If you happen to’re on the lookout for your subsequent e-mail advertising and marketing platform, and also you’re curious if Package is best for you, properly, you’re in the best place! Right here’s our complete Package assessment for 2024, which is able to cowl:
- What Is Package?
- Why do I would like an e-mail service supplier (ESP)?
- The rebrand from ConvertKit to Package
- Package Options
- Package Pricing
- Key Advantages of Package
- Drawbacks of Package
- Package & Electronic mail Advertising and marketing: Extra Assets to Learn, Hear & Be taught
What’s Package?
Package is an e-mail service supplier (ESP). Basically, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship e-mail campaigns to an inventory of subscribers. Package is one in all actually a whole lot of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we want and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we will nonetheless be goal! On this put up, we’ll cowl the options, advantages, and drawbacks of Package as we see them, that will help you resolve if it’s the best ESP for your corporation.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing technique: Why you want an ESP
If you happen to’re studying this, you would possibly already know what an ESP is and why you want one. However in case you don’t, an ESP is a very powerful piece of expertise to assist your e-mail advertising and marketing technique.
Electronic mail advertising and marketing is likely one of the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services and products to your viewers. Let’s discuss why that’s.
In its most elementary kind, e-mail advertising and marketing entails you sending emails to a bunch of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You would technically use a easy e-mail program like Gmail to perform this—however we don’t suggest it, since you’ll rapidly discover it inadequate (and since your private e-mail account will get flagged as spam when you ship too many emails from it!).
As your corporation grows and extra individuals subscribe to get your emails, you’ll need the flexibility to do extra refined issues along with your e-mail advertising and marketing, like customizing the emails individuals get in response to their pursuits, and utilizing studies and analytics to find out what’s working properly or not.
You additionally must be sure to’re respecting individuals’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An e-mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities laws world wide, such because the CAN-SPAM act in america, the Basic Knowledge Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Regulation (CASL).
Issues can rapidly get out of hand with out the assistance of a devoted e-mail advertising and marketing platform. That’s the place an ESP like Package is available in.
Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of Package’s options!
Psst… Need to develop your e-mail checklist and study highly effective segmentation and automation methods that enable your corporation to run by itself? Take a look at the Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic course.
Package options
These are the important thing options of Package, organized by the way you’ll use them.
Sending emails
- Autoresponders/drip campaigns (sequences): Ship a sequence of pre-written emails routinely to a selected phase of subscribers in your checklist, triggered by a selected occasion or motion, with the intention of guiding them to take a selected motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship commonplace bulletins or one-time emails to your subscribers on a selected date.
- CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are legal guidelines that set the foundations and necessities for business e-mail messages, and provides recipients the best to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (customized) e-mail content material: Your e-mail content material can show completely different textual content or pictures, in response to your buyer segmentation.
- Responsive e-mail templates: Prepared-to-go e-mail designs, in addition to the flexibility to create your individual customized templates. Package routinely codecs your touchdown pages for numerous units, resembling desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- WYSIWYG e-mail editor: The built-in e-mail editor permits you to see how your e-mail will look along with your template’s styling utilized when you’re composing it.
Gathering new subscribers
- Customized responsive touchdown pages: Use the included software to rapidly create a touchdown web page to gather e-mail addresses. Package routinely codecs your touchdown pages for numerous units, resembling desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- Embeddable varieties: Gather e-mail subscribers wherever in your web site by dropping in a Javascript or HTML kind, or through the use of the WordPress plugin.
- Web site builder: Create a web site instantly on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather cost for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages. Arrange a touchdown web page and acquire cost for one-time or subscription merchandise proper inside Package.
- Visible automations: Package means that you can create rule-based paths utilizing if-then logic, in order that when a subscriber takes a specific motion, you may ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a phase.
Studying about your subscribers
- A/B testing: Package permits you to take a look at completely different topic traces on your emails, and routinely determines the winner based mostly on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Find out how usually your subscribers open your emails, click on on hyperlinks, and full numerous actions.
- Segmentation/tagging: Segmenting your subscribers into completely different classes (much like however extra highly effective than different applications’ “lists”) means that you can ship them emails which are higher tailor-made to their wants and pursuits.
- Polls. Add polls on to emails to have interaction with and acquire details about subscribers, which you’ll then use to construct segments.
Rising your revenue
- In 2022, Package Commerce was added to the platform, permitting customers to attempt promoting digital merchandise to their subscribers by creating personalized product pages that may be embedded in your emails, together with automated gross sales funnels.
- The present iteration of Package additionally encompasses a website builder. You’ll be able to create a web site instantly on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather cost for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages.
Connecting with and supporting different creators: The Creator Community
- In 2023, Package launched the Creator Community, which helps customers information their viewers members to find different creators and get found in flip.
