ConvertKit’s 30 Day Landing Page Challenge

This post contains affiliate links.

How big are you dreaming this year?

What are you building to serve your audience? What products or services are on your horizon? What ideas are you ready to make a reality?

Did you ever think those ideas could help you win $5,000?

Now they can.

ConvertKit’s 30 Day Landing Page Challenge

ConvertKit wants to celebrate your big dreams and help you kickstart your next idea with this month-long challenge geared around landing pages.

I love landing pages.

They’re a simple and beautiful way to promote products, webinars, your newsletters...the possibilities are endless. And they’re so easy to set up.

In just 10 minutes you can have a fully designed and branded landing page live and ready to share with the world.

With that in mind, ConvertKit is hosting this challenge to help you get your next idea up and running with a landing page to gain as many new subscribers as you possibly can.

For one creator who can set up a landing page that grows their list by over 100 subscribers in one month, ConvertKit is giving away a grand prize of:

• $5,000
• A free year of ConvertKit
• And a year of coaching with one of their account managers
• There are also more great prizes for anyone who doesn’t quite reach that level too!

And to help you along the way, ConvertKit will be hosting five live trainings to help you with everything from creating your landing page offer, to figuring out how to share your landing page, to tactics to make that email list grow.

The challenge starts on April 1st!

With 18 chances to win based on the number of subscribers you gain, it’s time to make your next big dream a reality.

I bet you didn’t think April was going to be this fun, right?

Click the Link below to join the challenge today!

<Grow your list to fund your future with the 30 Day Landing Page Challenge>

Three Ways To Grow Your Community Online

 Online marketing is a constantly evolving challenge. One day we are told email marketing is the key to success and the next that email is dead. The way we think about reaching, capturing and engaging with our audience and our customers’ needs to reflect how they themselves engage online.

For me, that’s all about community. Ironically as we become more and more enmeshed in our digital worlds, the desire for connection becomes even greater. So how do we bring those two worlds together?

Here are 3 easy to implement ways to grow your online community.

Launch a Facebook Group

Facebook Groups are a fantastic way to build community around your core area of expertise and knowledge and like most things online, it’s about the quality of engagement, not the number of members. Of course, you want to grow your group, but do not be put off from setting one up by thinking that you need thousands of members for it to be successful, you don’t.

What you do need is to provide value and a real sense of community. That will require you to dedicate time into the group each day, to initiate conversations, to engage in others conversations and of course to steer the group itself.

So how do you start one? Pick a topic that you are passionate about and that is related to your core business. Start a group and make sure that you have some great graphics in place for your FB banner etc. You want to start your group looking as well put together and professional as possible. You don’t need to pay a designer to do this, you can do it very simply using apps like Canva.

Now its nearly time to start inviting people into the group, but before you do that, make sure that you’ve embedded some great content into the group. Here’s some examples:

Have a series of webinars already set up that people can join.
Create checklists and other useful documents that your members can use.
Set up regular discussions: Monday Meet Ups, Friday Promos – it sets a theme and an expectation for what people can get from the group.

Final part … start to invite people to join!

TOP TIPS

Just remember to not add people to groups without their permission, this is really, really annoying and will likely prevent anyone from joining. Instead send a personal message, whether through FB itself or another medium … just make sure that the message is personal and not the same message sent to multiple people. It is crucial that you do this for the first 20,50, 100 people. They will be the ones that create the most engagement in your group and make new members who come to ‘look’ at the group want to stay.

Facebook Live Broadcasts

Love or hate video, it’s here to stay and the best way to get involved is FB Live. Pick a topic that you want to talk about or share with your community and press Live Video … that’s all you need to do to get started.

FB Live will allow you to build relationships with your community far quicker and deeper – it’s the next best thing to meeting people in person. FB Live gives you an opportunity to showcase both your knowledge and your personality. This does not mean that you need to be an extrovert to make FB Live work for you, all you need to do is be yourself.

As FB Live is part of Facebook, they make sure that those videos are seen by far more of your community than other videos that you post, like You Tube, so it’s a great way to reach more people.

