Why Everything Is Changing at ConvertKit (June 2024 Updates)

[00:01] today from Craft and Commerce, which is ConvertKit's live event they do every favorites for online creators. And something that they typically do, as many brands do, is they do new feature announcements. So we wanted to come to

[00:16] you live today from the event and share with you some of these new features that Yeah, and they're pretty pretty exciting. When I heard that they were going to talk about the next 10 years of ConvertKit, I'm like, what else can they

[00:29] really roll out? I was actually blown away by what they talked about. Um, I can't really talk about Again, you're you're getting into it too into too much. Let's Okay, so So there are three main things we want

[00:42] trying to give them all away before we even get into it. So the first one is that they have expanded on their free plan. So ConvertKit, like most other email marketing softwares, has a free plan. Like most other marketing

[00:54] softwares, it has been up to 1,000 subscribers and with some limitations. But what they announced this morning is that their free plan now includes one free automation and one free automated email sequence. Um, and you can be

[01:08] included in their creator network where people recommend different creators recommend, so that your email list can grow passively, just if you're enrolled people's recommendations. I'm not explaining it very well, but it's a

[01:24] great way to grow your list. Most people see like a 10 to 30% list growth rate increase just from that one feature. But the thing that blew me away the most, that's really nice, that's really nice. That they are increasing the number of

[01:36] subscribers you can have on their free plan from 1,000 up to 10,000, which is crazy, mostly because that's so many more than any other email marketing Absolutely. I mean, I know we you've

[01:50] because they give all the features up to 1,000, but now ConvertKit has kind of done a 180 in blowing it out of the water with this 10,000 subscribers. Yeah, and what I think is so cool about that isn't just like, oh, so many more.

[02:06] It's that at the 10,000 subscriber mark, everybody who has an email list and has money with their list if they've got any sort of reasonable monetization strategy

[02:18] for their list, for their business at all. And so, it just makes it so much easier to get started with your list, and you know that you will be able to making good money. Yeah, absolutely. And you talk about

[02:31] your 100K funnel and how it has that automation and the sequence in in there, free plan. Yeah. So, that's one reason why I used softwares for people when they're first starting out was because I wanted them

[02:45] as possible. And to do that, you really need some automations. You need to be emails to people when they first sign up for your list, a welcome sequence. And transition from that welcome sequence into a sales sequence, an evergreen

[03:02] entire funnel all in a one email sequence. The most simple, most minimalist, most beautiful sort of sequence you can build. But ConvertKit didn't let you create automations in their free plan, and I know also a lot

[03:15] let you create a sequence or an automation, but they limit it to only like five emails or even just one email. But there's no limit on ConvertKit. So, profitable sales funnel with ConvertKit's free plan, which is

[03:30] amazing. But let's move on because there is more. So, the second thing that we want to share with you that really surprised me was that ConvertKit has decided they want to expand their features. And Nathan Barry talked about

[03:44] how they thought about becoming like an all-in-one software, but that there were do that. They basically, in short, they didn't want to do everything not very the thing they were good at. So, they decided to instead partner with

[04:00] thinking, don't you already do that? There are already these different softwares that ConvertKit integrates with. How is this any different? And then he explained that it actually is very different. They are building these

[04:12] apps for ConvertKit. What blew my mind is that in email functionality, and I don't know enough about coding, but I know that in email functionality has been really limited. What I mean by that is normally, you can't even click the

[04:25] play button on a video in an email and watch it in the email. It might look takes you over to YouTube or something like that. But recently, I've noticed that somehow ConvertKit has broken through that barrier, and now we can

[04:38] click the play button. Don't know how that's working, but what they revealed to us today is that now with these new apps, you can actually put a scheduler, like your calendar, in an email with buttons for people to select times and

[04:52] book specific times on your calendar that get live updated. Meaning like if someone else books the time on your calendar, it will now disappear from all glad that someone is very smart to do that coding. Yeah, I mean, that's

[05:05] amazing. I don't know how they're doing this magic, but it it doesn't stop there because there are several other different softwares that they are Mighty Networks. Do you want to talk about how they're doing that one?

