessly unite all aspects of their marketing strategies with one platform. I love that you can sell your digital products using ConvertKit, create landing pages, add popups ot your site to capture leads and customize your email communications so simply.
The biggest plus though is their pricing is super reasonable! Anyone can get started for free and your business can grow with ConvertKit without breaking the bank. This ConvertKit review has been brought to you with love! I actually love this product and I know you will too.
I’m a die hard Mailchimp fan and this article has given me a lot to think about! Always looking for tools that will help me reach my audience better. Thanks for the in-depth review!
I too was a Mailchimp fan! But finding ConvertKit was more intuitive and they tend to update features more often.
I knew convertkit was mail automation software. But I did not know it can be used for e-course too. Great article
IKR! So good! So much easier than using multiple platforms!
Loved this article! I use convertkit too and find it much more user friendly than mailchimp. I wasn’t aware of the A/B headline feature though, so THANK YOU! That will really come in handy!
That A/B headline tester is awesome!