293: Build an Email List in Under an Hour with Dawn Richardson of Flodesk

[00:00:00] Bree: Hi, Dawn. Hi. We're so excited to have you and diving in just straight away. Thanks for being back on the show. Yes, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you for having me again. Of course. And you're here with Flodesk and it's so much fun. Two of my favorites in one show. Oh my goodness. All right. So we're going to.

You are, we, you are going to quickly share with our audience today in this Thriving Five episode, how to start and send an email within an hour with Flodesk. Amazing. How do we do this?

[00:00:42] Dawn: Okay. So when you are doing email marketing, we need to get subscribers into our list of So we can email them. They have to opt in.

We can't add them ourselves. They have to give us that permission. So the first thing we have to do is create a form and a form is just a simple thing that you put on your website. It can be a pop up, it can be inline. You can create a whole page. That's a form and that. Collects their name and their email.

And oftentimes you want to ask for that information in exchange for something valuable. So that's where we talk about opt ins, things like that. And we're going to talk about that later, but

[00:01:16] Bree: yes,

[00:01:16] Dawn: so you want to create that form. And the cool part about the forms at Flodesk forms are totally free. You don't have to pay.

To use Flodesk and have a form. So even if you're not ready to start emailing your people, you can start collecting their information. So when you are ready to launch that newsletter or send them emails, you have their information ready to go. So that's your first step. Then once you have those subscribers, you can start building emails.

Now emails can be simple. They can be stories about your day. It can be what's going on in your business. It can be whatever you want it to be. But in Flodesk, super easy to create that email, design it. We create layout blocks so you can make it look and feel exactly how you want it to. And then you push send.

And if you want to automate that process. So when somebody subscribes to your list, they automatically get that email. You can do that with a workflow. And that workflow is very simple. It just says when they subscribe to this segment, Then send this email very simple and straightforward. And all of that can be set up within minutes.

[00:02:16] Bree: Yes. Within minutes because of the gorgeous, gorgeous templates that you guys already have ready to go. There's no like, Oh, I want to send an email, but it just looks like a blank white Google doc or something like these are beautifully stylized emails and you can find one that just matches your vibe instantly.

And I feel like the ease of everything, like these thriving five episodes, this one in next week's. I'm Just show like, Oh, it's, it's literally just those steps that Don just laid out. There's no extra like, Oh, but you also have to go do this. Oh, you also know that's literally it. And you get to choose just a quick, beautiful template and run with it.

There's not another email marketing platform that does that.

[00:03:03] Dawn: No, there's not. And we're some spoiler alert. New templates are coming down the pipeline. So that's exciting. And also we have Released shared templates earlier this year. So there are a ton of creators out there that are sharing their own templates.

Some of them are for free. Yep. Some of them are free. Some of them you can purchase. So even if you find that perfect one on a marketplace, you can use it and then import it into Flodeskdesk and then just. Get ready in a couple of minutes.

[00:03:30] Bree: Oh, you're reminding me we're making it even easier for everybody because we have a welcome email template set up and ready to go for you guys.

And it's a whole workFlodesk. You're getting like four emails for a welcome sequence. Now, now you have no excuse. No excuse. Okay. Tell me just, you know, if anybody's out there listening and they're like, Oh, I, you know, I'm a full time content creator or I'm a new content creator even, and I'm on social media or my own, I'm on these other platforms.

I have like my audience is there, but why do I need to spend my time growing an email list? That is a great

[00:04:06] Dawn: question. Now of the marketing channels. Email is still King. It has the highest ROI of all the channels. And it's estimated that, um, people that use email marketing are earning 42 back for every dollar spent.

So it is still the most prominent option that you have out there. But here's the thing. Social media is important to our businesses. We're not saying that you should stop social media, but what we are wanting to make sure that creators understand is that social media shouldn't be your only marketing platform.

You want to diversify your platforms, especially in our world. Currently, like we don't know what's happening to some of these social media platforms, and that's why it's really important to have our followers in multiple places. Now, something different about email that you can't do with social media.

You Is take your followers with you. So if you wanted to move from Instagram to Tik TOK or vice versa, you can't take those followers and just transfer them over. But with email marketing, that email list is yours. So regardless if you use Flodesk or another platform, you can take that email list and take it with you.

It is yours. You own it. Think of it like. Renting versus owning social media is that rented space where email list is an own space where that is yours to take with you wherever you go.

[00:05:20] Bree: So true. Oh my gosh. Okay. You guys go check out Flodesk. If you are not signed up already, then use the code thrive at checkout.

Flodesk is amazing. And they're giving everybody 50 percent off for the first year of trying Flodesk. But also like Dawn said, if you're like, I'm not ready to send emails yet, but I do want to start collecting emails. The fact that they are giving you guys a way to do that with beautiful forms for free.

At least start there. At least start collecting emails on social media. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Okay. We'll be back here next week. Don is joining me again to keep this conversation going. And so next week we're going to talk about automations to grow your list easily. We'll see you guys then.

[00:06:03] Dawn: See you next time.