Making money online through Niche Marketing

ConvertKit Review [2020]: Easy Email Automation For Bloggers

Last week I wrote about another email marketing platform. If you read my ActiveCampaign review, you know that I absolutely love the software. But, it’s not the only one I can vouch for. So, if you are still shopping for marketing automation tools, check out this ConvertKit review. 

‘The email marketing platform for creators’ presents a visual, drag and drop editor and robust automation tools on a simple interface. Here you’ll discover whether or not it’s right for your needs. 

ConvertKit Platform Summary

Before you dive into the nitty-gritty of the platform, it is helpful to learn who it’s right for. So, up front, let’s note that ConvertKit isn’t designed for advanced users. So, if you’re an expert marketing professional who is annoyed by barriers in your email campaigns, you’ll need to check out all of the available features to make sure it will work for your needs. 

On the other hand, if you’re a small business, educator, or a professional blogger, the available features will likely be plenty. In fact, if you can’t execute a certain task on its own inside the platform, you can probably integrate with another tool to streamline your efforts.  

The platform is similar to ActiveCampaign and Drip, being an email marketing platform with visual automation, split testing capabilities, and providing the general opportunity to help with growing your business. And, there are features that make it stand out. 

For example, with ConvertKit, you can edit emails and sequences in a single window, a feature not available with ActiveCampaign (which I use a lot). While this may not seem like a significant detail, moving back and forth between tabs while editing emails and workflows is incredibly time-consuming. 

With that said, while it may not have all the features available with more high-level platforms, ConvertKit makes it easier for users to visualize their work. If you still think this platform might be for you, keep reading.

ConvertKit Pricing Tiers

While some email marketing platforms have up to 30 varying pricing tiers for all needs, ConvertKit is uncomplicated; they have just four pricing options based on the size of your email list. 

  1. 0 – 1,000 Subscribers – $25 (yearly) or $29 (monthly) per month
  2. 1,000 – 3,000 Subscribers – $41 (yearly) or $49 (monthly) per month
  3. 3,000 – 5,000 Subscribers – $66 (yearly) or $79 (monthly) per month
  4. >5,000 Subscribers – *Cost varies based on list size

For a list larger than 5,000 subscribers, you can calculate your estimated platform costs from ConvertKit’s pricing page

pricing

With each pricing tier, you will have full access to every platform feature. And, when your contact list is larger than 5,000 subscribers, you can leverage the free concierge migration service to streamline the transfer of your existing list to the new platform. So, here’s what you’ll get. 

Here’s What to Expect When You Sign Up 

Onboarding with ConvertKit is super intuitive. The platform asks if you’re just getting started or if you’re migrating an existing list. From there, your dashboard is customized for your needs. 

Upon signup, new users are greeted with step-by-step getting started features. You’ll be guided through the following processes: 

  • Building landing pages
  • Adding and tagging subscribers
  • Creating sequences
  • Designing Visual Automations
  • Completing account information
  • Sending broadcasts
  • Adding billing info

It won’t take long to learn to use the platform, which is another reason why it’s an excellent system for beginners. 

ConvertKit Email Marketing Software Features

Now, it’s time to find out exactly what you can do inside the ConvertKit dashboard. 

Forms & Landing Pages

You’ll need lead magnets to build and grow your subscriber list. This is why the platform starts users off on the right foot by teaching them how to build landing pages.

You will be given about 20 landing page templates to choose from. 

landing pages

These templates are available for multiple lead magnet uses:

  • eBooks
  • Events
  • Newsletters
  • Podcasts
  • Profiles
  • Videos
  • Waitlists
  • Webinars

In addition, you can create inline, modal, and slide-in forms. ConvertKit has 12 form templates to choose from. 

When designing, you can use your own images or pull images directly from Unsplash with the built-in stock image integration. 

designs

The design interface is super easy to use.  

Email Creation

Next, you will need to create your emails. ConvertKit does NOT offer pretty email templates like some of the other platforms. Your emails will be sent in plain text. 

Still, you can add personalization based on subscriber information and tags. 

email creation

Unlike when using the form and landing page templates, you must upload your own images for use in the body of your emails. 

Sequences

Creating email marketing sequences inside the platform is not only easy but also convenient. As mentioned previously, my favorite platform feature is the ability to view sequences and emails from the same screen when editing.   

sequences

As you can see, sequences are viewed on the left side of the screen and can be moved up and down while editing the subject lines and messages themselves. 

This feature, in my opinion, makes ConvertKit one of the most user-friendly marketing platforms available.  

Broadcasts

Broadcast emails are sent out to multiple users or your entire list at one time to make an announcement. You don’t need the sequencing features to send a broadcast. Other than the removal of the left sidebar, your editing field is the same for broadcast emails — no templates, a simple formatting interface, and the ability to upload your own images. 

Automations

ConvertKit’s automations allow you to send emails that power your audience and business. The automations dashboard is not what you would call “robust,” but it provides content outlines for you to execute six different types of email marketing campaigns and the ability to create your own. 

Automations are triggered when a user joins a form, is added to a tag, makes a purchase, or is added to a custom field. You maintain control over who gets added.  

1. Evergreen Newsletters

newsletters

Evergreen newsletter outlines are pretty simple. They include a newsletter form, newsletter confirmation email, a landing page, and an evergreen newsletter email.

