Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, then you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast.
I'm your host, Rebecca rice. And today we're on Episode 77, talking all about my very favorite email marketing platform. And we'll get into that in just a second. But before we do, I wanted to let you know about a new free guide that I have for you guys all about email marketing. So hopefully this episode will be helpful for you. But I wanted to get you something tangible that you could get in your hands and really dive deeper into email marketing. So this guide will help you grow your email list from zero to 100 subscribers. So if you are looking to get your first 100 subscribers, this download is for you, you can grab it at Rebecca rice photo.com/email. And we will also link it here in the show notes for you guys so that you can grab it there as well. I know that'll be helpful for you. So go ahead and grab that. Okay, so we are going to dive into my absolute all time favorite email marketing platform. And if you've followed me for a while, you can probably guess what it is. But just in case you're not sure. My favorite email marketing platform is called Flow desk. It's basically like the Canva of email systems, which is how I like to describe it. And it just is amazing in so many ways. And so if you are not a flow desk user, or maybe you are and just didn't know about certain features, this episode is for sure for you. So a little bit of background. First of all, should you have an email list as a photographer? Absolutely. I feel like I could do a whole episode about why you need an email list. And maybe I will in the next few weeks. But whenever I began my email list, I tried a lot of different platforms. So in the past, I've used MailChimp, I've used Mad Mimi, I don't even know if that's still a thing. But at the time, that's what our church was using. I used ConvertKit. And after all of a sudden done, I landed on flow desk I got in when it had just launched in beta. So it was brand new. And there were like a lot of features missing when I first jumped in on it. But to me the price was unbeatable, even with some features missing. Now, several years later, they're out of beta mode, the features that I was missing are now there. So you don't have to worry about that being like this is not a good email platform, Rebecca, it's missing stuff. No, it really is great. What I love about it is the two girls that founded it, Martha and Rebecca, they are so sweet. And they truly do listen to their customers feedback. So customers like me would say, Hey, I would love to see a feature like X, Y, and Z. And they would go to their developing team and see if they can make it happen. And so it was really beautiful to get in on, you know, the ground level of something like that. And now this email marketing system is massive. I mean, people like Jenna Kutcher use it. And so there's just so many different things that I love about it. So I want to walk you through a few reasons that this is my favorite email marketing platform. And in case I forgot to mention, we have a 50% off code in the description here in the show notes. So if you're wanting to try it out, or you know, whatnot, you can get 50% off your subscription with that code. So we have in the show notes for you. And I for sure, like encourage you go even just try it out and see how you like it. So a few reasons that flow desk is my absolute favorite platform. Number one would be the price. What I love and what really makes Flo desk unique from every other email platform that I tried was that it does not go up in price as you get more subscribers. To me it was almost like the other platforms were penalizing me for growing my email list. And so like how does that encourage me to grow my email list? It doesn't. So I was like trying to stay below certain thresholds so that I wouldn't have to pay more. Whereas with flow desk, it is a flat monthly rate, no matter how many subscribers you have, whether you have 10, or 50, or 100, or 500, or 1000s, it literally does not matter, the price doesn't go up. So to me, that was a huge piece that made a big difference for me, especially when I was early on in my business and every dollar counted, not to say every dollar doesn't count now, but, you know, a lower monthly subscription made a huge difference when I wasn't, you know, booking as much or was, you know, kind of struggling and watching every single dollar that
came into my bank account and left my bank account. And so the price was a no brainer for me that I knew my goal was to grow my email list, because you know, that's the easiest way to sell and to, you know, get bookings from my warmest clients, my warmest leads, that would be my email list. So I didn't want to be penalized for that. So the price was a no brainer. The second reason that I switched to flow desk from you know, those other platforms was the design, it was so, so easy to use. That's why I call it the Canva of email systems. If you're familiar with the design platform, Canva. Basically, it's like drag and drop, they have beautiful templates. It's so user friendly, that's what flow desk is in an email system. And I remember whenever I was in ConvertKit, which is a great platform, but man, it was frustrating. And maybe it's changed since then, I don't know. But when I was there, I wanted to have a button in one of my emails, like a book now button or whatever, to get a button, I literally had to go into coding, and like code, a button, that's dumb, like, I was able to figure it out through lots of Googling and trial and error. And I'm no like coding expert. But