When it comes to building your business, the right tools are the key to growth.
But when it comes to email marketing, choosing the right tool for staying in touch with your audience can feel like you need a college degree to keep from wasting time & money.
You can choose from one of the dozens of specialized email marketing tools but then you’re left juggling multiple platforms for different aspects of your online business.
Or you can choose a tool that specializes in email marketing while making sure the rest of your business can be built on the same platform, like the new ClickFunnels.
In this guide, we’re going to dive deep into how ClickFunnels is changing how businesses use email marketing, making it more efficient, more effective and, ultimately, more profitable.
Get a Free Trial of ClickFunnels Today!
ClickFunnels & Email Marketing: 5 Critical Features
At the ClickFunnels HQ, email marketing is the backbone of our business.
Without it, we wouldn’t be able to serve our audience at the level we do.
And since we use our software to help sustain and grow our business every single day, we need it to perform at the highest level, too.
We’re constantly improving the functionality, adding new features to make our lives easier, optimizing original features so they’re even more efficient, and keeping our fingers on the pulse of our customers to understand exactly what they want & need and how they use it.
Here are some of the features that make our email marketing stand out above the competition.
#1: Effortlessly Managing Your Contacts
As your list grows, you need to be able to manage it without a ton of hassle.
Whether that’s importing contacts from another email service provider or manually adding contacts in as you’re speaking to them in Messenger or over email, for instance, we know that new subscribers don’t just get onto your list by opting into your landing page.
Inside our list management dashboard, you can manually add new contacts, update information about each of the contacts on your list, and segment them into different lists so you can send highly-targeted promotions to each — while keeping your open rate high.
You can also tag subscribers as they get onto your list so you know exactly where they came from, which offer they opted into, and how to effectively market to them in the future.
Picture this: you want to send out a new promotion but you only want to send it to customers who purchased a specific offer — or offer a bonus to those specific customers.
With our segmenting features, you can separate those customers into their own lists and email them specific offers without having the rest of your list see the offer, too.
Then, you can add multiple tags to each subscriber so you know which offers they’ve purchased or which traffic source drove them into your funnel so you can monitor split tests, test new offers, and keep them engaged based on what you know they want to see from you.
These features make managing your list extremely simple, especially as your list grows, you run multiple offers and are driving traffic from multiple sources.
This is how you maintain a healthy, profitable list and keep your conversion rates high.
#2: Crafting Engaging Emails
After sending out millions of emails, we know what works to get conversions.
In your dashboard, you can choose from dozens of proven email template designs that we’ve created for you, or start designing your own templates.
Our email marketing platform is one of the most intuitive platforms in the industry today.
It’s built to help you get your templates designed as quickly as possible while making them look great at the same time.
You can drag-and-drop different elements like images, buttons, social sharing elements, video, navigation, pure HTML code, and more.
Then you can preview each email to make sure it looks exactly how you want it to look — and functions exactly how it’s supposed to.
We believe you shouldn’t be bogged down with slow email marketing dashboards, or dashboards that have so many features you’ll never use that you end up wasting time trying to find the features you actually do need.
#3: Reaching Your Audience via Broadcasts
Sending out quick broadcasts to your audience has never been easier.
At ClickFunnels, we’ve taken the age-old practice of sending broadcasts to lists and made it even better by letting you filter through tags for people on your list — and sending an email directly to them, instead.
In the past, you were forced to email entire lists or segments of those lists, even if people inside them weren’t necessarily the right target audience.
With ClickFunnels tagging features, you can directly target people via filters so you can have multiple people in the same segment but only email the right people.
By filtering through your contacts, you don’t have to manage multiple list segments.
Instead, you’re able to tag subscribers as they come onto your list, based on how they came onto your list, and then email only those subscribers with the right tag.
This keeps you from emailing people who may not be interested in the offer you’re making so you keep your open rates (and your conversion rates) as high as possible.
Then, when you’re ready to send the broadcast to that highly-targeted audience, you can schedule the emails to go out over a period of time so you’re not hammering your email server or risk getting labeled a spammer and having your domain name blacklisted.
