How to Grow Your Newsletter in 2025 feat. Flodesk CEO Martha Bitar

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Welcome to today's episode and workshop of uploading. Today we are joined by Martha Batar, the CEO of Flodesk, an email marketing platform that has grown to a 8 figure ARR business very quickly. Martha built Flodesk while working full time at Honeybook and now leads a remote first company that serves creators and companies worldwide. In today's workshop we're going to cover how Martha grew Flow Desk from just a small platform into the big business that it is today. While managing a full time role, we're going to cover the power of email marketing for creators and how to get started. We're going to cover the best ways to grow your business through email and much, much more. So I guess without any further ado, Martha, I'll let you kick us off. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got it started, how you got started building Flodesk.

Yeah, okay, sounds good. Hi everyone and thanks for sharing what y'all do. If you, if you want to drop more in the chat just so that we know what you're doing, what you're working on every day, I think that would be fantastic. And yeah, so I created Flodesk. I'm one of the co founders, we have three each and Flodesk is an email marketing platform that helps you design emails people love to get. And we started it because even though I'm sure you've heard that the email marketing space is super noisy and there are a lot of solutions, we kept hearing from content creators that none of the solutions were actually solving the modern day pains. And we had a lot of friends, Rebecca, my co founder, Trang, my co founder and I, and we had a lot of friends in the creative space of Content creators that were completely crushing it on social media. They had millions of followers, like super high engagement, they were actually making money.

But then the algorithm, y'all know by now it's super tricky, it's rented space, right? So they knew that they needed email marketing but none of the platforms felt right. And initially we said well, why don't we help you use mailchimp, right? Because it exists, it's there, we can probably very easily solve your pain. So then I remember just scheduling coffee chats with, with some of these creators and building a design for them that they could just go into the HTML next week and like change some things and iterate from there and like next week without like a fault. Every single time they say, you know what, I need help again, I can't do these. So then Rebecca and I were like what, what is happening, right? Like why? Why is this truly not working? And then we realized that they, these platforms were created like more than 20 years ago and they solved problems that were problems in a very different world, right, Than the world we live in. So if you think about it, 20 years ago, just a single act of delivering an email to the inbox was a win, right? Because it was a hardware problem and a software problem. And today all of that is kind of commodity, it's been solved. And the modern day entrepreneur has very different needs.

For example brand, right? Like there's a lot of noise, attention spans are super short. So every single email, it can't just hit the inbox, it has to stand out, it has to engage from the beginning. It has to be hyper optimized for conversion. And text based without any of your brand just doesn't cut it anymore, right? And not just for solopreneurs. We actually we looked at a case study with Stripe. Stripe is a massive company, right? I think it's the largest private company in the world and they ab tested a text based email and one that was actually optimize for conversion using their own brand. And the on brand design based email increased conversion by 21%. So whether you're a very small business or a large business, like design is not a luxury anymore.

And that's what we set out to fix, right? For example, we're the only platform that lets you use custom fonts. If you work with a designer and you have your brand, and you have your brand font that you use on your website, right? On your social media posts like designs everywhere and you cannot use it on your email, something just doesn't click there, right? It just, it tells you this, this is not really solving the modern problem. It makes you think as well. Like if you're, if you're going to rent an office, but the office is going to have their brand on it, it just makes no sense.

Right?

Branding is just part of the modern business. So that's what we set out to build and we didn't expect it to grow so fast. Um, we launched and immediately the viral Twitter and the email started getting us exponential viewers and, and trials and wins. And now we're at 30 million AR, completely bootstrapped and here we are.

That's such an awesome story to, to see how everything grew so fast. And, and I think the interesting thing about email is it's like one of those things where maybe if you were looking at it from the outside in, you wouldn't fix the. Think there's like such a big problem and a platform to be solved there when it already seemed like the problem was solved. But you guys kind of found a niche that you were able to clip, clip onto and then build from there. So let's kind of go in on email and design. You were mentioning a couple things. So you were mentioning conversion, you were mentioning design, you were mentioning copy. I know today, like, if I open up my inbox, it's an absolute zoo, right? Like, I'm getting email promotions left and right.

Like, what does it take to stand out in email? Like, from what you've seen, the data that you guys have seen, the creators that you've worked with, like, let's go into each one of these different facets of like, what does it take to create a great email?

Yeah. Sound good? So it's actually really easy. And the beauty about email marketing is that it's been around for forever. So it's not. And the algorithm isn't changing. Like, it's a tried and tested channel. So you can learn it pretty quickly. And there are a lot of free resources out there.

I'd say number one is building a list, right? If you're going to send an email, you have to send it to someone. So building a list as soon as possible is game changing. In fact, we're seeing that a lot of businesses now start their business and before they even have a website, actually a lot of them just skip the website altogether. They just create an email list, right? They just create a form. So for example, you can go into flodesk or pretty much every platform has these. Create a form that you publish to the web. You don't need a website to host it. You make it on brand and then you share it.

You can share it in your link in bio. You can just send it to people that were originally maybe in your manual list. If you have a physical business, you can put it on an ipod and people can either scan the code or just sign up there essentially everywhere. And then you start building a list. Now, one of the best ways to grow a list is to add value. So this is called the freebie. And I'm sure you see seen it. Instead of just saying, hey, join my newsletter so I can share content with you, give something of value.

