Circle has recently launched their Marketing Hub that integrates email marketing and automation capabilities directly into their community platform. This launch appears to be a natural progression rather than feature bloat, however, I still recommend waiting 12-18 months for the email infrastructure to mature unless you are comfortable with being an early adopters.
A cleaned up version of the video transcript below:
Introduction to Circle Marketing Hub
[00:00] So Circle, the online software for community building recently launched their marketing hub, which is another way of saying we’re offering email marketing to our customers. And this may be a natural progression and perhaps they’re getting greedy. Perhaps it’s nothing to look at. Let’s explore it and see what we could possibly look forward to.
Core Features Overview
[01:00] If we go to the website, this is the announcement – unify your audience and community, send email broadcast, build marketing automations. You can send or schedule personalized emails, use powerful segmentation to deliver the right message at the right time, easily link to community conversations, events, courses, and monitor email open rates and engagement journeys.
Marketing Automation Capabilities
[02:00] Now we’ve got marketing automation, send emails based on triggers, signups, courses, events, posts, comments, and more. This is getting better and better in terms of leveraging the data that’s in the system.
Comparison with Mighty Networks
[03:00] This is my main gripe with Mighty Networks. I was a Mighty Networks user for years and the platform is good for who the platform is good for. But it’s what I would call a closed platform. You get in there and it forces you to use everything within that environment.
Data Integration and Functionality
[04:00] Circle has really captured a lot of the market share because I believe in the early stages, they had internet marketers like Pat Flynn and creators really guiding their decision making. You can always tell when a marketer is on board because you get stuff that allows you to access data.
Circle’s Data Management
[05:00] Before this, they had a great Zapier integration. I think they had an API in 0.2, but either way you could get data out of circle. In fact, I’ve seen people extract data from circle, put it in air table and do all kinds of analytics.
Natural Product Evolution
[06:00] In my mind, this is actually a natural progression of growth. I don’t think they’re being greedy. Most people struggle with basic segmentation, triggered emails. When do I trigger it? How do I do it?
Pricing Structure
[07:00] For less than a hundred contacts, it’s free to use. After that pricing is based on the number of contacts in your database. They’re not limiting emails. They’re just limiting it by contacts.
Development Background
[08:00] The co-founder mentions having lunch with successful customers who expressed how complicated it is to run their email marketing and how important it is to eventually build it into Circle.
Feature Set Details
[09:00] We’ve got newsletters, announcement, event promotions, offers, community growth, top of the funnel. Convert them into spaces they don’t have access to, learning engagement, email workflows, multi-day sequences.
Single Source of Truth Discussion
[10:00] I do not recommend this as being your single source of truth, because when we talk about single source of truth, we really want to be able to see the entire data schema.
Pricing Comparison – Circle
[12:00] 49 bucks a month for Circle itself. Whatever you’re paying for Circle that this is an addition on top of that. If you’re not already using email marketing, I would definitely look here first.
Pricing Comparison – Other Platforms
[14:00] Let’s jump into ActiveCampaign. For month to month, what’s that? 19 bucks. So four bucks more 19 a month. I can be using ActiveCampaign’s starter plan.
Use Case Analysis
[16:00] Circle is not saying build your list and then start mailing your list. And in those lists, you’ve got links. You can track the performance of these emails, not newsletters.
Competitor Analysis – ConvertKit
[17:00] Now we’ve got Kit, which was previously ConvertKit. We’re at a thousand here. 25 a month. Watch. If I go pay monthly, 29.
Competitor Analysis – Brevo
[20:00] A lot of people have been talking about Brevo, previously sending blue. I like Brevo. I use them for transactional email for certain projects.
Beta Considerations
[23:00] This is new, new email servers, new builder. So to me, this is beta and 12 to 18 months before you can really work out all the kinks.
Closing Thoughts
[24:00] Circle continues to lead. Many platforms now that are coming out, they all look like Circle. Mighty networks had an update a couple of years ago and they changed their whole interface to mimic Circle.