Using this automation, you can generate new subscribers and send them your monthly newsletter.

2. Evergreen Product Pitches

ConvertKit’s Evergreen Product Pitch automations are a little more complicated than the Evergreen Newsletters and include several tags and email templates. 

  • Course Launch Tag 
  • Warmup Sequence (X3)
  • Launch Sequence (X7)
  • 2 Days
  • Downsell
  • “Bought My Thing” Tag
  • Content for Buyers (Thank you, etc.)

This sequence will walk readers through a nurturing and sales experience that you can fully-customize to meet the needs of your audience. 

product launch

Above is an example of what a new Evergreen Product Pitch automation looks like from inside the platform dashboard. 

3. Webinar Promotions 

The Webinar Promotions automation is created just for email marketers promoting an upcoming or ongoing webinar and includes forms, tags, emails, calendars, and updates. 

webinar promotions

When a certain date occurs, an email will notify your subscribers that it’s time for them to check out the webinar they signed up for. 

Near the end of the sequence, you will ask those who attended the webinar to make a purchase. Then, finally, you can send targeted content to say thank you.  

4. Product Launches

The Product Launch automation from ConvertKit is designed to send users from your course to upsell one of your products or services. 

launches

It includes forms, tags, email templates, dates, and an if/then rule where your list is automatically segmented based on reader behavior. 

tags

You can use the if/then sequences to make sure your messages are relevant (you don’t want to broadcast sales pages to email recipients who haven’t shown interest in your products or services). 

events

While these rules will usually get the job done, some platforms offer more advanced options like moving readers who click on a button on a certain page of your website to a new sequence. 

5. Customer Follow-Ups

When customers don’t make a purchase, it doesn’t mean they’re not interested in your brand. It just means they’re not ready to make a purchase yet. In many cases, they just need more nurturing. 

So, ConvertKit offers the Customer Follow-Ups automation. Simply put, you use this automation to send a quick email to email recipients who didn’t make a purchase after being sent a sales email. 

customer followup

This automation is powered by a tag. By default, this tag is set to “Didn’t purchase” and is designed to work in alignment with sales sequences wherein you’ve used the tag. 

By default, four follow up emails are recommended. Keep in mind that each automation is customizable to meet your needs. 

6. Content Personalization Based on Survey Results

You can use the Content Personalization automation to invite readers to your mailing list with a simple survey question, then send tailored content based on the answers received. This is especially useful when growing your email list. 

personalization

The survey answers are organized with tags, leading subscribers to receive only relevant communications from you. 

Subscribers

The platform makes it easy to manage subscribers. You can either upload contacts manually, upload your existing list, or migrate from another platform. 

If you want to move your list from MailChimp, Drip, InfusionSoft, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, or Mailer Lite, the process will be streamlined for you. 

integrations

However, if you’re currently using a more obscure platform, you will need to download your subscriber list from the old platform and upload it as a CSV to ConvertKit; this will take a little longer on your end. 

Once you have your contacts uploaded, you can organize them with two tools. 

  1. Tags help you organize subscribers. Think of them as your own personal hashtags. When you open one tag, all users with that tag will appear.
  2. Segments let you group subscribers together for your broadcasts. 

The tags feature is fun, useful and not available on all email platforms. 

Reporting

Your ConvertKit dashboard home screen will provide you with lifetime reporting on crucial data:

  • Subscribers
  • Open Rates
  • Click Rates
  • Email Sent

In addition, you will be able to see all of your new subscribers who signed up on that day. 

You can also view individual broadcast statistics. 

reporting

Image Source: ConvertKit

And, you’ll be able to access information about who has unsubscribed after receiving individual broadcasts. The reports leave you with an idea what’s working, what’s not working, and how you can continually improve your email marketing efforts. 

Affiliate Program

ConvertKit offers a very supportive affiliate program. They offer 30% commission. So on a $99/mo plan, you would earn about $30 (per month) for each person you refer. They have some good promotion ideas, straight forward terms and an affiliate manager to help you get things up and running.

Who Are the 70+ Integration Partners?

Choosing the right email marketing software can sometimes depend on other tools you’re currently using (payment processing, live chat, etc.). ConvertKit currently has over 70 integration partners. So, chances are, you can probably streamline integration with the software you already use. 

integration partners

Here are the available software integration categories:

  • eCommerce
  • Lead Capture
  • Webinar Services
  • Affiliate Management
  • Membership & Courses
  • Surveys & Quizzes
  • Website Platforms
  • Scheduling
  • Giveaways
  • CRM
  • Facebook Ads
  • List Tracking & Analytics
  • Zapier (Create Your Own Zaps to Integrate with Other Tools)
  • Email Verification

So, as I’ve said, even where the platform might fall short, you can probably find an easy integration to open the door for new tasks. 

Featured ConvertKit Integrations

There are too many ConvertKit integrations to explain all of them in one platform review. But, to get an idea of what’s possible, let’s take a look at the top three contenders: 

1. CrowdCast

crowdcast

The CrowdCast integration allows you to send live videos and webinars to your subscribers. You can then tag users based on whether or not they viewed/ attended. With ConvertKit, you can use the tags created to keep your communications relevant. 