Look at the email address as currency. So you're getting paid with email in exchange for something. So my favorite trick for figuring out what the freebie should be is thinking, what are your customers or audience typically asking you? What are the top questions that they have for you? And then you use that. You create the answers, maybe turn it into a nice PDF. So it's a downloadable or even just an email that says, here are my top five, like tips or tricks or answers. Right.

And that's your freebie.

So now your form, instead of just saying, hey, join so that you can hear news first. It has value to add. And it can be something like, Download my top 5 traits in real estate or wellness.

Right.

Like the, the space that you are in. So that's, that's number one. Any questions from you or the audience and building a list before we move into emails?

Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's a, that's a great point in terms of like, leading with value. I mean, I, I would ask, you know, for the audience, like, while we're here, we're talking about flow desk, we're talking about cast magic. If you guys want to drop in your top questions there, I think that's a really great framework to start. It's almost like sometimes when you think about, you know, building a landing page, you might think about, okay, what are the FAQs that I want to answer? And you like, lead with that to like build out your landing page. And what you're saying is it's a similar sort of strategy when you're thinking about building your list or creating content. You're creating a lead magnet that's leading with value, that's ask, that's answering the questions before people even knew they had those questions. So I really like that as a framework. And then, you know, what do you see working just to kind of double click on this? Do you, do you see it as sort of the content that you are pushing in your email, delivering value or are you like seeing people build these lists through, you know, external lead magnets? Like you were saying, you take the time you create an external lead magnet like a PDF or an industry breakdown or something like that.

I know, I see them all the time on LinkedIn where people create a link magnet and then be like comment like this and I'll DM you. Like what are you seeing in terms of building that list rapidly? Because that's a question that we get a lot is like, okay, you know, I know I should be on email. I've got the emails of the people that I've, you know, are in my community. But I want to grow this list. I want to, I want to do even more. So, you know, what are the best ways, assuming that you're leading with value, what are the best ways to, to, to grow really fast?

Yeah, my favorite trend that I've seen lately is not having one lead magnet but having several ones and posting that as your link in bio. So for example, we have influence link in bio forms so you can have your general subscriber area at the very top and then you can have several different links that give you that. It's essentially like a choose your own adventure type of experience. So maybe you have your subscribe to my newsletter but then right immediately after download my digital guide and then immediately after join my course. Right. So you have different types of lead magnets that they can essentially opt into. And this is my by far favorite tactic because it allows you to segment from the beginning. And that's another really key point of building a strong engaged list is understanding in a way de anonymizing the subscriber as early as possible so that you can continue to serve hyper relevant content only.

And then once you have that subscriber list hyper segmented. So for example, maybe this is, these are the people who are interested in my course, these are the people who wanted the digital guide. Then you can also cross promote, right? You can send an email to the people that are interested in the course and say, hey, by the way, I noticed that you haven't downloaded my digital guide. Here's like a freebie for you just because you're on my list and it allows you to create more complex, I would say strategies from there.

Awesome. And let's, let's continue with this sort of stuff. So assuming that we've kind of got emails, one thing that you had mentioned was segmentation and data. Not to get like too technical, but maybe could you explain a little bit more about like what simple segmentation is when it comes to email lists and like what your strategy is there. So are you basically saying you're creating specific emails just for different segments of your audience or is it just kind of having that knowledge to understand what's, what's appealing to people from a data perspective?

I want to say it's either and it's both.

Right.

I think the, the reality is that we live in a world where the solopreneur is no longer focused on one thing, right? You start by creating a photography business, right? And then you become really good at it and other people want to learn from you. So now you're a photographer and you're a coach, right? And you start stepping into the educator space and you have digital downloads. But then a lot of people really want to learn from you. So you create a course, right? And then you create a course and people really want a mastermind or an offline retreat and also a new event like planner, right? It just, and, and we can't help it, right? Because it really, it's become that easy to start a business. And if you have a very strong connection to your audience and you get that, that frequent feedback, then you see opportunities and if you can fix them, if you can offer more than you're going to, right? So we call that like the octopus. But we're like, we're solopreneurs and we're also kind of all over the place in the best possible way. I think this reminds me also of the students that can't decide on their favorite course or in a major, right. Because they really are good at everything and we're seeing that a lot with our customers, with the solopreneur space.

So I think this is exactly where segmenting comes in. It's not the typical idea of segmenting the way that it worked in retail where I'm going to segment you because you're interested in a blue top versus jeans, right? Like this is specifically like what parts of my business or my offering is this person interested in? And that also helps you cross sell and upsell and grow your business, right? I also think that to answer your question on, is this specifically so you can create hyper relevant content for that segment only? It doesn't have to be. I think it helps you understand where people are living. Like if you have a lot of people interested in the course, for example, then maybe you're going to start focusing some of the content towards that large majority but still include some like, hey, sessions are now open for photography or, or, or depending right? On, on the data that you're seeing is just a really easy and fast way to get a lot of data about the people that are joining your list. You can know how to make it hyper relevant. And then the strongest piece is automations. So once you start figuring out how to send, like grow a list, send an email, the very next natural step is workflow automations. So for example, if somebody opts into your digital course or digital download freebie, right, the lead magnet, then a really smart thing to do there is to create an entire workflow that gets triggered as soon as somebody opts in to download a digital guide.

Then without you having to do any extra work, truly they're going to start receiving that drip campaign maybe once a week where you share more tips and tricks and you end up staying top of mind. But the idea is to turn these into, I don't want to say passive income, but I mean if you want to, you could. But just as passive a channel as you can so that you always look like you're on top of mind with the workflows, right? You always look like you're on, but you're not really working that hard on the automation piece. And then anything that's not evergreen, that's your peak. I would say campaign content can be done live through a one off email.