Compare this to how most email service providers send your emails when they blast them all out at the same time and you can start to see why our Smart Sending feature is so critical to maintaining a healthy email marketing strategy.
With the Smart Sending feature, your deliverability is improved and you’re less likely to land in the dreaded “Promotions” tab — where your audience may never see your message.
#4: Automating Email Workflows With Ease
Building email automation for a new funnel shouldn’t take you all day.
With most email service providers, you’re forced to click through 5 different screens just to add a single step to your automation — while waiting forever for those screens to load.
The ClickFunnels automation and workflow editor, though, is fast and makes building your automations incredibly easy.
Inside the editor, you can drag and drop the steps, conditions, tests, delays, and triggers directly into your workflow.
Whether you’re looking to create an autoresponder for a new funnel, or you want to segment people out of one list and into another based on whether or not they’ve booked a call with your sales team, for instance, our workflow designer is built to be as efficient as possible.
On top of that, ClickFunnels is one of the only email service providers that let you split test emails directly from your workflow so you’re not having to create multiple different automations just to see which email is performing the best.
This makes it incredibly easy to optimize your campaigns based on open rates, clickthrough rates, and even conversion rates when you’re driving your subscribers to a sales page or order form. Other service providers force you to set up multiple automations to make this happen.
#5: Utilizing Analytics for Informed Decisions
Without good data, you’re making educated guesses, at best.
With the right data, though, you can compare tests, determine which one performed at a higher level, and repeat those successes in your future campaigns — while cutting bad tests.
The analytics provided in your dashboard help you make educated decisions so you’re never guessing which campaigns are performing, which ones need to be cut, and which direction your next tests should go.
Inside your dashboard, you can filter your analytics by date ranges so you can effectively monitor when changes were made, how those changes performed, and whether or not your tests performed the way you expected them to perform.
With ClickFunnels, building high-converting email lists and managing them to keep your open rates high, run profitable split tests, and keep subscribers happy has always been our focus. That focus shines through in the new ClickFunnels.
Get a Free Trial of ClickFunnels Today!
ClickFunnels vs. Email Marketing Platforms — An Objective Comparison
We’re not the only email service provider available today.
And that’s actually a good thing.
It means we have healthy competition and we’re forced to make sure our software can stand the test of time against some of today’s greatest email service providers.
Having this level of competition gives us amazing insight into what people want and need from their email marketing campaigns, and delivers that to them while eliminating features that they don’t need or may never use.
To give you some comparisons, here’s an objective overview of how ClickFunnels stands up against some of today’s best services, like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and ActiveCampaign.
ConvertKit vs ClickFunnels
ConvertKit does a few things really, really well.
What they can’t do, though, is expand and grow with you as your business grows.
For instance, if you’re currently selling an online course, ConvertKit can help you sell that course and do it better than most other providers available today.
However, if you decide to start selling merchandise, or turn your course into a membership, ConvertKit isn’t capable of growing with you.
You’ll be forced to migrate away from ConvertKit so you can collect those recurring payments for your membership program or deliver physical products when you sell merchandise.
| ConvertKit | ClickFunnels |
|---|---|
| Primarily an email marketing tool | Comprehensive sales funnel builder with integrated email marketing |
| No integrated e-commerce features | Integrated shopping cart and easy payment processor integrations |
| Limited A/B testing | Advanced A/B testing (A/B test subject lines, landing pages, and more) |
| No built-in CRM | Robust CRM capabilities |
| No drag-and-drop editor | Easy to use drag-and-drop editor with a choice of many templates |
ConvertKit also doesn’t include a drag-and-drop email builder, a CRM to manage the data you keep on your subscribers, and can’t handle shopping carts for physical products.
Overall, ConvertKit is a great email marketing tool but that’s where it ends — at email marketing. When you want to use advanced split testing, manage your subscriber database, or create beautiful emails on the fly, ClickFunnels comes out ahead.
Mailchimp vs ClickFunnels
Mailchimp is one of the go-to email marketing services, especially among brand-new entrepreneurs and marketers who are operating on a small budget.
As your experience (and your skill set) grows, though, you’ll quickly realize that Mailchimp just can’t keep up with what you need from a service.
