When I chat with other business owners, I always immediately ask if/how they use email marketing. For us, it’s the fuel to our sparkle fire. And here’s what I often hear: I don’t know what to say. I don’t have an audience. I don’t have enough time. I don’t know how to design an email.
And I smile a little inside because these four things are so totally solvable. Like within minutes.
But let me back up a leeeetle . . . eleven years, actually.
I get asked about small business just as much as I get asked about food. And I love both topics equally. Mayyyyyyyybe even skewing toward small business, but I don’t know if I’m fully ready to admit that just *yet*. I started FOOD LA LA eleven years ago–it started as a travel blog, detailing my culinary adventures through France, and since, operating this business has afforded me an inimitable adventure.
We’ve built events and experiences for brands like Louis-Vuitton, Sephora, Netflix and Alaska Airlines, created content, manufactured our own products, shot and edited our own videos, housed inventory, shipped products worldwide, taught classes for thousands and thousands of people, built an online membership community, executed dream photoshoots, been featured in major media outlets (Forbes, Real Simple, Today–What is this crazy life?!), plus handled all the tiny, not-sexy things in between (figuring out payroll, worker’s comp, paying sales tax, balancing the books, racing to the FedEx transfer station at 3 am, insurance, licensing, cold calling, finding storage facilities, setting up POS systems, building the website and managing the backend, answering customer service questions, building proposals). You name it, I’ve probably been there.
When you own a small business, I really believe you’re *fortunate* to get to touch all pieces of it. I really believe it’s the only way to learn. How are you going to tell Dennis at your distribution center how to handle your product if you don’t even know?! Experience, especially the painful kind, is invaluable.
One of the most important roles I’ve had though is growing our email list and building our email marketing strategy. I used to take clipboards to our events and have people handwrite their emails and then I would come home at the end of the night and type them up–always losing about 30% of them to handwriting discrepancies. A few years into the clipboard method, I found Martha and Rebecca, the founders of Flodesk. They were building an email marketing platform that was based on intuitive design. Design that is strategic. Design that provides guide rails to build a recognizable brand (ya know how you can open an email and just know it’s from FOOD LA LA?! That’s not by accident). Design that sells. It was a match made in heaven–we got to use the FOOD LA LA weekly blog content to help test their platform, and simultaneously my emails went from mehhh-this-looks-like-it-was-created-on-Kid-Pix-but-damn-Lindsay-is-sure-trying-hard to Omg Did You Hire A Branding Team?!
And since, Flodesk has grown into one of the top email platforms on the market. I feel like a proud mama bear! A true tech Cinderella story. If you dig far enough into the templates, you’ll likely find a few photos you might recognize!
A FEW OF MY FAVORITE EMAILS WE’VE SENT:
I don’t know what to say
It doesn’t matter whether you have a product or a service or even still in the idea stage. An email list paired with consistent (doesn’t have to be frequent!) communication is your gas. I’ve been helping my sister launch her sustainability consulting practice and we just got her set up on Flodesk (not bad for Free Little Sister Work, eh!?). She doesn’t have a fleshed out plan yet, but I convinced her to just start writing to her audience once a month–a round up of favorite sustainable products, a few interesting articles and what she thinks about them, a hot topic in the industry (not necessarily a hot topic for everybody, but can you compost a tea bag if it doesn’t have a staple in it?!). I bet if you timed yourself for 20 minutes you could come up with at least 50 quick topics that you could write about. On the spot. Today.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, or hard, or feel out-of-reach. Write what you know. If it feels hard, sometimes it’s because we’re trying to write about or talk about things that aren’t totally aligned. When we’re in flow, it just . . . flowwwwwws.
I’ve used Flodesk to create our monthly emails, sell product, keep track of contacts, capture emails (electronically woo woo!!), and build landing pages in *minutes*.
If you’ve gotten this far, I have to assume there’s a little part of you that’s ready for something like this. As I told my sister, sometimes even just starting your newsletter will help you gain the momentum to build your list.
ONE OF MY FAVORITE FLODESK CHECKOUT PAGES:
I don’t have an audience
And if you’re thinking - Lindsay I don’t have an audience, you do. I can almost promise you have at least 500 people waiting to hear from you. And they’re hiding in plain sight.
If you want to give Flodesk a try, use my link to get 25% off your ENTIRE first year (CODE: LINDSAY). And because talking shop with other small businesses is my idea of R&R, I’ll even give you a free 20 minute consultation to get you set up (and tell you where your first 500 subscribers are hiding!!). Just shoot me an email after you sign up (hello@food-la-la.com). We’ll make it a virtual coffee date, k?!
I don’t have time & I don’t know how to design an email
With Flodesk’s intuitive designs, you can populate your brand kit (if you have one–or even just your fav colors and fonts!), choose a template that makes you starry-eyed, and pop in your own photos and copy. Rebecca designed the templates so people without any design experience could be successful extending their brand into email marketing. I’ve created emails in minutes and sales pages within an hour. Truly, sometimes it feels like I’m cheating. But getting to cross “write newsletter” off my list and feel really excited about the engaging, beautiful content dropping into all your inboxes makes me feel like I’m doing my job right. Like I’ve got a whole marketing team blowing wind into my sails, even though it’s just moi.
If you want to give Flodesk a try, use my link to get 25% off your ENTIRE first year (CODE: LINDSAY).