How to Use Flodesk: The Definitive Guide
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Have you ever heard the term, "Don't build your business on borrowed grounds?" This means that we should focus on something other than building our business on various social media platforms since we have no control over what could happen to those platforms.
When you use various platforms and marketing strategies to grow your email list, you are filling up your pipeline with leads.
No matter how big your email list is, whether you have two hundred subscribers or a few thousand, you can nurture your list and get consistent leads and sales. Over the last few years, I've tried various email marketing platforms, and undoubtedly, the easier it is to use a platform, the more encouraging it is to stay consistent with your email list growth efforts.
Flodesk is innovative, super user-friendly and designed to simplify the process of creating beautiful, impactful email campaigns. In this blog post, you'll learn more about Flodesk, how to use it, and some of my favorite email list growth hacks to set you up for success.
Use my affiliate code and get 50% off your first year! There is no need to enter a credit card required to start, and you'll get a 30-day trial giving you full access to all the tools and features.
Why Use Flodesk?
Out of the many email marketing solutions, why would you choose Flodesk? Flodesk is a platform that offers simple email marketing solutions while having the ability to create complex automated sequences. They also provide the ability to use various integrations; they even have their newest feature, checkouts which provides users with a great way to monetize from their email list.
Let's not forget that you get to try it out for free without providing your credit card information. The 30-day trial is unrestricted, which means you can test the tools to see if it's the right fit.
Flodesk Features You Need to Know
A tool like FLodesk offers ample features to increase your conversion rates and monetize your expertise. Let's review some of the best and coolest features available within Flodesk.
Intuitive Editor
You started your business or blog to pursue your dreams and goals, not to have to learn a new complicated tech tool every week. With Flodesk's easy-to-use editor, you can create eye-catching emails by dragging and dropping elements onto the canvas.
The platform offers a variety of pre-designed content blocks that allow you to customize your emails to match your brand's aesthetic effortlessly. When you get started, you'll be able to add your brand colors, making it even easier for you to edit your emails.
Beautiful Visuals and Templates
Along with an intuitive editor, Flodesk boasts a collection of elegant and modern email templates that are fully customizable. Whether you want to promote a product, share a newsletter, or announce an event, Flodesk's templates have you covered. All of their forms are customizable and can be fully adapted with your own branding.
You can add outbound links to your products and services and even add buttons. You can embed videos and images; there really are a lot of editing features to discover.
Segmentation
Flodesk enables you to organize your subscribers based on their interests, behaviors, and actions. You can use tags to send targeted emails to specific groups, ensuring your messages resonate with each subscriber. A list segment simply refers to the process of adding subscribers to specific lists based on where and how their email was captured.
For example, if someone signs up for your free nutrition guide, you can have things set up so that these subscribers are added to a list related to your nutrition guide. You can then connect this list segment to a specific workflow to nurture your list into selling your nutrition services.
If someone else signs up to learn about healthy tips while working remotely worldwide, you could add them to your list segment related to digital nomad wellness. Adding subscribers to segments can contribute to an increased open rate because you can keep the topics pretty niche. With that being said, you can also send emails to every segment meaning your entire list.
Automation Workflows
With Flodesk, you can nurture your list and increase your sales by creating automation flows. One of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make is growing a list and not nurturing it.
Their automation feature allows you to create nurturing sequences so that your email subscribers can keep you top of mind. It includes automation like welcome sequences or sales sequences for various list segments that you create.
Checkouts
No website, no problem. Monetize your email list with simple checkout processes. Sell products, services or even digital downloads. Flowdesk gives you amazing templates that are fully customizable and easy to edit.
Checkouts integrate with Stripe, and let's say you have your own website; you could use the "checkout only" template and embed the URL on your website or link the URL to a button of your website links page or other link in bio tool.
Social Form
Feeling overwhelmed with all the different links in bio tools for your social media accounts? Using the social form allows you to create a beautiful, mobile-friendly social form to collect emails and start growing your list.
All forms available with Flodesk are mobile-responsive, which is key to making your content accessible to your audience on various platforms. What's great about the social form feature is that you can create it with the goal of growing a general email list or even creating it for a specific segment for the launch of an upcoming product.
If someone ever asks you if you have a solution for XYZ, you can direct them to the waitlist in your bio so that you don't have to turn away any potential leads.
How to Use Flodesk
Now that you understand the essence of Flodesk, let's dive into the setup and how to get started. Hint: It's really easy!
Step 1: Signing Up and Navigating the Dashboard
To get started with Flodesk, head to their website and sign up for an account. After registration, you'll be able to navigate their user-friendly dashboard and learn about the tools and features available to you. Take time to click on the top right corner, where you'll see your name of your brand's name, and this will direct you to your account settings.
Go through the various options such as overview, email setup, checkout setup, branding etc. The email setup is where you'll set up how your emails will show up in the inbox of your subscribers.
What great about this is that you can add new senders. For example, if you have a community manager and you'd love for them to send emails to your community on their behalf in order to have your community manager build trust with your audience, you could add them as a sender. You'll find this under email setup and by selecting "Add new sender."
Under integrations, you can also connect your Instagram account so that it appears at the footer of each email. This is a great way to grow your Instagram audience.
Step 2: Building Your Form
The very first step is to decide whether you want to grow your list for an upcoming launch and add your subscribers to a waitlist or if you have a freebie to exchange for their email.
If you want to put people on a waitlist, it is critical that you nurture your list by either sending regular emails or setting up an authorization sequence prior to your launch.
