26 reasons why ConvertKit is the best email marketing service for bloggers

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Struggling to decide which email marketing service to choose? Choosing the wrong one can be a HUGE mistake and cost you thousands in lost revenue. Here are 26 reasons why ConvertKit is the best email marketing service for bloggers.

Email marketing is a crucial part of blogging – it can make a huge difference as to whether your blog is successful and profitable… or not.

Yet so often, email marketing is overlooked, given the bare minimum amount of time, automated to within an inch of its life, or is that one thing that forever falls off the end of the to do list!

But here’s the thing: getting to grips with email marketing is essential if you want to have a successful and profitable blog. There’s a reason why people say, ‘the money is in the list’!

But dabbling in email marketing is not enough. You need the right strategy and the right tools for the job.

One of the biggest things holding back your email marketing efforts right now is the wrong tools! Or, more specifically, the wrong email marketing provider.

Because email marketing providers were not created equally.

Most email marketing providers are not set up with bloggers in mind.

Most email marketing providers are set up with totally different kind of businesses in mind, and as a result, have a whole heap of tools that bloggers DON’T need and don’t always offer the tools bloggers actually do need. They make email marketing more complicated than it needs to be AND/OR make it so you need to build lots of elaborate workarounds in order to do the things that should be easy!

In fact, there is only one email marketing service I know of that has been designed specifically with the needs of bloggers in mind and that’s ConvertKit*.

Here are 26 reasons why I believe ConvertKit is the best email marketing service for bloggers…

1. It’s super easy to use

One of the big reasons why ConvertKit stands head and shoulders above its competitors is because it is so ridiculously easy to use. The interface is simple and clear. It’s incredibly easy to find your way around (there are only 5 options in the main menu and they are all named sensibly!).

Writing an email to your subscribers is as easy as writing a normal email to a friend.  Creating a welcome sequence is as easy as writing a few emails to a friend. And creating an attractive and compelling sign-up form is a 5 minute job.

There are no complicated workarounds needed and no more banging your head against a brick wall either! ConvertKit is simple, intuitive and a pleasure to use.

2. Great customer support

But if you do ever get stuck the customer support* is awesome! It’s fast and super helpful. You can access customer support right inside your ConvertKit dashboard and the team really do go above and beyond to help you out if you can’t figure out how to do something or you’ve got yourself in a pickle and can’t make something work.

3. Massive library of tutorials

Not only is the customer support AWESOME, they’ve also got a massive library of tutorials and video trainings* which cover everything from the basics of how to get started with ConvertKit, right up to advanced email marketing techniques.

My favourite is the Lunch and Learn video series*. You can literally learn how to use ConvertKit in a 1 hour lunch break.

If you are not sure about whether ConvertKit is right for you, I definitely recommend you watch the Lunch and Learn video series as it will give you a real insight into exactly what ConvertKit is like to use and what you can do with it.

4. Multiple opt-in offers

This is one of THE BEST features of ConvertKit. It is unbelievably easy to create multiple different sign up boxes and opt-in offers in ConvertKit. This is a feature that is ESSENTIAL for bloggers and yet which is missing in most of the other email service providers.

Creating an enticing opt-in offer is THE KEY to growing your email list with the right subscribers.

And creating multiple opt-in offers is the key to TURBOCHARGING your list growth!

Most bloggers only have one opt-in offer. This opt-in offer will only attract a small subset of your readers. However, if you create multiple opt-in offers, you will be able to attract a much bigger percentage of your audience as different opt-in offers will appeal to different readers.

The problem is, with most email marketing providers, having multiple opt-in offers is either not possible, not easy (for example involving complex workarounds) or technically possible, but likely to throw up a whole host of other problems.

ConvertKit on the other and is built specifically with the intention of making the creation of multiple opt-in offers easy, quick and enjoyable. It takes literally 5 minutes to set up a new opt-in offer form – even less if you use ConvertKit’s duplicate form option!

5. Attractive and enticing sign-up forms

So often I go to an otherwise beautifully designed blog and see hideously unattractive sign-up forms. It’s such a shame. If you have gone to all the effort of designing a beautiful blog, you really don’t want to ruin the effect with an ugly sign-up form!

