How I Use Flodesk for Email Marketing in My Creative Business

As a creative business owner, email marketing has become one of my favorite ways to connect with my community and share about my work in a way that feels personal and sustainable. I do enjoy sharing on social media – I love creating reels and planning posts and carousels! – but social media brings an added pressure because no matter how often I remind myself that views and likes aren’t everything, I can’t deny that I look at the stats more often than I should and let the influence my emotions.

Email feels different. There are no ‘likes’ or view counts—just one person opening their inbox and reading my message. It’s more personal and less public, which makes me more comfortable sharing my story more openly.

In this post, I want to take you behind the curtain and show you how I actually use Flodesk in my day-to-day business and why I think it’s one of the best email platforms for creative entrepreneurs. Because when I was starting out, email marketing seemed like something the big brands used, but over the years I’ve learned that email is a useful resource for any size business. So whether you’re just starting out and need a vision for where you’re headed, or if you’re more advanced but still love a view of someone else’s process, read on! I hope this will help and inspire you to focus on building and nurturing your own email list. 💕

Why I Chose Flodesk

There are a lot of great email marketing platforms out there, but Flodesk stood out to me because it is:

• Beautiful to design. This is at the top of the list because, well – I’m an artist!
• Easy to use. I don’t know how to code beyond copy/pasting bits of code exactly where I’m told!
• Includes a visual workflow builder – I’m visual and so is Flodesk – it’s a win/win situation.
• Flat monthly fee—some providers understandably charge more as your list grows, but Flodesk has one flat fee no matter how big your list gets!
• Integration between forms, emails, automations, and checkouts that I can understand!

As a visual person and an artist, I was first drawn in by the promise of beautiful, customizeable email layouts (and anything ‘easy to customize’ has my attention!). But once I started using Flodesk, I realized how well it worked for me to create templates for my emails to keep everything beautiful and consistent. Consistent creates familiarity which is important because I know I’m not the only email landing in your inbox!

Now I’m a Flodesk partner, so I have even more reason to use, love and share about Flodesk! If you’d like to try it out, you can get 50% off your first year cost using my partner affiliate link here!

Let’s dive into the features I use the most and how they support my creative work.

Scheduling Emails with Ease

My email newsletter is the heart of my email marketing. It’s where I:

• Share behind-the-scenes glimpses of my design process and why I create.
• Offer tips for adding creativity to your home and life.
• Announce new products, collaborations, workshops, or blog posts.
• Share deeper and stay connected with my community in a more intimate way than social media allows.

With Flodesk’s scheduling feature, I can write my newsletters when I feel inspired to write and schedule them to go out automatically. I try to stay consistent with emails going out on Thursday or Friday, but sometimes I have more words on a Tuesday afternoon. Scheduling allows me to sit down at any time, write the week’s email, add any visuals or links (Flodesk makes this so easy), and schedule it for Friday morning.

Knowing it’s handled for the week means I can turn my attention back to designing, painting, or recording a new workshop—without worrying that I forgot to hit “send.”

Creating Opt-ins to Invite People Into My World

One of my favorite ways to grow my email list is by creating helpful, beautiful opt-ins and quizzes linked to valuable information I can send out via email. These are free resources I offer in exchange for someone’s email address—things like:

• A personalized home style quiz
• Details for a Sketchbook Habit for artists
• A list of 40 Opt-In Ideas to help you grow your own email list (see what I did there?)

With Flodesk, I can create a sign-up form, embed it on my website or on it’s own landing page created right in Flodesk, and set up an automated email that delivers the opt-in content immediately. It’s a seamless experience for the subscriber—sign up and the information lands in your inbox like magic (unless I missed a step, which – let’s be real – has happened before! Oops!) However, when it’s all set up correctly, this delivery sequence runs in the background while I’m doing other things – like creating new artwork.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how I use it:

• Step 1: Create the opt-in (usually a PDF or guide)
• Step 2: Set up a Flodesk form or pop-up
• Step 3: Write the welcome email and attach the resource
• Step 4: Set the automation to send the email when someone signs up

That’s it. Once the guide is created, it takes me less than an hour to set up the workflow in Flodesk from start to finish, and it continues serving my business long after it’s live. If you need more help with that process, you can check out this email workshop for a deeper dive on that topic!

