Why I love Flodesk Email Marketing for Interior Designers
UPDATED APRIL 2024THE BENEFITS OF EMAIL NEWSLETTERS FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS & WEDDING PLANNERS
If you’ve been wanting to connect with your audience on a deeper level, or you’re thinking of rolling out another income stream, like digital products, affiliate products, physical products, or online services, I would highly recommend getting started with building your email list.
What I see happen all too often is my clients want to roll out an online service or product, but they don’t have an email list, so they have to sell to their audience on Instagram or Facebook, and with the algorithms, that means like 90% of your audience won’t even see your posts. When you have an email list, you 1) own that list, and 2) are landing directly in their inbox so you have the chance of everyone on your list opening your email and seeing the product or service you have for sale.
I think it’s important to understand your audience and ASK THEM what they want to see from you before you invest the time, energy, and money in building a commerce site or rolling out a digital product. When you have people who have already signed up for your email list because of a great lead magnet and you have consistently provided them with inspiration, resources, and valuable tips, they won’t be turned off when you have something to sell because they already have the know, like, and trust factor.
I also personally love the connection I have with my email list because of the messages I receive in response to my emails and because it feels like a private tight-knit community because it is! My email list has access to special sales on items in the Design Library and I share more there than I do anywhere else. They’re always the first to know what I’m seeing with my 1:1 clients (and sometimes I don’t share those things anywhere else). SO yeah, if you’re a designer or wedding planner and want to get on my list, you can click here to sign up.
Sure there are non-designers and non-wedding planners on my list, but I know a majority of the people on my list are there for the resources I share specific to these two industries, and that makes it so much easier to write emails when I feel like I know exactly who is reading them on the other end.
The other benefit you’ve certainly heard about building an email list is that you actually own your email list whereas, with social media accounts, you can get banned or hacked and lose your entire audience. Can you imagine all that hard work to grow your account and engage with your audience only to have it all shut down by Instagram or hacked by some loser? No way!
TIP: Back up your email list. You can use Zapier to automatically add new email subscribers to a google sheet in case anything ever goes wrong with your Flodesk account.
WHY I LOVE FLODESK FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS & WEDDING PLANNERS
I’ve worked with a few different email service providers and just love the ease of use with Flodesk and recommend it every time to my clients. Because I work closely with my interior designers and wedding planners and know the other software they use specific to their businesses, I have a good sense of how their creative brains work, and know the drag and drop and clean interfaces are similar to how my designers lay out their design selections during the sourcing process, and know the Flodesk layout is similar to that and just makes sense.
Just look at how beautiful the dashboard is:
Because of the intuitive interface, Flodesk is easy to set up quickly so you can be on your way to building your list and sending out great content and resources to your readers.
HOW TO GET STARTED WITH FLODESK
STEP ONE: SIGN UP FOR YOUR FLODESK ACCOUNT
STEP TWO: ADD YOUR BRANDING & SOCIAL LINKS TO FLODESK
STEP THREE: DESIGN YOUR EMAIL NEWSLETTER TEMPLATE
You can use one of their templates or you can create one from scratch. In either case, you’ll be able to personalize colors, fonts, and any of the elements within using their drag-and-drop creator tool. SO simple!
STEP FOUR: CREATE A SEGMENT TO IDENTIFY YOUR SUBSCRIBERS
If it’s a lead magnet sign-up, you can label the segment “Freebie Sign-Ups”. If it’s a general newsletter sign-up form on your website, you can call it “General newsletter form”.
STEP FIVE: CREATE A SIGN UP FORM AND ADD IT TO YOUR WEBSITE
You can choose a pop-up form, an inline form, or a full-page form. You can also use all three. Once you select the form type, you’ll select the Segment you defined above for that particular form. So if this form is asking people to sign up to download your freebie, you would select the “Freebie Sign Up” segment. If you have more than one freebie, you’ll want to create a segment for each freebie so you can see which one does the best.
Once you have your sign-up form type selected, Flodesk will walk you through the steps to design it, set up the confirmation and notifications, and to copy and paste the code into your website so the form shows up. Once you have the code, you’ll go to your website page where the sign up form will live, and you’ll embed the code.