I'd say I know, a decent amount of coding to be able to put a button in there by you know, Googling the code, string or whatever. But that shouldn't be the case, you shouldn't have to go into coding to add a button to an email to make it pretty. And the ConvertKit emails are just they were ugly, there was no way to customize them. It was very frustrating. And so what I loved about flow desk is the design was drag and drop. If I wanted to add a button, all I had to do was click add and click button. And they they had that design element already created. That was easy, I could put it in there, I could drag and drop where I wanted it, I didn't have to go into the coding. If I wanted to add an image or you know, a layout or something like that, there's so many different design elements that I could add to my email to make them really beautiful. And even now, like I don't even utilize as much of the design aspect as I could in flow desk, I just haven't had the time to like go in and set it up and make it super pretty. But that's something that if I wanted to like completely 100% customize, I could and it would be so simple to do. I also really liked the fonts, which is like sounds kind of silly. But that makes a big difference in the design. And I mean email, and my brand is pretty. And so I wanted a pretty email that matched my brand. And so I was able to, there's so many really beautiful fonts that are in flow desk that I didn't have to add fonts or whatever, that it just made it really, really easy. So the design aspect to me was really important, because I think just emails should be pretty, there's no reason in today's day and age technology that emails can't be pretty. I think people are more likely to open them and to read them and consume whatever it is that you're sending them, you know, to book sessions or whatever if your emails are pretty. So flow desk, by far has the best design out of any email platform that I've tried. The third reason that I really love Flo desk, as my email marketing platform is the features that it has. Now. Sure, it may have fewer bells and whistles than ConvertKit. But ConvertKit was like had too many bells and whistles. It was unnecessary for what I was trying to do. And I don't know about you, but sometimes for me that can get overwhelming where I see so many features that I honestly don't need. But it like puts me in paralysis mode of like, oh my gosh, I have what do I do? What do I use? And so the features in flow desk, I'll give you a few that were really, really great.
The first one that I love, especially for photographers is that you can separate your subscribers into segments, which a lot of other email lists do this. So this isn't technically unique to flow desk but flow desk makes it really easy and simple to do. So what a segment is, is basically it's a certain group of your subscribers that you want to sell break for whatever reason. So let's say you serve different demographics of people, maybe you're a wedding photographer, and you also do, you know, portrait work. So you may want to have a segment for weddings, like wedding clients, and then a segment for portrait clients. Maybe you photograph young families and toddlers and kids, but also seniors. And so the demographic there is very different. So you may want to segment your list to have just seniors on one segment, and then you know, the portrait the rest of your young families on another segment. And what you do with these segments is once they're separated, you can send emails to a specific segment. So let's say you're wanting to send an email out about your new spokesmodel team. For your senior rep program. Obviously, you don't want that going to a mom that doesn't have a senior a mom of like toddlers, that's not helpful for them. And so you could send that email only to your senior segment. That way, it's to people that's actually relevant. And you'll have less people unsubscribe, because you're, you're sending emails that are relevant to them and their phase of life. But then the beautiful thing is you can have people in multiple segments. So maybe you have your seniors and your young families. But then you have another segment that's like your general list. For let's say, you're putting out fall minis, you can send an email to everybody in your general list. Maybe they're a senior, maybe they're, you know, have toddlers, but either way, they could use some foul minis updated family photos. So you can send that to everybody, or whatever you get to pick and choose. But it's a really cool feature that you can utilize to really separate your list strategically. Another way that I use segments is for my associate team. So my associate team serves clients in lots of different cities, we have associate photographers in Dallas, in Nashville, in Richmond, in Raleigh, in Chattanooga, in Knoxville, I mean, so many different cities. I know I'm in Atlanta, I was like, I know I'm missing some, we can have a different segment for each city. So that whenever like, right, we just advertised our, you know, Christmas minis here recently. So we did Christmas in July. And we only wanted our Dallas information to go out to our Dallas clients. Because why would I send Dallas mini session information to somebody in Richmond, that's not helpful for them. And so we could send a Dallas email just to our Dallas clients, we could send info about our Nashville tree farm minis just to our Nashville people. If you do serve clients in several cities, or even a couple cities, segmenting is very, very smart, so that you can target them specifically, when it comes time to book specific mini sessions.