Exactly. And I think your point about the, the octopus and segmentation is so spot on, especially in the solopreneur world. I think this, I think you hit something that resonates with I'm sure a ton of people here, even from the comments that I see in here and even ourselves. I mean the reason we even built Fast Magic was because I had a podcast about E commerce and then I needed to solve my problem. So I built an AI tool that could like solve that problem. And then I'm ending, ending up in SaaS in the content space, building a new podcast out of this. So like, you know, obviously we, those aren't even segmented list, those are two completely different lists because there is like zero overlap in terms of audience. But I think it's just something you see in the solopreneur world, right? It's like just by working, just by working on projects, you start putting together these businesses that are like tangentially related, but they are not.

Like if you look from the outside you'd be like, how are those two things related? So really cool. And my next question, Martha, is about maybe if you could just paint a picture of the landscape. I know you mentioned something like mailchimp. We've Got flow desk. Could you just talk about like how Flodesk sits in between all the different email stacks even for us at castmagic, right. Like I have a different email service that I use for our product emails where I have like events that are coming in from like user actions in our app app versus like our newsletter content which is, you know, doesn't require that level of, of information. But if you could just paint a picture of the, the email landscape, I think that would be really helpful for, for everyone to just understand how, what the services look like.

Yeah, sure thing. So like I said, most, most of the email tools that are out there, if not truly like all were created 15, 20 years ago.

Right.

So the audience for email marketing was different, the problems were, were different. So they're focused a lot on the technical aspect, almost built for the technical user as well. So for example, if you come in and you start a trial of mailchimp, you kind of have to know where to go to make it work for you. If you want to build something that's really on brand, you need to work with a designer, a developer to work on the HTML. Right. So I think the difference is that we're kind of in a different era. VC software has been evolving away from the ecosystem need to build everything in HTML towards low code, no code tools. So I'd say that's probably number one where we're different.

We're also focused on solving different problems, right? Like design not really on the radar of the older email marketing tools. For us, design is key. It's not just about making your email look beautiful and unbrand. It's if it doesn't look beautiful and unbrand, it doesn't convert.

Right.

You're talking about an 8 second second attention span. They open the email right. And you have to grab their attention right that second. So whether it's like nurture or the, the actual ask of Buy now writer take action, you just, you need to understand that each different ask has a different kind of like ideal flow and design. We're hyper focused on that piece. I, I would say this is not something that we, we built it to be very simple and easy to use and we didn't expect this type of feedback. But one thing that we hear a lot is that it's very fun. So we, we have a lot of customers that go out of their way and they tell us, oh my gosh, like this is the first time that I'm having a lot of fun with my email marketing.

It feels like social media. It's it's making me feel very creative. So that's great. And I would say that's probably a big differentiator. But ultimately I think it's, it's really not about us versus what else is out there. I think it's about using email marketing versus not using email marketing. Right? Like go start a trial, everyone has them figure out which is the platform that you love the most and then, and then stick to it. There are a lot of platforms that have free plans.

I think the, the risk is not using it because you saw what happened with TikTok, right? It can really disappear overnight and you're really on rented space. You don't own your own, your audience. So over all of the effort that you put into building that followership and engagement can really go away. Where if you're building that on social media, but you're also saying, hey, by the way, join my newsletter. That's the list that you own. You're not platform dependent, right. Even if we at some point make a mistake and become like a dinosaur as well and you want to jump ship and go to another platform, you can just download and export your entire subscriber list and go use another platform. So I really, I believe that that's a win.

That's a true win.

No, I totally agree with that and especially what you were saying about like the design. You've got eight seconds to capture someone's attention, maybe even less honestly. But I'd love to. Let's talk about like, let's get tactical in terms of like, you know, just some information about email that I've been curious about and that I'm sure a bunch of people listening in are as well. First, I want to talk about subject lines, right? What goes in, like, what goes into a good subject line. And tell me about like the importance of open rate, like, and how are those related?

Yeah, so this is probably one of the pieces that's really simple. Once, once it clicks. Your open rate is entirely dependent on your subject line, right. Your content only like the conversion only matters once they've opened it. Really what gets someone to open your email is a subject line with one exception and it is landing in spam. So this is important if your content has a lot and sometimes it's very innocent words. Like one time our head of marketing sentinel that had in the content align some fun for your Wednesday evening and the spam bots thought that this was like R rated material and send it to spam boxes.

Right.

So sometimes it's very really unintentionally that you end up in spam. But other than controlling for that, your subject line is really what's going to drive your open race. And what's hot for subject lines, it really depends on your audience. Right. Like for us, we test internally and we see that adding an emoji increases our open rates. But I can see a world in which maybe if you're in the legal space, right. And you're sending pretty serious emails, it might not work.

Right.

It really depends on your audience. I would say experimentation is a way to go because it really changes. It even changes by season.

Right.

Like what people want in winter is very different than what they want in the summer. And there is no right answer. Do not go and copy what is working for somebody else. Just like experiment with your own ideas and then figure out what works best for your audience and then double down in that.

Awesome. And then what about. What about preview lines and preview headers? I know that's something in our newsletter that we think about a lot.

Yeah. So preview lines should be the hook. I think a lot of people think of the subject line as a hook, but subject line should be very clear, like as clear as possible so that people understand why they should open your email. And then preview line is the hook. So for example, if you're talking about, I don't know, a sale. Right. Um, so open now to get our biggest sale. And then your preview line should be like, you will not believe these numbers.