TOP TIPS

Set up a schedule so that people know what time and days you will be broadcasting. Consistency is key. I have a regular FB Live, every Wednesday at 6am GMT on my Facebook Business Page – everyone now knows they will always find me there, every week at the same time and each week, our audience grows.

Make sure you name your FB Live each week and include a link to your website / landing page – you do this in the text as you launch your FB Live.

Create Content That People Can Share

Whether you’re creating inspirational quotes, blogs, FB Live Broadcasts or Community Groups, you want people to share them. Sharing is caring and the best way to grow your community is through recommendation.

Make sure your content isn’t just about you and promoting your business; you want to provide real, meaningful value that people want to share. Your content wants to showcase your genius, give tremendous value and leave people wanting more.

TOP TIPS

Make sure that you have links to your website or relevant landing page in all your copy.

If you’re going to do inspirational quotes, make sure they are relevant and original … your own where possible!

Remember to ASK people to share your content! Sounds simple, but it’s easy to forget. IF you want people to share your FB Live broadcasts, you have to ask people and remind them how to do it. If you want to grow your Facebook Group, you want your members to recommend other people to join. Make that easy for them to do so; not just by asking them, but also by providing them with the links that they need to share.

If you’re not already in my Facebook Group, The Freedom Collective, what are you waiting for?! 

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The Future of Messenger Marketing: What It Is, Where It’s Going, & Why The Future Is So Very Bright For Businesses

Find out what’s coming and how businesses are already deploying Messenger Marketing strategies to grow relationships with customers in this post.

If there’s one thing all business owners can agree on, it’s that you have to approach your customers in the places where they’re already hanging out.

If your customers are sports-loving guys who watch ESPN and the NFL Channel, you wouldn’t advertise to them on HGTV and Lifetime, would you?

Of course not.

You’d put your ads on sports networks where your target market will see them.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Messenger Marketing is set to become the world’s single biggest marketing channel in the next 5-7 years.

Messenger Marketing – noun – the act of leveraging mobile, chat platforms to facilitate conversations and commerce with prospects and customers.

There’s no denying the fact that we’re moving away from emails, SMS and phone calls. More and more we’re using mobile-friendly messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and WhatsApp to keep in touch with friends, family, and even businesses.

It’s the quickest, easiest, and most convenient way to reach someone.

Is it any wonder, then, why Facebook Messenger Marketing is the most exciting new marketing channel to come by in a long, long time?

Just look how quickly messaging apps surpassed social networks in monthly active users:

Source: https://blog.bufferapp.com/messaging-apps

The steepness of that curve should tell you something: messaging apps have a naturally huge appeal. They’re too easy and intuitive not to use.

So, what’s to come? In the next 1,700 words, I’m going to give you a glimpse into the future of Messenger Marketing and apps, along with a few hints about some of the sophisticated new tools we have in the pipeline for ManyChat.

Before we jump to the future of Messenger Marketing, let’s talk about what it is and why it’s so important for your business to start using it to connect with your customers.

What Is Messenger Marketing?

Messenger marketing is a new and increasingly popular way to communicate with prospects, leads, and customers.

As a marketing channel it boasts better engagement than any other channel out there, including…

• Email
• Direct mail
• Social media
• Push notifications
• Skywriting

…you name it.

So what does that mean? Very simply, it means when you send your customers a message on Facebook Messenger, more people will open, read, and interact with your messages.

And those messages can either be live (say, a real-time conversation between a customer service rep and a customer), or they can be automated using a chatbot (much like an email autoresponder series). But unlike email, which has come to feel like work for most people, Facebook messages are quick & easy to respond to.

As a result, they get sky-high open and click-through rates.

If it sounds a little bit like SMS marketing, you’re on the right track.

However, with Messenger Marketing, you can do a lot of things you can’t with SMS, like sending beautiful messages that come complete with clickable call-to-action (CTA) buttons, GIFs, galleries, and more.

Basically, Messenger Marketing combines the instant delivery & attention of SMS with the attractiveness and automation power of email. Messenger also feels more personal than email, but less invasive than SMS—striking the perfect balance for businesses looking to communicate with customers.

And thanks to more and more integrations (such as our new integration with Zapier), you can now easily and automatically add Messenger contacts to your email list, register them for a webinar, and much more.

