One of our values at Kit is to work in public.
We strive for transparency, which is why we share information that is typically kept private like our finances and our deliverability. In addition, we also want to lean in and keep you updated on how we are developing our product for you with this cycle product report.
This cycle product report will cover features we’re building and bugs we’re fixing so you know how we’re prioritizing the projects that will impact how you use Kit.
We use the Shape Up Method to create our product development systems. It involves a 2-week cool-down period where we research and plan for the next 6-week work cycle. That means we create in cycles—hence the title of this report.
For creators, by creators
Kit is a marketing platform built for creators by creators, and we wanted to lean into that this past cycle.
We wanted to help you feel known and understood by having our product reflect your business needs and opportunities. Let’s dive in on how we did that.
Payment plan installments
Different ways to price your products mean different ways to sell your products. With our new payment plan feature, you now have access to a full suite of pricing methods, including one-time payment, subscriptions, and pay-what-you-want.
Payment plan installments give you the guaranteed commitment of one-time payments and the predictable recurring income of subscriptions. It opens up your customer demographic by making your product more affordable and gives you the ability to sell subscription products with an end date.
Learn more about how you can use payment plan installments today.
Additional currencies—GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, NZD
Expand your reach and increase your sales with access to sell in other currencies: British Pounds, Euros, Canadian Dollars, Australian Dollars, and New Zealand Dollars.
If you are based in Europe, the UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, selling in your local currency will help with sales and save you on foreign exchange rates in your payouts.
Even if you are not based in these countries, the ability to sell in additional currencies opens the door for you to reach a global audience. Target your sales based on geography and sell your products based on your audience’s currency to save them from calculating exchange rates.
Want to start selling in another currency? Let us know which currencies we should add to the list next!
Layout blocks
Plain text emails give you a more intimate connection with your subscribers, but sometimes, you also want to be able to switch it up when you have promotions. To give you more flexibility with how you format your email content, you can now add layout blocks to your emails.
Use the two-column layouts to showcase your new blog content, testimonials, or products. Add in the call-to-action layout to direct your subscribers to new music you just released, a sponsorship link, or conference tickets you’re selling.
For all of them, you can customize the column ratios, padding, and color to best fit your needs. All layouts will collapse into a single column on mobile to optimize the experience for your readers. To learn more about using our email editor, check out this support article.
Subscriber preferences
You have a range of products and content to deliver to your subscribers. Depending on where they subscribed to your list, they might be doing so for different reasons. With subscriber preferences, your subscribers can choose exactly which content they want to receive. This gives you insight into which of your content topics are the most popular and, more importantly, can also help you reduce unsubscribes.
To set this up, you’ll have to add in different Topics of Interests on your Subscribers page. Your subscribers will be able to opt-in or opt-out of the topics you’ve set in their subscriber profile. To learn more about setting this up, check out this support article.
Broadcasts API
We’ve just released new endpoints to create, manage, and send broadcasts with the Kit API. This will allow you to draft your emails outside of Kit and schedule them to send. You can find all API documentation here.
We are also actively working on new API features to further support these endpoints. If there are any improvements or feedback you have, please share your thoughts via this form.
Assorted updates and bug fixes
In addition to big feature projects, we also set aside time to make edits and improvements to our product to ensure we continue to increase the quality for you.
Here are other updates and bug fixes we’ve made:
- Settings UI update: We’ve updated the user interface of the settings menu to clean up all the information that was nestled in there. This update now gives you access to the Creator Profile, which will enable you to quickly create a public newsletter feed.
- Fathom integration: We’ve rolled out a new direct integration with Fathom Analytics so that you can get additional tracking and reporting on how your landing pages perform.
- Purchase graph: We’ve made additional improvements to our purchase graph to accurately reflect discounts, refunds, pay-what-you-want products, and digital tip jars.
- 3D Secure (3DS) for payments: We’ve updated our Commerce payment handling to support the extra authentication step required for Banks in the EU and India for digital tip jars.
- Subscription cancellation flows: We fixed some issues with product subscription cancellation flows. With this fix, your subscription customers will receive a cancellation confirmation email and be removed from the paid content when they cancel their subscription.
- Subscription deletion flows: We also fixed some bugs for when you delete your subscription product. Now, whenever you delete a subscription, we’ll email your subscribers to let them know the product is no longer being offered.
- Facebook API: We upgraded the Facebook API to avoid any downtime with this feature in the future.
What’s coming next?
Here’s a roadmap of what to expect from our team:
- Email editor toolbar design update
- Email template editor updates
- Account notifications and account summary
- VAT support for Commerce
- CSV exports
- Newsletter feed updates
- Reporting improvements for subscriptions
We hope you enjoyed this new cycle report. We’re excited to keep you in the loop of what we’ve been working on so you can get all the benefits of using Kit as you grow your creative business.
Do you have any feature requests you’d like us to check out? Join the Kit Community and submit them!
