AP 0600: Does ConvertKit Replace LeadPages?

AskPat 600 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pay Flynn here and welcome to episode psh … That was terrible. Episode 600. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, to any other episodes that you've listened to and all of your support. AskPat, I can't believe we've done this 599 other times. 600 is a great milestone and let's keep going.

We have a great question today from Lea but before we get to Lea's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks.com, making it awesome, easy, and super convenient to keep track and manage our business finances. They serve over three million other small businesses and they can help serve you too by just clearing all the headaches away, just making it really easy to manage and keep track of your finances.

When I first started managing my own finances back in 2008, I was doing it with Excel and it just became a huge mess rather quickly and I only wish I got started with FreshBooks sooner. If you want to get started with FreshBooks now, you can check it for 30 days by going to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” Section. Awesome.

Now, here's today's question from Lea:

Lea: Hey Pat, it's Lea Pica from LeaPica.com where I coach digital marketers and analysts on how to present data effectively and you graciously answered my podcast question a few months ago on episode 347 in exchange for me singing your favorite Disney song, if you remember. I loved creating that moment for you and that video actually connected me to one of my biggest professional heroes so thank you so much for allowing me to create that moment. Your answer and tutorials were instrumental in helping me launch my own podcast so I'm just so grateful to you.
I hope this second question will serve your audience. I recently joined ConvertKit based on all of your recent videos and some other blogger's posts and I like it so far but I'm trying to understand if it's meant to replace Lead Pages for landing page and lead box style functionality. I noticed that you use a combination of both ConvertKit and Lead Pages for content upgrades and general e-mail capture around the site and I was wondering if you have a specific strategy around using them separately or in conjunction.

If you decide to answer this question, I'll follow suit with a prior listener and offer up my t-shirt to another AskPat fan but since it's the holidays, I will offer you an encore performance of your favorite Christmas song if you have one. Just anything that's not Santa Baby, if you don't mind. Thank you again so much, Pat. You are by far the best around. Namaste.

Pat Flynn: Hey Lea, what's up? Thank you for the second question here. I appreciate you, everything that you've done and said to support the amazing talent that you have as a singer. It was a very touching video that you sent me, I really appreciate that. To those of you who are wondering, she had sent me a video of herself singing I See The Light, which is a song by Mandy Moore from one of my favorite movies, Disney movies, called Tangled, which is kind of a Rapunzel type story. Anyway, I'm a Disney freak, I know a lot of you are too. Maybe you're not but that's okay, but Lea's an amazing singer and I'm stoked that I can feature her second question here at episode 600. Then we'll talk about Christmas songs and stuff at the end.

Lea, great that you're on ConvertKit. I love that and so many people are e-mailing me telling me how much they love Convert Kit, but also, this is a great question because I'm getting a lot of people asking the same question as you. Does this actually replace Lead Pages? I am actually an advisor for both of these companies and I can tell you straight away that they are actually not competition with one another.

What happens is Lead Pages is a way to enhance an e-mail service provider, be it ConvertKit or AWeber or Infusionsoft or any other one out there. Lead Pages gives you access to hundreds of templates, lead pages, other lead boxes, and just makes you able to use lead digits, if you upgrade to the business enterprise level. It just gives you access to more options with collecting e-mails but ConvertKit is your e-mail service provider, Lead Pages itself does not collect e-mails. You need to hook it up to an e-mail service provider.

Lead Pages does have some basic landing pages and some basic sort of lead boxes light box pop up forms that you could use that I've used on my site just because it's easy to set up, but Lead Pages is by far the number one thing you should be using no matter what e-mail service provider you have to just truly enhance the subscription … The way people subscribe to your site and the opt-in forms that you have for sure.

We've featured Clay Collins a few times. The most popular episode, or one of the most popular episodes of the Smart Passive Income podcast was one that Clay was featured on and that's SmartPassiveIncome.com/session78 and that'll take you directly to that episode where we talk about lead magnets and all of the things that are working and continue to work today to help you build and grow your e-mail list fast and rapidly. Lead Pages is great. If you want to check out Lead Pages, you can go to AskPat.com/LeadPages and if you are interested in checking out Convert Kit, you can head on over to AskPat.com/ConvertKit.

I will say that my forms look a little bit different than both Lead Pages and Convert Kit. It's sort of a more customized hybrid version of the two and that's simply because of the position I'm in and the space that I'm in because so many people in the space, the entrepreneurial online business, how to start a business, that kind of thing, everybody's using Lead Pages and a lot of people are using Convert Kit. I just wanted to create something that was more unique, that was more tailored to the experience that you have on the SPI blog and throughout the entire brand.
It's something that I do personally and I spend a little bit of money to have done, but with Lead Pages, there's hundreds of different kinds of opt-in forms and you can just customize those lead boxes really easily too. I wouldn't worry about what I have because what you have is going to be really easy to set up, both on ConvertKit and Lead Pages. Lea, I hope that answers your question.

Simple answer, Lead Pages enhances your e-mail service provider and if you are up on ConvertKit, that's great. If you're not, still Lead Pages will help you out. Again, thank you so much and those links I mentioned earlier, those are affiliate links again. AskPat.com/ConvertKit and AskPat.com/LeadPages. Lea, thank you for offering the AskPat t-shirt to a lucky listener. For all of you that are listening to this, use the hashtag #AskPat600.

Leave a message for me if you'd like but for those of you that use that hashtag within a week after this episode goes live, one of you will be randomly selected to get a shirt that Lea … She doesn't need a second one, I guess, so we're going to give her next one to one of you, so use the hashtag on Twitter, hashtag #AskPat600. Super easy to remember. One of you will be randomly selected a week after the episode goes live, so yeah, we'll do that and Lea, the song. The song that you so graciously have offered to sing, and no it's not Santa Baby, it wouldn't have been that anyway.

I would love to hear Silent Night. That for whatever reason just always gives me goosebumps whenever I hear it, so thank you for that and thank you for the offer, thank you for the question. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like to potentially be featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page. Again, thank you to FreshBooks for sponsoring this episode. If you want to check it out for 30 days for free, head on over to FreshBooks.com/AskPat and make sure you enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Thank you so much and I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by Janis Joplin. She said, “Don't compromise yourself, you are all you've got.” Cheers. Take care and I'll see you in the next episode as we start our next run of 600 episodes of AskPat. Thanks guys, I appreciate the support, truly. Bye.