ConvertKit, on the other hand, have beautiful sign-up forms which are very easy to customise (even if you are someone with limited design skills!) so you can quickly and simply get them to match your blog’s style and colours.

Here’s an example…

They also have an integration with the Unsplash stock photo library, so you can take advantage of their high quality photography (for free!) to make your opt-in forms look super professional – or use your own images to show an image of your freebie (an opt-in offer is much more compelling when you can actually see what you are going to get!).

ConvertKit’s forms are also mobile responsive – meaning they look just as good on mobile and tablet as they do on desktop.

AND you have a choice of different formats:

• Inline (embed this one anywhere on a blog post or in a widget space)
• Modal (otherwise known as a popup, this can be triggered when a reader clicks a link, goes to leave your site (exit intent), or by time on site or scroll percentage)
• Slide In (sometimes known as a ‘toaster’, this one slides up from the bottom right or bottom left of your site after a certain time or scroll percentage)
• Sticky Bar (a banner that sticks to the top or bottom of your website)

All of these are free with ConvertKit, no matter how big or small your list. With other email service providers, you typically have to pay extra to get this kind of functionality or pay for a premium integration, such as OptinMonster*.

6. High converting landing pages

Another feature which is included on all tiers of ConvertKit is high converting landing pages*. Landing pages typically convert readers into subscribers much better than an opt-in form.

ConvertKit make it super easy to quickly create a really attractive, professional looking landing page for your opt-in offer.

You can choose from a whole library of templates (ebook, webinar, waitlist, newsletter, event…) which have been specifically designed to convert really well.

Again, this is a feature you would normally have to pay extra for or pay for a premium integration (such as LeadPages), but with ConvertKit, landing pages are part of the package!

7. Fully editable double opt-in email

It’s essential to send a double opt-in email* to your potential subscribers to comply with legal requirements in many countries and also to avoid your email list filling up with bots and fake subscribers.

Once a potential subscriber has entered their details, your email marketing provider will automatically send them a double opt-in email with a confirmation button they must click before they can be added to your email list and receive emails from you. But often the double opt-in email is not fully editable, meaning it comes across as impersonal and often a bit spammy.

Having an impersonal and spammy looking double opt-in email is going to put off many of those potential subscribers who have got as far as filling in their email address, but haven’t yet confirmed their subscription. This means you could be missing out on a huge percentage of ‘nearly there’ potential subscribers who are falling at the last hurdle!

ConvertKit allow you to edit every part of the double opt-in form so you can reword it to make it sound like you and come across as a legit, friendly and personal… not weird and spammy! This means you are much less likely to have potential subscribers falling at the last hurdle.

You can even personalise the subject line to make it much more compelling than ‘Confirm Your Subscription’, meaning your ‘nearly there’ subscribers are much more likely to open your double opt-in email in the first place!

And best of all, you can use the double opt-in email to actually deliver your freebie… by making the CONFIRM YOUR SUBSCRIPTION button also be the DOWNLOAD button for the freebie. Even the button is fully editable, so you can make it say whatever you want it to say: for example, DOWNLOAD NOW or GIMME MY FREE STUFF. And when your subscriber clicks that button they get their free stuff and you get a new confirmed subscriber!

8. Easy and effective freebie delivery

Have you ever tied yourself in knots trying to work out how to deliver a free opt-in offer to your new subscribers?

With most email marketing services it’s pretty complicated to figure out how to deliver just one opt-in offer correctly…

With ConvertKit it’s super easy, not just to deliver one freebie, but to deliver multiple freebies correctly to the right people.

With ConvertKit, you can have as many opt-in offers running at the same time as you like, and you can rest assured that if a reader opts in using a form which offers Freebie A, they will receive Freebie A and only Freebie A, while your reader who opts in for Freebie B, will receive Freebie B and only Freebie B. And your reader who opts in for both freebies will receive them both!