What Can You Do With Messenger Marketing?

The beauty of Messenger Marketing is that you can still do all the stuff you’re used to doing in your marketing efforts…

…it just makes everything easier and more effective.

When someone sends you a message they’ll be automatically added to your ManyChat subscriber list. From there you can add them to your email list and continue to follow up with them via email.

You can send them content, sell them products, ask for feedback, and more—all within the native messenger app.

The ability to add clickable call-to-action buttons in messenger gives you the freedom to customize messenger marketing for any business.

For example, look how easy it is to register someone for a webinar:

Depending on which link you click, Derek’s chatbot can automatically register you for the webinar, give you the details on how to attend, or offer to send you the recording.

You can also use ManyChat to segment your visitors and find out what their interests are, so that you can present them with relevant and personalized product recommendations:

Or, simply use a chatbot to deliver deliver white papers and other lead-nurturing content:

Cutting-edge ecommerce companies are using messenger marketing to send transactional messages (whether on desktop or mobile) — sending purchase confirmations, letting people know when their product has shipped, and so on.

Look how Code&Quill, a brand that creates specialty notebooks for creatives sends all the information their customers need about their orders:

Of course, you’re already able to do all of this through email. But email feels cold and impersonal, and even the best email marketing departments in the world still get open rates under 30%.

In contrast, Facebook messages provide your customers with the personal, one-on-one interactions they want, with open rates currently hovering around 85%. And if they have a question, all they have to do is reply to your message—and someone from your company will be able to respond instantly.

And that’s what’s so great about Facebook Messenger Marketing. It gives you all the automation you could want, but in a way that’s also private and personal. As a result it provides less friction for the end user, helping you to develop a deeper relationship with your customers.

(RELATED READING: How to Build a Simple Facebook Messenger Bot with ManyChat)

It was that goal—less friction for the end user, helping businesses to develop a deeper relationship with their customers—that drove us as we built ManyChat; the platform can already accomplish those things. But in the near future you’re going to see companies doing even more remarkable things with Messenger Marketing.

The best is yet to come.

And for a glimpse into what the future might hold, let’s take a quick trip across the world—where the future is now for messaging apps.

The Meteoric Rise of Messengers: The China Case Study

I’ve said before that in the next 5-7 years, Messenger Marketing is going to capture 80% of all B2C communication.

It’s going to replace email, websites, phone calls, and SMS as the primary way businesses communicate with customers. It’s not going to be “just another channel.”

It’s going to be THE channel.

And if you’re skeptical about any of this, look no further than China—where this exact thing has already happened.

In China, over 900 million people use WeChat each month, making it the most widely used app in the country. It’s the dominant way people communicate, pushing SMS and email to the sidelines—even at work, where many employees use WeChat for business communications (instead of email). The app allows for free video calls, easy sharing of large files, and instant group chats. Instead of exchanging business cards, you simply use WeChat to scan someone’s QR code and snag their contact information.

It’s done more than that, though.

In many cases WeChat has actually replaced websites altogether. Many bloggers in China have turned to WeChat as their primary channel for distributing content, generating massive readership without ever even posting to a traditional blog.

Did I mention it’s also a revenue monster—largely replacing cash and credit cards? WeChat Pay is everywhere in China: you can use it to pay for purchases at physical and online stores, request taxis, order movie tickets, and even buy a drink from a vending machine.

According to the 2017 WeChat User Report, 87-94% of users in China pay for offline purchases using WeChat…compared to 38-51% using cash and 29-36% using debit/credit cards:

Source: https://chinachannel.co/1017-wechat-report-users/

Statistics like this are really cool because they give a glimpse of what’s possible, of what’s coming, in the rest of the world. And when you combine that with all the capabilities of Facebook…all the rich data and targeting options hiding in our profiles…

You can see why the future of Messenger Marketing is so exciting.

The Future of Messenger Marketing

Imagine you’ve just spent a night at a hotel.

After you check out the next morning, you look at your phone and notice a notification from Facebook Messenger. You check it, and see that the hotel has sent you an automated message asking, on a 1-5 scale, how your stay was.