With Mailchimp, your ability to build high-quality landing pages is extremely limited while ClickFunnels has one of the most robust landing page builders available today.
Mailchimp also doesn’t allow you to actually collect payments or build advanced automations that make it easy to ascend people on your list from subscriber to customer — on 100% autopilot.
And while Mailchimp does give you the ability to create memberships, that ability is incredibly limited while ClickFunnels is built with creating memberships and recurring revenue in mind.
| Mailchimp | ClickFunnels |
|---|---|
| Limited landing page builder | Comprehensive landing page and sales funnel builder |
| No in-built sales capabilities | Integrated shopping cart and easy payment processor integrations |
| Lacks advanced automation | Powerful automation capabilities |
| Restricted membership features | Robust membership site & funnel features |
For beginners, Mailchimp is a great option, especially if you’re on a limited budget.
As you start making sales and you require more advanced functionality from your email marketing service, though, you’ll quickly outgrow what Mailchimp has to offer.
ActiveCampaign vs ClickFunnels
The biggest difference between ActiveCampaign and ClickFunnels is what happens outside of just sending emails.
ActiveCampaign does really, really well if all you need is an email marketing service, even if the dashboard is filled with features you may never need and loads slower than most.
What they don’t do well, though, is give you the ability to build robust sales funnels and membership sites, manage relationships with your subscribers and customers, or let you quickly launch new email marketing campaigns.
With ActiveCampaign being one of the most advanced email marketing services available today, that advanced functionality comes with one major downside: features that you’ll probably never use getting in the way of features you’ll use every single day.
| ActiveCampaign | ClickFunnels |
|---|---|
| Complex user interface | User-friendly, drag-and-drop interface |
| Limited sales funnel capabilities | Comprehensive sales funnel builder |
| Email marketing focus | Unified solution for email marketing, sales funnels, and CRM |
| No membership features | Robust membership site features |
If you’re currently an ActiveCampaign user, once you start your free ClickFunnels trial you’ll quickly realize why so many people are making the switch from ActiveCampaign to ClickFunnels.
Klaviyo vs ClickFunnels
Klaviyo is another heavy-hitter in the email marketing industry.
When it comes to strictly eCommerce-based businesses, it’s also one of the best email marketing services available.
Where it lacks, though, is being just that: only an email marketing tool.
It provides eCommerce-based businesses with advanced segmenting functionality but doesn’t give them the ability to create full-functioning landing pages or membership sites, lacks a robust CRM to manage relationships with customers, and makes it impossible to build full sales funnels to increase your profitability and truly solve your customer’s problems.
| Klaviyo | ClickFunnels |
|---|---|
| Primarily an email marketing tool | Comprehensive sales funnel builder with integrated email marketing |
| Advanced segmentation but lacks sales funnel capabilities | Comprehensive sales funnel builder with advanced segmentation |
| E-commerce focused | Integrated e-commerce and a broader set of business tools |
| Limited CRM and automation capabilities | Powerful automation capabilities with a robust CRM |
| No built-in landing page or membership features | Integrated landing page and membership site features |
ClickFunnels solves all of those problems by giving you a comprehensive sales funnel builder plus advanced email marketing functionality, along with incredibly powerful CRM and eCommerce tools you can use that grow with you as your business grows.
ClickFunnels vs the World
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not ClickFunnels is right for your business when you’re comparing it to the other services available today, take a look at this graphic.
It breaks down each of the features that ClickFunnels provides for your business while showing you the features available from each of our competitors.
You can see why we’ve quickly become the best all-in-one solution for building your business (see more charts here!).
And, after seeing the extra capabilities of ClickFunnels, one of the most common questions we get is:
“The tool I’m Using is Less Expensive Than ClickFunnels. Is it Really Worth the Extra Cost?”
While your current tool might appear less expensive at the moment, you actually want to consider what that lower price is truly costing you as your business grows.
If you have a substantial number of subscribers, say above 100,000, the cost of your current tool could skyrocket to approximately $5,000 per year!!
