Beginner Flodesk Mistakes | Troubleshooting Email Marketing Software

Most people who stumble across my channel get here because they're searching for two things, Canva tutorials and Flodesk tutorials. I love Flodesk and in this post, I am going to walk you through the top mistakes that beginners make when switching to this platform. If you've never heard of Flodesk, it is an incredible brand-new email marketing software that helps you create beautiful emails and they do not charge you more each month as your list grows. So if you want to try it for free and lock in for 50% off your first year, make sure that you click on this link. Without further ado, let's hop in.

Hi, I'm LaShonda, founder of About 90 Marketing and host of the Bootstrap Biz Advice show where I teach you how to grow your biz without breaking the bank. On this blog, you will find app reviews, tutorials, or biz advice to help you to take your business to the next level.

One of the top questions that I get about Flodesk is it easy to use. Now I would say easy in comparison to what? I know a lot of people who get started with email marketing and have no previous experience, other people are coming from MailChimp or Constant Contact or ConvertKit. What I will say about Flodesk is it definitely is easy to use however, there still are some mistakes that people make when they switch to this platform. Now if you are a Squarespace website user, one of the mistakes even I made when I switched over to Flodesk is I had something clicked on the back end of my Squarespace site that kept my form from showing up. So here are a couple dynamics that I want you to take into account when you are using Flodesk on a Squarespace website. There are two things that you can do. Number one is you can use a Squarespace newsletter form and you can connect it to Flodesk using a Zap. If you've heard of the website Zapier, it is a website that helps applications talk to each other. So if you want Squarespace to talk to Flodesk, you can create a Zap that connects the two. So even though Flodesk isn't an option under a newsletter form, you can make it happen by creating a Zap. So that's a simple and easy way to do it, however, you can also embed the code from Flodesk on your Squarespace site. If you do that, and you have Ajax loading checked, your form may disappear from time to time. Now I remember when I first got started with Flodesk, I did not know this was a thing. And I remember freaking out because I put my opt-in on my homepage. And sometimes when I went to my website, the form just wasn't there. I unchecked Ajax loading, no problem. So again, you have two ways to embed a form using Squarespace and Flodesk. You can create a Zap in Zapier so that Squarespace talks to Flodesk or you can copy the code and make sure that you don't have Ajax loading selected.

Number 2 is workflows. Now, if you're used to using a site like ConvertKit, you understand the concept of a sequence. When this happens, I want this to happen a day later and a day later I want this to happen. And you can change the times in between but that is called a sequence in ConvertKit and Flodesk calls them workflows. I create workflows to deliver my free content. If someone is downloading free pictures from Eye For Ebony, I want to follow up, deliver the photos and then I want to educate them on what Eye For Ebony does and typically, the money that I make within my business does not happen because of the free photos. It happens because of those follow-up emails. Workflows are the way that you automate follow-ups. So if you are a solopreneur, and you don't have time to manually email the people who sign up for your newsletter or sign up for your freebie. This is a great way to do it. You can create a workflow to help people sign up for a webinar. If you want to tell them, don't forget webinars tomorrow, don't forget webinar starts in 10 minutes, webinar is live, the workflow would automatically deliver those emails so that you don't have to go in and schedule a broadcast or a new email. Here's the thing though, as soon as you go in to edit a workflow, you unpublish said workflow. So if you decide to tweak the email, if you decide to tweak the delays in between them, if you do not hit publish, you've turned your workflow off and anybody who signs up through that form is not going to go through the workflow. I've done it. We've probably all done it. But I want to tell you this so that you can be more specific when you edit your workflows to make sure that you hit that publish button and you don't lose people in the process of making updates. So again, your workflow is how you automate your emails but make sure if you make changes, that you re-publish your workflow.

One of the things that people care about when they look at email marketing in their business is, will my email actually get to my customers? We know that Google does whatever it wants to do and sometimes it takes your email and it scoops it up and it drops it in the promotions tab or it scoops it up and drops it into spam. But on those beautiful days, sometimes your email actually makes it to people that you're trying to send it to and one of the things that you can do to increase your delivery rate is to verify your domain. What I mean by that, I hope you have a professional email. For instance, mine is hello@about90marketing.com so the reality is not only do I own that email address, but I own the domain as the end of it. And by going into my domain settings and adding in a few records. I let Flodesk know that I indeed own this domain. When you do that, it will help your emails to actually land in the inbox of the people that you're trying to reach out to. Again, there is no guarantee that it will always end up in the right place, however, it will increase your chances if you take the time to verify your domain. You can still email without doing this but like I said, if you care about the delivery rate, it will help your chances of actually landing in your customer's inbox.

Flodesk is an extremely popular platform within the creative profession community and one of the mistakes that I see beginners make all the time is they take a Flodesk template and they barely modify it before they hit send. Remember, Flodesk is an email builder, it is not an email assistant. What I mean by that is that what you get from Flodesk isn't the be-all, end-all. You need to add your own brand colors, you need to add your own images, you need to change the fonts to match your branding because what's going to keep happening, is your competitors or even people in like-minded businesses are going to be emailing the same people and your emails will not stand out if you don't take the time to customize it. Now you can upload your branding colors into Flodesk which makes it a whole lot easier to be consistent with that and you can also duplicate past emails to make sure things stay visually consistent within your own branding. But those templates are a starting point. Please do not just take a template, change the text, and send it out. Because what's going to happen is there are a lot of people doing that and you're going to decrease your conversion rate by not taking the time to make it your own. Flodesk makes it super easy, you can drag and drop different areas within a template to expand on what they provide you so you can go beyond what you see when you open that template up. But please, please, please do not just select a template, change the text, and hit send. Make it your own and you will increase your conversion rate on your Flodesk emails.

The last thing that I want to tell you guys is do not forget to promote your affiliate link. I will be completely frank and honest with you, my partnership with Flodesk is one of my top-producing affiliate partnerships. They make it so easy. Once you create your own Flodesk account, you will receive your own link within Flodesk. You can copy that and you can put it in a blog post, you can copy it and send it out to your list. Also, if you look at the bottom of your Flodesk emails when people click on  "Made with Love in Flodesk", it sends them to Flodesk using your affiliate link, so friends, you may not want to turn that off. That's a super easy way for you to promote Flodesk and generate passive income.

I hope you guys found this post useful. As I said, I actually use Flodesk in my business. I use it as a way to stay in contact with Bootstrap VIPs. My VIP vault is my epic resource library that's filled with cheat sheets, tutorials, checklists, and even stock photos for free. So when you go to my website lashondabrown.com and you click on the banner at the top, it will take you to a Flodesk form. As soon as you put in your name and email address, Flodesk will send you an email with the password which will let you into my vault absolutely free. Now again, if you want to try this platform for absolutely free, click on this link and you will lock into 50% off your first year should you choose to stick with it. So if you have another app that you would like for me to review, feel free to let me know in the comments. If you liked this post, be sure to subscribe to my channel because I teach you how to grow your biz without breaking the bank. Until next time, ta ta for now.