If you respond with a 1-3, the chatbot automatically asks you if anything was wrong and what they can do to improve. If you respond by telling them about the cockroaches you found under the bed, a customer service rep immediately replies to your message and credits you with a free stay.

If you respond with a 4 or 5, the chatbot automatically thanks you and gives you a link to leave a review online. They also tell you that, in the future, you can book a room by simply sending them a message with the date and type of room you want.

Doesn’t that sound quicker, easier, and more convenient for everyone involved? (Especially compared to the nightmare of opening graphic-heavy emails and navigating a poorly designed website on your phone?) And of course, the hotel chain will be able to store the data from this conversation in a central system and use it to provide better service in the future.

In short, scenarios like this are what the future holds for Messenger Marketing.

You’ll be able to set up chatbots that automatically send a message based on the last interaction the person had with your company—whether it was watching a video, making a purchase, viewing a certain product page on your website…you name it.

When someone needs to contact you, they won’t go to your website. Instead they’ll send you a Facebook message. Messenger will become your single point of interaction with customers—the one place where they can easily reach you anytime they have a question, need help, or simply want to make a purchase (which they will also be able to do directly through Messenger).

Powerful New Features Coming to ManyChat

I can’t give too many specifics just yet…but let’s just say we have a LOT of really exciting new tools and features coming out for ManyChat.

First up is an all-new way to create your Facebook Messenger experiences with a versatile and easy-to-use builder that will help you visualize the setup of the logic and sequence behind your chatbots. Built into this new tool will come a suite of intuitive analytics that will simplify the process of optimizing your Facebook Messenger campaigns.

We’re also working on more sophisticated and robust ecommerce systems that will help online retailers to generate more sales while providing better customer service through Facebook Messenger.

Better live chat capabilities are on the way, as are a whole host of triggers and automations to help you maximize sales & revenue while providing a seamless user experience for your customers.

Stay tuned for more news on these coming features as we roll them out in the coming months!

Want to Grow Your Business With Messenger Marketing?

Make no mistake: Facebook Messenger Marketing is going to be a huge marketing channel for everyone—consultants, ecommerce companies, brick & mortar stores, public figures and celebrities, event organizers, and more—for the foreseeable future.

Everyone can benefit from integrating Facebook Messenger into their marketing strategy. And given how fast Messenger Marketing is growing, the sooner the better.

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How to Optimize Your Subscriber Experience with Redirect Pages

Many bloggers believe that once your subscriber has clicked the buy button, your job is finished. You’ve nurtured them from reader to subscriber and finally to customer. You’ve accomplished your goal to get them to buy a product and that should be it. On to the next reader, right?

The disappointing truth is that too many bloggers believe this scenario. Whether it’s because they’re busy and always working on the next project or they honestly don’t know the benefits of following through, the truth is they’re missing out on a really big opportunity to continue interacting with that new customer and creating a memorable, enjoyable, and overall engaging experience.

Creating an engaging customer experience should always be at the forefront of your mind. As much as your products help you win over customers, the experience they have with you and your brand also plays a major role in whether or not they come back for more.

The copy you write, the value-packed sequences you create, and every social media post all add up to your customer experience. But there’s one area that most bloggers completely overlook when planning out customer experience– redirect pages.

How you can use redirect pages to optimize the subscriber experience

Out of all the people who see your blog, the ones that sign up for your newsletter, attend your webinars, and buy your products are the most valuable. They’re there because they want to be. They’re looking for something- help, information, products, guidance- and they’ve come to you.

You’ve got a captive audience with these subscribers, and now that you have their attention you need to leverage it. That means top to bottom, you need to find every little space for interaction you have with them and make it more readable, more exciting, more inviting, and more you. Doing this will give your subscribers more opportunity to build trust with you and see you as an authority.

This is also your chance to surprise and delight your subscribers. When they’re least expecting it, your redirect pages can be the perfect place for a free download, a discount, a new way to communicate with you, or even a way to turn a not-so-happy customer back into a raving fan.