2. Easy Webinar

easy webinar

Integrate ConvertKit with Easy Webinar to send those added to your webinars to your desired subscriber list. With this integration, you keep your accounts connected and communications relevant. 

3. Teachable

teachable

Do you build and sell digital courses on the Teachable platform? Use the ConvertKit integration to trigger the automation of your choosing when someone purchases your course. 

You don’t want to follow up with someone who didn’t watch your educational video and talk about what they would have learned. Instead, you can send readers something that might be more relevant to their wants. Stay relevant by connecting the accounts you already use to your email dashboard. 

Final Thoughts

In summary, ConvertKit isn’t the right email marketing platform for everyone, but it is outstandingly user-friendly. So, is it worth the expense? My verdict is ‘yes!’ — If your email marketing needs are not advanced, and you can make this platform work for you, the ease of using it will make it worthwhile. What are your experiences with the platform? Start your free trial today and let me know if you agree with my assessment. 

2020 ClickFunnels Review – How We Turned a Profit using this Software

Introduction: Why You Need Sales Funnel Software

So, you’ve got a great business idea. Maybe you’ve got several great business ideas. You could have developed a fortune-making digital or physical product or service. Perhaps you’ve designed a course or prepared a webinar that will be incredibly beneficial to others.

Whatever your great idea may be, after all the hard work you’ve put into making that idea a reality you’ve got to sell it. “If you build it, they will come” may work in the movies, but not in sales. You’ve got to invest time, money, and effort into building, tracking, and updating your sales funnel. In other words, you need to develop a way to

  • attract customers to your product or service
  • get them interested in your offer
  • make it easy for them to take the action you want them to take
  • support them so they not only continue buying from you, but become advocates that convince others to buy your product or service
sales funnel process

This can be an expensive process requiring website designers, developers, copywriters, and data analysts. It can also be time consuming, depending on the complexity and scale of your sales funnel, taking days, weeks, or months before you can start getting your message out to prospective customers.

But Nicheologist, you say, I haven’t got that kind of budget or time. I want to start selling my awesome product or service yesterday!

Rest easy, friend, you’ve got several tools that can give you the helping hand you need to market your awesome idea effectively and affordably. In this article, we’re going to look at one of the more popular tools that has produced great results for entrepreneurs with all levels of experience: ClickFunnels®.

[Sign Up for Your 14-Day ClickFunnels Free Trial]

What is ClickFunnels?

ClickFunnels is a one-stop sales funnel creator. It gives you the ability to build, track, and optimize funnels quickly, easily, and affordably. Features include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • Landing page builder and templates
  • Sales funnel templates
  • Email integrations
  • Autoresponder
  • Split-testing
  • Shopping cart
ClickFunnels Actionetics makes it easy to manage automated email campaigns

That’s just the tip of the iceberg – ClickFunnels has tons of options that give you the marketing boost your specific product or service needs. You get everything you need in a complete package, eliminating the need to mesh a variety of sales funnel tools together, which usually requires some technical knowledge. You can build a ClickFunnels page, website, custom email, or any other digital marketing asset with its drag-and-drop creator. The built-in marketing components of the full-featured ClickFunnels Etison suite enable you to manage your email lists and launch and manage your very own affiliate program –you can offer others the opportunity to make some cash promoting your goods and services for you.

I should also mention that ClickFunnels has its own affiliate program that enables you to earn some passive income while your running your sales funnels for your own products and services.

What ClickFunnels Can do for You

If you’ve got something to offer online, ClickFunnels is a great way to get onto people’s radar. The platform caters to all product and service categories, and it provides the tools you need to speak with pretty much any audience.

In addition to selling products, you can create membership sites and opt-in pages to build up your email lists. While you need to invest some time, creativity, and, once the free two-week trial is up, money into it, but ClickFunnels makes it super-easy to get a return on your investment – basically, you get what you give.

Ease-of-use is one of the main benefits that ClickFunnels promotes on its site, and, speaking from experience, I can tell you this: believe the hype. Really. Sure, there are a LOT of features, but ClickFunnels helps guide you through them with tons of great tutorials and a supportive community of fellow entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers.

ClickFunnels personalizes your first funnel-building experience

In addition to simplicity, ClickFunnels also provides peace of mind. There’s no need to fuss over costly, often complicated, things like website hosting, web page design and development, server maintenance, and security. You really get everything you need to create and optimize high-converting funnels that make it easy for you to

  • Generate leads
  • Make sales
  • Upsell products and services
  • Acquire webinar attendees
  • And much more

All you need is a business idea – ClickFunnels provides the funnel that will elevate that idea to a money-maker quickly and easily. You get this without the costly and complicated process that traditional sales funnels require.

Does ClickFunnels Work?

ClickFunnels earns me nearly $2,000 per month.

Here’s an example of how well ClickFunnels works for me: I make $1,335 in e-course sales per month plus $325 per month in promoting click funnels as an affiliate. I also make a considerable amount of additional income doing 1-on-1 coaching as a high ticket offer, which I upsell from the e-course (through ClickFunnels automation).

So yes, it does work. But you need to put in the grit of learning how to make an offer and then building a sales funnel and tweaking that process till you get it right.

