295: Email Marketing & Automation Strategies for Beginners with Dawn Richardson of Flodesk

[00:00:00] Bree: Hello Dawn, welcome back. I get you two weeks in a row.

[00:00:07] Dawn: I feel like I'm the lucky one here. I get to like hang out with you guys. I love it. I love being here.

[00:00:12] Bree: We're just going to have you keep coming back. Dawn is our resident tech expert and always comes back and she works with Flodes now, so it's just my two favorite things in one.

So last week we talked about how to. Get started and send an email within an hour using Flodesk and you just walked us through that so quickly and it's like, oh my gosh, that was so easy. So hopefully you guys have gone and done that. And now you're ready to use some automations to grow your list easily.

So Don, let's talk about that.

[00:00:42] Dawn: Yeah, so let's, there's a lot of automation type things that we can do here at Flodesk. So I know one thing that we wanted to talk about are the different types of forms that we offer. So this is the beginning of the automation steps. Okay. So when we talk about automations and Flodesk, we're talking about workflows.

So in order to get somebody into a workflow, we want to add them to a segment. And that's typically, um, they add themselves to a segment by filling out a form. So we have lots of different types of forms at Flodesk and we've actually released some new ones in the last few weeks, which is really exciting.

We have our standard pop up form that goes on your website. We have an inline form that can be embedded onto your webpage so you can make it, you know, seamlessly integrate within all of your other things going on on your webpage. We have a full page form and these are really cool because they create It's own URL.

So even if you don't have a website stood up yet, you can start collecting subscribers with a full page form. Now this is where forms gets fun though, because we've released some new form types in the past few weeks, such as video forms. So now you can embed a video onto your form, a YouTube or a Vimeo link.

So you can personally welcome them to your email list, or you can tell them about your product that you're offering, or maybe you're talking about a webinar, whatever that is. You can have that video and that engagement. Is going to increase your conversions and get people onto your email list. We also offer a really fun spinner form.

So have you ever like been to like, yes, I love, I have much, I'm an online shopper, so anytime I get a spinner pop up, I'm like, yes, I will spin the wheel for absolutely,

[00:02:18] Bree: please. Give me the big discount. Let's go. Yes,

[00:02:21] Dawn: exactly. It's so fun. So I put us, you can create a spinner form and you can change the colors, the design, what's on the spinner and you choose the winner.

And how that works is they will set, uh, put in their email address and then they can spin it and then they will get their option. Then you'll present them with a coupon code or a link or you put them in an email list, whatever you want to do with that form at that point. Our final form type that we've recently released has been a countdown form.

Now, this one is really exciting because urgency and scarcity increases conversions. So people have FOMO, they don't want to miss out on things. So by having a countdown timer on your form saying like, this is a limited time offer, or we're counting down to a webinar or some type of thing that you're offering, you're going to increase your conversions because they see that this is only a limited time.

They see how much time they have left and they are wanting to opt in so they don't miss it. Now, if they do miss it. You can put them onto a wait list and then send them a different email series from there. So again, all of our automations start from the form piece. You want to get them on the list. They have to put themselves there.

They have to agree to be part of your community. So that puts them into it. It's called a segment and then workflows can generate from a segment. Now, once we're in the workflow phase, this is where we can really start to use the power of automations. We can immediately send them an email. And then maybe wait two days.

And then send them another email. And if they click that email, then we can send them a different email, but if they don't click that email, we can send them a different one and you can create the workflow of how your subscribers go through a journey with these automations. So that's really powerful part.

And. We've also learned that by using segments. So that's dividing your audience into smaller groups. So you might have one subscriber that's in 12 segments and that tells us about them. So we can have a segment for what products they've purchased, what services they've purchased. Are they a photographer?

Are they like, what, what do they do? What have they clicked on? You can create segments based off of many different things. And based off of that information, you can really tailor their journey through your email marketing world and give them something that feels very comfortable and tailored to them.

And that's just going to make them a more loyal subscriber. They're going to stay. They're going to click on your emails. They're going to open them. They might even send it to other people too. And that's a really powerful thing. For you and your marketing plans.

[00:04:54] Bree: Oh my gosh. I have so many ideas that you're going through this.

I'm thinking to like the countdown timers and how, like, if somebody has something exciting, they're going to be announcing. Like we have one of our girls in our shift program that has something really big that she's going to announce. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, she needs to set a countdown timer. So her email list is the first ones to find out about this big thing.

And yes, then, you know, that's like one of the things that's like. Email doesn't necessarily have to add a whole bunch to your plate because it's so quick and easy with Flotus to just get everything set up and then have all of those automations running. So it's like, once you have it set up, it's done, it's all good to go.

You just keep sharing the link to get people to sign up.

[00:05:36] Dawn: It's so powerful. And for context, I have my own business, so I'm doing my own email marketing on the side. And I was digging into my analytics a couple of weeks ago, and I have 22 active workflows. So this could be delivery of a freebie or an opt in.

It could be a welcome series. It could be what somebody goes through after they, you know, buy my course. And it's like a welcome. And there's a series of emails that go out. Well, I have 22 of these workflows stood up and over the past few years, since I've been with Flodesk, I have sent over 26, 000 emails.

I did not send those emails guys. That's automation. Those are, that's the power of automation doing all the work for me. I set up 22 different workflows and 26, 000 emails have come from that. And that's really powerful. And I don't have a massive list. I have, you know, maybe 2, 500 people on my list. And that just shows how having the right tool, creating these automations can really do the work for you when you are not Paying attention to that.

You can be focused on other things. You can be focused on your family, your business, whatever it is, and your marketing can run on autopilot with Flodesk.

[00:06:42] Bree: Amazing. Okay. You guys should be 100 percent convinced now to get started with email marketing and Flodesk is amazing and it's giving everybody 50 percent off their first.

First year when you use the code thrive at checkout, or just click the link in the show notes here and it'll automatically apply that discount for you guys. All right, Dawn, thank you so much for being a part of these two thrive in five episodes. I really appreciate you coming on and just breaking down how simple and easy it is to get started.

[00:07:15] Dawn: Thank you for having me. I will be here anytime you call me.

[00:07:20] Bree: Thank you so much. All right. You guys will be back here in just a few more days with a brand new episode.