I feel like I often repeat myself when talking about this subject, but having your own email list is so important. Imagine your favourite social media platform you use for promoting your business shut your account down tomorrow, or deleted your followers. What would you do?
As much as it's your Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook account - you don't own the data of your followers and that platform can do with it what they wish.
But your email marketing, that's a different story. If you build and nurture your own email list, no one can take that away from you. So it doesn't matter what happens with social media, which platform you need to be on next or how the algorithms change. Engaged subscribers will always get your emails and the only people who can change that, is you or them.
So, after that little intro about why email marketing definitely isn't dead, I want to introduce you to Flodesk, my new email marketing tool - and I'm in love! For the longest time I was using Mailchimp, it's great to get started and it's free after all. But here's why I decided to invest...
The one thing that bugged me the most about Mailchimp was how clunky it felt, even as a techie person, I found it hard to find certain things and often found them hidden in unnecessary menus. The whole experience meant I honestly was avoiding using it, so yes it was completely free to begin with but at the cost of not using it - to me it's just not worth the £0 price tag.
Flodesk feels very Apple inspired - clean, minimal and slick. Everything is so easy to find and there's prompts everywhere so you don't miss something.
There's honestly isn't a way you could build an ugly email in Flodesk and it really is what sets them apart. You can add your logo and brand colours to the settings for easy implementation and they provide incredible pre-made templates and in email layout options within their drag and drop editor. All of this alongside beautiful fonts and your custom images to make sure your emails are just as on brand as the rest of your business.
Mailchimp to start with is free, but if you want to use more advanced features like email automation and sequences, you're going to need to pay. Like most other email providers, the price goes up depending on what features you want and how many subscribers you have.
Flodesk gives you all of their features for one fixed price, no matter how many subscribers you have - and that really is amazing.
Normally you can get Flodesk for $38 per month (approx £27.75) but I have a discount link which mean you can get Flodesk for $19 (approx £13.87) per month for life.
* My Flodesk link is an affiliate link and if you do decide to sign up, I will earn a commission - but it's so important for me to tell you that I use and love this product and I wouldn't share anything it without believing in it.
Let's say you want to keep your new subscribers engaged, if you were to do this manually you'd always be chasing your tail, sending the same emails to every new person who joins your list. Enter email automation sequences - these beauties will make your life so much easier!
Example automation: Some loves your content and decides to subscribe to your email list > they get a welcome email saying thank you for joining your crew > a day later they get an email with an introduction about you > 4 days later they get another email with your latest service launch > depending on whether they click on the link or not they get a specific email encouraging them to take the next step.
Set this sequence up once, and let Flodesk do the rest.
You can also place different sign-up forms to trigger different sequences depending on what they're for, the possibilities are honestly endless and it's so easy to create.
Gone are the days where you pile all your subscribers into one list, and each one get's every email you write. Now you can automatically assign tags depending on their actions.
If someone clicks on the link to do with your wedding photography email you can tell Flodesk to assign them the tag Wedding Photography. If someone becomes a subscriber because they filled out your form to enter your free workshop you can assign a specific tag for that too.
If a subscriber takes certain action which tells you what content they like to see, it's important to keep tagging them. So when you write an email to do with wedding photography vs branding photography, you know which audience is going to be most engaged. Not only does this prevent certain people unsubscribing because of irrelevant information, but it allows you to send really personalised and relevant content to the right people.
I've gone over a lot here, but there's still so much more to explore such as personalised emails, powerful analytics, and adding your Instagram gallery but trying it for yourself is the best option.
Alongside the discount, Flodesk offer a 30 day free trail so you can try it out before committing. If after your trail you love Flodesk as much as I do, use my code to get 50% off your plan.
If you're new to email marketing and have any questions, please feel free to DM me on Instagram or if you really don't know where to start, get in touch and I can set your email marketing up for you.
