Why Flodesk is the Best Email Marketing Platform for Authors and Writers to Reach Their Readers and Save Time
There’s something I hear consistently from every author I speak with or see while scrolling Booktok and Bookstagram: they hate spending time marketing their books. Now that might be a strong statement, but the reality is, most authors want to spend the majority of their time, ya know, actually writing their stories. The last thing they want to think about is designing engaging email newsletters, and creating lead generation pages to reach more readers. They just want to write their stories. And Flodesk, in my opinion, is the best email marketing platform for authors, and below I’ll walk through the reasons why. But let me back up. If you’re not familiar with Flodesk at all, it’s an email marketing platform where you can grow a list of readers, superfans, and potential readers of your books, send book updates, ARC opportunities, and even sell your books with their checkout landing page features. While they started out solely focused on emails, they’ve expanded to include a built in link-in-bio landing page you can customize, sales tools, forms, and are continually adding to their analytics offerings.
Having used Flodesk since its early beta days, you could say I’m a superfan. Not only is it an amazing, easy-to-use platform that I’ve used for a variety of startup clients in my marketing consulting business, but I also use it for my own small bookish businesses, including this blog’s weekly newsletter, and collection drops for my shop of literary luxuries, Valor & Lore. Now you might be wondering, ok, but what actually makes it so great for authors over other email platforms? Here are my top 9 reasons why you should switch to Flodesk for your author email newsletter, ARC list, and book promotion:
1. It saves you time, so you can get back to writing
Flodesk requires very little setup time. You can be up in running in just a few minutes, and they provide beautiful customizable templates for FREE, so there’s no need to spend hours trying to design or code an email, form, pop up, or even a book launch sales landing page. Plus, you can also quickly add your author branding, including your custom fonts, logo, and colors, so everything you create will automatically have your branding. And if you have a section you reuse a lot, they’ve added a favorites section, so you can easily add it to future newsletters.
2. WYSIWYG: no coding required for a beautiful newsletter
Related to point one, this email tool is all about saving you time. Having worked for companies years ago where I literally had to have an engineer code each email, and they always somehow looked terrible, and making changes was a nightmare, I was ecstatic when I finally found Flodesk. You can literally drag and drop different templates in and it’s exactly what your subscribers will see, and everything is optimized for both desktop and mobile readers, as well as dark mode.
3. It integrates with Book Funnel
Flodesk is constantly adding new integrations that are included in your subscription, and if you’re already using Book Funnel to distribute your ebooks, audiobooks, or ARCs, you can seamlessly use it with Flodesk. They even have an easy set up guide here.
4. It integrates with Canva
Canva is an author’s best friend, right? I know so many authors use Canva (and I’m a daily user as well), so this is such a welcome integration. It was launched more recently, so it makes it even easier if you’re using Canva to create branded book graphics, quote teasers, or book tour dates. You can easily add them to your email newsletter draft without having to download them to your desktop and then reupload, clogging up your computer. Again saving you time.
5. Affordable, unlimited growth for a flat rate (this is going away at the end of November!)
Since Flodesk started, they’ve been champions for small businesses, and where many email marketing tools charge you the more your list grows, they didn’t. It’s always been a flat rate no matter how many subscribers you gain, so you weren’t punished for growth. It’s honestly what first made me look into Flodesk. However, as they’ve continued to grow, it doesn’t seem fair that many of us as solopreneurs (because that’s what you authors are too!) are paying the same as a large corporation sending out millions of emails a month, right? So they’re sunsetting their unlimited plan. BUT I was shocked to learn they’re letting everyone who already has an active subscription keep their unlimited plan forever (as long as they keep it active). And a company that leads with integrity like this, is one I love to support.
👉🏻You can try Flodesk for FREE here* and get 50% OFF your first year + lock in unlimited growth pricing.
6. They’re constantly developing and improving the tools AND they actually listen to their customers
And speaking of integrity, I love that they are constantly asking for feedback, taking into account feature requests, and always adding new tools and features. I’ll be honest, Analytics were lacking for quite a while, but they’ve been adding more and more meaningful analytics features this past year, and it’s great to see a company actually listen.
7. You can use Flodesk Templates OR purchase Third Party integrated templates
Like I mentioned above, they have so many great templates to get you started for your newsletters, preorder incentive delivery, sales, and more. There are also super customizable templates for forms, popups that you can easily embed or add to your author website. In addition, they opened up their platform for designers to create integrated templates, so there are beautiful templates you can find that fit your author vibe, or you could even commission a designer to create them for you and easily integrate them into your Flodesk account to use in the future over and over again.
8. Automate! You can create workflows and segments
You can quickly make workflows like welcome sequences, and segments based on reader behavior, and again, there are easy-to-use templates. Based on click actions within emails you’ve sent, you can automatically add readers to specific segments. So as an example, let’s say you’ve got multiple books or series and you share them both in an email. If a reader only clicks on one, they can automatically be added to an interest segment for that book or series. So you can then email a high intent list of subscribers in the future. In the same way, if you want to keep your unsubscribes lower, you can let people opt out of certain messages, so they get segmented to specific content they’re interested from you. Flodesk has also recently added integrations with SquareSpace, Wix, and Shopify, so no more uploading CSV files from your author website of new subscribers and community members.
9. No sharing logins with your VA
Do you have an author PA or Virtual Assistant that helps put together your emails? Easily create up to three team logins, so you can keep your account secure and transfer access in the future to new employees.
If you’re serious about growing your author platform, selling more books, and building a community of loyal readers, Flodesk is, in my opinion, currently the most cost-effective, author-friendly, and visually stunning option on the market. With easy automations, gorgeous design, and flat-rate pricing (for a limited time!), Flodesk lets you focus on what matters most: writing great stories and sharing them with the world.
👉🏻Try Flodesk for FREE here, and get 50% off your entire first year
(Plus lock in the unlimited growth pricing before it goes away forever)
If you’d like me to make this a series and share more tips on email marketing for authors, drop a comment and let me know what questions you have or your biggest challenges in utilizing email marketing for your books.
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*(Flodesk Affiliate Disclaimer: This post isn’t sponsored, but if you sign up through my link above, you’ll get 50% off for your first year, and I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps keep this blog going for you and your fellow book lovers. I only share tools I love and use personally.)