ConvertKit Link Taxonomy - Andre Chaperon

We use ConvertKit. We love it because it’s simple and lightweight, yet powerful with everything we need. If you use another provider, the concepts I share here will be easily transferable.

A link trigger is a link that triggers an action (typically adding a tag). Then when a tag is added, that can trigger any number of other actions. A PLS4 has four steps:

1 A link trigger to tag people who have raised their hand.

2 A link trigger to tag people who want to be removed from the promo campaign.

3 A rule to add ‘raised hand’ people (#1) to a single-email sequence (covered in the next lesson).

4 Two redirect ‘thank you’ pages (every link trigger needs to page to redirect to).

The build workflow is in reverse.

Step 1 (Redirect Pages)

The first step is to create two pages – one when the link trigger is clicked (and tag added), and one when someone clicks to be removed from a launch campaign (another tag added).

Every link trigger needs a page to redirect to. I have two generic pages I use for this. This is super handy because I use these for almost all PLS4-style add/remove link triggers.

• tinylittlebusinesses.com/segmented/
• tinylittlebusinesses.com/muted/
  Be creative. This is an opportunity to delight people, to put a smile on their face. Nuances matter.
  
  Step 2 (Link Triggers)
  I have a taxonomy I follow for all tag names in ConvertKit. Managing ten tags with no system is easy. But when you have hundreds, believe me, figuring out a naming convention will save you a lot of headaches later.
  Tip: Keep a master list of all your tags in a Google Doc, or any other digital document tool that’s easily assessable and frictionless to use.
  Note: In ConvertKit, tags can be nice long pretty names. I am not aware of a length limit. What I appreciate about how CK handle tags, is every tag has a unique ID. You never have to concern yourself with this. But the implications are a demonstration in elegant simplicity. You can rename/edit a tag, and nothing will break on the backend. Rules or automations that use the tag, automatically update. I can’t express how helpful this is. When I used Drip back in 2019 – and this functionally may have changed since then – editing a tag name would cause any automations using it to break. This forced me to maintain a tag taxonomy. I’m grateful for this now.
  Example format: [what/action] - [name] - [date or extra identifier]
  Examples:
• Interested - SOI & ARM - June 1-8 2020
• Mute - SOI & ARM - June 1-8 2020
• Purchased - TTE - Cohort 1
• Purchased - ARM - $495
• Refunded - SOI - $495
• Customers - LBC
• Customers - TTE
• Customers - ARM
• Customers - SOI

Because ConvertKit displays the list of tags and segments in alphabetical order, I prefer to organize based on roletype. This way all /customer tags are grouped together, interest tags, mute tags, internal tags, etc. Believe me, this is very useful.

As an example for this lesson, let’s presume we are opening the official enrollment for Lean Business for Creators (LBC) on Black Friday 2020 through Cyber Monday.

For this scenario I’ll create these two tags:

1 Interested - LBC - Nov 27-30 (Black Friday 2020)

2 Mute - LBC - Nov 27-30 (Black Friday 2020)

Step 3 (Rules / Automation)

In ConvertKit there are rules and automations. Rules are for simple “if this, then that” cause and effect.

I’ll create one to tag people who are interested in the promotion, and one to apply the ‘mute’ tag if someone wants to be removed from receiving the promo emails once they’re already segmented.

Location: ConvertKit > Automations > Rules > Add Rule

Here’s the rule to add a tag to segment someone:

Here’s the rule to add a tag to mute someone:

NOTE: I could have removed the previous (Interested) tag instead. The outcome would be the same. But, as a rule, I try never remove tags, and rather use a segment to control who receives promo broadcast emails./

Why?

Because if I remove the interested tag, in retrospect I can’t see how many people, and who, decided to mute themselves. Say 500 people raise their hand, and 50 choose to mute themselves at some point during the campaign, I get to see that (10%). But if I received 10, that’s just 2%. I like to see this. It gives me context. Our last PLS4 (SOI & ARM) had just 37 people mute themselves from a segment of 1416 people (2.61%).

Here are the two rules:

In ConvertKit, accessing a link trigger is easy.

Note: The above workflow is for the new editor. I still prefer using the legacy editor (old dog new tricks), but the workflow is almost identical. Instead of a dialog box automatically popping up when you highlight some text, use the link icon in the toolbar.

The email copy I use at the header of every promotion email to a segmented group, to be respectful and allow someone to “opt out” at any point, is a variation of this:

Before I start, I want to be respectful of your attention: you’re getting this email because you indicated you were interested in hearing more about our [NAME OF PROMO]. You can hop off this promo segment anytime (unsubscribe here). This will not remove you from our main email list, only these emails. A full nuclear bomb unsub can be found in the footer of every email.

Wordsmith the copy to match your own voice and style. The ‘unsubscribe here’ is a link trigger to add the ‘mute’ tag to the record of a prospect.

Sometimes a person will click the unsub link in error (happy clicker). When this happens they email us in a mild panic. I then go into their CK record and delete the ‘mute’ tag. Boom, they’re back in the loop.

Step 4 (Create Segment)

A segment in ConvertKit is just a collection of tags and tag combinations (if this tag but not that tag). For example, here is an example segment for all LBC customers:

I need to create a segment which I’ll use to broadcast all PLS4 launch emails to. The segment will maintain a realtime record of everyone who should and shouldn’t receive the emails.

I’ll cover two variations. It’s up to you which you go with.

Variation 1 (new customers will still receive promo emails)

Variation 2 (new customers will not continue to receive promo emails)

In most cases, you’ll set up variation #2. This way, new customers will not continue to receive promo emails.

Why would you even want new customers to continue to receive promo emails (Variation 1)? Glad you asked. Because we get many customers waiting just before the cart closes before making a purchase because they want to receive all the emails (because they’re so valuable). To solve this weird behavior, we typically tell all prospects that they will not be removed from still receiving all the promo campaign emails, and if they want to ‘mute’ emails after they’ve purchased, they just need to click the link to be removed from the segment. Boom, everyone happy.

In either of the variations above, all PLS4 promo campaign emails will get broadcasted to the PLS - LBC (Black Friday 2020) segment. The segment will automatically take care of who receives the emails and who doesn’t.

Simple.

Additional: Adding Tags Post-Purchase (Commerce)

Because there are so many different payment platforms, shopping carts, integrations, and mechanisms to sell your products and services, it is beyond the scope of this course to cover this.

So I’ll stick to the high-level framework. Regardless of what you use, there will be a way to make an API call to ConvertKit (or whatever you use) and indicate that someone has make a purchase. If whatever you use doesn’t have a direct integration with your email service provider, there will likely be one through Zapier .

I choose to have our membership software (we use MemberMouse ) to add a tag to the record of a subscriber who made a purchase. Likewise, if someone refunds, a refund tag is automatically added. I use tags and segments to organize everything.

I setup my purchase tags like this:

Then, as I showed above, I’ll create a segment to organize this into a single customer segment for LBC:

If I ever create another purchase tag for LBC, I just need to edit the above segment and add the new purchase tag. Elegant simplicity.

Summary

You need two pages for your two link triggers. One to add someone to the PLS4 segment, and one to indicate someone does not want to receive the promotion emails anymore.

You need an interest tag and a mute tag. Then set up a Rule to add the interest tag when someone raises their hand, and one to add the mute tag when someone wants to be removed.

Organize tags using Segments. You’ll have at least two segments. One for all the PLS4 broadcast emails (example: PLS - LBC (Black Friday 2020)) and one for customers, new and current (example: Customers - LBC)).

Ta-da!