Here’s how ClickFunnels pricing stands up against the most popular tools available today:
Klaviyo Pricing
With Klaviyo, even with a small list, you could be paying upwards of $1,500 per month for the same service that you can get for $208 per month with ClickFunnels.
Mailchimp Pricing
Mailchimp is incredibly attractive to beginners because you get to start and grow your business for free. At least, it’s free in the beginning.
As your business grows, though, the price starts to skyrocket.
Take a look at this screenshot. With a small list of only 10,000 subscribers, you’re paying anywhere from $100 per month to upwards of $350 per month.
At 25,000 subscribers, that price jumps to over $600 per month!
And you still need another service to host your membership sites, build more robust landing pages, process payments, and deliver your offers.
ConvertKit Pricing
And then there’s ConvertKit, one of the more affordable options out there but still costing significantly more than ClickFunnels when you look at everything you’re not getting.
While ConvertKit may look more affordable on the service, costing only $140 per month for “full functionality” with a list of 10,000 subscribers, that “full functionality” is misleading.
You’re still going to need to use other services to host your content and deliver your offers which can quickly add up to ClickFunnels highest tier at $297 per month.
With ClickFunnels, though, you have everything you need in one central location instead of relying on multiple third-party services to play nice together and not cost you even more money when they stop communicating with each other in the middle of a big launch.
When you start to look at what you’re not getting from the lower price you’re paying for one of the alternative email marketing services available today, you can start to see how much it’s actually costing your business to stick with them instead of making the switch.
Then, when you take into account the cost of your time and switching when you realize that the service you’re using can’t actually keep up with your business as it grows, that low-priced service becomes even more expensive.
It’s why smart marketers and entrepreneurs are choosing to start on ClickFunnels instead of risking spending even more time making the switch down the road.
Get a Free Trial of ClickFunnels Today!
ClickFunnels vs. Email Marketing Platforms + Individual Business Tools
To help you see even more of the costs associated with running your business — the costs that are eliminated when you switch to ClickFunnels — here’s how some of today’s best business models are using ClickFunnels, and how much eliminating other software is saving them on a monthly basis.
1. eCommerce Business:
If you sell products online, you can use ClickFunnels for creating lead gen funnels to attract and convert customers, and then utilize the email marketing features to send out personalized product recommendations, promotional offers, and follow-up emails post-purchase.
You can also take advantage of the built-in shopping cart feature, making the buying experience more seamless for your customers.
Without ClickFunnels, here’s what you can expect to pay each month:
- Website Builder: Avg. Cost $30/Month
- Visual Funnel Builder: Avg. Cost $50/Month
- Ecommerce Store Features: Avg. Cost $50/Month
- Email Marketing Tools: Avg. Cost $120/Month
- Robust CRM: Avg. Cost $200/Month
- A/B Testing: Avg. Cost $40/Month
Total cost: $490 per month.
2. Online Course Creators:
If you’re a course creator, you can use the course builder to host and sell your courses directly from ClickFunnels. You can also use the email marketing feature to send out course updates, content teasers, and special offers to their subscribers.
On top of that, you can build membership sites within ClickFunnels to offer exclusive content to your paying students.
Without ClickFunnels, here’s what you can expect to pay each month:
- Course Creator: Avg. Cost $150/Month
- Membership Site: Avg. Cost $60/Month
- Email Marketing Tools: Avg. Cost $120/Month
- CRM: Avg. Cost $200/Month
Total cost: $530 per month.
3. Consulting or Coaching Business:
If you’re a coach or consultant, you can utilize ClickFunnels’s CRM to manage client information and the email marketing tool to send out personalized coaching content, session reminders, and feedback forms.
You can also set up sales funnels to attract new clients, showcasing their coaching packages and success stories.
If you’re not using ClickFunnels, here’s what those features could cost:
- CRM: Avg. Cost $200/Month
- Email Marketing Tools: Avg. Cost $120/Month
- Visual Funnel Builder: Avg. Cost $50/Month
Total cost: $370 per month.
4. Digital Marketing Agencies:
If you own a digital marketing agency, you can use ClickFunnels’s email marketing tools to build your list with new prospects, communicate with existing clients, deliver performance reports, and also build funnels for your client campaigns.
