Each and every blogger should be using an email marketing tool (if not, you should use them right away) to set up and automate email campaigns.
Because email marketing is a very effective way to grow your blog. After all, it is the only marketing channel that allows you to talk directly to your readers and build a relationship with them. You could even go as far as saying that email marketing is what can turn your blog into a business.
However, there are tons of tools in the industry to help you with Email marketing, and choosing the right one is very important. One of them is Flodesk. It’s not so popular as Mailchimp or Convertkit but the tool offers a various number of features for a much lower price compared to those popular tools.
In this Flodesk review, we will see the features, pricing, pros and cons of the tool, and whether the tool is actually worth it for you.
What is Flodesk?
Flodesk is an email marketing tool that offers modern, visually appealing templates and automation features that mainly focuses on small business and bloggers. The tool is a newcomer in the industry which was just founded in 2019 by Martha Bitar and Rebecca Shostak. The main goal was to make mail marketing more accessible for small business owners and bloggers. And of course, they achieved their goal pretty quickly.
Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to create stunning emails in minutes using ready-made templates, or from scratch.
The tool includes a handful of pre-built templates that you can customize without any coding skills. Moreover, all the templates are fully mobile responsive.
Most importantly, Flodesk offers automation workflows that allow you to engage with your subscribers automatically based on their behavior as well as a handful of reporting tools that you can use to better understand your audience.
Let’s see all the Flodesk features in detail.
Flodesk Features
Flodesk’s approach is straightforward and includes only the essential tools for email marketing. Flodesk provides users with only three features, but they’re the most important ones. They are
- Emails
- Forms
- Automation workflows
So now, let’s see each of the features in detail in this Flodesk review.
Emails
Emails are the core part of email marketing so customizing them should be a core priority as well. With Flodesk’s drag and drop builder, creating an email is very simple and easy to do. There are pre-built templates to make the job easier. You can either choose to start from scratch or use one of the pre-built templates with 7 categories and 45 templates.
In Flodesk, you can send an email with four steps.
- Choose the template
- Design your email
- Choose the audience
- Send the email
1. Choosing the templates
You’ll love how easy it is to create beautiful emails and newsletters when you use a professionally-designed template as a starting point.
Choose the template that’s right for you, depending on the type of content you want to highlight and your goals for each campaign. As I said before, there are 45 templates with 7 categories. They are
- Upmyemailgame
- Share news
- Welcome
- Make Money
- Say thanks
- Inspire
- Plain text
The names might seem a little odd but the templates are really cool with some having animation built-in to grab your audience’s attention.
2 Design your email with drag & drop builder
Flodesk’s drag-and-drop editor makes it a breeze to place photos, text, and other elements exactly where you’d like them to appear on your email
The builder is easy to use (with a smooth and soothing interface) and allows you to add 23 different elements to your email. They are
- Layouts
- Image
- Logo
- Video
- Text
- Link bar
- Button
- Divider
- Spacer
- Social Links
- Footer
- Address
3. Choose the audience
Choosing the audience can be done by using the list of emails that you have collected using the form or can individually type in the mail address of your audience.
With the email list, you can exclude certain emails easily to exclusively prevent them from receiving the mail.
Moreover, you can also upload your email list using the .csv format. Most of the email marketing tools only provide you with the option to use .csv on the higher tier but with Flodesk, you get it straight out of the box.
4. Email Sending
You can send an email immediately or schedule it to be delivered at a future time. You have the option to schedule a custom time or let Flodesk pick the perfect time for your message to receive the highest open rate.
Forms
With forms builder, you can build 3 types of forms such as popup, inline and full-page. You can use any one of the 24 pre-built templates to build your forms but you can’t start from scratch. Moreover, after choosing the template, you can only edit the elements that are currently being used by default (it varies depending on the templates) and you can not add new ones.
Even though each template satisfies different needs, a lack of ability to add new elements makes the form less customizable and may limit your ability to make the form look the way you want.
While choosing your form’s images, you can access millions of copy-right-free images from Unsplash. This might seem like a small feature, but trust me, you’ll appreciate it when you need it.
When you’re finished customizing the form, you can choose when and to whom it will appear, what happens if people subscribe, and whether the popup closes or redirects them somewhere.
Once everything is complete, you can embed it with other sites including WordPress. However, you can’t embed the full-page form since the form will be self-hosted on Flodesk itself.
Additionally, you can create folders to group forms and organize them.
Automation
Automation is the most critical aspect of email marketing. It is where you set up a sequence of emails to be sent out automatically based on certain triggers. You set it up once and then let it take care of itself—while still being able to adjust it if you want to make changes.