- You may also receives a commission for Creator Community suggestions you make by way of the aptly named Paid Suggestions.
Increasing the platform’s capabilities: App retailer
- As a part of the 2024 rebrand, additionally they launched an app retailer, the place you could find customized apps to do extra with Package. The app retailer will launch with 5 apps: KitBoard (add CRM to your account), Wordsmith (flip YouTube movies into newsletters, SavvyCal (add reserving widgets to emails), Mighty (join your Mighty group and content material with Package), and SegMetrics (study the way you acquire, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Package additionally gives a self-service app builder to create your individual add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at present in beta.)
Begin your Package account — free on your first 10,000 subscribers!
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From “ConvertKit” to “Package”: Behind the rebrand
In summer time 2024, the corporate beforehand generally known as ConvertKit formally grew to become Package. The brand new title was introduced in July in the course of the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went dwell in October. (They’d beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable detrimental suggestions to the brand new title brought on them to revert to ConvertKit till this yr.)
The change to Package was greater than a reputation change, although, as a result of the corporate launched a number of large new capabilities to their platform as properly. We lined a number of the new options within the part above, however listed below are the highlights:
- An app retailer the place builders can create add-ons to enhance Package’s capabilities
- A central information hub with enhanced reporting
- An expanded Creator Community to assist customers discover new collaboration companions
Package additionally made a degree of rebranding in public by sharing details about the rebranding course of by way of weblog updates, live-streamed design periods, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency offers an attention-grabbing perception into the corporate’s considering. And we predict it’s a wise transfer given how their earlier rebrand went.
With that out of the way in which, let’s discuss pricing.
Package pricing
For a very long time, Package solely provided paid plans. However in December 2019, the corporate introduced a brand new free tier in case you have fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They not too long ago expanded the free tier to incorporate creators with as much as 10,000 subscribers.
Listed below are Package’s pricing choices as of October 2024:
Package Publication Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The Publication plan contains:
- 1 fundamental Visible Automation
- 1 e-mail Sequence
- 1 person
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in varieties, and e-mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- Publication feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—at the very least one advice slot to develop your checklist by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Sensible Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that will help you develop your checklist)
- 24/7 assist
Package Creator Plan
- $9/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $15 if paid month-to-month)
- $25/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $1,916/month (paid yearly; $1,916 if paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator plan contains:
- All of the options of the Publication plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e-mail Sequences
- 2 customers
- Free migration from one other software
- Free Suggestions
- Paid Suggestions
- Take away Package branding
- Third-party integrations
- RSS campaigns
- Polls
Package Creator Professional Plan
- $25/month for as much as 300 subscribers (paid yearly; $29 if paid month-to-month)
- $50/month for as much as 1,000 subscribers (paid yearly; $59 if paid month-to-month)
- Tiered pricing as much as $2,166/month (paid yearly; $2,599 paid month-to-month) for as much as 400,000 subscribers
The Creator Professional plan contains:
- All of the options of the Creator plan
- Limitless Visible Automations
- Limitless e-mail Sequences
- Limitless customers
- Fb customized audiences
- Publication referral system
- Edit hyperlinks in despatched broadcasts
- Subscriber engagement scoring
- Superior deliverability reporting
- Insights dashboard
- 24/7 Precedence assist
Each the Creator and Creator Professional plans provide a 14-day free trial so you may see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll preserve this put up up to date with the most recent Package pricing, however you may as well go to the pricing web page on the Package web site.
Let’s get into the explanations we like Package subsequent!
Advantages of Package
We’ve used Package to energy Sensible Passive Revenue’s e-mail advertising and marketing for a number of years. In that point, we’ve discovered it to be the best ESP for our wants. We additionally suppose it’s an important answer for a variety of entrepreneurs and digital creators on the lookout for a sturdy, feature-rich e-mail advertising and marketing platform.
The very best e-mail service supplier for brand new entrepreneurs.
Straightforward to study, highly effective whenever you want it.
That is an affiliate hyperlink
From the place we sit, the facility of Package falls into two foremost classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Package advantages from the person’s standpoint
First, Package has every little thing a enterprise proprietor wants to rise up and operating rapidly:
- You’ll be able to acquire emails.
- You’ll be able to arrange a easy touchdown web page to gather emails.
- You’ll be able to promote merchandise (one-time buy or subscription).
These options enable somebody to begin promoting even whereas they’re within the means of establishing a web site elsewhere. It additionally makes it straightforward to execute on one of many foremost classes in our Sensible From Scratch course: utilizing promoting as a key step within the idea-validation course of.