Better still, your reader who opts in into Freebie C several times because they keep losing it will keep being sent Freebie C each time they opt in, unlike with most email marketing services which won’t resend a freebie once someone is on your mailing list!

9. Pay for each subscriber only once

With all this repeated opting in, you might be wondering if you have to pay for the same subscriber multiple times…

Absolutely NOT!

Unlike other email marketing providers which often have separate lists for different freebies / forms and make you pay multiple times for the same subscriber, with ConvertKit you only ever pay once for the same subscriber.

That means a subscriber can opt-in to every single one of your 37 different opt-in offers and ConvertKit would only ever count that as one subscriber!

10. Keep track with tags

One of ConvertKit’s best features is tags. You can set things up so a subscriber gets tagged when they do specific actions.

For example, you could tag every subscriber who has signed up for Freebie A with ‘Got Freebie A’.

Or you could tag every subscriber who clicks a link to your blog post about cupcakes in an email, with ‘Interested in Cupcakes’

You can then use these tags to target emails at the right people.

This is especially useful if you have different types of readers on your site. Maybe your blog is about gardening and cooking. You could tag subscribers who have clicked on the freebie related to gardening as ‘Interested in Gardening’ while those who clicked on your cooking freebie can be tagged as ‘Interested in Cooking’. Then you could send your cooking related emails to the ‘Interested in Cooking’ subscribers and gardening related emails to the ‘Interested in Gardening’ subscribers. Subscribers who have opted into both freebies would get both emails.

11. Link triggers

Link triggers are a truly AWESOME feature in ConvertKit. They allow you to create an action that happens when someone clicks on a link in one of your emails.

For example, if someone clicks on a link to your sales page, you can set things up so those people are then sent an automated series of emails giving them more information about your product or maybe even a discount code.

Or you could set up a link trigger so when someone slicks on a link they automatically get tagged to say they are interested in that subject. To take our previous example, perhaps you put a P.S. at the bottom of your gardening emails saying ‘are you interested in cooking too? If so click here to receive emails about cooking.’ You could then set up a link trigger so every time someone clicks on that link, they are tagged ‘Interested in Cooking’ and they then get sent the cooking emails too.  

You can also use this feature to opt your readers out of certain types of email. So, say for example you are sending a series of emails about your new product, you could set up a link trigger so that subscribers who aren’t interested could opt-out of your new product emails, but still stay on your list (this massively reduces the number of unsubscribes during a product launch and means you are not annoying people who love your newsletters but don’t want to hear about your new product!)

12. Easy and effective welcome emails

Another part of email marketing that often gets put off over and over again is creating a welcome sequence. Having a welcome sequence makes a huge difference to your open rates, click rates and reduces the number of unsubscribers. But with many email service providers these are tricky to set up and/or not available on all plans.

Not so with ConvertKit!

ConvertKit makes creating a welcome sequence a breeze. It’s as simple as writing a few emails. You can set it up so each email sends exactly when you want it to (immediately, 3 hours later, 2 days later, 1 week later… it’s fully customisable!) – you can even use link triggers in them, if you want to!

And you can easily set things up so the sequence sends to just the right people.

For example, so it just sends to new subscribers and not to subscribers who’ve already had it.

Or you can write two different welcome sequences to send depending on which freebie they opted in for.

You could even set up a welcome email that sends to all new subscribers and which contains link triggers – the subscriber would get a different sequence depending on which link they clicked. This would be great if your readers are sometimes beginners, sometimes intermediates and sometimes advanced – ask which they are in the first email and then send a different welcome series depending on which level they are!

And you don’t need to limit yourself to welcome sequences. You can create a sequence for absolutely anything in ConvertKit!

13. Visual automations

ConvertKit have a lot of features that I love, but I think Visual Automations* is my favourite. Visual automations allow you to do pretty much anything you like with your subscribers, depending on their behaviour in a really easy to use way.

You simply set up a trigger (signs up for a freebie, is added to a tag, makes a purchase…) and then you can choose what happens next (gets tagged, has a tag removed, gets sent a sequence, set a time delay).

