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I started and stopped my email list building journey more times than I can count, both as a retailer and a virtual assistant.

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My biggest hurdle was deciding on an email service provider, also known as an ESB.

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The options were overwhelming.

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Instead of choosing one, I stayed stuck in decision paralysis and put all of my efforts into social media.

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However, I soon realized I loved social media more than it loved me, if you know.

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You know, and I needed to break up with the algorithm.

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So I got serious again about finding an ESP and landed on Flodesk in the fall of 2021.

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About finding an ESP and landed on Flodesk in the fall of 2021.

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Sometimes, as creative entrepreneurs, we get bored quickly and change our software or strategy or craft.

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Y'all know what I'm talking about. Over three years later, the things that initially drew me into Flodesk are still why I am an avid subscriber today.

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So throw on your favorite graphic tee and turn up the heat press because it's time to turn down the hustle.

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Here's your host. Digital marketer.

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Cold brew lover. T-shirt maker, freckled hype girl and owner of Sunkist Virtual Assistant, amy.

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Let's get started with. Where did Flodesk even come from?

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It was started and founded in 2018 by Martha and Rebecca, and reading more about the reasons why they decided to start Flodesk really resonated with me as a business owner.

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Their vision was to reduce the hassle of crafting emails.

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It shouldn't be complicated and it shouldn't take hours.

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It shouldn't be complicated and it shouldn't take hours.

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Instead, that time spent trying to craft emails is lost time and you could have been using that time to either fulfill orders or spend time with family.

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I really love this about them.

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They saw a gap in the industry that didn't have easy to use templates or email marketing.

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They took all of the areas that other ESPs were not doing well or not doing at all and created a business out of it.

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They couldn't find an existing solution to a problem, so they solved it themselves, and I can relate to that.

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At Sunkist Virtual Assistant, I realized that creative entrepreneurs were stuck not posting on social media, kind of heard about tea parties but didn't really know exactly how to do it, and I had this idea what if I start to build step-by-step plans on how they can achieve a tea party or post on social media, like it doesn't have to be overwhelming or confusing or waste time.

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And then then came Sunkist Virtual Assistant.

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And in 2022, in January, I realized I was taking on clients.

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But boy, I had more clients than time in the day.

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What if I could help an unlimited amount of people just by creating courses or digital downloads or products that would allow them to execute it on their own without necessarily needing me to walk them through step-by-step or wait till I'm available?

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So again from the jump Flowdust, their founders story and the reasons why they started Flowdust, I resonated with Not to mention a woman founded company.

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I am all for supporting that.

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So once I learned more about where does this company come from?

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Who founded it? What's their story?

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You know? The next thing I looked for how much does it cost?

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My major mental block was as I grow my email list, or as I want to send more emails, I would have to pay more money as my email list grew.

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For me, that felt very counterintuitive.

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Like I want to grow my email list, but not so much that it's going to bunk me into the next bracket or I'm going to be constantly stressing over hey, they're not opening my emails.

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This is costing me money. I'm going to remove them, versus taking a different strategy or approach.

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When starting my email list, I envisioned having thousands on my list, which thankfully, today I have accomplished, and after a quick look at other ESPs, I realized my dream would cost me at a minimum $60 a month, not including as those rates increase.

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Oh, by the way, they also have an email send limit.

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That's not just subscribers, that's capping your emails on how many you could send.

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Since starting my email list journey with Flodesk, I have successfully grown my email list to just shy of 5,000 subscribers and a consistent 35% to 50% open rate.

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I am extremely happy with Flodesk and what it's allowed me to do for my business.

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I actually joined Flodesk in their early days, during their beta launch, so in 2021, they were still in beta mode and I personally locked in a lifetime rate of $19 per month, and it feels great knowing I can grow my business with a platform that supports my growth without any additional fees.

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However, what does that mean for you today?

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So Flowdust offers a 30 day free trial and you don't have to put in your credit card Like.

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There are no catches, no gimmicks, nothing like that.

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You can truly sign up for Flowdust for 30 days free, check out the show notes or go to sunkissvacom forward slash 26 to grab that link and try out all of the features.

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Poke around, see what I'm talking about as I talk through this episode so you can follow along.

