In case you’re in search of your subsequent e-mail advertising and marketing platform, and also you’re curious if Package is best for you, nicely, you’re in the appropriate place! Right here’s our complete Package evaluate for 2024, which can cowl:
- What Is Package?
- Why do I want an e-mail service supplier (ESP)?
- The rebrand from ConvertKit to Package
- Package Options
- Package Pricing
- Key Advantages of Package
- Drawbacks of Package
- Package & E mail Advertising: Extra Sources to Learn, Hear & Be taught
What Is Package?
Package is an e-mail service supplier (ESP). Basically, it’s a expertise service that allows you to ship e-mail campaigns to a listing of subscribers. Package is considered one of actually a whole bunch of ESPs on the market, and—full disclosure—it occurs to be the one we choose and use at SPI.
Though we’re biased, we are able to 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 appropriate ESP for your corporation.
E mail Advertising Technique: Why You Want an ESP
In case you’re studying this, you may already know what an ESP is and why you want one. However in case you don’t, an ESP is crucial piece of expertise to assist your e-mail advertising and marketing technique.
E mail advertising and marketing is likely one of the strongest strategies to construct relationships and market your services to your viewers. Let’s speak about why that’s.
In its most elementary kind, e-mail advertising and marketing includes you sending emails to a bunch of people that’ve chosen to listen to from you by “subscribing” to obtain emails from you. You might 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 should 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 together 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 nicely or not.
You additionally must be sure you’re respecting individuals’s privateness and never spamming anybody. An e-mail service supplier additionally lets you keep in compliance with authorities laws around the globe, such because the CAN-SPAM act in the USA, the Common Knowledge Safety Regulation within the European Union (GDPR), and the Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (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 record and be taught highly effective segmentation and automation methods that permit your corporation to run by itself? Take a look at the E mail Advertising 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 particular section of subscribers in your record, triggered by a particular occasion or motion, with the purpose of guiding them to take a particular motion.
- Broadcast emails: Ship commonplace bulletins or one-time emails to your subscribers on a particular date.
- CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL compliance: CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL are legal guidelines that set the principles and necessities for industrial e-mail messages, and provides recipients the appropriate to have you ever cease emailing them—so compliance is essential!
- Dynamic (personalised) e-mail content material: Your e-mail content material can show completely different textual content or photographs, 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 gadgets, similar to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- WYSIWYG e-mail editor: The built-in e-mail editor helps you to see how your e-mail will look together 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 gadgets, similar to desktop computer systems and cellphones.
- Embeddable kinds: Accumulate 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 an internet site immediately on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather fee for one-time or subscription merchandise, and construct customized pages. Arrange a touchdown web page and accumulate fee 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’ll be able to ship them pre-defined emails or add them to a section.
Studying about Your Subscribers
- A/B testing: Package helps you to check completely different topic strains on your emails, and routinely determines the winner based mostly on their respective open charges.
- Reporting/analytics/ROI monitoring: Learn the way typically 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 accumulate details about subscribers, which you’ll then use to construct segments.
Rising Your Earnings
- In 2022, Package Commerce was added to the platform, permitting customers to strive 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 incorporates a web site builder. You’ll be able to create an internet site immediately on Package to publish newsletters, host a digital storefront to gather fee 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 can too 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, in addition they launched an app retailer, the place you’ll 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 neighborhood and content material with Package), and SegMetrics (find out about the way you acquire, interact, and convert subscribers).
- Package additionally provides a self-service app builder to create your individual add-ons. (As of this writing, the service is at the moment in beta.)
From “ConvertKit” to “Package”: Behind the Rebrand
In summer time 2024, the corporate beforehand often called ConvertKit formally turned Package. The brand new identify was introduced in July throughout the Craft + Commerce Creator Convention and went dwell in October. (They’d beforehand rebranded to Seva in 2018, however appreciable adverse suggestions to the brand new identify prompted them to revert to ConvertKit till this 12 months.)
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 nicely. We coated a number of the new options within the part above, however listed here 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 some extent of rebranding in public by sharing details about the rebranding course of via weblog updates, live-streamed design periods, and a four-part YouTube mini-documentary. This transparency provides an attention-grabbing perception into the corporate’s considering. And we expect it’s a sensible transfer given how their earlier rebrand went.
With that out of the way in which, let’s speak about 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 when you’ve got fewer than 1,000 subscribers. They just lately expanded the free tier to incorporate creators with as much as 10,000 subscribers.
Listed here are Package’s pricing choices as of October 2024:
Package Publication Plan
- $0/month for as much as 10,000 subscribers
The Publication plan consists of:
- 1 primary Visible Automation
- 1 e-mail Sequence
- 1 person
- Limitless touchdown pages, opt-in kinds, and e-mail broadcasts
- Viewers tagging & segmentation
- Promote digital merchandise
- Run paid newsletters & subscriptions
- Publication feed & web site
- API Entry
- Free Suggestions (required—no less than one suggestion slot to develop your record by cross-promoting with different creators)
- Good Suggestions (auto-recommendation of comparable creators that will help you develop your record)
- 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 consists of:
- 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 consists of:
- 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’ll be able to see if it’s best for you earlier than committing.