You can even set conditions. This is super useful if for example you want to send certain subscribers a sales sequence for your product… but only if they haven’t already bought your product!

Here’s an example of a visual automation you could use for new subscribers. In this sequence, new subscribers are initially sent a welcome sequence, then after a short delay, they are then sent the sales sequence. If at any point a subscriber buys that product they are tagged with BOUGHT PRODUCT and automatically taken out of the sales sequence and put into the product sequence. If they go all the way through the sales sequence and don’t buy the product, they get sent a questionnaire asking for feedback on why they didn’t buy the product and then at the end, whether they buy the product or not, they get tagged with READY FOR NEWSLETTER and start receiving the normal weekly newsletters.

If you are finding it difficult to know what to use Visual Automations for, ConvertKit have a whole library of done-for-you visual automations* you can access directly from your ConvertKit dashboard!

14. Easy to make money from your list

ConvertKit’s clever tags, visual automations and integrations with other platforms* (such as Teachable, Shopify, SendOwl, WooCommerce, Zapier…)  makes it really easy to make money from your email list.

It takes no time to whip up a quick email sequence of a few emails designed to sell your product or service, then add a link trigger to your newsletter. If readers click on that link trigger, they then automatically receive your sales sequence. You can then set up a quick visual automation to ensure they are pulled out of that sales sequence if they buy the product.

To take things to the next level you could use even use conditional content…

15. Conditional content based on tags

ConvertKit really is awesome – it’s so easy to set up and get started but you can also do some really clever stuff with it, such as sending different content to different subscribers depending on what tags they have…in the same email!

So for example, in your weekly newsletter you could have a paragraph offering a 50% discount on your product which only displays if a subscriber does not have the ‘bought product’ tag!

You can find out more about how to use conditional content based on tags* in ConvertKit’s amazing knowledgebase!

16. Easily create email courses and challenges

You can also use ConvertKit sequences to create a free email course or challenge*. In each email of the sequence you deliver a lesson of your course. Perhaps the easiest freebie of all to create and one that converts really well! To see an example of this in action, check out my FREE cornerstone content course.

17. Simple text-based emails

ConvertKit have done a lot of research and discovered that simple, text-based emails are much more effective than the overly complex, highly formatted emails that most email marketing providers use.

This might seem somewhat counter-intuitive, but actually it makes total sense when you think about it…

Text-based emails are much more likely to actually reach your subscribers’ inboxes and not get caught up in spam filters and, because text-based emails look and feel more like a normal email from a friend, they are much more likely to get read and acted upon, compared to highly-formatted emails which look much more salesy and impersonal.

Of course, if you want to, you can still add photos, images and gifs to your ConvertKit emails… but you don’t waste time messing around with fancy templates!

18. Exclude particular subscribers from your emails

ConvertKit make it really easy to send your emails to exactly the right people. Whenever you send an email to your subscribers, ConvertKit starts by asking you who you want to send it to.

This means you can include and exclude subscribers to ensure that only the right people get that email.

For example, you can exclude anyone who’s already bought your product from sales emails.

You can exclude anyone currently going through your welcome sequence or an email challenge from your regular newsletters (so they don’t get bombarded with too many emails all at once).

Or you could even send out an email to just one small sub-set of your list. For example, just those subscribers who have joined your waitlist or who are coming to an event.

19. A/B Testing

It can be hard to pick the right subject line for your emails. A/B testing allows you to try out two different subject lines to see which one gets more opens.

You write your email in the usual way, but then instead of giving it one subject line, you give it two different subject lines.

ConvertKit will then send out your email with subject line A to 15% of your list and your email with subject line B to another 15% of your list.

ConvertKit will then collect data for the next 4 hours to see which subject line gets the most opens. After 4 hours ConvertKit will send your email to the remaining 70% of your list with whichever subject line was most successful in the first 4 hours.

This feature inevitably leads to better open and click rates overall as you will always be sending the majority of your list the most compelling subject line.

20. Use ConverKit’s Mailing Address

One thing which puts many bloggers off from even getting started with email marketing is the fact that you have to put an actual physical address at the bottom of all your emails to comply with anti-spam laws.

