ConvertKit is an email marketing platform and marketing automation hub that helps creators and ecommerce businesses grow audiences, communicate and drive revenue.
We started using ConvertKit at Visualize Value over 12 months ago to grow email subscribers, run email marketing campaigns, sell digital products, and automate our marketing communication strategy.
After growing an audience of over 800k followers via our social media channels, we've now converted over 50k subscribers to our email marketing list using ConvertKit's landing pages and sign-up forms.
And since using ConvertKit to run our email marketing campaigns, we've sent over 1 million emails, with an average open rate well over 50%, driving hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process.
And we're not the only ones seeing success.
There are over 500,000 creators and ecommerce businesses using ConvertKit to grow email subscribers and communicate with their audiences - in fact, the ConvertKit customer base regularly communicates with over 250 million fans using the platform.
To help get you started, we've completed a comprehensive ConvertKit review to show you how we use the ConvertKit features to add rocket fuel to our marketing efforts.
We also check out pricing plans, and ConvertKit Pro features so you have a complete picture before signing up.
What is ConvertKit?
ConvertKit has designed and built a range of marketing automation tools to help creators and ecommerce businesses drive revenue online.
These tools help you sign up email subscribers, send emails to your subscriber base, sell digital products and services, as well as automate your email marketing efforts with automation features.
ConvertKit is primarily designed for the creator economy, with thousands of entrepreneurs, coaches, musicians, artists, podcasters, and teachers using the platform to grow and communicate with audiences.
The platform is incredibly easy to use, requires zero coding skills, and has pre-built integrations with a broad range of digital technologies, including ecommerce platforms, payment stacks, online course platforms, affiliate marketing software, and more.
In fact, we have integrated ConvertKit into Shopify, and Mighty Networks to automate our marketing efforts across both platforms.
We'll dive into the ConvertKit features in more detail, but broadly ConvertKit makes it easy to design and build custom landing pages and sign-up forms, send stunning email creatives, and build marketing automation flows that drip emails to segmented audiences base don the triggers and conditions you set.
ConvertKit emails have a deliverability rate of over 98% and it's easy to add call-to-action buttons within email templates and access over 100,000 stock images to enhance the look and feel of your marketing outreach.
On top of this, you can tie in RSS fees automatically so that ConvertKit sends content to your subscribers once it's launched on your blog, and it's easy to build conversion funnels to sell digital products (like ebooks, online courses, paid newsletters, preset, and music) directly within the ConvertKit platform.
In fact, we'll talk about how we used ConvertKit's conversion tools to sell pre-sales of our recent online course, Compound Content - which drove over 500 sales in a few days using just one email.
Who is ConvertKit for?
ConvertKit is built for creators and ecommerce businesses.
There are over 500,000 coaches, entrepreneurs, musicians, podcasters, and authors using the ConvertKit platform to communicate with over 250 million subscribers - and the platform continues to grow.
If you are looking to build and manage an email marketing database, then ConvertKit is a great option.
It is one of the best email marketing software platforms out there and has a wide range of features to grow and automate your email marketing efforts.
And if like Visualize Value, you have spent a long time building a large social media audience (across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook) then it's well worth shifting some of that audience over to ConvertKit using their landing pages and sign-up forms.
Unlike social media, where you have to constantly compete for your audience's attention, email marketing platforms like ConvertKit enable you to own your own audience data, and to market to them how and when you see fit.
We've noticed an exponential rise in our revenue and sales, since using ConvertKit to communicate with our audience via email.
How Visualize Value uses ConvertKit
Visualize Value has been using ConvertKit for over 12 months.
We have grown an email subscriber base of over 50,000 subscribers, and have since sent that subscriber base over 1 million emails.
Our average open rate sits well above 50% (which outperforms the industry average open rate of 30%), and we have driven hundreds of thousands of dollars using ConvertKit's marketing automation features.
Here's how we maximize ConvertKit's features to grow Visualize Value.
Generating email subscribers
The first way that we use ConvertKit is to collect email subscribers.
We do this by utilizing a couple of landing pages and sign-up forms that we promote via social media and our website directly.
It really helps that ConvertKit integrates directly with Shopify (our ecommerce platform) because any data we capture via our Shopify sign-up forms, or our Tidio chatbot gets sent directly to ConvertKit.
ConvertKit also tags the subscriber based on how and where they signed up so that we can segment them and target them with email campaigns accordingly.
One of the best examples of how we use ConvertKit's landing pages to drive sign-ups is via our Leveraged Creator form.
Since launching this landing page we have driven 28,000 sign-ups using the Leveraged Creator form. And over 30% of those who land on the form sign up there and then.