How to optimize your Thank You pages for subscriber experience

Thank You pages are typically where you send a subscriber after some kind of conversion- filling out a form, subscribing, buying a product, etc. It acts as a confirmation so your subscriber knows their request was completed and can sometimes deliver your promise of a link for an eBook download or a further link into a webinar they signed up for.

There are endless ways to optimize the subscriber experience with your Thank You pages. Here are a few:

Help them get to know you more

More than whether or not a product is good, people are always looking to relate and identify with something. They want to feel part of the bigger picture and they want to know where things are coming from. With that in mind, use your Thank You pages as a ways to inject your personality.

Give your audience a face and personality to have a human-to-human interaction with. Be funny, be sarcastic, make a joke, post a GIF-whatever it is- you do you. Keep building your relationship with your audience right then and there.

Think Creative Collective shows their personalities with cutesy language.

Redirect page from ThinkCreativeCollective.com

Point them in the direction of more good stuff

Make it easy on your new subscriber to love you and use your Thank You page as a way to direct them toward even more information they might want. You can make your page a directory of all your other free downloads or a table of contents to your most popular blog posts.

Elle & Co use this Thank You page as a chance to offer up a collection of tools that will help their customer take the next step in organization.

Redirect page from ElleandCompanyDesign.com

The Upsell

If a reader has just purchased something from you, it’s likely they will buy even more. Give them that opportunity right out of the gate and catch their eye with an impulse buy by recommending similar products like the one they just purchased or some of your best sellers.

At AsianEfficiency, they add a countdown clock for a special offer to get customers to make another purchase.

Redirect page from AsianEfficieny.com

This upsell can also happen even if the subscriber has downloaded a free incentive instead of purchasing a product. Your Thank You page for your downloads could become a sales page for your lowest priced product. If they click through this upsell, they’re qualifying themselves as someone who would pay for your products and then you can feel confident in sending them through a sequence to pitch a higher priced product.

How to optimize your Unsubscribe pages for subscriber experience

Just because they’ve clicked your unsubscribe button doesn’t mean you’ve totally lost them yet. There are ways to bring a customer back from the brink if you play it smart.

Did you mean it?

Unsubscribe buttons are often hit because the subscriber is bogged down by the amount of emails in their inbox. It’s possible they’ve forgotten or aren’t sure who you are or even accidentally bulked you into their list of emails they want to unsubscribe from. In those cases, it might just take a quick message to make sure they meant to unsubscribe.

You can simply ask if they meant to hit unsubscribe, write a little message reminding them about who you are, what your mission is, and then give them an option of continuing to unsubscribe or resubscribe to your list.

Feedback survey

While these unsubscribes do hurt a bit, you can make the most of it by asking for feedback. Your subscriber will appreciate that you’re reaching out to find out what they didn’t enjoy or were missing with your product/service and you’re getting free feedback on how to improve your business for your other customers.

This can easily be done by adding a survey to your Unsubscribe page. It could be as simple as a fill in the blank where you ask for feedback on what went wrong or you could create a dropdown menu of options for the reader to choose from.

Option to re-engage

There will be some customers who choose to unsubscribe because they don’t quite understand how to use your product/services or why it’s so important. These are the people who need a little extra attention at the beginning.

If you feel up to it, you can offer up a 1×1 communication to help re-engage with these customers. You could simply state your email address or you could offer up your scheduling calendar to get on a call with you. This type of personal interaction can go a long way to turn an unhappy customer into a raving fan.

How to optimize your opt-in confirmation for subscriber experience

Put your best foot forward by creating an opt-in experience that your customers will love. How you use opt-ins to bring new and potential subscribers into your fold and how you continue to use them to communicate with your current subscribers says a lot about who you are as a blogger and business owner.

A simple way to optimize the customer experience with your opt-in confirmation in ConvertKit is to tailor the content for each form and then the content for the confirmation email. By default in ConvertKit, your form will take a basic look. For the sake of example, let’s me show you how to customize a Minimal form.

This is the default look of your form:

To be more eye-catching and engaging for your reader, there are a couple easy pieces you can customize. You can easily edit the title, button text, and the text, accent, and button colors

To change the confirmation message you send your reader to receive their download, go the the Incentive Email tab and make your customization there.

