6 Reasons We Left Mailchimp for Flodesk

Flodesk, the latest email marketing tool so fresh on the scene that it’s still in beta, is generating a ton of buzz these days…but besides the low price (Flodesk is only $19/mo with my 50% off referral code), WHY is it rapidly gaining so much popularity? Before I get into why I absolutely LOVE Flodesk and took the time to make the switch from Mailchimp, let’s chat really quick about why email marketing is still even a thing.

Why is email marketing still a thing?

Email marketing is important because not everyone who lands on your website or social media is ready to buy right then & there. Many people stop for a couple seconds out of curiosity & once they leave, you’re out of sight, out of mind. With everyone following literally thousands of brands & only those who shout loudest being shown due to constant, randomly changing algorithms, your voice can be lost in the clutter. Email marketing is the only surefire way to stay fresh in someone’s mind. It’s especially important for luxury brands like ours that are a want, not a need. It typically takes our clients anywhere from 3-6 months from initial contact to book a boudoir shoot, & emails are one way we get lurkers to finally hop the fence. Social media could also crash at anytime like it did once already this year, temporarily, or maybe someday, for good.

Why listen to me?

Before I became a full time photographer, I was an Email Marketing Specialist for 15 years. In my last corporate role at an ad agency, I was sending emails for Fortune 500 companies like 7-11, Purina, Panera, & Chili’s among others. So, I guess you could say that I might know a little about email marketing. When it came time to launch email campaigns for my own business, I tried just about every program that exists before finally landing on Mailchimp. I liked it for a few years due to the ease of use & their email templates being prettier than anything else at the time……….but that was then, and this is now. This is my old Mailchimp template (YAWN):

And this is how much prettier that very same email looks in Flodesk; I could probably come up with someone even prettier with more time, but it’s good enough for a 5 minute email build – yes, this only took me 5 minutes:

1. It’s the Prettiest

Not convinced yet that Flodesk is the prettiest email out there? This is just a sample of the beautiful magic you can create with the templates found in Flodesk:

Flodesk is perfect for artists, creatives, anyone who wants to stand out & get people to actually OPEN their emails instead of immediately send them to the trash box. Best of all is how EASY it is to build all this stuff. You can make every email look different, or make them all the same! You can select any template then use the layout feature to customize it even further by changing the layout of any block. Here’s an example of me making a layout & photo change in Flodesk on my own email campaign:

You can also change the colors super easily:

Another great thing about Flodesk is that you can preview how it will look in both mobile & desktop without even leaving the builder. Just click the applicable icon/s:

Finally, you can send a test to yourself to make sure all the links work:

2. As many segments as I want? Yes, please!

The next best feature of Flodesk is that unlike Mailchimp which only allows you to have THREE audiences (aka segments) on the free account & then charges you more the more audiences you add, in Flodesk you can have as many as want at no extra cost! I have 19 different segments so far. Yes, you read that right – NINETEEN. This is super important because I have several different groups I target with my emails – leads, current clients, tourists, & so much more. If I ever host a workshop for photographers for example, I can just email the “Photographers” segment shown in the screen below vs. everyone on my list. This ensures that people are only getting emails that are relevant to them vs. every email I have to send:

3. Beautiful Forms Straight Out of the Box

Incase you’re wondering, the key to getting people onto your email list is by having some sort of lead magnet (PDF download, etc) that people WANT to subscribe to get. We have a few different ones that we offer ranging from destination session notifications to our lingerie guide & more. One of my biggest pet peeves about Mailchimp was how dang UGLY the sign up forms are and you can’t customize them unless you know CSS. I don’t. It cost me $100 to have someone code my Mailchimp forms to match my website & they weren’t even pretty. Flodesk has SEVERAL different types of email subscriber forms that you can customize in Flodesk and install on your site by copying & pasting a simple HTML code. You can even have multiple subscriber forms on your site like I do on ours. We always have a pop-up advertising whatever current sale or hot item we’re trying to promote; currently, it’s our Greece trip:

And we have an embed form at the bottom of the site for our lingerie guide:

And of course, both of these form types are also mobile-friendly & you can also preview the mobile version in the builder.

Flodesk also allows you to create full-page sign up forms. These are great for when you want to be able to share a link that people can click to subscribe…we usually embed links in our social media posts. Here’s an example:

https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5df3fad83f5d940026330277

4. Easy-to-set-up workflows

Once people are on the list, you can choose to either send them one-off emails, or add them to an automation workflow so that they will get a series of emails over a spaced out period of time that you pre-determine. Here’s an example of a workflow I created for general leads:

You can also set up conditional logic without needing to know any coding. In the screenshot below, if someone opens the email, they get the “Thank You” email. If they don’t, they get the welcome email again just incase they missed it the first time:

5. Flodesk + Zapier integration

While Flodesk to Zapier integration isn’t live to the public yet, it’s coming!! Supposedly it will be live to everyone around January. We were fortunate to get an invite to test it out early & I have to say, it’s AMAZING. Zapier makes it so that when people respond to our Facebook ads, they’re automagically added to our email list & no manual imports have to be done by us. Zapier integration saves me SO much time & leaves me free to get other things done. Zapier will charge you $24.99 per month to have this premium integration app, but it’s worth it in my opinion. OR, you can manually import all your Facebook leads to Flodesk for free. Totally up to you.

6. Flodesk Pricing: No Tiers, Just One Rate No Matter How Large You Grow!

The absolute BEST, and I mean THE best thing about Flodesk after how pretty it is, is the PRICE. Mailchimp was costing us around $49.99 a month for 1,000 subscribers & only 3 segments. One day I’d like to have 100,000 subscribers which would cost $499/mo on Mailchimp – ludicrous. Flodesk on the other hand lets you have UNLIMITED subscribers and UNLIMITED segments for just $40 a month or $19/mo with my 50% off referral code which comes out to only $228 for the whole YEAR. I’m guessing that Flodesk‘s prices will eventually go up after it’s out of beta & the rest of the world catches on…go get it now while you can!

https://flodesk.com/c/BEAUTIFULEMAIL