Right. This is a. Almost like not necessarily bait and switch. I don't think that's ever really something I would recommend, but kind of close to really like make it impossible for. For people not to open it. Use the FOMO factor.

Right.

I think unless. Unless it's not content email and it's something more of a serious email than you really want to make it hyper clear. But I would say preview line is a hook. Don't use subject lines as the hook because then it kind of annoys people.

Right.

If. If your subject line is. Is borderline baity.

Right.

It's. It's not fair. Like we have a lot of emails in our inbox.

Yeah, exactly. And it gets a little bit annoying. And one thing that, you know, we always do when we test our emails is, you know, sometimes we'll a b. Test different subject lines and preview lines. But also, um, you know, I love getting, I love getting sent test emails so I can like just see them on my phone. Because sometimes when you're writing an email versus what it's going to look like when it lands in someone's inbox or like two totally different things. So, you know, we always have fun and sometimes you need to move words around. But I think it's a really good point on the preview line, it's like you've got more real estate there to like draw intrigue and get the click.

And your goal for the, the subject and the preview line is to get them to open because if they don't open the email, then you know, they don't see all the hard work that you actually put into the meat of the content. So I think that's spot on. My next, my next question about that open open rates and everything is, you know, why does open rate matter? Does it affect email deliverability? Like, is it a vanity metric? Like, should you care about what your open rate is? Like, you know, how does open rate matter? And, and yeah, what are your thoughts on it?

Yeah, I mean it matters because it's your funnel, right? The higher the open rate, the more people have even the chance to click and engage. So it also tells you that people are engaged. So it's validation that the content that you're putting out there is getting well received. But just for math, right, if you're sending an email to 100 people and 50 open, then the people that could potentially click are max 50, right? Like that lowers your funnel by a lot. So if you maximize that first funnel stage, then you also maximize the potential people that can click. I think it's, it's also important to understand the different aspects that influence open rate versus click rate because then you can experiment. For example, if you know that subject line and we think of preview as part of a subject line, but subject line and preview text are what's directly influencing open rates then and your open rate has been dropping, then you know that that's potentially where you should be experimenting, right? Versus if your click rate is dropping, then you know that you probably need to hyper optimize your content. And on the click rate piece as well, I think simple and clear is truly like what converts.

I'm not kidding. It's almost true. Like across the board almost every, every single time. If you create a really long button that says this is your Last chance to XYZ vs buy now act like join now the joy now the buy now. Like a simple action oriented clean clear buttons always work, which is almost counterintuitive because people feel like they need to, you know, like shooter code it or be more tactful. They don't want to come across as super Salesy. But again, back to the attention span. If you only have a couple of seconds, you want to make it super clear what is it specifically that you're asking for? What is the action that I want you to take?

Awesome. And then what about. Because I know you had mentioned spam, in some ways you could get caught up in spam. Is there a link between, you know, open rates and deliverability and spam? Is it like better just inherently to have a higher open rate or is it just more about your funnel?

So I think it used to be, it's changing a lot. So it used to be a lot about the open rate and also the content and that's been changing more towards domain reputation. So for example, right now one of the best things that you can do to increase deliverability is to not send from a free mail. And in fact Gmail, Yahoo, right, like the inbox providers in February released a change where if you're sending from a free mail and a free mail is like martha mail.com right versus marthaotesk.com so if I'm sending from a free mail, I can only send to 5,000 recipients daily. Daily. And that immediately like just decreases your IP and your sender reputation. If you start working to not just send from your own domain but also like verify your your domain authenticated with a dkim right on authentication, then it increases your deliverability. Then one of the best things you can do after that is encourage people to reply.

So the beauty about email is that even though you're sending one to many people can just literally reply and they have direct access to you into your inbox. And I think that's gorgeous. That's just like, it's so human, right? And, and not very many people use it. But if you send a campaign and you say by the way, like, do you like these Reply to me or here, here's the question I have for you. Reply and let me know your answer. Especially when you're getting started, that's one of the best things that you can do because as soon as people start replying to you that just like boost your reputation and your points, increasing your deliverability because it makes you come across like a real sender, right to Gmail and Yahoo and the likes.

So do you have any? I. It's so true and I love it because like we have a lot of like email automations that go off and like I get them all. And I always joke sometimes that my, my email inbox is a total shit show, but I, it's actually kind of fun because like I'll have people respond to me and be like, this is just an automated thing and I'll, I, I actually get them and I'll respond to them and we'll have like a conversation. But do you have any tips to elicit responses? Because like you were saying, it's a good thing when people do respond. So are there any tips you'd have to like elicit responses from emails?

Yeah. Awesome. Literally just say like reply to me. Even if you have, if you, if you send your first email and say, hey, I'm trying this new thing, here's what I'm doing. This is my newsletter.

Right.

Like and have a button that's like very clear. Right. One call to action and it says reply to me.

Right.

And that button can go to the mail too. Or just like say it in big text reply to me then that typically works. If you try more. Yeah, tactful modes, it might not work as well. Like I said for call to action, keep it simple, Keep it simple, keep it clear.

Yes, I love that. Okay, moving forward. So I think we've covered a lot on that side of things. We've covered segmentation, we've covered email deliverability, how to get opens. Now let's actually get into the content stuff. So now let's assume that someone's like actually opened our email. Why don't you tell us about like the. So you mentioned for Flow desk.

