This is part 5 of 6 posts on getting started with Kit (previously ConvertKit). Check out the other parts here: Part 1: Creating Your Account, Part 2: Adding Subscribers, Part 3: Building Email Templates, Part 4: Sending Broadcast Emails, Part 5: Creating a Landing Page, Part 6: Sequences and Automations.

In our Kit series, we previously covered getting set up, adding subscribers, creating email templates, and sending broadcast emails. In this post, we’ll focus on creating a landing page to help grow your list of subscribers!

If you’re using an email marketing platform, one of the things you’ll need is a way for people to add themselves to your list. 

Kit has two main ways for that to happen: sign-up forms and landing pages.

What’s the difference?

A sign-up form is usually a pop-up, slide in or small static form on your website. With Kit these types of forms are integrated with a website or blog — they can’t stand alone. 

Visitors can sign up to your mailing list by opting in using the form. Usually, you’d offer some sort of incentive such as a download or short email mini course.

A landing page is a stand-alone page for people to sign up for your stuff. Just like the form, people use it to get your freebie — and join your mailing list. The difference is you can share the URL for a landing page on social media and you don’t have to have a website or blog.

We’re going to create a landing page because it doesn’t rely on you having a website to be able to use it.

Create a landing page

Start by navigating to “Grow” in your Kit dashboard, then choose “Landing Pages and Forms”:

Then click on “+ Create new”:

Next, choose “Landing Page”:

You’ll be taken to an impressive selection of landing page templates. You can edit the templates in a similar way to how you edit the email templates. You don’t have quite as many styling options but the templates are already designed to look good and be effective, so you don’t really need them. 

Remember to save your work and rename the page to reflect the offer or freebie you’re promoting.

As an example, here’s one I created in about 10 minutes from the “Maple” template:

Landing pages have two steps: the first one is the offer, the second is the opt-in form. So, once you’ve finished with the first page, you’ll need to go ahead and edit the second. You can add custom fields to your step two page as long as you have already added them to your database. 

To add a custom field to your form, just click on the “+”, then click IN the new field to bring up the editing options:

Be sure to preview and check both pages carefully. Once you’re happy with your pages, it’s time to do the techie bits with the setup. 

Set up your page

Click on “Settings” at the top of the page:

You’ll get this popup:

Once someone has signed up, you can either redirect them to a URL to access their freebie or have an automation that send an incentive email to get it. Best practice is to send them the incentive email as a “double opt-in.” 

Why? Because then you know the people on your list are genuine humans with a real interest in your business.

So, set your success message. This is what they’ll see once they hit the “Get the guide!” button.

Set up the incentive email

Click on “Incentive” in the settings popup. You’ll be taken to this screen:

Click on “Edit Email Contents” to create your incentive email:

Hit “save” when you’re done. 

Attach your freebie

Close the popup to return to your settings screen. Here we can attach the download freebie or set a URL where your subscriber can access it. 

Let’s add it as a download. Click on the “download” button to be taken to an upload screen:

Choose your file and then click “upload.” You’ll see it appear on your settings screen:

Remember to save!

Advanced options

Finally, go to “Advanced” if you want to enable reCAPTCHA. You can also choose how you want the page to appear (or not) if people land on the page after already subscribing:

Click save again then close out of the screen to return to your landing pages. 

Publish and share

Once you’re happy with what you’ve got, hit “Publish” so your pages go live. You’ll get a popup with a sharable link:

I strongly suggest you test your page before sharing it publicly. The simplest way to do this is by copying the link into an incognito browser window and then subscribing yourself. 

Pro tip: you can use email aliases to test forms and landing pages. Just input your email address with a “+” and some extra text:

Once you’ve finished all the testing you want to do, go back, and remove yourself from your subscribers list.

And there you have it! You’ve now set up your landing page to add subscribers to your mailing list. 

Next time, we’ll look at creating an email welcome sequence and an automation, so you don’t have to do everything manually for each subscriber.