WHAT SHOULD INTERIOR DESIGNERS & WEDDING PLANNERS WRITE ABOUT IN THEIR NEWSLETTERS
I know you have a to-do list a mile long, and it’s key to make this process as easy (and fun) as possible. If you think about your ideal clients and the people who engage with you online, as a luxury service provider, they likely aren’t looking to you for DIY tips or in-depth guides for tackling projects on their own.
Your ideal client would rather see your favorite products and paint colors, easy decor swaps between holidays, how you style a space, mistakes to avoid, behind-the-scenes of a design studio, gifts you’re giving, and more. There’s something magical about designers and wedding planners-you know all the things, have all the connections, and make people’s dreams come true–for real. As a consumer, I want some of that magic in my daily life. I want more of that beauty, ease, and inspiration that comes so naturally to you.
Here are some newsletter topics for interior designers and wedding planners (these would also be great evergreen blog posts):
Your favorite accessories for styling
Your favorite no-fail paint colors
Easy decor swaps between holidays
For interior designers: How you style a coffee table, dining table, kitchen island, bookshelf, or nightstand (this could be an entire series that goes out over several months or could be a great lead magnet to drip out over a shorter period)
For wedding planners: how to style your escort card table, how to style your aisle, how to style your altar, how to style your bar, how to style your signature drink (this could be a series that goes out over several months–or could be a great lead magnet to drip out over a shorter period)
For wedding planners: the best gifts to give your wedding party
Mistakes to avoid
Favorite timeless trends
Behind the scenes of your design process
Where you find your inspiration for client designs
Gifts you’re giving
Best gifts you’ve ever received
The [insert number] must-have elements in every [wedding/room] you design
Most requested sources of the week/month
Trends you never want to see again
The worst advice you ever heard about [an aspect of your service]
If you were to design your [house/wedding] today, what would you do differently?
Our most successful [projects/events] have these [insert number} things in common
HOW OFTEN INTERIOR DESIGNERS & WEDDING PLANNERS SHOULD SEND EMAIL NEWSLETTERS
How often you send out email newsletters depends on several factors and I don't think you should adhere to a certain schedule if you truly don't have anything valuable to send out. However, I do think it’s important to let your email readers know how often you intend to send out emails so they aren’t confused when they only get something from you each quarter or annoyed when you send something every week.
I’ve seen anywhere from once/week, to monthly, to quarterly. Again, you want the frequency to tie into your big-picture marketing goals and any future product or service rollouts you’re planning while also being in line with what your audience wants.
I personally prefer weekly if it’s short and sweet (Bria Hammel does this amazingly well) and monthly if it’s a reshare of a blog post and some beautiful images (I love AislePlanner’s emails).
To simplify the email creation process and get into a regular schedule of sending, I recommend starting the email in a google doc (not directly in your Flodesk account). This way you can outline, draft, edit, and spell check before you copy and paste it over to your Flodesk account once it’s ready to go. Sometimes the Flodesk editor can be a little glitchy, so it saves a ton of time to draft the whole thing in a google doc first.
I also recommend writing at the top of each newsletter draft the goal for that email. Is the goal to share a resource, make a sale, book a call, get someone to download something, etc.? Then as you’re writing that email, make sure the focus and the call to action are leading the reader to do that thing.
If you know you’re going to be selling something eventually and want to start warming up your email readers, you should think about the timing of your emails to make sure you send them in advance of the product or service rollout so people aren’t annoyed if they don’t hear from you for months and then all of a sudden they get five emails in a week because you’re selling something.
For example, I signed up for someone’s list a year or two ago, they sent me their lead magnet email sequence, and then I never heard from them again. Which is fine, because I honestly forgot all about them. But then after over a year of silence, I received an email from them all about a new service they’re offering and the call to action was “click here to buy”. I was like, wait what? Did I miss like 100 emails from you, because I don't even remember who you are or why I should work with you? Bleh.
So don’t be that guy. Share free valuable resources that are entertaining, educational, or engaging. Reply back when people respond. Think about what YOU would want to hear if you were considering hiring a designer or wedding planner, and then write emails around those topics.
Tip: Don’t share DIY tips in your newsletters or marketing unless you are a DIY designer or a DIY wedding planner. When you share DIY tips, you’ll attract a DIY market, and if that’s not your ideal client, then don’t spend your valuable time creating resources for that audience.