One of the reasons that you thought there, that you've, you guys have seen so much success, so much success is because you made it easy for people to create beautiful emails. So what does your email builder look like? How does that differ from other platforms? And you know, once you've got like an email design that you like, how do you create an email that you know elicits the response that you're, you're looking for as a business owner?

Yes, Great question. So you can always start from scratch, right? If you already know how to create an email that's optimized for conversion, you can start from scratch and just use some of the layouts that we have. If not, we, we have layouts and templates that are already hyper optimized for these. We actually have a patent granted or layout technology. It's so that you can add custom fonts so that you can make sure that it relays the same across devices or inboxes.

Right.

And, and then the beauty of that is that it's already hyper optimized for the goal that you are trying to achieve. So email is really there's, there's an art and there's also a science, right? It's, it's a, there's, there's a flow. It's like a, you know, like you just continue reading. It's very, in a way similar to how we read social media or on mobile. So I think this is also why even though every year somebody says email is going away, email is dead, it's just like it stays, it remains because it's, it's still the way that we organically consume content. So, but there's, there's a science, right? So you want to have the right hierarchy, you want to have the right logo presence not just for the inboxes so that they can recognize you as a true brand, but also so that you're re establishing that trust, right? And, and then the story has to flow. So for example, we've, we found that one thing that works really well is having your logo at the very top. Then having a very compelling image that's high quality, optimized for deliverability, right? And then a call to action.

This, this way you can just right from the beginning, get to the point, get to the call to action. And then having a text paragraph because this increases your text to image ratio, right? And then having a handwritten signature at the bottom because it makes it very human. So you're right. Even though it is an automation, right? Like any chance that you, that you can have to come across as human, it really, it makes a difference when it comes to content and design. So that's a typical flow. I think within there you can hyper customize it to what content you need. So, so there's function and then there's style. So function wise, maybe if you have a roundup of some of your favorite things, then you'll have like a roundup template, right? And it kind of has that like flip image and button, button and image or image and button layout, right.

If you have, if you have a sale, then you might want to use a layout that's specifically designed and optimized for sale. The Buy now for example we have like gifs that are going around the product, let's say like Buy now or Sale and it just catches your attention right away because you haven't seen movement like that in email, right? Like imagine you open it and you have your digital guide download, right? And there's this like sale font right in your own brand that's kind of going around and moving or like an arrow pointing. It's, it's really cool. I think it's also really hard to build these and customize it for every single campaign. It's just so time consuming. So if you can start from a template and then optimize it to your brand, then that's always easier. And then if you have, if you're more like running like a general sale and you want to send people to your shop, then you probably want to use a layout that has just like a collection of products. So the idea is, be clear with your goal.

What is it ultimately that you want to achieve? Try to add your button, your call to action as soon as possible so that people understand what you're asking and then follow with some of that story. And it has to be a story.

Right.

I think that's another thing that's changed. Twenty years ago, people was expecting email to be more informational and now people want the story. They want to know what's like, who you are. And people like to purchase and engage with people. Right. Not with brands really. So I think that's another thing that the solopreneur segment has going. And, and yeah, an email is one of the best channels.

Yeah. And one of the things that is just fun for me is like on, on this, this workshop, we'll do all sort of workshops with different sort of content creators. And I immediately see like, how connected all the different forms of creating content are. So for example, like, I've had short, short form creators who come on and like, they will go super viral in creating these like, you know, short reels that are like a minute long. And it's not just like a reel. They have a whole science behind it. They start with a hook, then they do a rehook, then they open up a curiosity loop and then they tell a story. They give you a little bit, they open up another like curiosity loop and then, you know, the next thing you know, you finish the entire piece of content, you're sharing it with your friends.

And I think a lot of those principles can even be applied to the way you approach the copywriting in your email. Because like you were saying in the beginning, we want to, we want to get the open. We want to get the open. We want to draw curiosity. We get them into the email and then once they're in the email, you want to spark curiosity, you want to be human, you want to do all these things where it's not just a simple informational message, it's really designed for the platform. So I think that's just one of the fun things about content creation. It's like you See all these reoccurring threads, but then the formats are a little bit different. So there's things that you're going to do for email that are slightly different than the, the strategies that you're going to use for a post that goes viral on LinkedIn or link or Instagram reels or something like that.

But there are definitely, you know, parts that are, are similar that you can kind of pull from, from your inspo. So at least for everyone who's listening, if you, if you guys have any other ideas from like other ways that you guys create content on, whether it's your YouTube channel, your LinkedIn, your whatever, see how you can apply those strategies to, to your emails, Right?

Yeah, big time. I so spot on, Martha.

The next question I was going to have was going to be about content frequency, Right. This is something people ask about in other platforms. How many reels should I be posting? How many LinkedIn posts should I be doing? How many emails should I be sending? Because again, we don't want, we don't want unsubscribes, we don't want spams. But at the same time we want to grow, we want to engage and we want to, you know, keep our funnel growing. So what are you seeing in the data and what would you recommend? And I know it can obviously vary by business, but like, generally speaking, how do you approach frequency?

Yeah, generally speaking, once a week is good. I think what you don't want to do is have a consistent time frame and then go dart and then come back in because that can create a lot of spam or unsubscribes. Right. Spam. Specifically people marking you as spam because maybe they forgot that they subscribed. I don't know if you've ever had these, but you subscribe to something, they never really email you and ultimately they decide that they want to do email marketing. So three years later they're sending you an email, you have no interest in it anymore and you mark them as spam. Right.