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And then, after those 30 days are free, you can't send any emails.

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You can still play around with your account, but until you enter your credit card you can't continue.

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After those 30 days, and once you activate with your credit card, your first year will be 50% off the entire year.

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So that is $19 a month, what I'm enjoying right now.

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You'll have that for the first year. So, once again, you have nothing to lose that first year with $19 a month After your first year is up.

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Currently, at the time of this recording of this episode, it is $38 a month or $35 a month if you pay for a year at a time.

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Another reason why I love Flodesk is just how easy the platform is to use and the intuitive functions and email builders throughout the software.

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If you look at reviews on other ESPs the majority of the feedback when people don't like it it's because it's overwhelming or confusing or they just could not figure it out.

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I've heard that quite a bit about other ESPs, but Flodesk was designed for those who do not have a full-fledged marketing team.

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Would it be amazing to grow our business to the point where we have to hire a team?

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Yeah, that'd be great, but we should not have to wait until we have a team to build our email list.

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It's almost kind of turning into which came first the chicken or the egg situation.

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Flodesk is also packed full of templates to get you started as well.

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Any newer feature they just released is that we can share templates now.

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So if you're part of my product drop organizer club, you know I provide email templates each month where I've written it all out for you.

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All you got to do is just add your own touch, throw in your products and make sure it fits your brand voice and schedule that email.

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Now I can build those emails directly in Flodesk, format them all for you.

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You just open up that template and probably in a few minutes you're ready to schedule that email.

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Super simple to use with all of their templates.

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I get the question a lot like hey, amy, well, I'm already using the built-in features of my website to collect emails and I'm sending emails that way.

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Isn't that enough?

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Why do I need another ESP service provider.

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Isn't that enough? Why do I?

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Why do I need another ESP service provider?

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Well, for starts, what your website host is providing for you is truly just the surface layer to email marketing.

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There is so much more to email marketing beyond just sending a random 10% off email here and there or a band and cart.

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We're segmenting, we're building funnels, we have time sequences, we're getting opt-ins and providing different value offers beyond just a discount to get them onto your email list.

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And what happens when you decide to pause your website?

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We've all been there in seasons where you realize hey look, I personally don't think that I'm at a point where I can continue to pay this website fee.

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I'm going to take a break. Well, if you pause your website and that was also what you were using for emails now you're no longer collecting emails to grow your email list.

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Well, with Flodesk, you don't have to have a website to collect emails and send emails.

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So that's a big misconception. What you can do in Flodesk is, if you go to the forms tab, select full page form, you can create a beautiful opt-in page to have people join your list.

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Have that pinned in your Facebook groups or your socials, wherever you are, in all of your tea parties.

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Even if you don't have a website, you can still collect emails and grow your email list, believe it or not.

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Flotas actually added a feature, I want to say, maybe a year and a half ago.

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It's actually checkout. So, I just mentioned, you don't need a website to be building your email list, which is completely true, but if you are only selling a few products and again you either don't have the time or the energy to build a full fledged website, you can actually build pages to sell from through Flodesk If you have a product you want to sell.

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What's really cool, too, is that they don't keep a commission of your sales.

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All you have to do is just pay that Stripe processing fee.

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Checkout, though, is an additional add on each month, though it's not included with the basic unlimited plan price, so you would have to pay a bit more each month, but it is an option for somebody that has maybe gone through a season of overwhelm where you don't want to build a website right now or you have it paused.

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Whatever your situation may be, flodesk does have a checkout option, which is pretty cool because you could sell directly in your emails and lead them straight to the checkout.

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Let's talk about who Flodesk integrates with.

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So currently you can integrate your Instagram feed so it can appear at the bottom of your emails or wherever you want it to appear in your emails.

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It'll automatically sync your most recent posts.

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You can customize that block to however many posts you want to share, what you want it to look like.

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It also automatically and directly integrates with Shopify.

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So as people join your email list from Shopify maybe at checkout they select yes, I'd like to receive email marketing you can have that automatically imported into Flodesk so they can join your email list to email them.

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Also, if you use any quiz software, such as Interact, it will automatically integrate there along with Marvelist.