Once you add digital products or online offerings to appeal to a wider audience, then you may be able to incorporate DIY content into the mix if you begin attracting that type of audience, however, you shouldn't do that from the start to promote or share about your full service offers.
HOW TO DRAFT AN EMAIL IN FLODESK
Once you have your initial email design created, and your google doc email is written out and ready to go, all you have to do is plug the email into your template, add links or images, add a subject line, select the segment to send it to, and hit send or schedule it out. Flodesk walks you through it step-by-step.
THE BEST DAY TO SEND YOUR EMAIL NEWSLETTERS
As far as the days for sending it out, Campaign Monitor says the best day for sending out email newsletters for open rates is Friday, however it is impacted by your industry and your client base. So look at your schedule, think about what’s realistic for you, and then send it out as close to that time as possible each week/month/etc.
Side note: Looks like I'll be changing up my email schedule so it goes out on Fridays from now on.
HOW TO GET EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS AS AN INTERIOR DESIGNER OR WEDDING PLANNER
So all of this is great right IF you have a list. But how do you build and grow your email list as an interior designer or wedding planner? You have to get people to sign up to be on your list, and there are a few ways you can do this.
CREATE A LEAD MAGNET
One way to grow your email list is by having a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free digital download that is given away with the goal of collecting an email address in exchange for the free item. Check out our done-for-you lead magnet systems here and here for interior designers.
HAVE A GENERAL SIGN-UP FORM
The other way to grow your email list is by setting up a “sign up for my newsletter” form on your website in your footer and throughout the site.
Marketing pros will tell you people generally won’t sign up for a “sign up for my newsletter” call to action, however, I’ve seen that people do, just not as frequently as they’ll sign up for a free download from you.
TIP: Promote your lead magnet or email sign-up form in your email signature, email autoresponder message, link in bio on Instagram, Facebook business profile image, and Pinterest.
LEAD MAGNET IDEAS FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS
Building a house: the step-by-step guide (then a high-level walk through the order of what happens and the timeline for your area)
How to budget for a new construction project/how to budget for a renovation/how to budget for a furnishing project (like this)
Questions you should ask your builder
Things your builder won’t tell you (that you should request in your allowances)
The biggest mistakes we see clients make when building/furnishing/styling (like this)
Biggest misconceptions about interior designers
Grab our done-for-you lead magnets and email sequences here or here
LEAD MAGNET IDEAS FOR WEDDING PLANNERS
Mistakes to avoid when you first start planning your wedding
How to budget for a country club wedding/at home wedding/destination wedding/hotel wedding
The five elements of a seamless wedding day
Things our brides had wished they’d known before planning their wedding
Questions to ask your wedding vendors before hiring them
Ultimate Tipping Guide: Who to tip on your wedding day, and how much
TIP: Don’t create a DIY lead magnet. You want the lead magnet to be the very first step of your client journey, which ultimately leads them to work with you, buy from you, or engage with you and become a “super fan.”
Once you’ve landed on an idea for your lead magnet, create it in a Google Doc or Canva file and save it as a PDF, or save fifty hours and purchase one of my done-for-you lead magnets and email sequences. From there, you’ll create a sign-up form so people can sign up to receive it, and then create the email that will deliver the lead magnet to new subscribers.
You can use one of Flodesk’s templates, or you can use the email template you already created.
After you’ve added your email content and link to your freebie (if you have a lead magnet), you’ll want to select the trigger event that will start the email sequence flow. The trigger for a lead magnet or new email subscriber is going to be “A subscriber is added to segments”.
Select the segment you created (either Lead Magnet freebie or General Website Sign-up segment. This means once someone signs up for that segment, this workflow will begin.
Then select a time delay between the emails that go out and then add those emails. (Again, you can use the Email Template you already created when you set up your account OR you can use one of Flodesk’s templates).
Here’s a screenshot of the first few steps of one of my lead magnet workflows:
It’s recommended to have a series of emails that go out along with the delivery of the lead magnet so you can nurture and engage your new subscribers. A simple email sequence is as follows:
Email #1 - Initial email sent immediately after subscribing to deliver the lead magnet
Email #2 - Redelivers lead magnet and establishes expertise
Email #3 - Builds trust through additional resources
Email #4 - Further establishes your expertise
Email #5 - Pitches your services
Email #6 - Pitches your services again
If you decide to create a lead magnet and email sequence to go along with it, you want to make sure each email is tied to the lead magnet topic and is geared toward the paid offer/service that is the natural next step for the client. So if your lead magnet is a download with “Your Favorite No Fail Paint Colors” and you offer a Paint Consultation Service, then you’ll want to make sure when you pitch your services and share resources in the email sequence, you provide resources that point readers in the direction of hiring you for a paint consult.
