Flodesk is an email marketing platform designed to help businesses and creators create visually appealing, beautiful emails and effective email campaigns quickly and without much coding. It is known for its user-friendly interface and gorgeous customizable templates, allowing users to design and send professional-looking emails without the need for advanced technical skills. Here is my experience with flodesk and how to use it correctly!
*Just a heads up—this post may contain some affiliate links. That means if you click through and make a purchase, I might earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I truly love and use daily and think you’ll enjoy too.
Flodesk positioned itself as of the best email service providers that focuses on simplicity and aesthetics, providing features like drag-and-drop editing, automation, and analytics. They set out to make email marketing easy for new business owners, particularly helping us avoid sending out boring, unbranded and let’s face it, ugly emails. When you sign up for a Flodesk account, you’ll receive a huge selection of templates to choose and customize, making getting started really simple.
What is Flodesk and How To Use It Correctly
Welcome to the world of email marketing, friends! If you don’t already know, it is essential to your business. But what is it? Flodesk is an email marketing provider that is known for it’s clean and simple to use platform. Email marketing refers to corresponding with and building your community via email. This digital marketing strategy involves sending emails, email campaigns or an email newsletter to a targeted group of individuals with the goal of promoting products or services, driving traffic back to your online store, building relationships, or generating brand awareness. It’s power comes from the fact that it’s a direct form of communication between a business and its audience. For small business owners the relationship you develop with your email subscribers has a direct impact on the success of your business.
An Honest Review of Flodesk
Like me, some of you maybe tried a few different email marketing platforms. It took a bit of time for me to sort through the email providers that gave me enough functionality but also didn’t penalize me for growing. I don’t believe you should pay more just because you have more subscribers. How does that make sense? If I’m using your platform successfully and growing my list, why am I being charged more? I love that Flodesk is one fee, always. I tried others where my monthly rate kept changing, increasing because I grew my list or needed additional features.
All this to say, I ended up on Flodesk for that and a few other reasons. Incredibly intuitive and easy to use, I’m able to concentrate on the analytics I need, segment easily and send emails quickly with my brand and messaging in mind. It’s also beautifully designed and for me, as a sucker for lovely things, I enjoy platforms that are pleasing to use.
While it is sometimes necessary to choose function over form, before discovering Flodesk I was using an email marketing platform that was making me die a little bit each time I sent one. I became frustrated by the limitations that were set by other platforms, such as mailchimp or convertkit and the lack of branding options that left me feeling like my email marketing was disconnected from my brand. The emails were inconsistently designed, if at all, and I dreaded Fridays, which are my newsletter days because it meant pulling hair out trying to get the thing to look remotely close to the aesthetic that I strive for in my artwork.
The other super important thing (or super frustrating if it’s missing) is how simple it is for you to add opt-in forms, pop-ups, and embedded forms onto your website. I found I had to hire someone each time I had to update or replace a form on my website. With Flodesk, with a few copy and pastes, I was able to add all my forms by myself and move on with my life, amen!
Ok, back to the fee thing. I really admire is that there is one fee for email marketing and one free for email marketing + e-commerce, no matter what functions you use or don’t use and number of subscribers you have. A no-tier system making it simple and straightforward, and as you grow you’ll always pay the same price. So great!
Is Flodesk easy to integrate into my website?
Of all the platforms I’ve tried (mailchimp and convertkit), I found the easiest one to embed into your site was Flodesk. There are a few different signup forms and emails that you can easily place onto your site using the custom html block as well as inserting your code directly into your header for it to appear on all pages. I’ll be sharing some more info on how to do exactly that if you’re struggling to figure it out.
WIthin Flodesk you can also save your brand preferences and brand colours, set up and duplicate flodesk forms, use their gorgeous templates or create your own. You can also use their free version for 30 days (at the time of be writing this) to try the platform and all the Flodesk features. As a website designer, I love when my clients use Flodesk because it’s a seamless platform with powerful automation, making my client’s job a lot easier. It’s also much faster to get up and running, make changes and start sending email newsletters.
What To Do With New Subscribers – The Correct Email Marketing Strategy
Here are a few things you NEED TO BE DOING when you get a new subscriber. These strategies will help you maximize Flodesk and use it correctly.
1. The first time someone visits your site, they’ve likely seen your opt-in form, which probably contains a very well designed, useful and high quality freebie in exchange for an email… a guide, a print, a downloadable, a template (also known as a lead magnet).. something that intrigued them enough to give you their email address. If they don’t get a direct download URL when they sign up, they should immediately receive a link in a welcome email making it easy for them to grab their freebie. If you don’t set this up correctly, you’ll end up with an “unsubscribed” and they’ll probably never return to your site again because they’ll assume your website is spam. Make sure to give them the exact thing you promised or you’ll lose them forever.
