ConvertKit | A Complete Guide
ConvertKit is basically the secret to successful email marketing. With ConvertKit, more people open and click on your emails. We’ve tested other platforms and always come back to ConvertKit. If you want to give it a try, you’re in the right place! Here’s ConvertKit | A Complete Guide.
ConvertKit | A Complete Guide
Dashboard Overview
When you first log in to ConvertKit, you’ll find a dashboard that shows the overview of your account. From here, you can see how many new subscribers you have, your email open and click rates, and the total emails you’ve sent. It’s a great place to take a quick peek at how many email list subscribers you have and your growth trajectory!
In the top toolbar on the dashboard, you’ll see 5 different sections – “Grow,” “Send,” “Automate,” “Learn,” and “Earn.” Let’s break down what each of those sections include.
Grow
The “Grow” section of the toolbar features the two most prominent elements of growth – your actual subscribers, and your landing pages and forms.
Subscribers
The subscribers tab gives you more in-depth information about your subscriber numbers. You can see which days people subscribe and unsubscribe. Don’t worry – when you send an email, people will totally unsubscribe! That’s just how it goes. It doesn’t mean you did something wrong, but it can be a good indicator of what content is the best for your audience when you look at it over time.
Tags
The subscribers page also allows you to search all of your subscribers and see all of the tags that exist in your ConvertKit. Tags are a great way to section off your subscriber list to do more targeted email marketing. You can create tags to discern which product someone has purchased from you, which freebie they opted-in for, or even their demographics.
To create a new tag, scroll to the bottom of the “tags” column on the right-hand side of the screen and click “+ Create A Tag.” Then you’ll see a pop-up to label the tag.
You can add subscribers to a tag manually, or use automations to make this happen. We’ll talk about automations in a bit!
Landing Pages and Forms
Landing pages and forms are another element of growth because they collect information for new email subscribers. You all know that freebies are a GREAT lead magnet to get more people on your email list. If you want to create a freebie to give away in a blog post and attract new email list subscribers, this is the place to do it! (The freebie in this blog post is a form that I made on ConvertKit.)
ConvertKit allows you to create entire landing pages, or forms. Landing pages will have a URL that you can direct people to for sign-ups, and forms can be embedded on an existing website to collect that information. Both can be very useful!
Send
The “send” tab features access to your email broadcasts, templates, sequences, and snippets. For the purposes of our ConvertKit | A Complete Guide, we’re mostly focusing on the broadcasts and templates.
Broadcasts
This is, unsurprisingly, where you will create and send out your emails! You can create an email just like you would in a typical email system. Then, once you’re ready to send it, you have the option to choose who you do and do not want to send the email to, as well as the time it goes out. This is where tags can come in handy!
We use this feature a lot when we’re advertising a course launch. We want to make sure the email goes to everyone who attended the webinar where Jessica advertised the launch, but not to anyone who has already purchased the course.
Templates
The templates section is where you can design the style of your emails. You can format the color and size of your headings, bullets, etc. Make it your own!
Automate
The automate tab houses some of the most impressive features of ConvertKit – the automations! For the purposes of our ConvertKit | A Complete Guide post, I’m going to stick to the Visual Automations tab. You can also find Rules, Integrations, and RSS info in this section.
Visual Automations
The visual automations in ConvertKit are literally AMAZING. Basically, an email automation means that you can tell ConvertKit to send certain emails to people in a certain order based on a tag or form that they complete. Here’s an example:
That’s an automation for the Hustle & Grit Guide freebie. There are two ways to hop into that funnel: filling out your information on a landing page, or filling out your information on a form embedded into the website. Once you fill out your information, ConvertKit knows to send you the Hustle & Grit Guide.
Then, the automation branches off. If someone already on the email list signs up, they won’t get another email. But if a new email list subscribers signs up, then they will be added into my nurture sequence! That’s basically an email sequence to say hello and help the subscriber learn more about Jessica.
Since these automations are created visually, it’s super easy to think through how they will work!
Earn
The “earn” tab features a products section, a tip jar, and a payout. If you’re an affiliate for ConvertKit, then the payout section is where you can see those numbers!
The Hey Jessica team doesn’t use the other two sections, but I’ll give you a brief intro. The Tip Jar is literally that – you can let your audience send you tips for creating your email content!
The products section allows you to sell digital products to your audience straight in ConvertKit. We use a combination of other services to make this happen, but if you want an all-in-one solution, you can take advantage of this.
Learn
The Learn section is there to help you learn more about ConvertKit. Their support is already AMAZING, but the addition of detailed tutorials and community forum means you won’t go long with a question unanswered.
Whew, there you have it! ConvertKit | A Complete Guide. This will help you get started with what I think is THE best email marketing software out there! And if you want to give ConvertKit a try, you can click here.
*Note: some of the links included in this post are affiliate links. They help support me at no extra cost to you!*