Second, the Package staff designed their platform to develop with the sophistication of the person. Once you begin, you most likely simply wish to acquire e-mail addresses and ship emails. However as you develop, you’ll wish to begin tailoring your message and segmenting your viewers. At that time you may reap the benefits of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your corporation turn into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next step—you gained’t have to change to a special e-mail service supplier 5 years down the highway. This units Package other than another ESPs, significantly Mailchimp.
Some individuals discover Package a bit daunting (see Drawbacks under), however when you’re considerably tech-savvy we predict it’s fairly approachable. Particularly, we just like the accessibility of Package’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in a simple, linear manner.
We tried Infusionsoft for a yr and located its automation builder progressive however overwhelming. You needed to already perceive how automations work, in addition to the varied symbols widespread in automation builders. We discover Package’s automation builder, however, makes it straightforward to string automations collectively in a complicated manner. With a number of templates to select from, establishing an automation for the primary time is simple for any person.
We additionally like Package’s method to subscriber administration. With Package, all of your subscribers go into one large pool; there are not any lists. As an alternative, subscribers could be put into segments by assigning them attributes utilizing tags and customized fields. These allow you to deal with your subscribers as distinctive people with completely different wants; not all subscribers are created equal. The opposite good thing about the way in which Package treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, in contrast to another ESPs.
Package’s not too long ago launched Creator Community can also be a giant plus in our eyes, from each a business-building and community-building perspective. It means that you can develop your subscriber base whereas additionally fostering connections with different entrepreneurs and creators.
Final however not least, when you’re shifting from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Package gives a free migration service that may take a number of the headache out of switching.
Package advantages on your viewers
Package offers you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You’ll be able to have as many varieties and touchdown pages as you need. You’ll be able to have as many tags, customized fields, and segments as you need. You could be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you wish to be.
As you acquire details about your viewers, you can begin to phase subscribers so that you don’t hassle individuals with issues they aren’t involved in. Package makes it straightforward to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the way in which, and also you aren’t penalized for that by way of larger prices, as you’d be with a list-based e-mail platform.
Drawbacks of Package
No answer is ideal, after all. Listed below are a number of the drawbacks we and different Package customers have seen.
- Reasonably steep studying curve. The interface is usually a little overwhelming for a newbie. Taking full benefit of all of Package’s options—like segmentation, tagging, and automations—requires some studying (and doubtlessly coding). You’ll be able to shorten this studying curve by following their Getting Began video sequence, in addition to the remainder of the content material on their well-organized assist website
- No list-based group. Though we like the way in which Package permits you to arrange subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the shortage of a list-based group system could be complicated when you’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we predict you’ll discover this technique extra versatile than managing lists.
- Barebones e-mail and touchdown web page templates. Package requires CSS coding to create customized superior e-mail templates and touchdown pages past the included choices. Some customers report that the e-mail design software could be buggy.
- Analytics might be extra strong. The free and Creator plans don’t provide the identical superior deliverability reporting, subscriber scoring, and analytics options of the Perception characteristic that the Creator Professional plan gives, which is sensible however could also be a hassle to some customers.
Fortunately, one of many earlier drawbacks of Package, that there was no free choice, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Package comparable on the entry degree to different fashionable ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is not at all a disadvantage, however as Package continues to develop its choices to incorporate issues just like the Creator Community and Package Commerce to its core e-mail advertising and marketing capabilities, there’s an opportunity that the platform’s worth might get unfold skinny. To be clear, we don’t suppose that is going to occur and have a number of confidence in Nathan and the Package staff, but it surely’s price protecting in thoughts.
Our large takeaway on Package
With the latest updates, Package is coming nearer to being a one-stop store for creators who wish to develop, nurture, and promote to their audiences with a platform that’s largely prepared to make use of and automatable. If you happen to’re on the lookout for your first or subsequent e-mail advertising and marketing platform, we predict it’s an important answer for rising your viewers and rising your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you set out into the world!
Package & e-mail advertising and marketing: Extra sources to learn, pay attention & study
So there you could have it—our assessment of Package’s e-mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll depart you with just a few extra sources when you’re inquisitive about Package, or wish to dig additional into e-mail advertising and marketing.
Package [Full Disclosure: As an affiliate, we receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]
SPI 825: Behind the Scenes of a Main Rebrand & Classes Discovered After a Onerous Fail—my dialog with Package CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra bold targets with the rebrand.
What Is Electronic mail Advertising and marketing? + Finest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic Course
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this put up has been useful in deciding whether or not Package is the best ESP for your corporation. No matter e-mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra essential than having the best e-mail advertising and marketing technique, so make sure to try our important information to e-mail advertising and marketing and contemplate the Electronic mail Advertising and marketing Magic course if you’d like extra hands-on assist along with your e-mail advertising and marketing, accessible contained in the SPI Group. Good luck!
