The real power on an email marketing strategy lies in Email Automation.
If you can create a process for sending a welcome email as soon as someone joins your email list, that is email automation in its basic form and it is generally known as the Welcome sequence.
Flodesk workflow offers a pre-built welcome sequence and we are going to have a look at it.
Before creating a workflow we will need at least one email list segmentation and a sign-up form to add people to your email list.
A sign-up for helps us to add people to a certain list. For example, if you are running a giveaway and keep track of the people who joined through your giveaway, you could create a form called 'Giveaway form' and add people coming through that form to a segment called 'Giveaway participants'.
[ If you want to know how to create Flodesk forms, check out this post. ]
So whenever someone gets added to the segment called 'Giveaway participants', a welcome mail sequence can be sent to them. It is called 'Trigger' which you will get to know in a second.
In short, a in order to begin a workflow you need a trigger and that trigger is subscribers added to a segment. For that to happen you need a form and a segment.
Now let's go to flodesk, sign-in and click on Workflow
When you click on creat new workfow, it opens up with a few pre-built workflows or you have to option to start from scratch.
You have the choice of selecting Nurture sequence, Welcome sequence, Lead magnet delivery and sales sequence from the pre-built workflows.
Since we are getting started, we are going to select Welcome email sequence and customise it to our needs. So we are going ahead and selecting the Welcome Sequence.
There is our first look of a welcome sequence. Click on 'Customize' to get started.
Basic components of any email marketing automation are Trigger and Action.
Think of it as cause and effect, action and reaction. You flick a switch, light turns on. You push a button, missile fires. A subscriber joins, flodesk shoots an email. Trigger and Actions are pretty much that straightforward.
Now you are getting into the territory of Triggers and Actions. I will soon publish a post on everything yu need to know about Triggers and Actions.
You need a trigger to start the workflow. Without a starting trigger you can't expect an email automation to work.
Compared to other high end, more expensive email marketing systems, there are limited options available in flodesk to start a workflow. In fact there is only one trigger available which is 'Subscriber is added to a segment'.
Though we can still create amazing automations by smartly creating sign-up forms and moving subscribers from one segment to another depending on their actions etc. So flodesk is still manages to pull of some interesting automations.
Now let us add our first starting trigger.
Click on "Add Trigger" and on the right hand side select "A subscriber is added to segment" and then select the segment that you want automation to trigger.
For example, imagine you have two segments - Australia and New Zealand. You are offering entirely different products to Aussies and Kiwis. So when you advertise your Australian product, you only want the Aussies to see the ad and subsequently sign-up. When they sign-up, since you've used a separate form to capture each segments, Aussies will be added to a segment you named as Australians. You have also designed emails tailored towards Australians by including the product you're offering them.
So whenever someone joins through the Australia specific sign-up form, they will be added to a segment called 'Australian' (which you have created)
When they are added to this segment, we can use it as a trigger to send out welcome emails.
So when you set the trigger as "A subscriber is added to segment" - Australia, your automation will start. That is an example of how segments decides which automation to run.
Now that we have successfully added a trigger, we need to set up an email to send out. Afterall that is the point of welcome email, isn't it?
In our pre-built workflow a welcome email is already added. As soon as someone joins in the specified segment, this email will be sent out.
When you click on the email, you will be able to edit and customise the email content, sender email address, subject line and preview just like any other emails in flodesk.
Once we are happy with how the email looks lets get to the next step.
You want a welcome email as soon as someone joins your list.
Someone is interested in your product/service, they want to know more about you and hence they signed up through one of your email list builder forms. And they expect to see something from you as soon as they sign up. Hence we did send them the email immediately.
But they don't want to receive all other emails then and there. That is when we need to add some delay between our emails.
With this option, you can keep on sending emails to a person who joined your list at regular intervals and it is completely automated! You can set your delay as a week, a month, 2 days, half an hour, 5 minutes and so on.
You can also decide to send the emails on certain day of the week, certain time of the week or on a specific day which means you can send an email on every Monday, in the evening or at 10 am on Valentines day. You have a lot of options available.
Once you get a hang of this, you can repeat the steps as many times as you want depending on your email marketing strategy.
Add a timer, send another email, add yet another timer and add one more email and so on. And this is just your welcome sequence alone. And that is the power of automation. Set and forget( don't forget it completely though). And everyone who joins this list segment, irrespective of when they joined, get all the mail according the time schedule you have provided.
Now that is your Flodesk Workflow welcome email sequence. Let me know if you have any questions.
