The Best Email Design Software (Flodesk Drag & Drop Email Marketing Review)
As an email marketer of over 11 years, and through trial & error I’ve discovered the best email design software out there for creatives & small businesses alike…
Yep, way before I started my website design business in 2015, I actually ran email marketing campaigns for several other companies before this (from B2B software, to ecommerce print companies and more).
So I’ve been around the block; using different platforms, seeing different email design trends change, and discovering what works best for me (and my web design clients!).
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*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.
What is the best email design software for your marketing campaigns?
So after trying several of the most popular email marketing platforms and their email design tools, my favourite of them all has to be Flodesk*.
Flodesk are relatively new on the scene for email marketing platforms and I first started experimenting with their features back in 2020, falling quickly in love with their intuitive email design software.
As a creative myself, I found myself feeling constantly frustrated with how difficult it was to design beautiful email templates in other tools like Mailchimp, Convertkit, ActiveCampaign, Mailerlite etc. These tools either required coding knowledge, awkward mobile device views, or clunky drag and drop editors that looked very basic.
And I knew my website design clients felt the same way too, with one of the biggest things putting them off getting started with email marketing being how difficult the email design process was!
Below are some more in-depth reasons as to how Flodesk’s email design platform* feels so much more intuitive…
Customise the best responsive email templates
Flodesk comes with a large range of beautiful email campaign templates for you to use and customise, helping you to get started straight away OR you can easily start from scratch too and create your own fully custom email designs.
But regardless of what you choose, your emails in Flodesk will always be mobile responsive, which is hugely important when more than ⅓ of all emails are opened on an iPhone!
The issue with other email platforms is that you might be encouraged to design your emails in a graphic design program (eg. Canva) first, but this isn’t always a great idea for:
Email deliverability & usability (large image files can be more likely to be flagged by spam)
Email accessibility (it’s harder to convey information through images vs text for screenreaders)
Mobile responsiveness! (eg. text size won’t adjust based on the screen if it’s built into a graphic)
Design with ease with Flodesk’s drag-and-drop email builder
Designing a no-code, no-graphic-design-program-needed email in Flodesk is incredibly easy with their drag and drop email builder.
There are lots of different ‘content blocks’ to choose from to add to your designs, including prebuilt layouts, product blocks, countdown timers and more! All without needing to know any HTML.
Each block is completely customiseable too, from the spacing to the colours and fonts. My clients LOVE how easy this email builder is for creative, visual brains.
PS. Read my ‘Ultimate Guide to Flodesk’ here.
Add engaging polls to emails *new*
Flodesk recently released an awesome new feature where you can add interactive ‘poll’ blocks to your emails. Give your subscribers a choice to click, and it will display a dynamic poll results page. You can also connect each choice to a segment or custom field, so you can collect more information about your subscribers as they vote.
This email feature is such a great way to encourage engagement in your emails, and not something that many email design softwares offer!
Create beautiful, optimised email sign up forms too
As well as being able to create beautiful email designs in Flodesk*, you can create a cohesive brand experience by designing your email sign up forms in their platform too.
There are also plenty of customiseable sign up form templates to choose from, and they’ve recently added some really fun new features too…
Add videos to your sign up forms to create that personal connection, add countdown timers to make a sense of urgency, and even gamify your sign up forms with the fun ‘spinner forms’ too.
All incredibly simple to set up with no code knowledge needed.
How to design beautiful emails
What goes into the making an email campaign look beautiful? Below are some tips to help you…
Use your brand colours (but check contrast & readability)
Creating a consistent brand theme across your website, content and email marketing is really important, so you can use your ‘Branding’ settings in Flodesk to set your brand colours and make them easy to access when designing.
However just be sure to check that there’s enough contrast between backgrounds and text colours to make the text readable!
Less is more when designing emails
Minimal emails can sometimes have more impact than heavily designed ones, and it’s also important to consider your email deliverability as well, as generally lots of image files & graphics in one email can cause issues with spam filters.
Make text scannable
Break up large chunks of text with subheadings and bullet points to make it easy to scan through, and try to keep your content as concise as possible.
Break into sections with images & design features
If you’re creating email newsletters with different segments & sections, you can use line blocks, or different coloured backgrounds, or images to create those distinctions.
Get inspired with Flodesk’s pre-built ‘layout’ blocks
Flodesk have loads of gorgeous ‘layout’ blocks to choose from that you can customise to look totally unique in your email designs. I love using these to add a bit of interest to my emails!
Why I love and use Flodesk for myself and my design clients
I’ve been using Flodesk* for over 4 years now, and absolutely love it, but I also recommend it to many of my website design clients as well.
Yes, the intuitive email design software has a huge part to play in this, but there are lots of other reasons why I love Flodesk as well…
Fixed price no matter how many subscribers you have
You’ll notice when you look at other email marketing softwares, they usually have tiered pricing which gets more expensive as your list grows, but not Flodesk!
You won’t get penalised for growing your email list and getting more subscribers, because Flodesk has a fixed price no matter how many you have!
I’ve spoken about this before but I was paying over £150 a month for another tool at one point, so switching to Flodesk has ended up saving me over £1000 each year!
Easy automations & link actions
If the idea of email automation sounds scary, Flodesk has made this really and intuitive, much like their email design tool.
It’s easy to set up automated workflows that send out freebie emails, welcome emails and sales sequences to your subscribers while you’re sleeping, AND their new ‘link actions’ feature means you can automatically segment your subscribers or add them to workflows based on what they’re clicking on in your emails too.
Integrate easily with any website
As a Squarespace designer, I recommend Flodesk for my web design clients because it’s so easy to connect. But it’s also incredibly easy to connect to WordPress, Showit, Shopify, and really any website platform too!
PS. Read my comparison of Flodesk vs Squarespace Email Campaigns here.
Create custom email templates & form templates to share
Not only can you use and customise Flodesk’s email and form templates, you can also create your own templates to share with clients or sell too!
In-depth analytics
Flodesk has a whole, in-depth ‘Analytics’ area in their dashboard which dives deep into email opens and clicks, subject lines, sign up form performance and email subscriber analysis too. See quickly the best days & times to send emails, which sign up forms are bringing you the most subscribers, and much more.
Get 50% off your first year of Flodesk!
If you’re seriously considering using Flodesk and your email design software, you can start with a 30 day free trial plus 50% off your first year* of your subscription using my sign up link below.
(+ Remember, no matter how big your list grows, Flodesk has a fixed price! So no nasty surprises later on either…)