Hopefully you don't. Please don't mark people as spam because it's really hard to get out of the spam. Yeah. Territory once that happens. But yeah, I think stay once a week is probably good across the board. And then the best thing you can do is to be hyper specific to what your audience wants. I think that's just across every channel in marketing.

Right.

For email marketing there are really easy ways to do these. So. So when you have your newsletter form, you can add subscriber preferences. So for example, you can say how often do you want to hear from me? And give people the option like once a week, once a month, daily.

Right.

And like if you have for example financial market news, maybe daily makes a lot of sense. Right? Or a real estate business where you want to be sending like daily listings. Right There, there are business with daily actually makes sense. I would say once a month is probably a long time without letting your subscribers hear from you. But some businesses, like, in some cases it also makes sense just give your subscribers the option. I think first of all, once you have that form, you're going to get an idea of how often they want to hear from you.

Right?

Because just by collecting that data you'll get an indication then that could be your like what you start with. That could be your best possible data. And based on that you can always give people the option to change their frequency.

Right.

And then the best news is that when you, it's not really hard to manage on the other side. You don't have to keep track because they're already self segmenting. So when you have for example your weekly newsletter, you can only send it to the segment that's like your weekly segment. And then maybe for your monthly newsletter you can have a roundup of here's what you missed last week or this month and, and then make it work so you're not creating a lot of extra work for yourself.

Totally. And the last question that I have, Martha in in regards to like email best practices because I know we're covering them all and then for anyone else who you know, has any other questions about strategy or your own personal business or your own strategy that you're doing, drop them in like the, the comments and we'll get them out into the qa because we're going to kick that off in a second. But I was going to ask about cleaning your email list. This is something that like I've talked about with, with my co founder a bunch, you know, is that something that you should be doing if people are, if you're just constantly sending emails to people and they're not opening is should you clean your email list? Should you actually remove subscribers or does it not matter? How do you guys think about that?

Oh, this is a hard one. Because you should be cleaning your email list. I don't like that. I think you should have a very clear unsubscribe link at the bottom of your campaigns. And if people don't find your content relevant anymore, they should subscribe before cleaning a list and removing subscribers that didn't remove themselves. I would probably run a campaign that says, like, you can segment your audience based on people who, for example, haven't opened my email in six months or three months. Right. And then send an email to them saying, hey, I noticed you haven't opened my emails recently.

And I just want to let you know that if you want to unsubscribe, you can click here and give them the choice.

Right.

And maybe let them clean themselves. Sounds weird, but because it's so hard to grow a list, right? And also a lot of people just don't engage all the. Like, I have a lot of subscriptions where I might not open if it gets really busy and chaotic. I might not open your newsletter for a few months.

Right.

But I really definitely still want to be subscribed. So. So I think having that option too. And I've, I've gotten those emails as well that offer to help me out and I can't think of a single time that I took that because I, I still wanted to be subscribed.

Right.

I think if I didn't want to be, I would have unsubscribed. So I would say try to do that first. And then this is probably my like favorite area of where AI is going to disrupt email marketing. I think this is an area where with these and tags as well, but especially the cleanup, the list. Having more creative ways to re engage or opt out people who are disengaged is going to become a lot easier with AI because right now it's pretty manual. You have to go and you have to segment and you have to kind of know what you're looking for. But with AI, it can automatically take people that are considered disengaged based on a combination of factors. Not just not opening, but maybe you haven't clicked in a while or maybe the number of clicks combined with the number of opens or the frequency and timing, you could even like adjust.

Like I can see a world in which you adjust the bar and you're like, I want to go super aggressive in this segment for disengage or I want to go conservative, right. And then the, the tool should be able to do this for you. And I think that's the, the, that's what we're going to start to see change. And it's so much easier. It's so exciting. And, and then the benefit is that you can continue to focus on grading the content. Right? Like being hyper human. Because that's another change we're going to see, right? Like for a while, a Lot of people are going to be using AI to create their content and you're going to start getting these exhaustion right from AI generated content.

You can just see a lot of like it's crucial and you're like yeah, this is GPT generated. Right. And, and we saw that happen in social media where it was all filtered and perfect and robotic and people started wanting the behind the scenes, the messy band, the show me what's really happening. Right. And now we have the person holding the phone and shaky camera and, and I think that's just what's going to happen with, with content and email as well. So better to stay ahead of the curve.

Perfect. And what just one last question that kind of relates to that is what about emails where people sign up and maybe they give a, a BS email or maybe they add a typo. So like you're not actually delivering to an inbox. Is there, is there any way to clean that or should those be cleaned?

A hundred percent should be cleaned, otherwise that can get you in spam faster than any content that you can create. And your platform should be cleaning these for you. So essentially before you send an email in fltisk, we go through your list and anything that soft bounces is essentially sent for more of a like a second look. And if they look like, like the.com and it's.co and it's undeliverable, we remove that for you. We let you know. But you should, your platform should not let you send to bot addresses or incorrect addresses because that's super damaging. Yeah. In the end of the day like you shouldn't have to worry about deliverability.

That's what WIX is for. So great question but choose Google Strong.

That's good to know. You guys do that. Okay. And then last promise is the last question before we open it up. So like please everyone drop your questions in the chat. So we'll, we'll open those up right after this. But you mentioned AI as it pertains to email. What are you seeing in the space? What are you guys building in the space? Like how is AI going to play in email in, in a positive way? I think we covered like the negatives where it's like a bunch of people creating a bunch of like AI generated content.