If you’d like an example of a lead magnet email sequence that follows the above format and is shown in the screenshot above, you can see mine here by downloading my Signature Client Experience Process Blueprint below. Or, check out our done-for-you lead magnet systems for interior designers here and here.
HOW TO TRACK THE EFFECTIVENESS OF YOUR EMAIL MARKETING IN FLODESK
There are several numbers to review when determining the effectiveness of your email marketing. Flodesk is great for this because it’s not an overwhelming amount of data, however, depending on what you’re selling and your business, this could limit you in your analysis because there isn’t as much data to review in Flodesk as there is in other email service providers.
The two data points to look at in Flodesk (you can do this simply by clicking on the email you sent out) are your Open Rates (this is how many people opened your email) and your Click Rates (this is how many people clicked a link in your email). I also like to look at my unsubscribes, however, if you have a lead magnet, you’ll likely end up with more unsubscribes because people only signed up for the lead magnet and aren’t interested in staying on your list. If they sign up through your sign-up form, I find you’ll have fewer unsubscribes because those people truly just want to hear from you. So again, don’t take it personally if people unsubscribe from your list. That is good. You want only the people who are your ideal audience to be on your list so you have better data when assessing conversion rates and the effectiveness of your emails.
You can gather data by clicking on the email newsletters in your dashboard. I love how beautifully the information is laid out in Flodesk. So intuitive. Here’s a screenshot of the stats of one of my emails:
As for what are good open rates and what are good click-through rates, it does depend on the industry, however a good open rate, according to Influencer Marketing Hub is 16.97% across all industries with an average open rate of 2.6%.
Each month, I recommend tracking the following numbers:
How many new email subscribers joined
What segment had the most email subscribers (this is how you can see which of your sign-up forms is doing the best and use that information to improve what’s not doing well OR do more of what’s doing well)
Your open rate for each email
Your click-through rate for each email
If you have a landing page, I like to look at the conversion rate of the landing page to make sure it’s in line with industry standards
Once you have a history of data, you can start to analyze trends and understand why some emails did well and why some didn’t. These stats might be impacted by the day or time sent, the subject line, or the calls to action inside of the email. All of these are important to review and assess in your month-end process so you can make improvements or refinements if needed.
TIP: As part of your month-end process, check all your marketing stats so you can track what’s working and what’s not. I like to track website analytics, Instagram growth, Pinterest analytics, lead sources, and conversion rates by source, newsletter growth and stats, and a few others that are specific to my marketing plan.
FLODESK PRICING
In addition to being intuitive, easy on the eyes, and quick to set up, Flodesk’s pricing is amazing. For a flat fee per month (not based on how many subscribers you have), Flodesk is just $35/month, and they also have an annual rate. You can save 50% off your first year by signing up through my affiliate link below.
SIMPLE STEPS FOR GETTING STARTED WITH FLODESK FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS & WEDDING PLANNERS
While Flodesk has so many more capabilities than what I've shared here, I think it’s the best email software for creatives because it is simple and laid out in a way that I’ve seen work really well with the brains of my creative clients.
I always recommend starting small when adding new software to reduce overwhelm.
Set up your branding
Create an email template you love
Then build a sign-up form.
Add the sign-up form to your website, email signature, and Instagram bio link
If you’re not sure regular newsletters are in the cards for you, let your readers know that. Create a short series of emails that go out right when someone signs up and ask them “What questions do you have about working with a designer” and then use those as topics for your newsletters. Another great place to get ideas for what to write about (and oftentimes greatly overlooked) is your inquiries from potential clients and the questions they ask on discovery calls (read more on how to know exactly what to write in your newsletters here).
What are their pain points?
What questions do they have?
If you’re interested in signing up for Flodesk, get 50% off by using my link below.
This post contains affiliate links which means I may receive a small commission if you sign up through my link. However, I only recommend software I use and love for my business and for my clients’ businesses.
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