If you don’t have an opt-in incentive

It seems pretty simple that the way to optimize your opt-in confirmation when you have a content upgrade or incentive is to deliver on your promises quickly and efficiently. But what if you’re not offering an incentive?

If you have a newsletter opt-in form that doesn’t offer any other opt-in incentive, I highly suggest creating some kind of extra information for your confirmation page.

You can make it as simple as introducing yourself more to your new subscriber like Nutrition Stripped does for their newsletter confirmation opt-in.

Redirect page from NutritionStripped.com

Or you could offer multiple options for the subscriber to choose from that helps you know more about them. For example, you could use the redirect page to ask the question, “What are you struggling with right now?” to find out where the reader is in their skill level and knowledge of your topic. Each option you provide is a link that triggers them into a sequence where you offer valuable, targeted information and eventually pitches your lowest entry product.

Ready to optimize your redirect pages?

Don’t let your redirect pages be a dead end. There’s an opportunity here to add your flair to these pages and optimize your customer’s experience through pitching them a new product you think they’ll love, asking a question, or even just adding a little humor to their day. Your readers are worth the extra effort, right?

What redirect pages are you going to work on first? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

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The Power of Email Segmentation & How to Use It

When it comes to your email marketing, you already have a lot working against you in a subscriber’s inbox. Family news, party invites, and every other online business owner vying for some attention are your competition, and you’ve got to find a way to rise above the chatter. The best way to do that? Email segmentation.

The name itself might not initially sound like a strategy for increased open and click rates, but once I start to unpack it a little more, you’ll quickly see why email segmentation is going to be your new best friend. In fact, according to DMA, 77% of email marketing ROI came from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns in 2015. So I’m not just talking about deliverability anymore – I’m talking about product sales and money in your pocket.

Stated simply, email segmentation is the process of putting your email subscribers into different buckets and speaking to each of those groups directly. Think of it as meeting your subscribers where they’re at on their customer journey so you can send them targeted content that speaks specifically to their needs and goals at that point in time. To do that, you’re going to need to do some recon on your subscribers, but we’ll talk about that later. First let me tell you a bit more about the benefits of email segmentation.

Why you need email segmenting in your email marketing

Email segmentation is one of the key distinctions between a list that converts and one that makes it hard to reach your goals. Knowing your subscriber's backstory and how they interact with your content is key to understanding how to communicate with them and pitch your products.

For example, if you know that your subscriber is a newbie on your topic, you can specifically send them your intro level eBooks for free and put them into a sequence where you teach them the basics of your topic to gain their trust and build authority.

But if you find that another of your subscribers is more knowledgeable on your topic, you can send them one of your more complex eBooks and put them into a sequence that eventually pitches them one of your more expensive and advanced products. See how that works?

Knowing certain data points about your email subscribers will help you know where they are on their journey and can help you continue to move them along from blog reader to email subscriber to customer.

Now you know that email segmentation helps you meet your subscribers where they’re at, but here’s what segmentation actually means for your email deliverability:

Increased Open Rates

An email in an inbox is only as good as the person reading it. Having a segmented list allows you to send the same email but with custom subject lines to specific subscriber groups that appeal to their needs.

Your customers aren’t all the same person and segmentation can help you get more specific with smaller groups of your list.

Better Click-Through Rates

Once you have those custom subject lines set up for your different subscriber groups and you’ve sent your emails off, it’s up to your subscribers for the next step– click-throughs.

Setting up targeted emails alone won’t put money in the bank. You need your email subscribers to interact with your content by clicking through on links to your articles, videos, and, ultimately, your products.

ConvertKit customers with targeted segmentation often see click-through rates of as high as 10-14%. Considering the industry average across all email marketing platforms is roughly 6%, that’s at least a 66% increase. Your subscribers are also much happier as they’re now getting emails they actually want to open and click on. It’s definitely a win-win.

Maximized Conversions

When you’ve reached that trust point and are ready to send your sales email to your list, the last thing you want to see is zero conversions. If you’re emailing your entire list of subscribers who may or may not be interested in that particular offering, you risk losing them as a subscriber and you certainly risk losing the sale. You’ve got to narrow your audience based on your subject.