Understandably most bloggers do not want their home address appearing at the bottom of their emails, nor do they want to pay for an expensive PO Box address.

ConvertKit have an amazing workaround for this – you can use ConvertKit’s own address! This is all totally legit and above board. The legal requirement is that it has to be a real address that someone could send real physical mail to. If anyone sends you any mail to ConvertKit’s address, ConvertKit will scan it and email it to you FOR FREE! How awesome is that?

Find out more about how to use ConvertKit’s mailing address in your emails here*

21. Amazing analytics

One of the most important parts of email marketing is analysing the analytics to see what is working. ConvertKit make this super easy to do. They have all sorts of amazing analytics right in the ConvertKit dashboard, so you can quickly and easily see how you are doing.

For example, you can see at a glance, how many subscribers you are getting each day and from which forms / landing pages.

You can see which forms and landing pages are getting the most visitors and which are converting best.

You can also see at a glance how your email newsletters and sequences are doing – your open rates, click rates, unsubscribes and the results of any A/B testing.

And you can drill down and look at an individual subscriber’s history – which emails they opened/clicked, whether any emails bounced and what tags and purchases they have.

22. Really easy to clean your list

It is essential that you regularly clean your email list to ensure you only have active subscribers on it. A list full of inactive subscribers will affect the deliverability of your emails and mean you end up paying for subscribers who never even see your emails, let alone open them!

The reason why many bloggers don’t clean their email lists is because with many email marketing services it is such a palaver!

But ConvertKit make it super easy.

There is a ready-made ‘cold subscribers’ segment right in your ConvertKit dashboard. From there you can easily select all your cold subscribers and either delete them or send them a reactivation sequence.

23. Free migration

Really like the sound of ConvertKit and want to move over, but can’t face all the hassle of moving your list and all your existing forms, sequences, automations, templates etc.? ConvertKit has you covered with their FREE migration service*!

24. ALL the features – even if you have a small list!

One of the loveliest things about ConvertKit is you get ALL the features even if you only have a small list. So often with email marketing services, if you are on the bottom tier, you only get some of the features and you only get the really good features if you have a huge list.

Not so with ConvertKit!

Whether you have 3 subscribers, 3000 subscribers or 300,000 subscribers you get ALL the features:

• Unlimited forms and landing pages
• Unlimited email sends
• Unlimited sequences
• Unlimited tags
• Unlimited visual automations
• Unlimited link triggers
• Access to all the tutorials and video trainings
• Access to all the analytics
• Amazing, fast customer service
• Free migration

25. Amazing value for money…

One of the biggest reasons I hear for not going with ConvertKit is the price, but when you consider all you get with ConvertKit… and especially the fact that ConvertKit make it so easy to make money from your email list, actually ConvertKit is amazing value for money.

In fact, by NOT going with ConvertKit, you could well be losing out on money you could’ve earned and so NOT going with ConvertKit could actually be COSTING you money!

Ready to make the switch? GET CONVERTKIT TODAY*

(You even get a free 14 day trial, so you can test all the features out and see if it’s for you before you commit!)

26. … and now there’s even a free option!

If you really like the sound of ConvertKit but you are just starting out and even the basic tier is beyond your budget, I have good news for you… you can now get a FREE version of ConvertKit which allows you to send emails to up to 500 subscribers plus get unlimited landing pages, subscriber management and ConvertKit’s Creator Pass (two business building courses) for FREE!

But you need to hurry as this is a limited time offer from ConvertKit. Very soon they will be moving this limit back down to 100 subscribers for new free plan customers.

To get hold of this offer, you need to use my special affiliate link HERE*

Find out more about ConvertKit’s free plan, including how to unlock up to 1000 subscribers on the free plan HERE*

More on this topic…

• Why every blogger NEEDS an email list
• How to kick start your email list growth and become an email marketing ROCKSTAR!
• 31 email marketing mistakes to avoid
• How to create an opt-in offer that actually works – step-by-step
• ConvetKit vs MailChimp: which is best for your blog?

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*This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!