Using Flodesk Workflows to Welcome New Subscribers

Once someone signs up, I don’t want them to feel forgotten. I want to welcome them right away with a warm and engaging welcome email.

A welcome sequence is your chance to introduce yourself, thank someone for joining your community, and remind them of the value they’ll receive from being on your list. The email list welcome sequence emails are some of the most important you will send because they tend to be the most frequently opened!

However, we both know that we can’t be available to respond to every new subscriber as soon as they sign up! That’s where Flodesk’s workflows come in. I use them to create a nurture sequence—a short series of emails that introduce someone to my world, my mission, and how I can support them. I have an entire blog post on creating a valuable Nurture Sequence here!

The visual workflow builder in Flodesk makes this so easy to set up. I can drag and drop steps, include favorite emails (emails that I’ve saved from other workflows or even a really great newsletter), add delays, and personalize each message. Once it’s live, the whole thing runs in the background while I sleep.

Saving Emails and Blocks to ‘Favorites’

Have you ever spent way too long perfecting the formatting, font, spacing, and image placement in an email—and thought, “Please let me never have to do that again”?
With Flodesk, now you don’t have to!

You can save any email layout as a favorite and reuse it as a template whenever you need it. It’s an amazing time-saver and has made creating emails so much faster for me!

You can also save individual blocks within an email. That means if you just need to reuse a single section—like a blog post shoutout, quote, announcement, or call-to-action—you can drop it in from your favorites without recreating it from scratch.

Selling with Flodesk Checkouts

This is one of Flodesk’s newest features—and one I’ve been loving.

Flodesk Checkouts allows you to create a simple or detailed sales page, checkout form, and follow-up emails all in one place. I use it to sell things like:

• Creative workshops on specific topics that I can also offer to bundle creators.
• Seasonal guides or downloads
• Low-cost offers that lead people into my world

Instead of linking out to another sales tool or platform – which gets complicated, I can keep everything streamlined. My favorite part? The thank-you page and follow-up emails are also designed in Flodesk so it all feels cohesive!

Keep It On-Brand and Beautiful, Please

As a designer, I care a lot about the visual experience people have when interacting with my brand. I want to inspire creativity at every turn. Flodesk gives me the flexibility to:

• Customize fonts and layouts – and save them to my favorites!
• Include consistent images from my branding
• Keep everything consistent with the style and tone of Toboggan Avenue

This matters to me—not just because it looks good, but because it feels intentional. I want every email to feel like a little gift in someone’s inbox, whether it’s a creative tip, a story, or a new product announcement.

What I’ve Learned Along the Way

Email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated to be powerful. In fact, keeping it simple is key to making it sustainable. The more simple and repeatable I can make the process, the more likely I am to continue showing up and hitting send!

Here are a few takeaways from my own journey:

• Start before you feel “ready.” Even a small list can be mighty. The act of writing and sending emails builds your confidence and connection. And figuring out the quirks of email is a lot easier with 9 subscribers than 400!
• Let your emails sound like you. Don’t try to be too formal or perfect. Your personality is what makes your emails memorable. You shouldn’t try to write like anyone else!
• Consistency matters more than frequency. Whether it’s weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly—just find a rhythm you can stick to. And if you fall off that rhythm, you don’t need to apologize, just get back up and show up again -when you’re ready.
• Automate where you can. Opt-ins, templates, workflows, and scheduled emails are your best friends when time is limited and to help you stay consistent.

One Last Thing…

Flodesk has become one of the tools I use almost daily in my business and has changed the way I market my artwork. It supports my business, reflects my brand, and makes it easy to share what I love with the people who want to hear from me.

If you’re a creative entrepreneur, artist, or small business owner looking to build a more connected, inspired audience, I can’t recommend it enough. If you’d like to give it a try, Use my partner link here to get 50% off your first year of Flodesk! Being an affiliate means that I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share the things I love, and I’ve been using and loving Flodesk for five years now!

And if you’re curious to see how I use Flodesk in action, hop on my list here and get a peek behind the curtain yourself.