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If you have any courses, they will integrate Flodesk along with Session.

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So if you're taking more service-based clients, you can integrate with Flowdesk.

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So if you're taking more service-based clients, you can integrate with Flodesk.

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However, it's not limited there. While those are the only integrations at this time that directly work with Flodesk, you can connect a multitude of other third-party softwares using either Zapier or Pably Connect.

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I personally use Zapier. A few of the instances there is if customers buy a certain product, I have Zapier.

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What's called a Zap. I have a Zap created where whenever it recognizes that action has been taken or that product has been purchased, the Zap will send to Flodesk and automatically add people to that email segment.

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Also, I have a Google Sheet where if I'm typing in first name, last name email into a Google Sheet, I also have another Zap built that will automatically add individuals to a segment, depending on what the situation is or if I get a Google form response, I can have it automatically add them to a segment as well.

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So Zapier, it's an amazing tool.

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After you check out Flodesk, you should check out Zapier.

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It's pretty cool how you can make all of your different apps work together and they're all connected through Zapier.

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When it comes to branding in Flodesk, what you can do is once you go into my account and hit the branding tab, you can add your logo.

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That will appear anytime you add the logo block.

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Also, go ahead and upload your brand colors.

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They used to cap it at, I think it was like six colors.

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Now they're up to 10 now, so you can have those colors at at once, kind of like Canva, and then they're easily accessible whenever you're building emails.

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You can also upload your own font.

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So whatever your brand font is, upload that into Flodesk and you can use that for your emails.

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Whenever you use a custom font block, add your website so that will also link to your logo anytime someone clicks it.

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So that will also link to your logo anytime someone clicks it. Also, your social links.

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There are so many social links you can add through float us just to name a few Instagram, facebook, pinterest, youtube, podcasts.

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Let me see what else do I recognize here?

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Your Amazon, your Etsy threads, vimeo, tiktok, spotify.

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So many different social links that you can add.

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Pretty sure that's more than what Shopify even offers on their own website.

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There are tons of social links that you can add in your setup for Flodesk to be added at the bottom of every email.

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Added at the bottom of every email. Finally, why I love Flodesk is their analytics tab.

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When I join, this tab did not exist, so I even chose Flodesk, even without knowing I didn't have the ability to analyze all of the emails I send at a glance, but now they've since added that.

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So that is a huge bonus feature for Flodesk, so you can analyze multiple different areas of your email marketing at a time, whether it's subscribers, certain emails, opt-in forms, workflows and even your checkouts.

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If you're using that to try to convert, you can look at how many new subscribers have you gotten in the last X number of weeks.

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Where did they come from? Like.

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Are they coming from Shopify? Are they coming from a certain form?

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You can see their activity out of you, like.

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How many subscribers did you lose? How many did you gain?

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Which segment of the subscribers is performing the best?

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So the subscribers and your newsletter segment is performing better than maybe your sweatshirt segment, whatever it is.

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You can start to compare the two. Also, emails I love this tab.

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It starts to show you the best day to send emails.

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You can start to analyze when were people the most active on which days.

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Also, when did people open your emails?

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When are they most active? Along with, are they opening it on a desktop, a mobile device and, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, super powerful performance by email.

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Take a look at what your subject line was and see how it performed.

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Is there a subject line that performs better than others?

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What were your worst performing subject lines?

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This is a great area to take note of that.

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So that's just a few reasons why I love Flodesk, if any of them resonated with you and you're wanting to try it out?

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Head to the show notes sunkissvacom forward, slash 26,.

16:55

Grab the link. It'll get you all the details to get started and you can start investing in something you own.

17:03

What do I mean by that? You do not own your social media followers.

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You don't own your Facebook group.

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You are at the mercy of Facebook's changing dynamics, or whatever social media platform you're using their algorithm.

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You are at their mercy.

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Or what if there is an incident or an accident and somehow you're locked out of your account or your group disappears?

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We all know people that has happened to Then where do they start Over from scratch?

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You're not going to do that if you start investing in building an email list.

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Don't even get me started on how difficult it is to reach your customers on social media.

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But the main focus is you can start building your email list with a list of subscribers that are your subscribers.

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You own that list.