Are you already building an email list for your business? Email marketing is seriously one of the best ways to stay top of mind with current and potential clients and build relationships that grow brand know/like/trust. Flodesk is one of my favorite email marketing platforms, and today we’re talking about one of my favorite Flodesk features: workflows. Flodesk workflows help you automate the email process, making it simple to turn freebie opt-ins into welcome sequences or build marketing campaigns for that online course you’re launching. 

What is a Flodesk workflow?

When it comes to email marketing, pretty much everything will fall into one of two categories:

• Emails you write individually and then manually send to email subscribers (like a newsletter)
• Emails campaigns that have a set sequence and need to be sent out to specific groups of people at particular times (like welcome or launch sequences.)

A Flodesk workflow helps you automate the email campaign process with a series of emails that are sent to subscribers according to a pre-set schedule and conditions, so you don’t have to manually send each email along the way. 

It can be confusing, overwhelming, or just plain impossible to send out consistent marketing emails on your own, and workflows can save you sooo much time!

Do these two things before you set up a Flodesk workflow

1. Create a segment

A segment organizes email subscribers into a group that will receive whichever emails you send out as a part of your workflow. You can’t create a Flodesk workflow without choosing a segment to send it to, so that’s the first thing you’ll need to set up! 

From your dashboard, go to the Audience category, then go to Segments and click on Create a Segment. Name your segment something that tells you where these subscribers came from, like “Course Creation Freebie.”

2. Create an opt-in form

To collect email subscribers from your website and add them to a segment, you’ll also need to create an embeddable form in Flodesk.

Click on the Forms category, then create a new form. Once you’ve created the form, you’ll be asked what segment you want to add people to whenever they use the form to sign up for your emails – select the segment you just created. Next, you’ll get an embed code that you can copy and paste into your website to start building your email subscriber list!

How to create a Flodesk workflow 

Now you’re ready to set up your first Flodesk workflow.

1. Head to the Workflows area from your Flodesk dashboard.
2. Next, you can choose between pre-made workflows, copy one of your own workflows, or build one from scratch. Whichever one you choose, you’ll be asked to name your workflow. In the following steps, I’ll walk you through what to do if you’re building a Flodesk workflow from scratch!
3. Define the trigger. Right now, Flodesk only has one workflow trigger: “when a subscriber is added to this segment.” You’ll want to select the segment you’ve created for subscribers from your opt-in form, then click Save.
4. Now it’s time to add emails and events. If your opt-in was for a freebie, then the first email should always be the one that delivers your freebie to the subscriber. Click on the plus icon and then add an email. You can write something totally new or select one you’ve created before.
5. Next, add a time delay. This is a fixed period of time that your workflow will wait before sending the next email to your new subscriber. It could be any amount of time you like, but a couple of days is a good starting point. You can also choose to wait until certain times of day or days of the week so subscribers receive emails during working hours rather than in the middle of the night.
6. Add another email. The second email could be a “hello” email that introduces you and your brand to subscribers.
7. Add in another time delay.
8. Continue adding emails and time delays until you’ve added in however many emails you’d like to have in your email sequence.
9. Once you’re finished adding emails, click Publish in the top right corner, then confirm you’d like to publish.

That’s it! You’ve created your first Flodesk workflow. You can also add conditions and actions to your workflow based on what someone does with your email. For example, you might send a specific email to people who opened your last email vs. people who didn’t or move subscribers into a new workflow after they’ve clicked a link.  

I wouldn’t worry too much about getting fancy with conditions and actions when you’re just getting started with email marketing, but it’s nice to know it’s there as your business and your email marketing strategy grow!

Ready to level up your email marketing with Flodesk?

Setting up Flodesk workflows is a breeze, and you can get the hang of it in no time! If you’re ready to start growing your email list or make your marketing so much easier, you can try Flodesk for free for 30 days and get 50% off your first year with my link.