Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
And in this ConvertKit review and demo, you're going to discover five dirty little secrets,
that may make ConvertKit, not the best solution when it comes to your email marketing and
automations.
Make sure you check out the links in the description, to other marketing software reviews, including
a positive video that talks about the top five reasons ConvertKit is awesome.
Here we're going to be all negative and we're gonna kick things off with number five, and
that is ConvertKit is beginner overkill.
Look, if you're just getting started with your digital business, or you already have
a business and your emails are in a bunch of Excel sheets and you're just coming online
for the first time, wherever you're starting.
If you're just getting started with email marketing, there are other solutions out there
like MailChimp and MailerLite that lets you get started for free.
And once you get to, you know, 200, 300, maybe even 500 or 600 subscribers, then it makes
sense to look at solutions like ConvertKit.
But when you're just getting started, it just doesn't make good business sense, to shell
out $30 to $50 a month, for something like ConvertKit, when you haven't proven that email
marketing is something that's actually going to contribute to your bottom line.
Now, reason number four ConvertKit may not be the best solution for you, deals with the
way that you put together your emails.
There's no way around it, ConvertKit is super plain and is lacking in the email design department.
Some of the things that makes other solutions like MailChimp stand out is they have a ton
of different templates and newsletter styles, that you can put together and it's drag and
drop easy interface.
If you want anything other than plain text and a couple pictures inside of the ConvertKit
editor, you're going to be doing some custom HTML.
So you're going to need to know HTML, in order to turn your plain old text-based emails into
something that is more graphically intensive.
Personally, for me, it's not a big deal, but if you want to have a newsletter that has
a lot of graphics, that has a really nice design, you don't just want the usual ugly
plain text emails, then ConvertKit probably isn't for you.
And on the subject of emails.
Reason, number three ConvertKit might not be for you, is the way that they handle unsubscribes.
And this is going to be very important, especially if you have a lot of different segments in
your business, or you're going to have multiple lists.
Because even on ConvertKit site, they say, if you're gonna be running multiple businesses
or you have multiple lists that aren't necessarily related to each other, then they actually
recommend you having multiple ConvertKit accounts, which is kind of ridiculous because then you're
paying like $30 a month, for each different list that you have, which is crazy.
And the problem with this and the reason that this is such a big deal is, with ConvertKit,
if someone clicks on subscribe, they unsubscribed from everything, unless you set up some custom
unsubscribed links, whereas things like MailChimp and AWeber, where everything is list-based,
if someone's going through a sales sequence, and they unsubscribe, or they don't want that
particular offer, in those other solutions like MailChimp and AWebber, the person's still
going to be on your broadcast list because everyone's in a different list, the lists
are siloed.
Whereas ConvertKit, everyone is in one big list.
So if they clicked on unsubscribe anywhere, unless you've set up custom unsubscribe links,
they're going to be unsubscribed to you, across the board.
And I really think this is something that they should include and make really clear
when you're setting up your account, they don't, it took a little bit of digging.
So you can't put together custom links to make sure someone is just unsubscribing for
a particular sequence.
So you don't lose them altogether, but it is just an extra step it's kind of annoying.
And it is a huge negative, in my mind when it comes to the usability of ConvertKit.
And speaking of usability, reason, number two ConvertKit might not be for you, deals
with the integrations.
And this is something that is very personal because I found out the hard way.
So when you're looking at ConvertKit or any email autoresponder, you wanna make sure that
it's gonna work with every piece of software, you're using now in your marketing and sales
and any piece of software you're considering using in the future.
For example, ConvertKit, doesn't have a deep integration with MemberMouse, which is actually
my favorite membership plugin for WordPress.
There is some basic stuff, but just keep in mind that ConvertKit, because it's a relatively
niche solution for bloggers and creators.
And I think it's pretty small compared to some of the other larger solutions out there.
It may not work directly with your other software in your marketing stack.
So you definitely wanna make sure, that there's a correct integration.
And I really wanna drive this point home.
You need to check what type of integration it is, because just because the piece of software
says that it integrates with ConvertKit or ConvertKit says it integrates with another
piece of software, dive into the documentation and look at how it actually integrates.
Because what they consider an integration, might be fall short of what you actually need,
in terms of the information talking to each other.
So I really want to stress that integration is a huge issue for me personally, when it
came to how ConvertKit talk to other pieces of software, that we were already using in
our marketing stack.
Now, reason number one ConvertKit might not be for you, is price, right at the end of
the day, how much are we paying and how much are we getting?
So reason number five, I briefly went over how it's really not designed for beginners.
And the pricing reflects that.
Because from zero to a thousand subscribers, you're gonna be paying about $29 or $30 a
month, depending upon the pricing might change by the time you're watching this video.
But it's essentially 30 bucks for a thousand subscribers, which when compared to pretty
much every other solution like MailChimp, AWebber, MailerLite, GetResponse, you know,
ConstantContact, ConvertKit is the most expensive.
When you compare it to the higher end solutions, you know, like Drip, InfusionSoft, Ontraport,
OfficeAutopilot, then ConvertKit looks relatively good, in terms of the pricing.
But ConvertKit sits in the middle, in terms of features.
It's definitely not able to compete with things like ActiveCampaign, InfusionSoft and Ontraport,
but it does have a heck of a lot more features and automations, I think just easier UI or
user interface, when compared to something like AWeber and MailChimp.
So it kind of sits in the middle there and you're going to be paying a hefty premium,
for the easy to use automations, inside of ConvertKit.
So that's just something to really consider and really think about.
And that's why I kicked things off with reason number five, why it's probably not a good
idea for beginners, just because the features are overkill.
And then you're gonna be paying a lot of money.
I mean, $30 a month for just a thousand subscribers is a lot, when compared to some of the other
pricing models and other options you have, that subscriber level.
You also want to keep in mind how much you're making off of your email list, to make sure
that your return on whatever software you're purchasing to manage and automate your email
list makes sense, because if you're not at least making, you know, a hundred, some odd
dollars a month, then paying $30 a month for ConvertKit, probably isn't going to make a
lot of business sense.
So thank you so much for watching.
Those are my top five dirty little secrets, that you should keep in mind when considering
using ConvertKit.
Go ahead and check out the links in the description, to other review videos.
So you can be confident and successful with each piece of digital marketing software you
pick up.
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