My ClickFunnels Experience

It took me just a few hours to create my very first Funnel, I had traffic coming to my offer from facebook ads, google ads, retargetting existing traffic and SEO. So by placing the new offer in front of this traffic, I noticed a significant increase in sales and conversions. I would say that most of this is due to understanding how to make a proper offer (from ClickFunnels “One Funnel Away” Training and having a better software to guide my visitors through our new sales process.

While ClickFunnels is jam-packed with features, I found the tutorials and community extremely helpful. In fact, from just 1 post on their facebook group, a complete stranger (also a funnel hacker) did a LIVE zoom call to help me overcome an issue I was having (and expected nothing in return). I’ve never seen support like this with any other platform. Users are super supportive of each other’s success!

Features

To start with, ClickFunnels enables you to build every component of your sales funnel in one intuitive package. Assets you can create include, but are not limited to:

  • Landing pages
  • Opt-in pages
  • Squeeze pages
  • Membership websites
  • Webinars
  • Sales funnels with upsells
  • Normal business websites and blogs

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find even more handy features that will help you achieve your sales funnel goals.

Multiple integrations

In addition to integrating with a wide range of shopping cart solution providers and payment processors, ClickFunnels also allows you to add any of several auto-responders.

ClickFunnels integrates easily with popular auto-responders and shopping cart solutions.

Email marketing

While it integrates easily with third-party email automation solutions, the ClickFunnels Etison suite includes an email marketing feature. So ClickFunnels enables you to not only capture your leads at the top of your sales funnel, it also supports and nurtures those leads throughout the entire funnel, increasing each customer’s lifetime value.

ClickFunnels Actionetics Broadcast helps you distribute your message quickly and effectively

A/B Testing

To continuously improve, you’ll need to test different variants of your sales funnels. Not only does ClickFunnels give you everything you need to run split-tests quickly and easily, it also handles the analysis to help you quickly see which funnel elements and layouts work best, and which ones need to be scrapped.

Setting up A/B testing in ClickFunnels is quick and easy.

ClickFunnels Marketplace

While ClickFunnels makes sales funnel creation easy, you’ll still need to put in some time and effort to customize the look and messaging on your pages and set up your funnel according to your needs. If you’re keen to get a funnel or two up and running quickly, you can shop for proven sales funnel templates in the ClickFunnels marketplace. You’ll also find experts that you can hire when you need a bit of help.

Find page templates, complete sales funnels, and experts in the ClickFunnels marketplace

Backpack – Affiliate Program Builder

ClickFunnels also makes it easy for you to build your own affiliate program and grow your business easily and affordably. The Backpack feature included in the Etison suite is, like everything else in ClickFunnels, incredibly simple to set up and use, no matter how tech savvy (or non-tech savvy) you may be.

The intuitive ClickFunnels Backpack dashboard provides a clear overview of your affiliate program's results.

What you’ll Love About ClickFunnels

There’s a lot to love about ClickFunnels. Here are just a few features that put it in a league of its own.

Ease of use

I’ve mentioned it already, and I’ll mention it again – ClickFunnels really does simplify the process of building a profitable sales funnel. You don’t need any design or coding skills to create highly effective sales funnels. A wide selection of templates plus the drag-and-drop editor enable you to make everything you need for your funnel in minutes – though you’ll probably want to spend more time to get everything exactly as you want it.

One of my favorite, and most profitable, ways of using ClickFunnels is building out a funnel with the following:

  • Opt-in
  • One-time offer
  • Order bump (at order page)
  • 1-click upsell
  • 1-click downsell

My customers immediately get access to the course they just paid for, along with a summary of what they paid for in an internal membership site. ClickFunnels makes this entire process easier to run than other platforms.

Visual summary of funnel outline

After your sales funnel is live, intuitive dashboards, clear analytics and custom settings, give you everything you need to optimize every stage of your customer journey.

This includes being able to easily click on each section of your sales funnel, including your:

Squeeze page, Order Form, One Time Offer, Downsell, Order Confirmation, Client Access and Affiliate Access. It is very easy to drag and drop these parts of your funnel around and even copy from one funnel to another.

Being able to clearly see the overview of your funnel makes management easy. Each section has its own set of statistics and settings to get everything just right! You can even customize the url(s). They really do make the process of building a complex sales funnel simple!

Moneymaker

ClickFunnels is committed to helping you make money. All you need is an idea, a computer, and some time. Then it’s just a matter of setting up your account, building your funnel, and delivering your goods or services. Fast and simple integration with payment processors makes it easy for your customers to pay using their preferred payment methods and makes it easy for you to collect those payments.

All-in-one

ClickFunnels saves you the hassle of cobbling together different software solutions that traditional sales funnels normally require. Create and optimize web pages, forms, emails, and everything else you need for your funnel in one well-rounded solution.

Active community

The ClickFunnels community is supportive, inspiring, and keeps you motivated. The ClickFunnels Facebook groups are incredibly active and full of great tips and solutions. Also, they host several events like the upcoming Funnel Hacking LIVE gathering where you can network and learn from top earners as they share the secrets of their success.

funnel hacking live
Funnel Hacking Live

Weaknesses (and what you can do about them)

As great as ClickFunnels is at what it does, it has its detractors. However, the issues that some people have experienced are not deal-breakers.