We promote the form via our marketing outreach, and across our social media platforms. When someone signs up, they are added to an automated 10-step sequence where we serve valuable content, and discount coupons for our online course materials.
Another example of a high-converting landing page is our VV Drop Alerts form.
Whenever someone wants to stay up to date with our latest merch drops, they can sign up using the VV Drop Alert form. From there, we communicate with them directly (in a segmented way) whenever we have new merchandise drops available.
So far, over 6,000 people have signed up for these merch drops.
Landing pages and sign-up forms are incredibly easy to build within ConvertKit. They require absolutely no coding experience, and there are templates and pre-built forms to get you started.
Running email campaigns
Once our audience signs up to receive emails from Visualize Value, we create valuable campaigns to engage with them.
We run weekly newsletters and custom email campaigns via ConvertKit to target our audience, drive action, and increase sales and revenue.
Our open rates consistently sit above 50% and in the majority of cases, we see open rates exceed 60-70%.
We recently ran a quick email campaign to our audience asking those who have purchased online courses to leave a review, in return for a $50 discount.
Not only did we receive countless 5-star product reviews, but we also drove more sales, and delighted our audience with a bespoke incentive.
It's easy to build email templated using ConvertKit, and we regularly utilize our pre-built templates to launch email campaigns in minutes.
And if it's a bad time to send, we simply schedule the email to be sent at a more convenient time.
Email marketing automation
One of the best features that ConvertKit offers is its email marketing automation sequences.
It's easy to build visual automation flows to retarget new sign-ups based on any number of events, triggers, and actions.
For example, when someone signs up via our Leveraged Creator landing page, we automatically send them a 10-day email sequence that runs through some of the leading Visualize Value concepts.
In addition, we promote our social media accounts to increase followers across Twitter and Instagram and finish the sequence by driving online course sales using discount codes.
It's very easy to set up any number of automated sequences using ConvertKit. The platform makes it easy to set up rules and trigger sequences based on specific events and actions.
ConvertKit also tags every user that signs up, so you can run different sequences depending on how the user is tagged - this is helpful when you're capturing customer data from different sources.
Finally, if you do want to integrate an RSS feed, you can trigger ConvertKit to distribute your content to your subscriber base every time you launch a new blog post.
Build product landing pages
Another way we have leveraged ConvertKit is to sell digital products.
We recently launched a brand new online course, called Compound Content (which helps content creators build content that drives search traffic).
Before we even started creating the content for Compound Content, we launched an email campaign to drive pre-orders and validate demand.
The email took less than 20 minutes to create and was sent to the entire Visualize Value audience, offering a 50% pre-order discount.
We sold over 500 copies of Compound Content within the first month, generating over $24,000 in pre-order revenue. This gave us a really easy way to validate demand for what we thought would be a popular product.
Compound Content now has dozens of 5-star reviews and continues to add value for new customers every day.
Manage email subscribers
It's easy to manage and segment audiences using ConvertKit.
Every time someone signs up to our email list, ConvertKit adds a custom tag to identify the user. This means we can segment audiences and tailor our communication strategy.
It would not be helpful if we had to send the same email communication to our merchandise and online course customers. ConvertKit solves this by giving us all the tools we need to communicate with different customer profiles in a way that makes sense.
ConvertKit Features
Before we talk about ConvertKit pricing, let's review all of the main ConvertKit features, so that you know exactly what's included in each plan.
Grow your audience
When it comes to growing your audience, ConvertKit offers you the ability to create high-converting landing pages and sign-up forms that you can promote via social media, marketing materials, and your own website.
There are tonnes of pre-built templates that you can use as a basis for your own landing pages and sign-up forms. And you don't need to be a designer or have any coding experience to get started.
All ConvertKit landing pages and sign-up forms are optimized across devices (desktop, tablet, and mobile), and you can access over 100k stock images to enhance visual appeal.
Once you're set-up, it's easy to connect your data capture forms and pages to automated sequences, to onboard new sign-ups with educational content, and promotional material.
What's more, ConvertKit is fully GDPR compliant.
Connect with your subscribers
ConvertKit has an extremely high deliverability rate (over 98%) and on average, ConvertKit's open rates sit above 30%.
That's a testament to how easy it is to build beautiful email creatives with clickable subject lines using the ConvertKit email builder.
Segment your audience so that you only communicate with those you want to engage with, mock-up emails in minutes, and schedule the sends for whenever makes sense.
And as your subscriber base grows, add tags to your audience so it becomes easier to segment, and leverage ConvertKit's marketing automation sequences to trigger email sequences based on any event, action, rule, or trigger you create.