[05:18] Yeah, that one was really exciting to me because a lot of creators want people want. They want a place to connect, and they are going the app itself is going to integrate with the emails. So, you can, if you have a

[05:34] Mighty Networks community, add your events and add anything that's inside the community, just integrated into the email itself. And I thought that was a Yeah, I think so, too. So, basically, they were showing that you could add

[05:47] like an event from your Mighty Networks community into the email with a button to RSVP. Or you could add like a post from your Mighty Networks community into they're actually they actually have functionality inside of the email, which

[06:01] Like there's a section that says Mighty Networks and then you you can, you know, toggle and add what you want into there. Mhm. Yeah, natively inside of ConvertKit. It also is going to solve a problem for us, I think, because people

[06:15] have been asking me for years what platform to build a membership on and for me to answer because I have a membership that I love that's it has a lot of great functionality, but it was custom coded for me. And so that's why

[06:28] it's built so well. And all of the other options that were out there, they really were more suited to be a course platform or to just be a community, but not really be a membership. But Mighty Networks, they've been expanding a lot

[06:42] robust platform where you can put content and you can have a community with conversations in it and you can has become a quite all-in-one membership platform. And so now to have it fully

[06:55] definitely going to be recommending that to our customers. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I love that it's social media-esque, but it's Yes, yes, for sure. Okay, so now we're going to get into the last big

[07:08] just go out there and say it, they're changing their name um and completely rebranding. So they've decided that they want to not just be like a sales tool, but they want to be the complete kit for creators to be able to use to grow their

[07:21] online businesses. And so they are rebranding to change their name to just kit with that understanding of like that definition of the word kit being, you know, like a toolbox for a job. And one of the interesting facts that

[07:33] they shared is that 29% of high schoolers want to be creators. That's what they call want to call themselves Yeah, that it's like it's the career schoolers. Yeah, and something

[07:47] That really surprised me. I like I I low-key don't believe that number, but I TikTokers or something. well, I yeah, I would say influencers, YouTuber. an influencer is not a popular term

[07:59] be calling yourself an influencer, so maybe that's why they're calling Yeah, that's true. Well, I'm definitely not a TikTok creator. I don't think I The whole dancing thing, you know. Um but I thought that was really neat and

[08:12] that's something that Kit is trying to focus on and how do we um help them be able to do that in a all-in-one way, but not in an all-in-one platform. That they're giving you that toolbox rather than like a multi-purpose tool

[08:24] that does everything. And I think that's really smart. And I also think it works, bias, but I've always been the sort of person who likes to kind of patchwork of everything. So, for example, I homeschool my kids and I've never been

[08:39] curriculum out of a box. I always was like, I want the best math curriculum best grammar curriculum. I know this is getting way too nerdy, but that's my personality and that's how I built my business as well. I never signed up for

[08:52] the best email marketing software and the best website builder and all those different things. And so now ConvertKit is giving me exactly what I want. Yes, now Kit. This is going to be take a little bit for that transition.

[09:05] this rebrand is just that they haven't done it yet. They have like publicly announced that they are changing their name, but they are going to be several months. Rebranding in public is what they're calling it um with the plan

[09:19] to have the rebrand complete by September of 2024. So, you can keep your eye on what ConvertKit does over these next few months. Um keep your eye out for my face. They interviewed me for a rebrand documentary that they are doing.

[09:32] be released or exactly when, but it's probably later this summer. that. Oh, yeah, Yeah. So, we are actually in the new Kit Studios. That's what they're calling it. They have set up this really

[09:45] cool kind of like co-working space, but no, there's like a a little kind of conference room co-working area. Um, and then four five five different recording studios that are fully kitted out with

[10:00] um, cameras like high-end cameras and nicely decorated and microphones and just literally everything you need to sit down and push the record button which is incredible. Like as someone who's been creating videos for well over

[10:14] seven years, um, the amount of time that I normally spend setting up and tearing down to be able to walk in here and literally push a record button and sit down is just like mind-boggling and I think I need this in my life.

[10:26] state. So, I'm not going to be able to use this on the daily, but I think I might be making the track over here more often because this is just so Yeah. And it's a free feature. It's a free feature for all Kit users at

[10:39] record your course here at the Kit Studio, it's in Boise, Idaho, by the way. That's where Kit is based out of. If you are a Kit customer or ConvertKit customer, you can come here and record for free to re-record your course or

[10:52] record a new course or record an interview for your podcast or your YouTube channel or just record a YouTube video. And of course, if you did make the trip here, then you could sit down and record a whole bunch of content all

[11:04] easily see someone coming here spending a day here to record their YouTube videos for the next 3 6 12 months. Yeah, absolutely. So, it's an amazing perk that ConvertKit is offering at least for now. And I

[11:16] future. I I feel like at some point they're going to have to charge for this know, their paying ConvertKit customers are enough to, you know, like they're might be able to stay free forever. I'm just not getting my hopes up because

[11:30] true. It's like a dream. shall we say Convert features that we the press as we just learned about them this very morning. Thanks for sharing

[11:43] this with me, Gabe. Yeah, this has been fun.