Flodesk – Best Email Service For small businesses and hobby farms

While Flodesk is still very new, they are doing amazing things and I definitely feel like they are there to support the small business owner.

You know when you see a company and you just know they will do great things? Well, that was Flodesk for me. Forbs seems to think so too! You can read their interview with the co-founder here.

I am going to cover the most important thing first because honestly, it drives me crazy when people take forever to tell you how much something is because why waste your time and mine if you can’t afford it right? I am all about budgets so I hear ya.

Flodesk Pricing

This was the first thing that made me stand up and pay attention like it would for anyone… They charge you 1 price and you get UNLIMITED access.

They don’t keep any features from you or limit the number of people you can have on your list. If you have used an email service provider you know that is unheard of.

Most times there are different levels and the more you pay the more features you get access too.

But not Flodesk.

Oh, and did I mention the number of subscribers does not matter either? I know I did, I just want to make sure you were paying attention.

If you have 50 or 1 million and it does not matter. I know people who pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars because their email list is so big.

This brings me peace of mind and I can work to grow my list with reckless abandon and not have that little voice whispering “you’re getting close to the next tier, your gong to have to pay more….” It allows me to helo more people with no increase in cost.

That alone was worth the price they don’t punish you for growing your list.

So what is Flodesk pricing?

As of right now, they are $38 a month if you go straight to their home page.

BUT if you sign up through my affiliate link below I get you in for only $19 a month FOR LIFE how cool is that! Can you imagine paying only $19 a month and be able to talk to as many people as you want without paying a penny more? Your profit margins just got drastically bigger.

… and the best part is you can test it out for 30 days free to see if you like it.

But I am pretty sure you will be hooked.

Personal Experience With This Email Service Provider

I love to test the waters when it comes to tools in my business. One to test my curiosity but also to make sure it is the best tool for my business that gets RESULTS. Which could be the key for business owners.

My blogging mastermind leaders said this about the tools they use. If it is easier or better for the customer they are still going to stick with it even if the tool is clunky on the backend. Now I am not saying that Flodesk is clunky. What I am saying is that they may not have all of the bells and whistles that the older email service providers do. But there are several ways to make this tool do what you need if you pause and look at the features handed to you.

In my blogging journey I have also used and tried Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Active Campaign, and ConvertKit.

Active Campaign and ConvertKit are more advanced hands down. BUT this is the thing that I always felt limited me with these tools.

Active Campaign limits the tools you have access too based on the level you pay for. There pricing is not just based on the size of your list.

While Convert Kit doesn’t’ do that. Their cheapest option is $29 for only 1000 subscribers. They do have a free version that allows you to have 500 emails on your list but you do not have access to automation. Meaning you cant send your opt-in to your email subscriber automatically. Which is how you get people on your list.

After using Flodesk and my blog as making more money I wanted to test out ConvertKit because that was what the cool kids use. My opt-in rates dropped and overall business results dropped as well. I went back to Flodesk and almost immediately I started getting more subscribers and reply to my emails.

Once I started thinking about it the people I open the emails from are the people who use Flodesk. There is just something warm and inviting about those emails. And that is what I want for my brand.

Flodesk Dashboard

Flodesk I extremely simple and I am going to show you how easy it is to use.

At the very top, you see all of the main tools you will work with in the menu are in the center. I will go deeper into those later. The dark letters mean that is the page you are currently on.

When you first get into your dashboard you see all of your emails, sent, drafted, and scheduled.

This email service provider currently alines your emails from the latest works to the oldest. They do not realine due to schedule which is kind of a bummer to me but not worth leaving over.

So if you are like me and would rather see them in the order the only real way around this is to work on them in the order you will schedule the emails.

You can filter through your emails to only see the sent, drafts, and scheduled emails. There is a space for archived as well. I am a neat freak and don’t want more than this month’s email on my dashboard so I tend to push the old emails to the archived area.

We will see how long that lasts. It is not a fast process since you have to do it one email at a time. I do think having emails on hand is good because you are able to go back and study the results to start doing more of what works.

