Best Email Newsletter Platforms for Content Creators

Share your unpopular opinion and run: independent creators and content makers can promote their content without hiring large marketing teams. Or anyone if that’s the case. Given the right tools, they are often better at conveying their ideas than any external “broken phone” could ever be.

Ah, the right tools. As a creator, one of the fastest proven ways to get your message across, monetize your knowledge, and build community is a newsletter. It will come to your follower’s emails, be personalized and worthwhile, and make a step towards establishing a genuine connection.

Sounds amazing, but also complicated. Wouldn’t you need some training to do that? Luckily, there are several ESPs and don’t require a tech degree from its users. In this article, we will look at several such solutions:

1. beehiiv
2. Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit)
3. Substack
4. Kajabi

We will consider their features, use cases, and aspects to improve, but from a curious angle. The angle? Just like these platforms help creators promote their content, Claspo team would like to offer suggestions on how to improve conversions at different funnel stages, with examples. Shall we?

Backgrounder

Claspo is a no-code widget builder to enhance your website’s user experience. Create, launch, and manage website widgets to engage, guide, promote, and convert visitors — all without interrupting customer journeys. 

With a library of 1000+ customizable newsletter sign-up templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, your personalized widgets can be live in just minutes. 

Featuring gamification and advanced targeting, Claspo is the ultimate all-in-one tool for businesses aiming to optimize their website funnels, all without the need for technical or design skills.

Let's look at the newsletter platforms to see if Claspo can make their funnels even better.

beehiiv

beehiiv is the first email newsletter platform we will consider. It is perfect for:

• independent creators
• small media publishers
• growing businesses 

However, anyone seeking to grow and monetize their email newsletters can make good use of beehiiv, while also enjoying the process. Composing a newsletter is rather easy thanks to the platform's intuitive interface, familiar navigation, and a clean editing environment, accessible even for beginners.

Features

1. Monetization is at the heart of Beehiiv’s functionality, allowing users to expand their email lists by bidding for placements in other newsletters and creating referral programs that incentivize organic growth.
2. Users may enjoy diverse revenue streams with options to boost other newsletters, offer paid subscriptions, or join the platform’s native ad network to accept sponsored content directly.
3. Analytics is realized through performance tracking tools, from concise overviews on the dashboard to more detailed insights available in the Analyze section for paid users.
4. The content calendar view is particularly helpful for planning and organizing posts, ensuring a consistent publishing schedule.
5. The platform integrates generative AI into the writing flow, offering tools to streamline content creation and even providing an AI image generator for additional flexibility.  

While some more advanced monetization and analytics features require a paid plan, they offer significant value for creators aiming to scale their newsletters.

Best Use Case

Beehiv is perfect for independent creators, small media publishers, and businesses that prioritize audience growth and monetization. Its growth-focused tools like referral programs and cross-promotions make it an excellent choice for newsletters aiming to build large, engaged communities. 

Meanwhile, advanced analytics, segmentation, and drip campaigns cater to those looking to optimize content performance and subscriber retention. Whether your focus is on premium newsletters, niche campaigns, or scaling a community, Beehiv offers the tools to drive revenue from your content.

Potential Growth Areas

Great as it is, beehiiv doesn’t include templates or visual customization options, which could be a drawback for those looking to create visually elaborate newsletters. Instead, the platform focuses on delivering content efficiently and effectively.

Claspo in Action

Gamify Your Multi-Step Form

For example, we are on the main page. A floating button at the bottom left corner offers customers “Trial Premium Subscription.” Pressing it opens a two-step popup form with essential personalization (“Which best describes your interest in a newsletter?”). It puts forward a clear value proposition — access to premium features for 30 days.

If you close the form but stay on the website for over 30 seconds, the form is triggered to appear again. And again. It is persistent but predictable. While interacting with it, the customer remains led and passive.

Suggestion

With Claspo, you can flip the script by adding one more component to the form — a scratch card with a promo code a user can apply once the 30-day free trial is over (see an example template). 

We all know but don’t say it out loud: a 30-day free trial means we unsubscribe the night before. However, that’s for the future, and most important at this stage is that your user becomes engaged and instigated to interact with the form, feeling the dopamine rush of the expected reward.

Kit

Kit is "an email-first operating system" — to quote their website. It is most suitable for:

• artistic practitioners (musicians, digital artists) 
• content creators
• social media influencers
• niche experts (bloggers, coaches)

The name — Kit — is a precise and clever expression of what the platform offers: sets of features, aka kits, you can choose from the Pricing section. It can also refer to product recommendation lists that the platform’s users seek to share with their followers. Kit is particularly valuable for monetization, as it integrates affiliate links, allowing creators to earn commissions on referred sales.

Features

1. Curated product collections that are easily channeled through customizable pages with unique URLs, which facilitates promotion.
2. Affiliate link integration allows smooth connection with affiliate marketing programs, enabling creators to monetize their recommendations. 
3. Thoughtful analytics offers insights into kit performance, including clicks and sales as well as deliverability reporting that helps to see trends in followers’ behavior. You can even A/B test your newsletter elements. Sold yet?
4. Automation tools like content snippets, visual automation builder, and email sequences, to name a few, help make a user’s work independent and highly efficient.
5. A referral program reinforces the creator-focused approach and makes it easy for them to incentivize subscribers to help creators grow.