Drive revenue and sales
It's easy to drive revenue and sell through ConvertKit.
Launch paid newsletters, or sell digital products (like ebooks, online courses, podcasts, music, and coaching) using ConvertKit's conversion pages.
It's easy to add payment buttons and call-to-actions as ConvertKit integrates with Stripe. When someone makes a purchase they can checkout seamlessly using Mastercard, Visa, or AMEX across any device from anywhere in the world.
ConvertKit also allows you to launch tip jars so that your audience can tip you for providing free value with your marketing outreach.
Reporting & A/B Testing
Like any good email marketing software, ConvertKit makes it easy to run A/B testing to identify which email campaigns perform best for your business.
Once sent, you can track campaign performance, keeping on top of metrics like the number of recipients, open rates, click-through rates, and deliverability.
ConvertKit also offers reporting dashboard so that you can track total/new subscribers, the number of emails sent, the average open rates, the average click-through rates, and more.
The visual automation views also make it easy to understand where there are bottlenecks in your marketing automation sequences.
ConvertKit Pro
ConvertKit offers advanced features via its Pro plan. These advanced features give you the ability to take your ConvertKit usage to the next level.
Here's a rundown of the main ConvertKit Pro additional features.
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Subscriber scoring - easily understand who your top subscribers are, and monitor them closely to understand whether they remain engaged, or whether their interest in your email campaigns is starting to fade. Target them in unique ways, and show them additional value to ensure that they remain your best customers
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Sync ConvertKit with your Facebook custom audiences - create automated email marketing campaigns for your Facebook custom audiences. That means you don't have to do any manual intervention, just pull in your Facebook custom audience data directly and you're good to go
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Live link edits - it's the worst feeling for any email marketer - you click send on your email marketing campaign, and your CTA is broken. ConvertKit Pro ensures that if you make a mistake with your email links, then you can update them post-sending in order to ensure your campaigns convert as intended
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Email referral system for subscribers - the Pro plan includes a free Sparkloop account which allows you to reward subscribers who refer friends to your email list. It's possible to set up custom rewards to tip those who are willing to share your sign-up forms and landing pages with their audience - helping to rocket-fuel your subscriber growth
- Deliverability reporting - get advanced metrics on deliverability reporting to see exactly who did and did not receive your email (as well as the reason behind emails not being delivered). That way, you know how to respond to customers when they reach out to say that they're not receiving your emails
In addition to these ConvertKit Pro features, you can also invite other team members to your account, and access priority customer support with your upgraded plan.
ConvertKit Pricing
The main factors influencing ConvertKit pricing plans are the features you wish to access, and the number of subscribers on your plan.
If you're just getting started, ConvertKit has a 14-day trial that will help you get to grips with the platform. And if you have less than 300 subscribers, you can use some of ConvertKit's features for free while you start to grow your list.
The main limitations of the Free plan are that you cannot integrate with other 3rd party applications like Zapier, Shopify, or other ecommerce platforms. And if you want to run any automated campaigns, this functionality is missing from the Free plan.
The Creator plan starts at just $9 per month and includes all of these features, so in our opinion, it's worth trying this plan for a few months to make sure that you maximize your ConvertKit when you're starting out.
Both the free plan, and the Creator plan give you up to 300 subscribers initially, and then the pricing scales based on the additional subscribers on the plan.
To bring this to life, if you have 10,000 subscribers on the Creator plan, the pricing sits at around $100 per month. This sounds expensive, but the ROI is incredible if you engage your audience in the right way. We can make this $100 back (and more) with one email campaign.
The Pro plan starts at $25 per month and includes all of the features we ran through in our ConvertKit Pro section. The pricing scales faster than the Creator plan, with 10,000 subscribers costing around $140 per month.
What is ConvertKit not good for?
While ConvertKit is a very popular, well-rounded email marketing tool, there are some features that it lacks.
We reviewed all of the best email marketing software platforms and found that other platforms have a wider set of communication features, including the ability to automate SMS and Whatsapp marketing campaigns.
What's more, other email platforms give you the ability to launch social media ads directly within the platform and also build fully fledged websites within their solutions.
For a complete breakdown of the best platforms, check out our detailed guide. And if you are looking for more affordable solutions, tools like Aweber have Pro plans starting under $20 per month.
Get started
Start building your email list today.
Head over to ConvertKit and get signed up for one of the free or paid ConvertKit plans to get started.
Whether you're just testing, or ready to commit, ConvertKit offers a 14-day free plan so that you can start testing their range of email marketing tools.
If you're just getting started, check out our range of training courses on building a personal brand, developing content strategies, and building your business online.
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