Flodesk Analytics

If you scroll down a bit more you can see the scheduled date and as you see in this image a stats button you can click to see that email results without actually going into the email itself which I think is great.

This is what you would see if you clicked the button on your Flodesk dashboard without going into the email itself. Pretty self-explanatory.

The recipients are how many emails this email was sent to. Open rate is how many people opened your email. The Click rate is how many times a link in your email was clicked.

The numbers below are pretty low for me. After being on Flodesk for a while an average open rate is 29-30% of which I am working to increase.

Flodesk Main Features

Remember that I said they are in bata so I know that they are going to be adding more things as time goes on but you have to be patient.

Segments – How you organize your subscribers.

Your audience is separated by segments (image below) and you can think of these as your tags. Flodesk does not have tags at this time but I am sure this is coming.

If you have more then one opt-in you will have to create a special form, segment, and workflow for that opt-in if you want to know which opt-ins are performing best.

If you want all of your subscribers to end up in 1 segment after they go through a workflow you can create ACTION at the end of the workflow and have Flodesk move them to that segment.

You are able to see all of your subscribers in one big list as well.

Forms – How you get people on your email list.

I will do a deeper post on forms later but what you need to know is they have inline forms, pop up forms, and full-page forms. The full-page forms are great for linking from your social platforms so people don’t get lost and end up not signing up for your list.

When you are looking at your created forms you are able to sort through them just like you could in your emails.

Below is an example of what you see on your forms page. They show how many people have opted into each form which is a great help if you want to test form stiles.

Workflows

Workflows are basically a series of actions your tool takes on your behalf. When a subscriber fills out a form the tool is delivered and a series of emails are sent over a set amount of days. Below is a list of the options you can use when creating your workflows. It is pretty simple which is actually very nice in my opinion.

Workflows with basic features of delayed sending times, “if” conditions. Meaning if they opened an email they can go one direction and of not you can send them on another path. (shown below)

And actions. Meaning when they get to a certain point in a workflow you can move them to a different subscriber segment.

Flodesk Integrations

They are currently integrated with Shopify and Zapier which is a tool that will help flodesk talk to other tools such as payment processors.

Zapier does work well with flodesk and I am going to be testing Shopify soon.

Creating An Email In Flodesk

Now, this is another area that helps me stick with them even though they are so new. I believe that you should be using a tool that inspires you to create no matter what you are doing. If you are using something that is not fun to use and even clunky at times that is not going to encourage you to get in the tool and do your work.

Flodesk has so many email templates that make your emails BEAUTIFUL. And once you design those emails to your liking you can save them as templates and you have deigned your own. (shown in the video above) Look through some of the pre-made email templates to see what I mean.

These are just a few of the many email templates that are provided for you. Let alone the options you could create if you wanted to use their drag and drop builder to create your own.

Subscriber Stats

This email service provider puts your subscribers under the tab called audience. Then you have two options that drop down. You can look at your entire list or go to the segments and see your subscripers from a more high level.

Let me explain what different filters there are and this will make more sense.

Subscriber Filters

When you are on the page with all of your subscribers individually listed. There are a few ways to filter out subscribers and look at them by different attributes.

There are “Statuses” and shows if they are Active, Unsubscribed, Bounced, Or Marked As Spam.

Then you have the Activity filter where you can choose a specific time frame of when the subscriber was last active. This is great for cleaning the inactive subscribers off your list. Which you should do every 90 days or so to keep your list healthy.

Here are some of the Last Active times you could possibly filter out.

• With in the last 7 day.
• Within the last 30 days.
• 30 or more days a go.
• 60 or more days ago.
• 90 or more days ago.
• 6 months ago.
• 1 year ago.

Subscription Source

Meaning how they got into the system. Manually entered, CSV File, or a subscription box.

Segments – This is how you can filter out a group of people purchased your products, opt-ins, or anything else you have created a segment for.

Flodesk truly helps you get creative and fall in love with emailing your list.

That’s all for now and I will continue to update this post and create more detailed tutorials on this wonderful tool. But for now, this will get you started.

Let me know in the comments what other questions you have.