The monthly fee

ClickFunnels may seem a bit pricey at first, but we’re talking about a complete one-stop-shop for all the online marketing tools you need for a profitable online business. In addition to saving you the hefty total cost of using separate e-marketing tools, ClickFunnels’ Etison Suite saves you the time and cost of setting up and integrating those tools so they play nice together. Ease of use means you don’t need to hire expensive designers and developers.

You need to make investments in your business; ClickFunnels gives you maximum bang for your buck.

ClickFunnels Etison Suite saves you money and time.

Crashes and bugs

Crashes happen to the best of programs and ClickFunnels is no exception. In this regard, a ClickFunnels problem can become your problem if their downtime means that your site goes offline till the issue is resolved. The longer the downtime, the greater the potential losses. Checking your pages frequently is the only way stay aware of site status.

While ClickFunnels can be somewhat buggy, they provide good support. Their service team has promptly replied to, and resolved, every ticket I’ve had to open. They are also open to suggestions for improvement, and often implement new features and updates based on user feedback. Whenever I’ve turned to the Facebook community for assistance, fellow ClickFunnels users have been kind enough to have live chats and even calls with me to help resolve and/or work around any bugs or other issues that I’ve been stuck on.

Simple – not overwhelming

On the surface, ClickFunnels can seem a bit too simple, due primarily to many the straightforward templates available through the ClickFunnels marketplace and community. Also, their membership sites and shopping cart are rather basic. However, underneath its hassle-free drag-and-drop page and funnel-building features, ClickFunnels is highly customizable and gives you the opportunity to tailor pages and funnels to suit your brand perfectly.

The ClickFunnels page editor lets you customize your landing pages easily.

At the same time, the vast selection of tools and options that ClickFunnels contains can appear to be a bit overwhelming, especially for less experienced online users who want to get their funnels set up quickly so they can start selling right away. But there isn’t much of a learning curve, the dashboards really are intuitive, and you can take advantage of the ClickFunnels free trial for two whole weeks, which is more than enough time for you to get to know the software and figure out how you can make it work for you once you’re ready to start paying for it. Plus, the admins go live in facebook multiple times per week answering technical questions and training on the technical aspects and unknown features of the software.

Jack of all trades

Like most all-in-one solutions, ClickFunnels is good at everything it does, but as a result – not superior in every category. For instance, due to its simplicity sales focused approach, ClickFunnels Shopping Cart and Membersship Areas are basic. They don’t have advanced customization capabilities that other softwares offer. However, there are plugins you can download and a community of programmers available to create a more robust experience for these 2 weak points. So if what you’re looking to have done isn’t a “stock” option, you still have a means to get what you want via customization.

What you lose in this respect, you more than recover with the time and cost saved by using a sales funnel tool developed to handle your entire sales process. Also, as I mentioned earlier with respect to cost, ClickFunnels frees you of the expense and hassle of buying and integrating separate solutions from different providers.

ClickFunnels Pricing

ClickFunnels offers a free 14-day trial with no obligation to buy. Once that’s finished, you can choose between two pricing packages: a basic package consisting solely of ClickFunnels or the Etison Suite, which includes ClickFunnels, Actionetics (for marketing automation), and Backpack (for affiliate program creation).

ClickFunnels has two pricing options - basic for $97 per month and one full-featured package for $297 per month.

For $97 per month, the Basic ClickFunnels option includes:

  • 20 funnels
  • 100 pages
  • 20,000 visitors
  • Unlimited contact leads
  • 3 custom domains
  • A/B split tests
  • Email integrations
  • Optin funnels
  • ClickPops
  • ClickOptin
  • All advanced funnels
  • Sales funnels
  • Membership funnels
  • Unlimited members
  • Auto webinar funnels
  • Webinar funnels
  • Hangout funnels
  • Order pages
  • Upsell pages
  • Downsale pages
  • Funnel-sharing

The full Etison Suite costs $297 per month and includes:

  • 70 funnels
  • 300 pages
  • 100,000 visitors
  • Unlimited contact leads
  • 20 custom domains
  • All basic features, plus:
  • Actionetics – marketing automation tool
  • Backpack – affiliate program creation tool
  • Priority support
  • Priority template requests

Final Thoughts

ClickFunnels is ideal for you if you’re looking for a dependable one-stop-shop for creating and managing your sales funnels including your opt in pages and membership sites.

Its ease-of-use, intuitive dashboards, and supportive community are just a few of the key features that has made this software so popular among entrepreneurs and online marketers.

Ultimately, it is the best tool for learning how to create better offers and for building profitable sales funnels. It definitely helped me turn a positive ROI (Return on Investment) on cold advertising and I could not have done this without the software.

[Start your free 14-day ClickFunnels trial]

ClickMagick Review: A Full Breakdown of the Link Tracking Software

One of the more popular link tracking software options on the market, ClickMagick has people talking. Modern agencies, freelancers, and niche business owners — especially those who pay for website traffic or generate revenue from affiliate marketing — need to know about it.

So, I’ve decided to take it for another test drive and break down the most relevant platform features for you.

In this ClickMagick review, you’ll learn the available pricing options, how to learn to work in the platform, my experience with the response time of their customer support team, and how often the API is updated.

You’ll also find helpful information about the platform features including basic and advanced link management, click tracking, and link rotation.

Most importantly, once you’re finished reading, you’ll be ready to make an informed decision about whether or not you want to try their click tracking tools for yourself.