So segments is a great feature. Another really cool feature that flow desk has is the ability to create really beautiful and like easy simple to do opt in forms. So essentially, an opt in form is just a little form that people fill out, they put their like first and last name and their email address and they get added to your email list. So you can select what segment people get added to from your opt in. But this is a great way to get people added to your list. So you can embed a form on your website, you can have it as a pop up, like there's so many different things that you can do with flow desk forms, you can, you know, put it as your link in your bio or whatever, with the goal being to grow your email list. So and even like if you're doing a giveaway, and you want people to fill out the form to enter the giveaway, that can all be done through flow desk. So it makes it super, super simple. And then the last feature that I really, really love is the workflow automations to help you serve your clients well. So basically what happens is you can create these automations that when somebody enters a segment, then it triggers a series of emails to go out. And so maybe you want to have like a welcome sequence. So it's like a simple three day sequence. So every day for three days, when somebody joins your email list, you're gonna send a quick little email. And this happens automatically. So you type it up once you set it up in your workflow, and then it just runs so maybe somebody joins your email list from a popup on your website. And then the very first email they get is like a general welcome email where you're like introducing yourself. You can tell them kind of what to expect you can say you know, over the next couple of days, I'm going to be just dropping in your inbox for a little bit more about me and my business and I I'm here to answer any questions. Maybe email number two the next day automatically could go out that it is talking about your business and like your why why did you start your business? Who do you serve, and kind of things like that giving
some like general information getting a little bit personal. And then maybe day three. So the next day automatically, an email goes out, that is like giving them some kind of call to action to book with you. So it's like, Hey, if you're looking to book a session, now's the perfect time, you know, respond to this email. And if you're, you know, ready to book a session, and I would love to kind of chat with you and see what would be the best fit or whatnot. So there's so many ways that you could do that. But that's like an example of a simple welcome automation, you can also have an automation for like a giveaway, where when somebody fills out your form to enter your giveaway, you automatically have an email sent to them as like the confirmation of like, Yes, I got your entry, and you can be on the lookout, I'll announce the winner on such and such day. So all of that can be done through flow desk. And it's so so easy. So like I mentioned, I have the 50% off link in the show notes if you want to check it out. But I also have a special like offer for you guys. I've got a an email marketing mini course that I created that dives deeper into this. And if you're like the sound of all that setting it all up sounds overwhelming, this email marketing course would be a huge help. Basically, I share my screen and like walk you through how to set up these things, what kind of emails to be sending what to say, that's all included in the email marketing course. So we'll link it here below. But if you want to go check out my on my website, Rebecca rice fau.com, you can go find it there as well. So hopefully, that'll be helpful for you to really like get your email marketing game, going because email marketing is not dead. Email marketing is extremely valuable. And that's like one thing that if I were to start a business today from scratch, the number one thing that I would be focusing early on would be growing my email list because the sooner you start that the better off, you'll be not to say you're too late right now, because it's not too late. You can always start today and go from here. But don't wait to start your email list. Because I'm telling you, it is so, so valuable. My associate team who we started last year with zero client base, they're not attached to my name, they are completely separate brand, they did not use any of my previous clients. So they had zero client base last year, they ended up this year because they had been really strategic about growing their email list. They booked like 40 Christmas minis in about two days, just from their email list. And so when we did our Christmas in July campaign, we sent a series of emails and I was so so proud of them because they had worked so hard on growing that email list over the last year. And it was so easy to book those 40 Christmas minis because it was just all done through email. So email can be extremely powerful when you really utilize it to the best of its potential. So be sure to check out that 50% off link for flow desk here in the shownotes. And also that email marketing mini course because I know that it'll be helpful for you. If you have any questions at all about email marketing about flow desk about the mini course all the things you can always find me on Instagram at Rebecca rice photography, and you can DM me and we can chat. I would love to help answer any questions there. I say all the time. But like seriously, reach out ask me questions. People all the time message me and they're like okay, Rebecca, you say all the time on your podcast to DM you. So here I am. I'm doing what you asked. And it's like literally my favorite thing. So reach out there. I would love to chat with you and just help and serve you any way that I can. So I hope this episode was helpful and go ahead and sign off for today and we'll see you next week for another episode. Bye guys.
