Today I’m sharing more of a “secrets of creative business ownership” post than a post about what we’re eating for dinner or how I refresh our home in the spring; I’m sharing one way that I’ve been able to very intentionally grow my online community while being a work-from-home mom. One way that I’ve been able to save time and be more efficient with my very limited work hours as a work-from-home mama. Today I’m sharing ALL about why I left Mailchimp, and then ConvertKit, and Why I Started Using Flodesk. That might be the longest title I’ve ever given a blog post, but I wanted to capture your attention from the beginning. And I’m not being dramatic. I feel like a Flodesk evangelist, and I want everyone to love and use Flodesk.

What Is Flodesk?

I recently broke up with ConvertKit (and before that, I was a Mailchimp girl for almost a decade) when I fell head over heels for FLODESK. Flodesk is a revolutionary new email service provider that basically makes sending beautifully, thoughtfully designed emails a JOY and a PLEASURE for all of us who know what we like to see in an email but don’t know how to get there on our own.

In November 2019, I was sitting in a coffee shop painfully going back-and-forth between ConvertKit and Photoshop, trying to design a pretty email. My friend Jen walked in and sat down next to me. She looked at my computer screen, (probably laughed inside a little), and promptly asked if I’d heard of Flodesk. I hadn’t, so she sent me the details. I immediately signed up for the FREE TRIAL, and on the last day of the free trial, I signed up. I got locked in at $19/month for forever (which is 50% off their regular rate of $38/month, which is still a STEAL). I had been paying nearly $70/month with my old ESP.

I Used Mailchimp for Nearly 8 Years.

For almost 8 years, I glugged away on Mailchimp. I rarely sent emails, because they were labor intensive, time consuming, and not enjoyable. I WANTED to send emails that were beautifully designed and full of substance. I’d spend HOURS designing sub par blocks in Microsoft Word or Photoshop or Spark or Canva (…sound familiar?). I was never completely satisfied and was always frustrated, so I rarely sent out emails.

I knew it was possible: I received emails from companies all the time and these emails were beautiful and well designed. I simply didn’t have the knowledge to do it or the time to learn the skills necessary or the money to outsource it. So for roughly 8 years I accepted Mailchimp as the only option. Somewhere along the way I started paying for my mailing list, but still rarely invested time in that community.

Then I Switched to ConvertKit.

In early 2018, I took a course on how to nurture your mailing list. At that time, I became convinced I had to leave Mailchimp. So, I looked around a bit and settled on ConvertKit. ConvertKit was going to make it easier to segment and tag my list, something that Mailchimp had lacked, so I was happy enough. But my emails still didn’t look the way I wanted them to. They were long, boring, and very labor intensive. I wanted a combination of eye catching design and written text paragraphs, but the eye catching design was not within my reach. For about a year and a half, I made do with ConvertKit. I was paying nearly $800/year for a service that I was still spending too much time figuring out, trying desperately to give my emails some visual interest. I was still so frustrated.

Enter Jen and Flodesk.

Jen always solves my design dilemmas (she designed my website and my shop and my logo). So when she entered that coffee shop and told me about Flodesk, I knew this was going to be the answer.

My 5 top reasons for falling in love with Flodesk:

1. Flodesk’s cost just makes sense. Right now, Flodesk is $38 a month. AND YOU CAN GET LOCKED IN AT $19/MONTH AND RECEIVE 50% off your monthly subscription if you start your free trial using this link! They’re still in private beta, so that incredibly $38/month price could go up eventually. But if you sign up now, you secure that rate for the lifetime of your account with them. AND it gets better. Your monthly subscription cost never increases as the size of your list grows (it does increase in Mailchimp and ConvertKit). Someone with 500,000 subscribers pays the same as someone with 500 subscribers. That’s awesome.
2. Flodesk brought me explosive growth. Since fulling switching everything over from ConvertKit to Flodesk in late November (so about 2 months ago), my list has grown by 1/4 of the total size. That’s 25% growth! I attribute this growth to the super gorgeous and simple-to-design pop-ups and forms you can add to your blog/site/etc.
3. Flodesk is super intuitive. It took me one day to set up all my “workflows” (automatic emails that get sent out when a condition is met, like opting in on a form on your blog), get pop-ups and forms designed and in place on my blog, etc. It’s not time consuming or confusing. And they have a great help center, if you do have questions.
4. Flodesk has beautiful templates. This is the best thing about Flodesk (well, actually, all of these are the best things). I’m finally sending out emails that look professional, that people WANT to receive, that seamlessly combine graphics and images with paragraphs of text and buttons and oh, it all just makes me so happy!
5. With Flodesk, everything happens in one place. Another great feature…you don’t have to use a separate service to host your leadpages/forms/pop-ups. You design them all in Flodesk, they generate a code or a link for you to put on your site/link to, and voila, you’re done!

Here’s Some Evidence for the Visual Improvements to My Emails

The first two screenshots are from my Mailchimp days of sending emails with just paragraphs of text. Nothing interesting or beautifully designed, because I didn’t have the time or knowledge. The last two screenshots are from an email I sent out in December using Flodesk. Night and day!

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And here’s one final screenshot of the beautifully designed pop-ups that are available through Flodesk. I never before had these on A Daily Something because I didn’t know how to design them in such a way that was consistent with my branding and eye-catching. Flodesk makes it all so simple.

So What Are You Waiting For? Use my code “ADAILYSOMETHING” to lock in at $19/month for life with Flodesk.

Honestly, if you have a mailing list or are thinking about starting a mailing list, I highly recommend checking out Flodesk. They are doing incredible things, and it’s so fun to be a part of something that’s solving the problem of designing emails for literally 1000s of users.

Let me know if you have ANY questions!

Read more about my life Working-From-Home!