What is ClickMagick?

ClickMagick is a platform that allows marketers to optimize and track all of their marketing efforts in one place. It is a link manager, rotator, and click tracker. The platform helps you give more value to all of your links.

Why would you need any of this?

  • Link Management – When building links to your content, a link management platform helps you stay organized. Without organization, you will lose track of your efforts.
  • Click Tracking – By tagging your URLs with a unique click-tracking code, you’re able to count how many clicks a link on a particular page, email, or social media post gets, as opposed to tracking page visits as a whole.
  • Link Rotation – Do you sell traffic and ad space? If so, this feature will save you a ton of time sending traffic to multiple clients.

Furthermore, when you need to perform A/B testing, rotating your links can help you understand which landing pages perform best based on where the traffic is coming from.

Does this tool sound like something your business operations could use? If so, read on.

Pricing Options

One of the first things marketers need to know when making a software purchase decision is how much it will cost. As with most modern SaaS platforms, ClickMagick offers several options, based on the popular needs of users.

At this time, there are three ClickMagick pricing tiers to choose from:

  1. Starter Plan: $144 per year
  2. Standard Plan: $396 per year
  3. Pro Plan: $792 per year
clickmagick pricing

Each pricing plan includes all of ClickMagick’s core features and “Fanatical one-hour Support” (explained below). One of the major factors in choosing which plan to go with is how many clicks you anticipate needing to track.

To track up to 10,000 clicks per month, you can safely select the starter plan. For 100,000 clicks per month, you can choose the standard plan. And, with the pro plan, you can track up to 1,000,000 links per month.

The plan you select will also determine how long your data is stored on the platform, how many funnels you can manage in your dashboard, and how many custom tracking domains you can create.

Does ClickMagick Offer a Free Trial?

Yes, ClickMagick currently offers a free 14-day trial for new users.

Your credit card information is required for the trial. So, if you decide to take it for a test spin, remember to cancel your account before the trial period ends.

ClickMagick Trial

User Tutorials, Videos, and FAQs

If you’re going to dive into a new marketing platform, you’ll need a knowledge base to learn how to use it. ClickMagick tutorials are available from within the platform.

Ideally, this means you won’t have to sign up at any external user forums to learn the lay of the land. So, do their videos stack up? Can you learn everything you need to know without reaching out to an external source or to customer support?

When you click on the help menu of the dashboard from any page on the website, you can easily maneuver over to the user tutorials. From there, the ‘Getting Started’ video guides you down a learning path that covers all facets of using the software:

  • Getting Started
  • Setup
  • Content
  • Integrations

If you still have questions after watching the tutorials (you probably will), the FAQs should be able to help you. And, when all else fails, you may need to ask customer support.

That’s one of the downsides to the platform — there are so many bells and whistles that users must dedicate time to learning how to use it. And, that’s also why they try to go above and beyond with their support.

What is ClickMagick’s “Fanatical one-Hour Support?”

ClickMagick seems to have coined the phrase, ‘fanatical one-hour support,’ to promote its customer help platform. So, this is worth understanding before you commit to a year subscription.

Unfortunately, no ClickMagick customer service number exists to make a phone call to support. Alternatively, all platform help is handled online. A simple query like, “how do I create a link?” will bring you to a list of the relevant FAQs and a list of potentially helpful tutorial videos.

And, in this way, you can find the answer to most questions immediately.

But, what about queries that are more difficult to answer?  For those, you can submit a ticket at the online help desk. Based on the copy displayed on the site, you will expect to receive a response within an hour. So, will the customer service team deliver?

To find out, I submitted a ticket to the ClickMagick support at 2:09 PM. The first response I received via email was a minute later, letting me know that my query had been received.

Fanatical One Hour Support

How long did it take to receive a response from a support specialist? When I checked back over an hour later, around 3:30 PM on the same day, I still hadn’t received a reply.  So, I decided to give it a few hours and, voila!

By 5:32 PM on the same day (about three and a half hours after submitting a ticket), I received a detailed, helpful response to my query.

So, while my question wasn’t answered in an hour (to be fair, it was a fairly difficult question to answer), my issue was resolved in less than 24 hours. From my experience with similar online platforms, this is satisfactory.

If they were to add live chat, I’d probably give the user support a five-star rating.

How Often Does ClickMagick Update Their API?

Marketing software isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ industry. When you’re paying a subscription fee to use a business tool, you want to be sure that your provider is continually updating their API to iron out kinks, add features, and enhance your experience with the platform.

So, how often are the developers over at ClickMagick making updates and improvements?

Every single day.

ClickMagick News and Updates

As soon as an error is reported, you can trust that someone is working to troubleshoot and solve the issue. So, most of the time, you probably won’t even notice the hangups they’re having.

And, when features are requested by enough users, the dev team is ready to figure out how to add them.

All of this indicates that ClickMagick is likely a tool that will grow with you as you scale your marketing — it shows signs of longevity and dependability.

Link Management and Click Tracking Features

ClickMagick software allows you to create unique links and to group them into specific projects to keep your dashboard organized. You can redirect your links to any URL  (your domain or someone else’s) including website landing pages, social media pages, and other web content.

Tracking Features 1

You then gain instant access to data including the total clicks (TC) and unique clicks (UC) on your links. “Total clicks” represent the number of times the link has been clicked while “unique clicks” show how many unique visitors have clicked through the links.