We’ll maintain this put up up to date with the most recent Package pricing, however you too can 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 Good Passive Earnings’s e-mail advertising and marketing for a number of years. In that point, we’ve discovered it to be the perfect ESP for our wants. We additionally suppose it’s an ideal resolution for a spread of entrepreneurs and digital creators in search of a sturdy, feature-rich e-mail advertising and marketing platform.
From the place we sit, the facility of Package falls into two major classes: person advantages, and viewers advantages.
Package Advantages from the Person’s Standpoint
First, Package has every thing a enterprise proprietor wants to stand up and operating rapidly:
- You’ll be able to accumulate 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 permit somebody to begin promoting even whereas they’re within the strategy of establishing an internet site elsewhere. It additionally makes it simple to execute on one of many major classes in our Good From Scratch course: utilizing promoting as a key step within the idea-validation course of.
Second, the Package crew designed their platform to develop with the sophistication of the person. If you begin, you most likely simply need to accumulate e-mail addresses and ship emails. However as you develop, you’ll need to begin tailoring your message and segmenting your viewers. At that time you’ll be able to make the most of issues like automations and dynamic content material. As you and your corporation turn into extra superior, the Creator Professional Plan is the next move—you gained’t have to change to a special e-mail service supplier 5 years down the highway. This units Package aside from another ESPs, significantly Mailchimp.
Some individuals discover Package a bit daunting (see Drawbacks under), however should you’re considerably tech-savvy we expect it’s fairly approachable. Particularly, we just like the accessibility of Package’s automation builder, which helps you to create automations in an easy, linear method.
We tried Infusionsoft for a 12 months and located its automation builder modern 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, alternatively, makes it simple to string automations collectively in a sophisticated method. 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 a substitute, subscribers will 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 advantage of the way in which Package treats subscribers? You’re solely charged as soon as for every distinctive subscriber, not like another ESPs.
Package’s just lately launched Creator Community can be an enormous 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, should you’re transferring from one other ESP like Mailchimp or AWeber, Package provides a free migration service that may take a number of the headache out of switching.
Package Advantages for Your Viewers
Package provides you the chance to tailor your messaging to your viewers. You’ll be able to have as many kinds and touchdown pages as you need. You’ll be able to have as many tags, customized fields, and segments as you need. You will be as particular in speaking to your viewers as you need to be.
As you accumulate details about your viewers, you can begin to section subscribers so that you don’t trouble individuals with issues they aren’t desirous about. Package makes it simple to gather particulars about your viewers alongside the way in which, and also you aren’t penalized for that via increased prices, as you’d be with a list-based e-mail platform.
Drawbacks of Package
No resolution is ideal, after all. Listed here 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 probably coding). You’ll be able to shorten this studying curve by following their Getting Began video collection, in addition to the remainder of the content material on their well-organized assist web site
- No list-based group. Though we like the way in which Package helps you to manage subscribers utilizing tags (and doesn’t cost you for duplicate subscribers, as we talked about above), the shortage of a list-based group system will be complicated should you’re coming from different platforms. Over time, although, we expect 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 will 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 function that the Creator Professional plan provides, 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 possibility, hasn’t been the case since 2019. This free tier makes Package comparable on the entry stage to different common ESP choices like Mailchimp.
Lastly, that is not at all a downside, however as Package continues to increase 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 quite a lot of confidence in Nathan and the Package crew, however it’s value holding in thoughts.
Our Huge Takeaway on Package
With the current updates, Package is coming nearer to being a one-stop store for creators who need to develop, nurture, and promote to their audiences with a platform that’s largely prepared to make use of and automatable. In case you’re in search of your first or subsequent e-mail advertising and marketing platform, we expect it’s an ideal resolution for rising your viewers and rising your revenue whereas retaining artistic management over what you place out into the world!
Package & E mail Advertising: Extra Sources to Learn, Hear & Be taught
So there you’ve gotten it—our evaluate of Package’s e-mail advertising and marketing platform! We’ll depart you with a couple of extra assets should you’re inquisitive about Package, or need 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 Realized After a Laborious Fail—my dialog with Package CEO Nathan Barry about setting his firm’s sights on extra formidable objectives with the rebrand.
What Is E mail Advertising? + Finest Practices: An SPI How-to Information
E mail Advertising Magic Course
AP 0712: How Do I Migrate an E mail Record from AWeber to Package? – Good Passive Earnings
Why I Switched from Aweber to Infusionsoft to ConvertKitI hope this put up has been useful in deciding whether or not Package is the appropriate ESP for your corporation. No matter e-mail advertising and marketing platform you select, nothing is extra vital than having the appropriate e-mail advertising and marketing technique, so remember to try our important information to e-mail advertising and marketing and contemplate the E mail Advertising Magic course if you would like extra hands-on assist together with your e-mail advertising and marketing, obtainable contained in the SPI Neighborhood. Good luck!