You can also split test campaigns to optimize results, lower your client’s CPL, decrease their CPA, and reduce your overall monthly expenses.
Without ClickFunnels, here’s what you can expect to pay:
- CRM: Avg. Cost $200/Month
- Email Marketing Tools: Avg. Cost $120/Month
- A/B Testing: Avg. Cost $40/Month
- Visual Funnel Builder: Avg. Cost $50/Month
Total cost: $410 per month.
5. Event Management:
If you’re an event organizer, you can use ClickFunnels to create event registration funnels, and then leverage the email marketing tool for sending event updates, ticket confirmations, and post-event follow-ups.
You can also manage your attendee list and their preferences using the built-in CRM.
Without ClickFunnels, here’s what you could expect to pay each month:
- CRM: Avg. Cost $200/Month
- Email Marketing Tools: Avg. Cost $120/Month
- Landing Page Builder: Avg. Cost $50/Month
Total cost: $270 per month.
When you break down the costs of ALL the software you’ll need in order to run your business at the highest level, and then compare those costs with the single cost of ClickFunnels, you’ll see how much more you’re actually spending to keep your business going.
Get a Free Trial of ClickFunnels Today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some more frequently asked questions.
“What If I Already Use Mailchimp / ConvertKit / ActiveCampaign? Why Should I Switch to ClickFunnels for Email Marketing?”
If you’re already using ClickFunnels, but you’re still using another service for your email marketing, making the switch is simple.
The biggest benefit is being able to eliminate an extra expense each month — while also building your business in one central location.
If you’re not already using ClickFunnels, though, and thinking about making the switch, you’re going to be tapping into FAR more functionality than just email marketing.
Whether you’re looking to sell courses or physical products, grow your email list, create membership sites, deliver your content, build sales funnels to increase your profitability or manage the relationship you have with your audience, ClickFunnels does it all.
“I’m used to the interface of my current email marketing tool. Is ClickFunnels user-friendly?”
ClickFunnels has a user-friendly interface designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate.
While it might take a little time to adjust if you’re switching from a different platform, many users find it simple to use once they’ve used it a few times.
Remember, we use this platform to grow our own business so we want to make sure our team can be as efficient as humanly possible — that means eliminating the fluff and only including features that are necessary for sustaining and growing your business.
“I’m using a specialized email marketing tool. How can a comprehensive platform like ClickFunnels cater to my specific needs?”
This is one of those occasions where you don’t realize what’s missing until you see it on another platform you’re testing.
Many times, especially if you’ve only used other services, you don’t realize how much you’re being held back by the tools you’re using until you make the switch to ClickFunnels.
By unlocking even more functionality, you start to see new doors open for your business.
On top of that, if a feature you’ve grown to love is missing from ClickFunnels, all you have to do is make a suggestion to our development team and we’ll consider adding it in.
“What About Integration With Other Tools? Can I Integrate My Current Tools With ClickFunnels?”
ClickFunnels can integrate with today’s most popular third-party tools and services.
If there’s a particular tool that it doesn’t support, there are usually ways to create a workaround using webhooks, ensuring that you can still use all your preferred tools in conjunction with ClickFunnels.
“Does ClickFunnels Offer Advanced Email Automation Like My Current Tool?”
Absolutely! ClickFunnels includes advanced email automation capabilities.
With it, you can create complex automation workflows, including the use of tags and triggers, to effectively manage and automate your email campaigns.
This means you can set up a sequence once and have it automatically send based on your specified conditions.
Why Choose ClickFunnels?
When it comes to building your business, there are 101 different tools you can use.
With that, though, comes 101 different ways for your business to break, too.
When you consolidate all of those tools into a single, centralized platform, you’re eliminating points of failure in your business WHILE saving money at the same time.
Since there’s more to your business than just email marketing, ditching the rest of the tools you’re using and giving ClickFunnels a try starts to make more sense.
Then, after you start using it, you’ll realize why more than 200,000 people choose to use ClickFunnels as the backbone of their operations every single day.
After that, you’ll never look at other tools the same again.