Tracking Features 2

From there, you can get a bit more advanced with your efforts. Here are some of the top advanced features to use.

Advanced Feature #1: Create and Leverage a Custom Domain

You can use a custom domain and to track visits to a web page. However, this isn’t the simplest feature ClickMagick has to offer.

Why would you want to leverage a custom domain?

If you’re serious about your business, you need to protect it. If you’re not using a custom domain, you may be blacklisted when another marketer on the platform uses a standard ClickMagick link, which looks like ‘https://clkmg.com/XXX/XXX.’

So, using a custom domain is considered best practice and keeps the ball in your court.

Now, what makes this feature difficult to use?

The problem with using a custom domain for link tracking in the platform is that you’ll have to access and alter your domain’s DNS records.  Luckily, you can use the existing FAQs and tutorials to learn how. And, as long as you’re using a major domain registrar like (GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.), it will be easy enough to figure out.

User tip: Be sure to use a subdomain (ex: https://track.yourwebsite.com) for link tracking on any domain with existing content.  

Advanced Feature #2: Monitor Organic Traffic

One of the coolest features of ClickMagick is that you can use it to monitor organic traffic on singular pages.

The organic traffic monitoring feature comes in especially handy when you’re working on a link building project that focuses on just a few specific pages of your site as opposed to the entire domain. In this case, you can see the number of page views from links built by others as well as yourself.

Advanced Feature #3: View Real vs Fake Traffic

You may be getting thousands of visits to your pages, but receiving low conversions. Despite your best efforts to optimize UX, you still don’t know what’s wrong. Well, it could be bots!

Bot traffic or non-human traffic to a web page can kill your visible conversion rates and throw a wrench in your analytics.

Fortunately, ClickMagick will filter bot traffic from real, human traffic based on the IP address used.

You will be able to see “premium,” “good,” and sub-par traffic based on the country where the IP is based. These tiers are broken down into three groups.

  1. Tier 1 / Premium Traffic comes from one of five English-speaking countries where the most leads are likely to come from (US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ).
  2. Tier 2 / Good Traffic comes from one of 43 countries where remaining leads are likely to come from (Argentina, Italy, Mexico, etc.)
  3. Tier 3 / Sub-Par Traffic comes from a country where few leads, yet many bots are likely to come from (Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria, etc.).

Knowing the source of your traffic can make all the difference in honing your acquisition efforts.  For example, if the majority of your traffic is bad, it doesn’t matter how well you optimize your pages.

Advanced Feature #4: Create and Leverage Retargeting Pixels

If you currently use tracking pixels from any third-party source like Facebook, Google, Twitter, or somewhere else, you will love the option to expand your efforts.

Rather than just retarget ads to visitors who land on your blog or click through your PPC ads, you can now use your tracking pixels in links from emails, social media, forums, and more.

This feature is not available with most link tracking platforms.

Advanced Feature #5: Link Cloaking

If you use a custom domain in your link tracking efforts, you will also have the ability to cloak your links. Essentially, cloaking your tracking links allows you to hide or   links, which are often exceptionally long and easy for web admins and readers to spot.

You will have the ability to cloak any link you create with ClickMagick.

Advanced Feature #6: A/B Testing

You can maximize the value of your campaigns with A/B or split testing. You will need to learn effective A/B testing techniques before you can leverage ClickMagick to effectively implement them.

Send traffic to two or more pages manually using link rotation (I’ll explain later), or you can use ClickMagick’s built-in Split Test function.

AB Split Testing

I recommend the Split Test function because ClickMagick will automatically choose the winning page for you based on the determinant of your choice.

  • Actions
  • Engagements
  • Sales

Based on the factor choose, ClickMagick can collect the information you need and select the best landing page to direct clicks to.

In a nutshell, it completely automates the A/B testing process for you.

Link Rotation Features

A link rotator delivers incoming clicks to one or more URLs. Usually, you would use it to give your ‘clicks’ to sites who have purchased traffic from you. ClickMagick offers four types of rotators.

Link Rotation
  1. Fulfillment Rotator – From the list of URLs you enter, this rotator will give the first URL the clicks until the order/ quota is fulfilled, then move down the list sequentially.
  2. Spillover Rotator – Similar to the Fulfillment rotator, this rotator starts at the top of your list, fulfilling click quotas, one URL at a time. But, when a second click comes through from one site visitor, it is given to the second URL on the list. It continues to move down the list as more clicks come in. This rotator is ideal for people who sell solo ads.
  3. Random Rotator – Just as you would expect, this rotator sends clicks to URLs on your list at random. It is rarely used (in my experience, “random” rarely means “balanced.”)
  4. Sequential Rotator – This rotator sends clicks, as they come in, to each URL on your list. So, the first URL on the list gets the first click, the second URL gets the second click and so on and so forth.

These rotators are pretty much everything you’ll need to get started. But, you can and should take your work a step further.

‘On Finish’ Settings for Sequential Clicks

When using the Spillover Rotator, you will have access to On Finish settings, which determine what happens when each URL in your list has multiple clicks from a visitor.

Where can you send any additional repeat clicks acquired through the Spillover Rotator?

