If you’re on my Grow Your Blog Newsletter, you’ve already read this. Since that email had such a high response, I thought it might also prove valuable to others searching for ways to increase their open rates, so I’m reposting the email here. 🙂

If you’re not on my Grow Your Blog Newsletter, you can sign up here. I send out an email once a month covering a different blog topic every month. 🙂

So, here goes…. 

After last month’s email, I received several questions about why I switched from MailChimp to ConvertKit and since your email list isn’t rented space like Facebook or Twitter, I thought I better give you an in-depth answer as to why I love Convertkit and what I don’t love about it.

What I Don’t Love

Basic Templates (unless you’re a whiz at coding)

The email templates are not as easy to use as they are with MailChimp and I believe that is mostly due to the founder’s strong belief that “pretty emails are for you, not your reader”. Meaning that an email that contains a ton of graphics and images and is “pretty” is not only more than likely going to end up in the spam filter (or the dreaded promotions tab of Gmail), but it’s also more distracting to your reader.

Your reader wants your voice, not an email with a bunch of pictures…or at least that is the case according to Nathan of ConvertKit.

Confuses Some Folks

The downside to not using graphics any more in my emails is that some folks are confused on the email they are receiving. They don’t realize that 1). It’s a mass email going to several thousand different people, not just them and 2). They don’t understand why they’re getting it because it’s personalized with “Hi [Their name]” but there aren’t any cute graphics to tell them it’s from “The Budget Mama” and not some random chick named Jessi.

It’s Expensive

I’m cheap. There I said it. I hate paying more for something, especially since MailChimp is soooo much cheaper than Convertkit, but as you’ll see in what I love about it, it’s worth every penny in my opinion.

What I Love

Open/Click Rates

My open and click rates have soared through the roof since switching. I’m not sure if that’s due to the no graphics thing but I know that with MailChimp, I tested a few emails with no graphics and my open and click rates were still less than 10%. Now with ConvertKit, my open rates are on average 49%!

That’s amazing for me because before, if I got a 10% open rate I was happy.

Automations Actually Work

I know after talking with a few other bloggers, once their lists reached a certain point, their automations would stop working with MailChimp. MailChimp would randomly pause my “Welcome” emails and my debt-free Christmas challenge emails would randomly stop sending. It was super frustrating. I haven’t had this problem with ConvertKit at all and any issues that I have had with ConvertKit have been solved within 24 hours.

Landing Pages – My FAV!!

Okay, so this is one of my favorite things about ConvertKit….their landing pages.Click here to see one of mine. I love it! Seriously, it’s pretty, it’s captivating, and it’s currently resulting in a 55% conversion rate…meaning that 55% of all people visiting that page are signing up. Makes my heart happy. 🙂

Here’s my video tutorial on setting up landing pages: 

Tags

If you’ve been in the blogging world for a while, you’ve probably heard of the mac daddy Infusionsoft for email marketing. What makes Infusionsoft so awesome is that when someone signs up for your list, they are automatically given a ‘tag’ so you know what they signed up for.

ConvertKit does the same thing and it’s not nearly as expensive or confusing! So, let’s say that signed up for this list (my Grow Your Blog Idea newsletter) plus you signed up for my 21 Days to a Better Budget list. Instead of your email list being added twice to my subscribers list, you would just get a new tag added to your name.

It’s awesome because now, I can really tailor my list down when sending out promotional content! I don’t have to send the same email out to several different lists any more. I can just click on the tags and send one email out to a portion of my overall list. Awesome Sauce.

Okay, so there you have it, why I love ConvertKit and why I switched from MailChimp. 🙂