Email Marketing for Website Designers: Grow Your Design Business
If you’re wondering whether to add email marketing to your content strategy, but you’re not sure if it’s worth it for website designers, keep reading!
One of the things I’m so grateful I did back in 2016 when I was a year into my website design business, was start an email list. In fact, even then I wish I’d done it sooner!
Email marketing has been a key feature in my content strategy for 8+ years now, and I want to share with you WHY it is very much worth your time, and how us website designers can harness it to actually get more clients.
Table of Contents
*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links where I get a small commission if you make a purchase, so thank you in advance for your support! Please know I would never recommend anything that I don’t personally LOVE myself.
The Benefits: Why is email marketing great for website designers?
You own your email list (more reliable than social media)
When you collect email addresses into your subscriber list - no matter what email marketing tool you’re using - you technically own that list and can easily export and import it into any other tool you like.
Meanwhile, on social media, you don’t own your Instagram followers in the same way. They are a part of the platform and if the platform decides to remove them, or block/remove your account, there’s no way for you to get access to that audience again.
So growing an email list is a more reliable asset to have than a social media following.
PS. The tool I personally use, love & recommend to all my clients is Flodesk*! You can get 50% off your first year with my link. I share more about why I love it below…
Use your email list to stay ‘top of mind’ + nurture your audience
The key point of using email marketing is having a way to communicate with your subscribers and remind them of your value and how you can help them - NOT necessarily by promoting your services constantly, but by nurturing them and creating that stepping stone between them discovering your brand and actually hiring you.
I talk more about creating this ‘funnel’ type content startegy in my free ‘Get More Clients’ masterclass 👇🏼
Your emails can show you’re an authority / Expert / Relatable
Within this ‘nurturing’ content, you’re able to show your email subscribers that you’re the GO-TO authority & expert in your industry, and maybe show a bit more of yourself behind-the-scenes so that they feel they have more personal access and relate to you more.
Email Marketing is More Personalised & tailored than social media
With your email marketing software, you’re able to create segments and lists of subscribers based on certain criteria, such as what they’re interested in, or what actions they’ve taken with your content etc.
This way, you’re able to send more personalised, tailored messages to specific people, which is so much more impactful than a generic ‘broadcast’ message that you’d share to all your followers on Instagram.
You can also do things like include peoples’ names and specific details inside emails too, which I show how in this Flodesk tutorial.
Email marketing gives you better and predictable data
Most email marketing tools give you useful analytics that get detailed about exactly WHO has opened and click which emails, and other useful information. It also tends to be more predictable than social media analytics, which are very changeable due to algorithms etc.
How email marketing benefits your website design clients too
Becoming an email marketing pro isn’t just great for your own marketing, these skills can also have a knock-on effect for your website design clients!
You’re learning skills + platforms your clients need too
A large % of my website design clients also want to start and grow email lists, and this is something that needs to be integrated into their websites. So it’s important for me as a website designer to understand how to use these tools, integrate them with websites, and best practices around ‘privacy’ and conversions too!
You can offer email marketing / set up as an extra service
Adding email sign up forms to your clients’ websites might already be something you offer, but if you have additional skills around email marketing (because you’re using it for yourself!) you could easily add this as an extra service to help your clients set up their platforms or get started with their first emails or sequences/workflows.
Or add value by designing email templates for your clients
Or if you don’t fancy offering an extra service, perhaps you could add value to your existing website design service (OR create an additional passive income stream!) by offering custom email templates that match the design of the client’s new website!
Flodesk* allows you to create custom templates to sell or send to your clients easily with their new template feature.
The best email marketing tool for website designers
So I’ve mentioned it a few times already but Flodesk* is really the perfect email marketing tool for website designers. I’ve written a full ultimate guide to Flodesk before, but here are a few top reasons:
Fixed price (no matter how many subscribers you have)
Most (if not every?) other email marketing tools increase in price as your list grows, whereas Flodesk always costs the same ($38 per month or $19 per month for the first year if you sign up with my link!*). This can save you £100s a month when your list gets into the 1000s (trust me, I’ve been there paying over £150 a month for another tool!).
beautiful, intuitive design
Flodesk is definitely the leading platform for creating BEAUTIFUL email designs that look as gorgeous as your brand and website designs, and they make it way easier to do this than all the other platforms as well. It’s second-to-none on the design front (which is obviously important for us designers!).
easily integrate with any website platform
No matter what platform you use for your website, you can easily add Flodesk. I personally use Squarespace and it’s super easy to integrate Flodesk, but you can do this with anything. This also means it’s a great platform for you to suggest to your clients as well!
an affiliate program you can use for your clients
If you DO decide to use Flodesk*, you automatically get added to their affiliate program, which means if you recommend Flodesk to your clients and they sign up, you can start generating passive income from this. I earn £1000s every year from this.
Want to see some comparisons?
Get 50% off your first year of Flodesk (making it just $19 per month, no matter how many subscribers you have!) with my sign up link*!
How to grow your email list
In order to grow your email list and get more email subscribers, you’ll need to:
Offer Value in exchange for People signing up
It’s not enough to just slap ‘Join the newsletter’ on a sign up form and expect people to sign up. You need to incentivise them but sharing something of value for your potential website design clients! I talk more about how to do this and what you can create inside my Email Marketing with Flodesk course.
Promote your email list
Treat your email list just like you would a product or service and promote it. You need to share about it on social media and your other content platforms in order for people to be aware of it and then sign up.
Be sure to watch my free ‘Get More Clients’ masterclass which touches on why this is so important!
What to send to your email list
You don’t want to be putting ALL your focus on growing your email list, with no content strategy for what you’re planning to send to your list. As website designers, we could send:
Value / tip-based emails
Case studies & portfolio projects
Industry / trend insights
Your process & availability
Those are just a few examples, but don’t forget about setting up welcome sequences and automations too. I have more tips about improving email list engagement here, and my Email Marketing with Flodesk course has its own separate strategy course inside that goes more in-depth into all this.
The best email marketing course for website designers
Want to learn how to use email marketing to promote your website design business, from an actual website designer who has done it? My course - Email Marketing with Flodesk - teaches you how to start, grow and nurture an engaged email list of your ideal clients, with the strategy AND tech tutorials you need.
In this online course you will Learn how to:
✔ Run a GDPR/legally compliant email list and with best practices
✔ Grow & organise an email list of subscribers who actually want to buy from you
✔ Set up & Flodesk forms, email newsletters and workflows that connect seamlessly with your website
✔️ Craft optimised emails & subject lines that get opened and clicked
✔️ Use simple & advanced automations and email sequences to uplevel your marketing
✔️ Understand analytics to help you improve your email strategy over time
+ create opt-in incentives, use Flodesk Checkouts and much more!