  • Backup URL – Selecting this option will send the person who has continually clicked your link to a backup URL of your choosing.
  • Last URL – This is the default setting for what the click rotator does with additional consecutive clicks from a single user. So, if you do nothing, this is what will automatically happen. The person clicking the link will be sent to the last URL on your list
  • Top of Rotator – The person clicking the link will be sent to the top of your list to go through each URL again.

Next, when using the Random Rotator, you will see a different set of on finish options for what to do with consecutive clicks — you can either set the link to point to the same URL repeatedly or to another random URL.

Finally, the on finish settings for the Sequential Rotator allow you to do even more. You can either send sequential clicks to the same URL repeatedly or move the visitor through each of the URLs on your list with each click.

Using MagickPops and MagickBars

Some of the most impressive tools offered by ClickMagick are the MagickPops and MagickBars.

MagickPops are pop-ups you can add to websites that you have no control over.

You can use MagickPops to direct people to a sales offer and capture their email addresses. The visitor must click through your link in order to see the pop-up you’ve created.

  • Immediate pop-ups are displayed instantly when a user clicks your link.
  • Intelligent pop-ups appear when your visitor attempts to leave the page.

These can come in extremely handy when collecting user emails.

MagickBars allow you to add banner ads, timers, and other elements to websites that you have no control over.

Furthermore, you can put any content you want into a MagickBar.

These are the features that really take your marketing to the next level, as they allow you a new degree of control over sites that you don’t own or manage from the same dashboard you use to your manage links.

For example, imagine that you’re sending visitors through a link to one of your affiliate products. When the user clicks through your ClickMagick link, they are taken to the landing page on a website that you promote, but don’t own.

Once the user arrives on that page, you can greet them with a customized MagickPop (pop-up) or MagickBar (banner) to collect email information or send them to one of your other promotional pages.

Note: Link cloaking comes in exceptionally handy when leveraging these features.

MagickPop Example

For the sake of this example, let’s imagine that I have an affiliate account with Zoho, and I want to direct traffic to their social tools in exchange for a commission on paid signups. In addition, I want to build my email list. I could use a MagickPop to do this without ever sending traffic to my website.

  • Step 1: Create a custom domain using GoDaddy or Namecheap (or another registrar).
  • Step 2: Connect my new domain to ClickMagick.
  • Step 3: Create a cloaked ClickMagick tracking URL that directs clicks to the Zoho Social landing page with my affiliate code.
  • Step 4: Create a new email subscription form using MailChimp (or another email marketing platform).
  • Step 5: Use my new email subscription form to create a MagickPop.
  • Step 6: Connect my new MagickPop to my new ClickMagick tracking URL.  
MagickPop Example

As you can see from the screenshot above, when my tracking URL is clicked, users are taken to Zoho’s website. But, they see my URL and subscription form.

MagickBar Example

Now, let’s take the next feature for a spin. As stated above, MagickBars can contain any content you want. But, for the sake of simplicity, let’s just say I need a banner for a marketing client.

I’ll pretend Ray Higdon is my client (Note: I have no actual affiliation with Ray Higdon). I want to direct users to one of his books on Barnes & Noble. But, if the customer doesn’t want to make a purchase right now, I’d like to encourage them to follow Ray on Twitter.

So, here’s what I would do.

  • Step 1: Create a custom domain using GoDaddy or Namecheap (or another registrar). *For this purpose, I’ll just stick with the same URL from the MagickPop example above.
  • Step 2: Connect my new domain to ClickMagick.
  • Step 3: Create a cloaked ClickMagick tracking URL that directs clicks to the book’s landing page.
  • Step 4: Create a new banner ad using Canva (or another design platform).
  • Step 5: Add my banner to Imgbb (or another image hosting site).
  • Step 5: Use my new banner to create a MagickBar.
  • Step 6: Connect my new MagickBar to my new ClickMagick tracking URL.  
MagickBar

And, as with the MagickPops example, you can now see my URL and banner content on a website I do not own.  All users who click through my ClickMagick tracking link will see the same.

These features have nearly unlimited uses that breathe magick into your marketing efforts.

Available ClickMagick Integrations

While the platform has an impressive range of features, no modern marketing software is complete without integrations with other complimentary tools.

Lucky for you, ClickMagick integrates easily with your other affiliate marketing tools.

  • PPC Networks – You can integrate your account with PPC networks like Bing, Google, and more.

User Tip: Make sure to add your tracking links to your PPC ads after they are approved.

  • ClickBank – For the most accurate reporting results, set up your ClickMagick account with ClickBank’s instant notification services. Simply create your ClickBank secret key, add your secret key to your ClickMagick user profile, and add ClickMagick’s instant notification URL to ClickBank.
  • Affiliate Networks – Integrate landing pages and ClickMagick with many available CPA affiliate networks including MaxBounty, PeerFly, and ClickBooth.

In addition to the affiliate and advertising integrations, ClickMagick is compatible with Google Analytics, giving your campaigns even more power.

Final Thoughts

Overall, ClickMagick is an excellent platform for link management, click tracking, and link rotation.

But, it’s probably not the best fit for a novice affiliate marketer. Rather, the system is a full suite of link tools for experts in the affiliate and digital marketing spaces.

If you have the time and energy to learn the interface, ClickMagick is well-worth the investment.

Go here to start your free trial now and see what you think!