With good segmentation you can track who clicks on your links and then send targeted emails just to those people with a reminder about any details, some FAQs, or anything else they need to know to seal the deal. Emailing just the people who have shown direct interest is not just a smart business move, it makes you look like a real human on the other side of the computer screen too.

Less Unsubscribes

Even though unsubscribes can be good for your list health overall to get rid of un-engaged subscribers, you still don’t want to lose your subscribers at alarming rates. After all, when someone unsubscribes from your emails they’re gone for good – no more possible conversations (or conversions) with that person.

Using segmentation to your advantage will keep the number of unsubscribes to your account at a minimum. You’ll still have people who clean up their inboxes for time to time, but the more targeted you can get with the emails you send, the more likely your subscribers are to hang out.

Avoid The Dreaded SPAM Filter

The whole point of email marketing is to have the emails you send actually delivered and read, right? Spam folders are notorious for making that hard on marketers, but there are actions you can take to make it better.

Email service providers (ESPs) want to see that your subscribers are opening emails, clicking on links, sharing emails, replying to emails, marking them as important, and not immediately hitting delete. Sending targeted email content through segmentation helps you avoid being flagged by those ESPs.

Want to know more about how to increase the quality of your list and avoid the SPAM filter? Read up right here.

Hopefully now you see that email segmentation is the best way to create targeted content for your email subscribers to help with your click rates, revenue, and so much more. Now let me tell you how easy it is to create segmentation in ConvertKit.

How to segment email subscribers with tags in ConvertKit

In ConvertKit, we create segmentation by tagging subscribers and then grouping those tags together. So basically tags organize people and segments organize tags.

Tags allow you to organize and group your subscribers based on actions, interest, and more. Because we are subscriber-centric and not list-centric, you only have one list of subscribers, and tags help you keep that one list organized.

Ways you can add tags to your customers are:

• With Link Triggers, you can add a tag when a subscriber clicks a link.
• With certain integrations, you can add a tag based on a purchase.
• You can import into a tag, so you know when you brought over certain subscribers

Within the ConvertKit app:

• Tags can be created on the Subscriber page or within an Automation.
• Tags can be added to existing subscribers on the Subscriber page via Bulk Actions, or within an individual Subscriber profile.

Here's a quick video that explains how to use forms, tags and segments effectively.

Check out this ConvertKit knowledge base article for a more complete look into the technical details of how to segment: How to Segment Subscribers in Convertkit

Figuring out the best way to segment your email marketing lists can be a huge undertaking. But the more you tag, the better you can target your emails with content that feels tailor made for each subscriber.

Types of subscriber data to collect for email segmentation

You could also think of tags in terms of data you collect about your subscribers. This data will help you get to know your subscribers better– what they’re interested in, where they’re from, what they want to learn from you– so that you can send them more targeted content and in turn pitch them products they actually want. Here are some tags that we suggest our customers use for collecting data for their subscribers:

Where the subscriber is at on their customer journey

Other than the basic information, this is one of the first pieces of data email marketers use to start segmenting their list. Knowing this initial starting point will help you know what level of skill, knowledge, and engagement your subscriber has with your topic. This can give you insight on everything from what kind of product to pitch to how much teaching content you need to prepare.

How to use this tag– In your introductory email, ask your subscribers what their main struggle is by offering five different options to choose from. The reader will respond by clicking on the link they identify with which will trigger a sequence that ends by pitching a product geared toward that struggle.

Products they’ve bought/downloaded from you

The next thing you'll want to track is when subscribers purchase your product. It helps to create a tag called “Purchase: Product Name” for each product. Then Gumroad, Shopify, Teachable, or whatever other e-commerce provider you are using can add customers to that tag once they make a purchase through an automation. And don't forget to include these purchase tags in your newsletter or all subscribers segments

How to use this tag– Knowing what a subscriber has already purchased helps you in a couple different ways.

• You can exclude that person (through their tag of Purchase: Product Name) from any further communication about that product. They don’t need your sequences that pitch that product any more since they’ve already bought it, right?
• You can make an assumption on what other products they might enjoy based on their first purchase. You can set up a link trigger that sets them into a new sequence that pitches your subscriber that similar product.