Just like every other tool on the market, Flodesk has many types of automation workflows, from simple to complex. Each workflow is built with a certain goal in mind.
Some of the common workflows on Flodesk contain elements of each of these categories
Trigger and behavior-based emails: These emails have an action or trigger that causes them to be sent. Some common trigger actions include welcome emails. These are the important ones and you can decide what emails to be sent when someone is subscribed to a particular segment based on the conditions (Segments are like tags to help you organize your users, this can be set when creating forms).
For example, they’re triggered by events like when someone subscribes to a list, opens an email, or clicks a link.
Time-based emails: These emails are sent based on a specific date or time frame. Common examples include anniversary emails.
With these elements, you can set the automation the way you want.
This is how automation works on Flodesk: When a user is subscribed to a particular list (called segments in Flodesk), a series of emails can be sent immediately or with a time delay, or it further triggers a condition such as when the user opened the email or clicked the link, and finally, the desired emails will be sent.
User Interface
User Interface is my favorite thing on Flodesk. It’s really beautiful and soothing. If you start using Flodesk, I am pretty sure that you will get attracted to and addicted to its UI. Moreover, It’s really simple and easy to use, so even a beginner can get the hang of it right away.
The UI has a black-and-white color scheme, which looks really sleek and classy.
The main menu contains four sections to access emails builder, form builder, workflow builder, and audience. On the profile menu, you can access your profile page, set up a custom domain and email, branding, integration with third-party tools and apps, and pricing plans.
Reports
Reporting is a key component of any email marketing tool. It’s the only way to know how your campaigns are performing and how you might be able to improve them.
Automated reporting tools are available in every major email platform, which is great because it allows you to save time and have better insight into your email marketing results and Flodesk is not an exception.
With Flodesk Reports, you can find the following
- Open rate which is sorted by a device such as mobile or desktop
- Click rate which is sorted by a device such as mobile or desktop
- Delivery rate where email gets delivered without getting bounced
- Bounce rate
- Spammed emails were emails marked as spam
- Unsubscribed users
By using this data, you can improve your marketing campaigns and get the most out of them.
Pricing
Flodesk pricing is really simple like its UI. This is the part where Flodesk trashes its competitors.
The tools offer only one plan that can be paid monthly or annually. The monthly plan costs you $38 and the annual plan costs you $418 which includes a discount of $38.
With this plan, you get access to everything with no limits. Yes, you heard it, right? You have unlimited access to its features. This is the one thing that sets this tool apart from the rest on the market.
Moreover, You can try out the tool for free for 30 days without a credit card
Support
Good support can often be the difference between an awesome email marketing experience and a horrible one. If you don’t have access to a knowledgeable team that can answer your questions as soon as possible, it’ll be hard to get started and grow your email marketing efforts.
So support is one of the prominent features of any tool and there should be someone who could assist you immediately when you ran into a problem.
Unfortunately, Flodesk doesn’t provide those kinds of support. There is no mode of contact to get in touch with them instantly. No live chat or phone support.
The few methods that you can follow to contact them are to open a tick by sending an email to them or post your questions on their Facebook group.
These kinds of support may take a few minutes or even a few hours to get a reply.
Support is one thing that Flodesk should improve.
Pros and Cons
How can a review be without mentioning the pros and cons? As the final section of this Flodesk review, let’s see the pros and cons of the tool.
Pros
- Straightforward pricing with only a single plan that allows unlimited access to the tool.
- Easy drag-and-drop editor.
- Beautiful template designs.
- Native integration with Instagram, Shopify, and Zapier.
- Excellent documentation and tutorials.
- No sending limit.
- Easy to set up opt-in forms and landing pages.
- Free 30-day trial, no credit card required!
Cons
- Limited ability to customize the forms with the option to only edit the elements that are included with the templates. And not allowing the user to add a new one based on their needs.
- Features are quite limited.
- No live chat or phone support. The only possible way to contact Flodesk is to send an email or post your question to their Facebook group.
Wrapping up Flodesk Review
So to conclude my Flodesk review, I believe Flodesk is a great choice for someone who loves very sleek and simple UI with only basic email marketing features.
And yes, I do recommend Flodesk.
It’s affordable compared to others and it does a lot more than most tools that charge the same price. If you want to give Flodesk a try, use their 30-day free trial offer.
The tool is being updated on a regular basis with new features and for this price point, Flodesk is the bang for the buck tool.
Affiliate Discloser: This post may contain affiliate links. If you purchase anything using these links, I will get a commission for the referral at no extra cost to you. Moreover, I only recommend things that I have personally used and always offer my honest opinion.
Featured Image by freepik
