Client Case Study
The Mom 100's Successful Migration from Mailchimp to Flodesk
This case study discusses how we helped Katie Workman, owner of “The Mom 100” food blog, migrate her email list from Mailchimp to Flodesk to reach her audience and grow her business more efficiently. We’ll cover the challenges she faced, her objectives, and the solutions we implemented to achieve her goals.
Introduction
Katie Workman owns the award-winning “The Mom 100” blog, an online space offering fuss-free comfort food recipes.
Katie, like many female entrepreneurs, wears a lot of hats. She’s a cook, a writer, a mother of two, an activist in hunger issues, and an avid—but not judgy—advocate for and fan of home cooking.
She’s written The Mom 100 Cookbook (2012) and Dinner Solved! (2015), and they’ve sold well and have gotten lovely praise from publications such as Cooking Light, Tasting Table, and the New York Times.
Background
Katie started her business and blogging in 2012, when her kids were young and cooking for a family with little people was the focus of her kitchen world.
Early on, she realized that building an email list for her blog and business is essential to succeed and reach her audience. When she started with “The Mom 100” blog, she initially chose Mailchimp as her email marketing provider as it got the job done.
At the beginning of 2023, Katie attended the Tastemaker Conference—the premier food blogger conference for influencers and content creators—where she was introduced to a new email marketing platform, Flodesk.
"Mailchimp worked fine, but it was expensive, and clunky in design, without much room for modification. Flodesk seems more streamlined, and also geared towards giving the user easy access to data about open rates, users, etc, easier to segment and analyze. I also wanted to make the change before embarking on a welcome series, which Flodesk seemed very well suited for."
Objectives
Once the decision was made to switch providers, Katie needed someone to help her strategize, plan, and execute her list migration and set her up on the new platform from scratch.
She wanted to do something new and offer a freebie for new subscribers to her email list beyond getting her regular weekly emails full of delicious recipes. And she wanted to set up a welcome workflow that was missing from her email marketing strategy so far.
She was short on time and knew it best to leave it to an expert.
We set up an introduction call via Zoom, where Katie and her Content Manager, Colleen, talked about their current email marketing setup and explained their needs and expectations in detail.
"I found Petra when checking out the Flodesk FB group, and thought - ooh, maybe she’s taking on freelance clients! Colleen and I have very full plates, and didn’t have time to learn all the ins and outs with Flodesk. We thought it would be well worth it to find someone who could help us with the migration, and get us properly set up within Flodesk, as well as advise on how to best set up a welcome series, load in lead magnet documents, and help with best practices. As soon as we spent 30 minutes with Petra on a Zoom call, we knew we had found our person!"
Solution and Implementation
Based on this initial, complimentary call, Katie received a detailed project proposal with a quote for their review—which she accepted.
After both of us signed the client service agreement electronically (save the trees), and the invoice was paid, the project officially started.
What was delivered?
- Advice on re-engagement campaign in Mailchimp to clean up the existing email list
- Migration of eligible Mailchimp subscribers to Flodesk to their relevant segments
- Design and setup of a new freebie opt-in form, freebie delivery email and freebie workflow
- Setup of a new welcome email workflow with three custom-designed emails
- Design of a weekly newsletter template
- Replacement of the old newsletter forms with the new Flodesk inline forms on the website
- Design and setup of a full-page newsletter subscription form
- Updating the existing Mediavine Grow signup form and connecting it via Zapier to Flodesk
- 45-minute mini-training on how to use Flodesk, showing how to
- design, edit and schedule/send your newsletter emails,
- save emails as favorites, and where to find these emails in the template gallery,
- access account-level analytics and email-level/workflow-level reports on the platform,
- use segments, and
- answering any additional questions you have about using Flodesk.
+ Email strategy advice on any questions raised during our status calls and via email.
Results
The project was completed in time for Katie to pause their paid Mailchimp subscription and transition to Flodesk completely.
"We are saving about $200 a month, which is great! Also, Flodesk has unlimited subscribers and emails."
Since the migration, her email open rates and click rates have soared. Their average email open rate on Mailchimp was ~25%, with a click rate of 2%.
These have almost doubled now on Flodesk with average email open rates of 45% and click rates of 4,6%. And the newly set up freebie delivery and welcome workflows have an average open rate of 51.8% with an average click rate of 12.8%.
"Petra was knowledgeable about all aspects of the migration, from the capabilities of Flodesk to the best ways to create a welcome series of emails. Petra was a pleasure to work with, hit every deadline, was a clear communicator, kept us on track, and made herself available as we made the transition. She was just terrific."
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