Not even social media, organic SEO, paid to advertise, or affiliate marketing can match email marketing’s benefits. Email is personal so when a subscriber decides to open your promotional email in their inbox, there is a better chance of it leading to sales compared to any other marketing strategies. 

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy based on sending emails and developing relationships with your prospects and customers. An effective email marketing strategy can convert prospects into customers and can turn first-time buyers into repeat customers. (READ More: What is email marketing?)

The importance of email marketing

Email marketing is a vital part of an overall marketing and sales strategy. It enables you to turn website visitors and social media followers into loyal email subscribers so you can stay in touch with them long term.

Using email marketing, you can send educational and promotional emails directly to your subscribers without worrying about social media algorithm changes or advertisements. Since you have full control over how often you communicate with your subscribers, you can cultivate an audience of people who are excited to hear from you.

A few additional reasons on why you may want to start building an email list include: 

Building trust with valuable education content

People only buy products and services from people they can trust. However, before you can build trust, you need to provide real value to your subscribers.

One of the best ways to do this is by sending educational emails and a welcome email sequence before introducing a product you’re selling. It shows that you care more about nurturing your relationship and establishing a good rapport with your audience than just sales alone. 

Furthermore, your informative content can strengthen your expertise and credibility when you share a behind-the-scenes look at your creative process and teach your subscribers everything you know.

You can also offer upfront value by offering lead magnets and content upgrades to allow your readers to gain free and exclusive access to some of your best educational resources.  

Promoting your products and services thoughtfully

Once you’re providing relevant and valuable content to your audience, they will be primed the next time you launch a new product or service.

If you only send promotional emails, your subscribers may shy away since you haven’t taken the time to nurture the relationship. Instead, you’ll want to lead through your actionable educational content.

By creating informative emails, you can show how much you know about each topic and begin to understand your audience’s needs and desires.

Email marketing is vital, especially when you are launching a new product or service. Sometimes launch announcements can get lost in your follower’s social media feed. It is better to send a launch-based email sent directly to your subscriber’s inbox so they won’t miss it. 

Nurturing relationships through email marketing

While turning email subscribers into buyers or clients is one of the primary goals of email marketing, it’s hard to accomplish this without building and nurturing relationships with your subscribers first. 

What is ConvertKit?

ConvertKit is a full-service email service provider created by Nathan Barry. It’s one of the fastest-growing email marketing companies around due to its ease of use, automation, and other features. It also offers customizable signup forms and landing pages to help bring in more email subscribers. 

What makes ConvertKit stand out from its competitors?

There are several reasons that make ConvertKit stand out from other email marketing service providers.

•     Several of the most popular email marketing service providers were built using the previous generation of technology and design trends. This leads to overly complicated tools with steep learning curves or not made for modern-day uses cases.
•     ConvertKit is easier to use, more powerful, and its paid plans are priced competitively. They also offer a free landing page plan.
•     ConvertKit is designed for one type of target audience: online creators such as bloggers. This means that there aren’t a lot of eCommerce-focused features that you don’t need. 

Key Features of ConvertKit

Here is a quick rundown of the key features of ConvertKit. 

Subscribers

Other email service providers charge based on the size of your email list. However, ConvertKit was one of the first to do so based on the number of unique subscribers. 

Landing Pages and Forms

ConvertKit offers a wide variety of customizable, responsive landing page templates and forms included with all pricing tiers to help you get more email signups. 

Its built-in forms and landing page functionality is pretty impressive. You can set them up on your own in just a few minutes without the need to pay for any third-party tools or hire an expensive designer. 

Broadcasts

A broadcast is a one-off email to your list that is ideal for traditional newsletters. For instance, whenever you publish a new blog post, you send out a broadcast to your entire email list.  

However, when you are launching a course, you only send emails to people interested in that course. They are still considered as broadcasts. However, instead of going out to the entire list, it’s only going out to a segment you created.

Sending a broadcast is simple. All you need is to choose the recipient, write the email, and send it. ConvertKit’s interface can represent what the actual email will look like.  

Sequences

A sequence is a series of emails, each with a period of delay between each, such as a day or two. You can set them to send out with relative send dates. These are ideal for onboarding sequences, email courses, and evergreen product launches.  

Automation

Automations allow you to do things such as automatically sending different emails to people based on the actions they’ve taken, such as clicking a link or opening a particular email. 

Setting up ConvertKit for email marketing

Below are the steps that you need to follow to set up ConvertKit for your email marketing. 

Step 1: Create a Form

A “form” is the actual thing displayed across your site that will prompt readers to subscribe and then filter them over to your contact list in ConvertKit.

You can embed the forms anywhere throughout your site. Your ConvertKit forms can be displayed by installing the ConvertKit WordPress plugin or adding the code to your site. 

     A. Select Form

     B. Select the Style of your Form

You can choose whatever style you like for your form. Currently, ConvertKit offers three options to choose from. Once you’ve selected the style of your ConvertKit form, click on Settings.

   C. Configure the settings of your form.

1.   Change the name of your form.
2.   Decide what will happen when people submit the form.
3.   Decide if you want to deliver an incentive.

An incentive email is how you will deliver your one-time freebies to subscribers (ebooks, files of stock photos, etc.). When someone opts into your form, the incentive email will automatically be sent to their inbox.

If you choose to send an incentive email, make sure that you check the Send Incentive/Double Opt-in Email located on top of the page.

    D. Design your Form.

There are several ways to design your form. You can change any template text that you see by clicking into it and typing over the existing text. You can add an image by clicking on the big image box in the middle. You can also change the accent color of the form and the text color. Don’t forget to click Save once you complete the changes. 

Step 2: Create a Sequence

Once you’ve created your form, you’ll want to set up an email sequence. 

An email sequence is an automated series of emails delivered to your subscribers who are linked to it. 

You can use an email sequence to deliver content for an email course, or you can use it to provide informative messages to your subscribers as part of a sales funnel for your products.

 

A. Click Sequences on the top menu + Create Sequence.

B. Name your Sequence.

C. Set Up your Sequence

When you’re ready, you can start adding your own emails to the sequence. You can write them in a separate word document or Google document. Afterward, you can copy and paste them over to ConvertKit.

•     Customize your emails to subscribers by clicking the “personalize” button.
•     Decide when you will send each email.
•     Add as many emails as you’d like to your sequence.
•     Add any subscriber exclusions as deemed necessary. 

Step 3: Connect Your Form to your Sequence.

Now that you have a form and a sequence, you need to ensure that they are connected so that when someone signs up through your form, they’ll automatically subscribe to the sequence and read your emails. You can set up this configuration by using the Automation capabilities within ConvertKit.  

Step 4: Display your Form Throughout Your Site.

Now that you have both a form and a sequence, you can display the form on your site. When done correctly, you can display your form anywhere on your site.