If you have a freebie to use, you should also nurture your list so that you can encourage your subscribers to purchase your other products and services. No freebie? No problem. Create a list of ten helpful tips that could help your ideal clients solve a problem or a need.
You can then craft a beautiful email in Flodesk as an automation setup for anyone who signs up. You can also take those tips and add them to a Canva document and attach it to your email. There are so many other options for creating freebies, such as free masterclasses, ebooks, checklists, and much more.
If you already have an email list, import your existing email list into Flodesk. If you don't have a current list, create a new one. No website? No problem.
If you have a website, follow these steps:
At the top of the Flodesk navigation, click on "forms."
Click on the plus "new form" button.
Select Popup, Inline or Full Page.
Follow the steps to create your form.
When your form is ready to publish, you'll be given options, including a code that you can embed on your website.
If you've selected a full page option, you will get a link. You can create a special button for that link on your website and even share this link on your social media profiles.
Embed the form on your website, and voila!
If you don't have a website, follow these steps:
At the top of the Flodesk navigation, click on "forms."
Click on the plus "new form" button.
Select "Social Form."
Follow the steps to create your form.
You'll get a link to share your link on social media. What I love about this form style is that it looks like a links page (link in bio tool such as Linktree) that belongs on social media.
Remember, you can use this to promote a freebie or to build a waitlist for an upcoming launch.
If you have a product or service to sell, consider using Checkouts. Checkouts from Flodesk are as easy as creating a form to collect emails. The previous steps are simply to help you identify what type of form you could create, and it is entirely up to you how you want to set up your list.
Step 3: Designing Your Email Campaign
If you've already gone through the steps of setting up your account on Flodesk, this will be a piece of cake. Your campaign type will depend on what your goal is. If you are getting subscribers on a waitlist, you want to ensure that you nurture them before and during your upcoming launch. If you are sharing an incentive (a freebie) to collect emails, you'll want to ensure that you set up your freebie delivery automation.
No matter what type of email campaign you set up, always send yourself a test email to double-check your work.
Using Pinterest to Grow Your List
Pinterest is an amazing top-of-funnel platform that allows brands and creators to grow their email lists on an evergreen basis. Pinterest is a visual discovery engine, and your content shows up on people's feed based on the keywords they have entered in the Pinterest search bar. When you click on a specific pin, you'll also notice that Pinterest will show you a "More Like this" section. This is another way that Pinners often discover content.
Your success on Pinterest will depend on how consistent you are with the platform and if your account and pins are optimized. Let's review the steps you need to take to grow your email list with Pinterest.
Step 1: Optimize Your Pinterest Profile
Start by creating a Pinterest for business account. Once you create your account, you'll want to use my free Pinterest profile guide and follow the steps to ensure that your profile is optimized.
Step 2: Create Eye-Catching Pins
Now, it's time to have a look at your freebie. What is the title of your freebie? Take your title and create five to seven different variations of your title.
For example, if my freebie title is "Free Pinterest Profile Guide." I would create the following additional titles.
"Complimentary Guide to Crafting a Powerful Pinterest Profile"
"Unlock the Secrets to a Successful Pinterest Profile with this Free Guide"
"Discover How to Optimize Your Pinterest Profile with Our Free Guide"
"Get Your Hands on a Free Guide for Enhancing Your Pinterest Profile"
"Mastering Pinterest: Your Free Profile Guide is Here!"
We're doing this because we never know which title will resonate the best with our audience. Over time, you'll get to know your audience and the type of pin titles they prefer.
With these titles, I am then going to create new Pinterest graphics (or videos) for each. For this particular freebie, I will schedule one pin every five to seven days, going to my various Pinterest boards.
Don't forget to include the following when sharing/ scheduling your pin:
Your pin title
Your pin title as text overlay on your graphic or video.
A pin description
Your URL (the link of your Flodesk Freebie URL.)
Add ALT-Text
Choose your tags (for video/ and Idea Pins)
If you have blog posts related to your freebie, you can include the link to your freebie in various sections of your blog. In this case, your blog link would be the URL that you share on Pinterest.
Repeat this process on a regular basis. Since Pinterest likes "fresh" content, try to create new blog content on a regular basis where you can add the link of your freebie. It is totally ok to share both your blog post links or the Flodesk links to your freebie signup forms. You can share them on an ongoing basis as long as you allow for a few days in between each pin.
If you've ever heard of business owners and bloggers pinning multiple times per day, keep in mind that this includes them promoting their other content, their products and services.
Step 3: Utilize Pinterest SEO
Pinterest is a visual discovery engine, which means that optimizing your pins with relevant keywords and descriptions is so important. In order to do Pinterest keyword research, you need to know your audience and what they would be searching in order to discover your product or solution.
For example, if you sell organic cotton yoga pants, your ideal customer may be searching for "Sustainable Yoga Pants" or "Organic Fabric Yoga Pants." Organic Yoga Pants." They have a specific need, so they likely wouldn't be searching for just "Yoga Pants."
When searching for your Pinterest keywords, you can use the Pinterest search bar and enter various keywords to see what comes up. You can also use the Pinterest Trends tool and the keyword tool in the ads manager. Pinterest Predicts is also a great place to discover keywords for certain categories, and personally, I also love Keysearch.co.
You can learn more about Pinterest and using Pinterest for your business by visiting my blog here.
You are now equipped to start growing your email list with the help of Flodesk. Remember to sign up today for your free 30-day trial with my affiliate link. Should you choose to sign up, you'll save 50% for an entire year.