One of the most powerful things in the ConvertKit arsenal is its amazing set of automation features. They combine a fantastic amount of flexibility with unbelievable ease of use.
Let's take a closer look and see how they go.
NB – Links in this article may be Affiliate Links, which means I get a small commission if you decide to purchase something after clicking the link. There is no additional cost to you for this (and sometimes there is a special discount).
ConvertKit Marketing Automation Video
For people who prefer the video version, here it is! Below is a transcript that I've tidied up a little, but if there are errors then that's not going to be too surprising…
https://youtu.be/jS1bfe1HD_4
ConvertKit Marketing Automation
This is a modified transcript of the above – I recommend the video but you'll get the idea through the text…
Today we are continuing in our detailed review of the Convert Kit e-mail marketing software.
Through this we're taking a look at forms, courses, broadcasts, and subscribers – but today we are looking at the real powerhouse of ConvertKit.
This is where it starts to go above and beyond what you can do with MailChimp and AWeber, and that is the automations function. This is an incredibly powerful function.
The way ConvertKit describes things, it is made up of rules, and the best way to think of a rule is like this: If something happens, then do this extra thing.
And I'm going to show you just how to do that now.
It's so simple – you create a new rule, and a new trigger. I'm going to run through each of the triggers.
- When a user subscribes to a particular course, and there are different ways you can have a user subscribe to a course. You can automatically add them to one, and when they set up a form, or when they subscribe to a form, as I showed you in the forms lesson, but you can also have them elect to subscribe to a course using different functionality within Convert Kit. So that is the trigger in that particular case.
- Next, when they use a particular form to subscribe, so when you set up your forms, do it with this automation in process. Think about how you want to split up your people, or how you might want to split up your people. There is absolutely no harm in having a whole series of different forms. The worst case scenario is that you end up with different forms and different statistics. It might be mildly irritating, but if you ever want to potentially use these functions to do it, to segment your audience, or to send a message, or to tag them or segment them or in any way communicate with them or do something with them, have different forms.
- Next, when they complete a course (now called a sequence). So when they get to the end of one of your e-mail courses, what is it you want them to do? Do you want to send them a new course? Do you want send them a sales pitch? Perhaps you might want to send them a hard sell, or a link to something new, or an option for more advanced courses. What is it you want them to do when they get to the end of your auto-responder series.
- Next, when they click a link, so you can set up links in ConvertKit that allow you to track when people click it, and if they click it, maybe you want to do something. Maybe you want to tag them as being interested in a particular topic. Maybe you want to have them subscribe to a particular auto-responder or course. Maybe you want to do something like unsubscribing them from a form, or maybe you want to do something else entirely.
- Next, new RSS post. This is very, very useful for people who don't actually want to bother setting up their broadcasts by themselves. Where there is a new RSS post available on your website, you can have ConvertKit automatically create a draft broadcast that is ready to go. It will import the necessary information, and you can pretty much just click broadcast should you choose to do so. Very helpful, saves a lot of time.
- Next, when someone is tagged with something, useful here as well, add or remove tags. This is where you can add or remove them to e-mail courses. You can send them a particular e-mail. Maybe you can do various different things that you might want to actually have them as the result of them being added to a new interest or a new category that ConvertKit has.
An Example ConvertKit Automation
And so I'm just going to deal with a couple of examples here, and I think one of the more useful ones you're likely to use pretty often is the trigger when someone subscribes to a form.
When someone subscribes to a form, I want to add them to a particular course. So when they subscribe to this form, I want to add them to a particular e-mail course, and it's going to be this one, save the rule, and that is done.
That will automatically now happen. Whenever someone uses this particular form, they will be added to this particular course. Easy, isn't it?
Next, what about something more sophisticated? What about when someone completes that particular e-mail course, the one that they automatically signed up to in the last trigger, I want them to get to a new course.
So I'm going to subscribe them then to the new course, because it's a more advanced course. So if they get to the end, and they need more content, then I'm going to subscribe them to a new course.
Brilliant, now we're getting somewhere. What about when someone is tagged in a particular way? Now, there's various different things we can do here, and as you can see, there's various different options over here as well. But perhaps if someone is tagged with “already has a website”, I might like to subscribe them to this particular course because it's a more advanced course.
You can see just how easy it is to set up these rules, and this is really an amazing power of ConvertKit.
One more thing, which is that you can choose multiple actions upon the happening of a single trigger. If someone signs up using this particular form, perhaps I want to tag them like this, but perhaps I also want them to be subscribed to this course. There we go. One trigger, two actions, amazing.
And this I think is by far and away the coolest part of ConvertKit. It is the sheer power of the automation section.
It is as sophisticated as you can imagine for a piece of software that costs, frankly, very, very little per month, and if you're not there yet, you will be at some point, so don't pick a piece of software that doesn't do this stuff if you think you might get there in the future. Changing providers is quite frustrating. I've done it a number of times, and I'll probably do it again in the future, frankly, but ConvertKit is very, very good at managing the change.
You can import all of your existing subscribers if you want to give ConvertKit a go. You can use this automation very, very powerfully.
Got any automations you want to know about, or examples of how you're using it? Let me know in the comments!