But like what are the positives that you see out of it? What are you guys planning for and how are you thinking about AI anymore?

Yeah. Oh, so excited. So I think what we're going to like the best expression of AI is going to be agentic.

Right.

So Imagine like agents that help you get things done. And I think the biggest change we're going to see is in the solopreneur space, because by definition, a solopreneur is one person that's running a business, right? And imagine if you could have agents for practically like anything. I'm not saying you're going to replace like hiring people, but the Solopreneur is not like, is a solopreneur by definition, right? So if instead of using your tool, your software to just design an email and send it, but you could chat with your software and say, like, what should my email marketing strategy be? And have your software be your agent for that specific purpose and hyper optimize everything that you do and, and teach you how to do it super well. Because we have that data, right? Like we send billions of emails. We have a lot of aggregated data. We have a lot of aggregated data about your subscribers as well. So we can, we can actually hold your hand a lot more than we're currently holding your hand. And I think the biggest barrier was making it speak your language, right? Like making it super easy to interact with.

So now that barrier is gone. So I'm really excited about that. I think that's going to be the best and most positive expression. It's a. You're going to be able to operate like a large business and compete with large businesses. It really levels the playing field. And the channel is already optimized for this as well. Because if you look at, for example, meta, right? If you, if you're creating content on Instagram, you are every single day competing with other businesses that are creating content as well and businesses that are paying for ads, right? So all of a sudden you have to compete with people who have a larger budget and they get better placement because they're paying the platform.

Now let's go to the inbox. That doesn't exist. You cannot, Amazon cannot pay Gmail to rank higher than you in the inbox. No, right? Like this is entirely in your hands. You can figure out what's the best time to send for your audience and send it, and nobody can pay you out of that specific space. You're not fighting the algorithm. So I think the combination of the agentic AI with, with these just being the channel that already levels the playing field is going to be super exciting.

Awesome. And I love that how you're thinking about it in terms of like, you know, the agent can kind of be your email strategist. Even in Gasmagic, like, we're thinking about how can AI be your content strategist? Right. So it's, it's, it's going to be a really exciting time where in your platforms you're going to be able to use your platform to do what you need it to do, but you're going to have all these tools to like really supplement your workflow. And the cool thing here is like I think one of the things that you did with Flow Desk is like probably back in the day when email wasn't really pretty and you didn't have easy templates, you would have to, you get an email strategist, get an email like template designer that's like writing the HTML and setting all this up and then you're able to productize that. And I think there's just like, it's just a really exciting time with AI because like all of those like manual services you can essentially like bring in house, bring in platform and then you know, the people who benefit are really the solopreneurs who you know, are, would really love to have a beautiful email and now they got it or would really love to have an entire content strategist team and now they have it. So really exciting. Okay, so let's get into the Q and A.

So the first one is from Dave. How would you rate the degree of priority to get a referral reward program going just for the list itself relative to the lead magnet, a higher engagement affiliate program for actual referral partners, et cetera? So I think the question is just about, yeah, like how would you prioritize getting some sort of refer. Referral program set up?

Yeah. Okay, so it's a, it's a great question. It's a popular trend to get referrers for your list. I don't, I personally don't believe in that. And the reason is because a referred email has I think one eighth of the value of an email of a person who actually decides to opt into your list because they are relating to you. So the, the, I think I initially I was really excited about these, but the data we're seeing is that when they come from referrals they don't have the same connection to you, the content creator that they would have if they were opting in directly. So then eventually they forget like, oh, why am I getting emails from this person? Right. Because they never really established that, I guess emot conscious connection.

And then it leads to a lot more unsubstructs. I do think there's a right way to do it, but it's not something that like we Believe in. I think also the privacy law is going in the completely different direction. Right. It's like first party opt in. So I would recommend sticking to what's legal in this case. Not saying that that's not legal, it's just like a great area.

I think that's a good call out. Right. Like, you know, at first glance I think people might think, oh, it might be the fastest way ever to grow an email is through referrals and these referral programs and maybe I can pay for subscribers. But like again, you're never going to get the same intent as you are as someone who like found your content, loved it and signed up. So I think that's a great call out. I wasn't even thinking of that, so that's awesome. Okay. Kelsey asks how reliable are open rates though with all of the machine opens?

Okay, not just the machine opens, but changes in Apple mail. Right. I think in general much less reliable, but at the same time they're really key to understanding your success. And the way that I would think about it is less of the absolute number. Like we already know that we're probably not getting the right number. It might be inflated because of the auto replies, but it might be deflated because of the Apple privacy changes. So don't see it as absolute number but see it as a trend. Right.

Like if, if both of these like the Apple deflation and the machine inflation are impacting your absolute open rate, that means it's going to continue to be impacted the rest of the time.

Right.

So don't focus on the on the absolute total, but focus on the trend. If your open rate is increasing, it's probably really increasing. If it's decreasing, it's really decreasing. So, so track that trend and then use that trend as your validation and your success metric.

Awesome. Next one from Kim is how many newsletters or emails should you send for a welcome series? I'm also super curious about this one because I think there's too many emails in our welcome series.

Yeah. So it depends on your content. So let me tell you how we determine ours. We have a new trial welcome series. So the very first piece that we took a look at is how long is our trial open for? So it's a 30 day trial. So then we know, okay, well we have 30 days for these specific welcome sequence. So then you look at the actual journey, like where are they truly in their journey? What are they thinking on day one, what are they needing on day three? And this is based on two things. What are customers actually telling you like when they come in to support and they ask for questions or help.