2. Create a welcome email sequence (or series of email sequences) that is about 3-5 emails long slowly introducing your brand, your story, your products. Flodesk makes this easy where you can create emails and then place them into a sequence, with 2-3 day wait times between each email. I’m going to be sharing my 5 email strategy next week with the topics and narrative of each email with you.
3. Tag or segment your subscribers into various categories – be it art collectors or art learners for example, creating a distinction between those who subscribed because they want to buy art from you versus those that subscribed because they want to learn how to paint like you.
4. With each email sent, go into your Flodesk Analytics and see how your emails are doing – open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate… With time you’ll start to see patterns and find what types of emails your subscribers love the most, and which ones they don’t!
5. Stay consistent and authentic. Maintain a schedule and send our your weekly newsletter on the same day and time each week. By doing this, you’re nurturing your community, keeping current and allowing for opportuntities for them to engage with you. What good is a mailing list if you’re not sending anything to it?
6. Maximize Your Time and Duplicate Emails. I don’t mean copy and paste, but you can easily duplicate emails that you’ve already written and sent and place them into new subscriber sequences. If you have a new subscriber join today, you can reuse all the emails you’ve sent to date so that this new subscriber also receives them. You can also take existing email sequences and tweak them to redirect to different digital products, artwork or service you might be providing.
7. Utilize Flodesk’s Inline Form Builder and create custom inline forms for various locations on your website. For example, where you have informational content and helpful resources, provide a inline form that prompts readers to join the mailing list to receive a free guide or informational resource. Where you’re perhaps selling a physical artwork, perhaps you can provide a custom inline form for a wall art hanging guide or a free printable. Use different forms for different readers and customers.
8. Brand Colours, Template Galleries of Emails, Layout Blocks. This is a great feature! Flodesk has incredible options to create branded emails – you can create favourites, create branded font types and colour palettes so that all your emails always look the same and are on brand. This is a great way to build consistency, brand identity and trust.
9. Full Page Form Integration. This is the easiest way to add full-page forms on your website. You can customize everything for each form you want to create, giving your page a really professional look and feel that helps converts visitors to subscribers. Examples include a custom contact page with opt-in options for specific content, freebies or guides, as well as requests such as quotes or service inquiries.
Flodesk Pricing
If you’re looking to grow your email list and improve your marketing automation and not spend a fortune, flodesk is my favourite email marketing platform. There are three different plans to choose from – link in bio, +email marketing and +e-commerce. Each plan has a different rate, charged either monthly or annually. But, this rate is locked forever, so you don’t pay more as you add email addresses and there is no limit to how much you use it, how many landing page options you create, emails you can send and opt-in forms you can use. You have unlimited emails and unlimited subscribers.
If you’re looking for a simple link in bio, this option is their free plan! If you want to add in email marketing (the plan I use), it is $38 monthly or $35 monthly if billed annually. Lastly, if you want to add e-commerce functionality to your emails, it is an additional $26 monthly or $24 monthly if billed annually. To learn more about the different pricing options and the different features of both, click here.
If you’re at a point where you’re considering adding a mailing list (in which case stop thinking and do it!) or you’re not satisfied with the one you’re currently using, give flodesk a try. They’re constantly adding new features and have some beautiful welcome sequence templates to get you started quickly! You can continue running the platform you currently use and start flodesk on a free trial and just play around with your email templates, forms, sequences and see how easy it is! You’ll be sold on its ease of use, functional emails, campaigns, user interface and customer service, I’m sure!
GET STARTED HERE AND RECEIVE 50% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR, YAY!
If you have any questions, let me know! I’m happy to show you how to set some things up, talk about main differences and how I have my workflows and sequences running. I promise you, email marketing is actually quite fun and you’ll be impressed how quickly your list will grow! You can book a coaching call here, and we’ll specifically resolve your email marketing strategy.
I also have another blog post that might answer some more questions you might have about email marketing and selling art online. You can read that post here.
I also help smal business owners set up their email marketing service, set up email sequences, create weekly emails, and help them send out their first email and get comfortable with email marketing. If you’re looking for some help with this, creating templates and a few automations to boost your business instantly, feel free to reach me here.
If you’re new here, I’m Donata Delano. I am the creative owner and artist behind Donata Delano Art. I started The Good Canvas with the hope to create a community that is built on sharing, creating, learning and building beauty in our lives using art. Aside from art related tutorials, tips and information occasionally, I also post recipes, crafts and out adventures living abroad in Mexico.
Hope this is helpful for you and gets you building your community.
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ABOUT THIS POST
This post is written by Donata Delano – A Professional Artist, Graphic Designer and Architect based in Canada and Mexico. She specializing in visual communication and web design, creating branding solutions and websites that are thoughtful, unique and aesthetically pleasing.