Claspo in Action

Add Social Proof to Subscribe Form

Modesty is a virtue, but it definitely shouldn’t be a priority when it comes to marketing. The blue "Subscribe to Newsletter” button follows the customer across the website. It is visible and easily accessible, but why not take it further with more advanced functionality?

Suggestion

Many companies use social proof as the strategy, and one such testimonial can be added to a popup form (see what we have in mind here) that pops with a down scroll trigger. All colors and fonts can be adjusted to the company branding, headline, fields, and CTA — renamed. Popup widgets tend to increase conversions by up to 13%. Claspo’s animated "Subscribe" button may add at least 1% to that statistic.

Substack

As “the home for great culture,” this platform primarily caters to writers of all kinds: authors, comic and finance writers, bloggers, and podcasters who want to grow and monetize their newsletters. It also supports multimedia content. 

Substack has developed an intuitive editor and uncomplicated subscriber management system so that a person with minimal technical experience can benefit from it while focusing on their creative work.

Features

1. Built-in monetization with tiered pricing options helps creators generate revenue directly from their readers. The platform integrates smoothly with payment systems and offers several payment methods, taking the administration burden off the creator’s shoulders.
2. Community-building features create a space for writers and their readership to bond through comments and discussion threads, so there is no need to have a conversation on the matter elsewhere.
3. Cross-promotion tools make it easy for the creators to recommend their counterparts’ newsletters to their subscribers. It works well as a word-of-mouth referral and expands reach.
4. Substack provides mobile apps that enhance the reading experience, ensuring subscribers have easy access to updates wherever they are.
5. A basic yet effective analytics dashboard shows metrics like subscriber count and engagement rates.

Best Use Case

Substack is best suited for independent writers, journalists, and niche content creators looking to monetize their work and build a loyal audience. Its simplicity and creator-focused tools make it ideal for those who prioritize storytelling and direct audience interaction over complex design or marketing features. Whether you’re launching a paid newsletter or simply sharing your insights with the world, Substack provides everything you need to get started.

Claspo in Action

Improve Website Funnels with Gamification

The UX of many websites looks monolithic and unbroken, which may be perceived as both consistent and predictable. It is a classic way to convey your message to the audience, where a business believes it has already provided significant value to the customers, and the rest is up to them. 

Suggestion

However, there are always ways to get better engagement results. Some of them are:

1. Animation for the elements that need to be highlighted for pragmatics, banners with CTA buttons, or to give feedback on user’s actions, showing that the website is actively interacting with them.
2. Popup widgets that encourage users to move at least one stage ahead on the funnel.

The second suggestion may be implemented with the help of Claspo. Which users to target, though? Online newsletters is a two-sided marketplace where content creators (and the automation platform) depend largely on the following they establish. Attracting subscribers for such platforms is much easier than doing so with paying reader-whales, and this is where a little enhancement perk comes in handy. 

It’s possible to offer a welcome mystic box set (see example) with a symbolic loyalty discount if the user performs a certain action, such as subscribing to three authors for free or referring a friend to subscribe. All widget components are highly customizable, and our support team is always there to help.

Kajabi

Kajabi is about helping creative folk monetize their dreams. Their positioning is an all-in-one platform that allows individuals and businesses build, market, and sell digital products like:

• courses
• memberships
• newsletters 

To help the said segments succeed, the platform offers robust tools like website templates, email marketing automation with a convenient email list generator, and seamless integrations with payment processors like Stripe and PayPal.

Features

1. Pipeline builder allows users to create and automate marketing funnels, guiding leads from sign-up to conversion effortlessly.
2. Email campaigns feature integrates with landing pages and forms, enabling targeted outreach and nurturing. 
3. Comprehensive analytics allows users to track conversions, revenue, and engagement in real-time. Moreover, with proper automation, there is a lucrative offer to move the creator’s contacts from social media channels to the CRM Kajabi develops.
4. For content delivery, Kajabi supports On-demand and drip content, making it ideal for creators offering courses or subscription-based learning. 
5. Built-in community spaces enable engagement through forums or group discussions, creating deeper connections with subscribers, which strengthens Kajabi’s strategy of not sharing their users with social media.

Claspo in Action

Catch Leaving Visitors with Exit-Intent Widget

You may already have a well-designed system of widgets that reflect a classic customer journey: anchored to the bottom of the main page is a quiz-type form that pops up as the user scrolls through the page. However, people are getting more and more impatient on the web, especially when they don’t immediately see what they want. 

Suggestion

Proceeding from the newbie’s issue of choice, let’s say a particular cohort of customers click on a Newsletter tab, close it, then hit Podcast and do the same. They haven’t come across what they need or what sounds interesting within the 8 seconds of their attention span. 

Some of them might seek to exit the website then and there. You can make at least one more attempt to keep these users on the website and curious to proceed with the help of a modified exit intent popup widget. Yes, there is one on the Pricing page, but these users might not make it there.
Here is an example that can be easily modified to reflect a business's exact goal, like finding out the reason. If the user states that they haven’t found what they were looking for or couldn’t understand what content(s) they needed, you can think of ways to retain the customer, be it perks or free trial, etc.