Why I moved from Mailchimp to ConvertKit

I’ve wanted to write this post for a long time now, but I didn’t want to write it too soon after I switched (I switched in March 2015). Here is a look into why I moved from Mailchimp to ConvertKit (and why you might want to as move as well).

Mailchimp is huge, ConvertKit (especially when I moved) was the small, up and coming email marketing software. Here’s why I moved (as well as some of the things I wish ConvertKit could do (but can’t, yet).

Sequences

OK, if I had to give just one reason. It’s the email sequences. Putting this together in Mailchimp was a PAIN. Moving emails around in a sequence was almost impossible. Check out how pretty the sequences are in ConvertKit:-

p.s. this is the Actual sign up sequence for the ‘Getting the most out of your Plugin Hunt Theme’ which you will get alongside the free guide for ‘10 Niche Website Ideas using the Plugin Hunt Theme‘

Subscriber Search

I also really like the Subscriber search and listing feature. It’s great how it lets me tag my users and maintain a single list. What I didn’t like with Mailchimp was if I made a new Email List (e.g. Plugin Hunt Theme sign ups) then it would effectively manage two lists.

In ConvertKit I know my subscribers are only on my list once, and I can tag and segment them nicely into group and send broadcasts that way.

Lead Generation Forms

How did I almost forget about this. One of the biggest reasons for moving was MailChimps sign up forms were particularly difficult to display on my website in a nice fashion. ConvertKit’s forms are just great. There’s loads of options too such as pop up when you read 70% of the page scroll, or show on exit intent. The form at the bottom of this post? That’s convertkit and you can have as many forms as you need.

What about the downsides?

Just like Mailchimp, ConvertKit isn’t perfect. The main thing it doesn’t do which I wish it did is A/B testing. You can still do this via ConvertKit but it’s a bit of a hack.

Here’s how to do A/B testing using ConvertKit

1. Export your subscribers to a CSV.
2. Randomly tag your subscribers list using Excel’s RAND function
3. Re-import your subscribers with the tag you’ve randomly assigned using Excel
4. Broadcast two broadcasts, one to the tag A, the other to the tag B
5. Track the broadcasts separately

My only other ‘Niggle’ is the ‘RSS to email’ and how it doesn’t let me easily edit the Title of the RSS email unless I ‘un-automate it’.

What should happen is the RSS template I can edit the title, but it just takes the Feed Name (you can checkout our feed

Here’s how to make your RSS emails pretty

To be able to get around this you have to:-

1. Have the RSS compile but save to draft
2. Manually go in and edit the template (such as the title, and some pre-amble)
3. Then manually send it.

It would be much easier if I could create the template, with RSS tags and let ConvertKit just roll it out automatically.

Using ConvertKit with WordPress

Down to Crunch Time. The really great thing about ConvertKit is how easy it is to embed sign up forms to your WordPress website. I had endless trouble trying to embed MailChimp forms into my website. If you want to see what a ConvertKit form looks like, check out the one at the bottom of the post.

They also offer full landing pages for email sign ups, which you can easily setup on your site by creating a Page and then choosing to use the ConvertKit landing page and not the standard page template.  Perfect for a specific landing page for email sign ups.

This has been improved a lot recently and I’m super excited to see any further improvements they make.

ConvertKit and WooCommerce

I use WooCommerce to sell my products, and through the simple Convertkit WooCommerce plugin I can have people who have purchased on me signed up to a sequence which drip sends them information. This is perfect if you’re a eCommerce business who sells through WooCommerce. It gives you a great way to:-

1. Capture customers into your Email Marketing software
2. Send them a specific sequence of emails post purchase.

Want to Move to ConvertKit?

While ConvertKit has it’s ups and downs, I’d still recommend it to anyone who, like me likes simplicity and almost seamless integration with WordPress.

It only takes a few minutes and you can be up and running with your own Campaign (join ConvertKit here)