And two, what are customers, customers actually telling you? Because you pick up the phone and you call them and you ask, hey, how's it going?

Right?

It's day three. What do you need?

Right?

You need to get that information to make it hyper relevant. You need to always be talking to your leads to your, to your customers and then figure out exactly what they need at what point. So for example, we know that around day seven they're going to start working on automations, right? So we start sharing some tips right before that where at the beginning they're looking at sending their first email how to design it. So we send like top 10 design tips, right? So how many and how long it should be? Really truly, I know you want a specific answer, but I actually will encourage you to not copy somebody else's playbook because what works for us, even for that specific welcome flow is very different than what works for a welcome flow in a completely different campaign. Right? So it has to be really like the only, the only data that you should be looking at is data that your customers are selling you or leads.

But I think that, I think what you just said, actually it is super actionable because you're basically just saying look at the data and understand where, if you weren't going to have a welcome series at all, where would people be from a data perspective in your product funnel or in your product journey. And then you can kind of map your welcome sequence to like where they would be naturally. Like if you know, on average it takes 10 days for them to discover whatever X feature that's like buried in your platform. Then on day 10 you can send them the information about that particular feature because on average it's going to be more relevant on that day than it is going to be on day two. So I think that's a really good call out and I think it's super actionable. Okay, let's see what else we have here. Kelsey asks what is, what is the best practice for when it comes to image to text ratio, for getting a great click rate.

Okay, click rate. I was expecting deliverability. So I'm going to answer two things. First, on deliverability, these used to be something you didn't want to do. You didn't want to include a lot of images because these would affect deliverability. Hasn't been the case for a long time. Image to text still matters, but not on that weight. And actually we see some of the top companies are crushing it in email Marketing, like anthropology, like Airbnb, Urban outfitters.

Their emails are full image, right? So, so there's the structure, the content, right? Like hyper optimizing. It matters more than the ratio. I still think that for sharing a story a text paragraph works a lot well and then having all visuals. But then for. For click rate I think it the optimal that we found. Again this is general. Never copy somebody else's playbook. But what we found is one large hero image large enough where you can still have a button like a very clear cta.

This is a button right under that image and have that button appear over the fold on mobile because most people are opening on mobile right now. After that, whatever you do, just don't make it too long where the inbox providers will clip it. So essentially your ideal format, at least to start with and then experiment and find your own is put your logo, put a hero image that's clear, compelling, right? Like maybe with we. We love hero image layouts because you can have your image but you can have a huge title. So you're already giving people the beginning of the story. Then have your button, then have a text paragraph with a lot of a story. It has to be really human. Then sign up with your signature, have one single call to action and that typically converts better.

And. And then experiment from there. Beautiful.

I think that's, that's a bunch of information on images and rich. Hopefully that answered your question as well about the examples of images to consider for content creators. But last question here. And this is from Dave and this goes to about I guess lead quality, right? Do you think so? He asks, isn't it partly a function of the quality of your list in the first place? As in a thousand well qualified leads would be preferred versus 10,000 of spray and pray variety, right? Or is more always better. So when it comes to intent and like the quality of your list, like how do you think about that? Are you thinking about the quality or are you thinking about the quantity?

No, never, always the quality. And this is why referral programs are not something that we probably will invest in. Would always any day have a highly engaged small list and a large list that will have the risk of throwing me to spam or unsubscribing. And here's a key, right? Like if you own your domain and you should be owning your domain and sending from your domain, your sender reputation will be your biggest game changer on how well email marketing works from you, how well it converts, right? So how profitable it is for you as a channel so your top, top priority should be always to increase your deliverability. And to do that you have to have a very engaged list. People that do not unsubscribe, that don't bounce, right. That aren't bought, addresses that are really truly genuinely first party opting in. And if you have a small list, right, let's say you have 100 people, but you know that your emails are going to land in the inbox, that all 100 people are going to see your content, they're going to be engaged, right.

That you're not sacrificing their or risking your deliverability for the future of your business. That's so valuable. That's so valuable, right? Then having say 200 people, some are bots, some never open your emails, it just gives you more work because at some point you're going to have to clean that list, right? We just talked about it and, and it decreases your email reputation, meaning that sometimes you're going to land in the inbox, sometimes in promotion, sometimes in the spam, right. And then is if like let's say even 30, right. Of those 200 people mark your emails and spam, even if three of those 200 people mark your emails as spam, that can risk for the rest of the lifetime of your domain landing in spam, right. Like that is brutal for your business. You're going to have to go find a new domain, change everything like restart from scratch. It's not worth it.

So yeah, highly engaged, smallest for the win every time.

Tldr stay out of spam. So I love that Martha. I think that is a great place to end for everyone who's, you know, thank you for everyone for, for joining today. For anyone that's looking to, you know, find more information about you, float us like why don't you just shout out your guys socials.

Yeah, of course. So we're@floatus.com I can actually type it here and uh, same like Lotus on Instagram I think. Lodest co on TikTok, which see you there for 90 more days. Thank you. This was such, so fun, such a blast. Thank you for the engagement. Thank you for the questions. Going right back at you.

Congrats on your success as well. Thank you so much. This is so much fun. Thank you.

Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks so much Martha. We had a great time and we learned a whole lot. So, so thanks and have a great one. Bye guys. Thanks for coming. See you.

Bye. Thank you so much.