Webinar attendee

People who join webinars are generally people who are excited to learn. A webinar attendee has already given you their email address so they could attend your webinar, so make sure to make the most of this list growth by adding a webinar tag to their name.

How to use this tag- You’ve most likely given away a free product or pitched something on a webinar, so you know that anyone with that tag already has a basic knowledge of who you are and what you do. You can parlay that knowledge by putting people with that tag through a sequence that teaches them more in depth on your webinar topic and ends with a hard pitch for one of your products for sale.

Event attendee

Don't miss the opportunity to reach out to leads and potential customers you've already made a positive connection with at a live event.

How to use this tag- Segment your email list depending on the type, topic, or theme of event or even to RSVPs who didn't make it out. You'll be able to keep inviting them to events while sharing relevant content offers based on what you learned about them from past events.

Where the subscriber’s sign up form came from

Did your new subscriber sign up because of your podcast or video show? Did they read your guest blog post you wrote or find you through a contest you contributed a product to? Knowing the type of content your subscriber originally found you on can tell you a lot about what kind of content they like and how they like to consume it.

How to use this tag-  If a subscriber found you through your podcast, you know that you can push any products you have related to creating and hosting podcasts. If a subscriber found you through a guest post, you can create content and products that relate to the core topic of the blog that hosted your guest post (or at least reach out to more blogs in that industry to expand your audience).

If they refer your products/services often

If you have customers who constantly refer you to new clients or other businesses, it’s a good idea to create a tag for them. These customers are your biggest advocates and you should give them extras from time to time.

How to use this tag- You can use these advocates as beta-testers when you have a new product coming out. And to give them extra incentive to keep referring you, you could send them extras like discounts, free trials, or even set up some kind of affiliate system.

What affiliate the subscriber came from

If you already have an affiliate program setup, it’s smart to keep the sign ups for each affiliate separate. Every affiliate will cover their own niche topic so knowing which affiliate a new subscriber comes from helps you craft content specifically for them.

How to use this tag- If you blog about baking cakes and you have an affiliate that blogs about wedding inspiration, you could create an eBook or another small free giveaway about popular wedding cake flavor combinations or color schemes that you can send to subscribers who came specifically from that affiliate.

Interests

If you blog on different topics, it’s very important to keep all your readers grouped into their correct interest so you’re not talking to them about the stuff they don’t need.

How to use this tag-You could run a survey asking your readers to click one of five topics you blog about. The link they click will tag them by their favorite interest, and now you know more specifically who to send content to when you deal with multiple topics.  

Interested in, but hasn’t bought

A subscriber can go through a whole teaching sequence of yours and still not end up purchasing anything. You can create a link in the final email of that sequence that tags those subscribers as “interest in: product name”

How to use this tag- When that subscriber goes through your sequences and ends up not purchasing and being tagged as “interested”, you can send them a follow up sequence with a downsell of that product they are interested in. It could be a smaller version at a lower price or just a lower priced product that you think compliments the original product you were pitching. Doing this shows that subscriber that you care about them getting a product that truly helps them reach their goals and can go a long way in building trust and authority.

Customer tag

Whenever a subscriber buys anything from you, give them a ‘customer’ tag. Knowing what subscribers have made a purchase from you lets you know that they might be willing to buy other products from you. The difference between the “interested in” tag and the “customer” tag here is big. It’s the difference between sending a subscriber through another teaching sequence and offering free incentives or sending them through a sequence with a hard pitch that doesn’t involve as much trust building.

How to use this tag- If a subscriber purchases your course on “How to use gluten-free flours in baking”, you can assume that since they bought a course on this subject from you, they might also purchase another course from you in a similar topic. You could send them into a sequence with a hard pitch on your more targeted course “Gluten-free bread baking”.

Time to get tagging

It’s a Type A’s dream, right? Gathering all the information and putting your subscribers in their designated places will not only help you understand your audience more, it’s also going to help your audience feel understood. The more you send them content that feels like you wrote it just for them, the more they’ll trust you and your work– that means increased revenue numbers.

Do these data points we talked about work for your audience? What other tags would add to this list? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

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