Blogging Goals 2025: Organizing the Almost Practical Newsletter Using Flodesk and Grow Automailer
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The Almost Practical Newsletter is all about organization and productivity – and ironically it, itself, needed some organization.
Actually the newsletter is not really the issue – it’s me who needed a little help.
One of my 2025 business goals was to revamp my newsletter to make it more useful and consistent.
I have to admit that my least favorite part about blogging is email. Yes, I know it is the best way to communicate with readers – and a good list is an online marketer’s dream but the writing of it is a complete chore for me. I would rather spend my time working on blog posts and have my readers drop in for content that is interesting to them.
Over the years I tried to make writing an email newsletter easier for me – I tested out several email platforms and took a variety of email marketing courses. But I only ended creating a huge mess and creating chaos instead of organization.
So for 2025 I decided to simplify my efforts and come up with a plan using tools that I already have available at my disposal.
If you are a blogger who is struggling with your own email marketing strategy – then I know you will commiserate with me and hopefully find some of what I am doing helpful to your own business. If you are not interested in blogging, you can skip on by this article.
Two Email Tools and Strategy I Am Using
The two key tools that I am using in 2025 to manage my email strategy are:
Flodesk
When you send out emails for business the one thing that you absolutely need is an email service provider. There are so many great ones out there to choose from. I have been in blogging long enough to have tried many – and the one that I finally settled on is Flodesk.
Many of the features that Flodesk offers are comparable to that of other services – they have great looking sign up forms (which I do not use since I am using the Grow Automailer for sign ups), you can set up workflows and segment your subscribers, and also upgrade to include checkout pages etc.
But to be honest, the one feature that pulled me in is their flat pricing structure. You pay one yearly fee no matter how many subscribers are on your list. For me, this structure is not only cost effective, it also makes sense since I have not been consistent with my email list.
If you engage with your email list on a regular basis and it makes you money – then a pricier email service provider may be worth the investment. But I think Flodesk offers lots of flexibility should I choose to do more with email and also the right price point if l decide to let email slide and focus on blogging instead.
If you have not yet tried Flodesk and want to take it for a ride, you can use this link to get 50 percent off of your first year subscription.
New users: Sign up for Flodesk and get 50% off your first year subscription using the link below!
Grow Automailer by Mediavine
The next tool that I am using for my new email strategy is the Grow Automailer from Mediavine.
Note that this tool is available to you even if you are not a publisher that uses Mediavine for ads. You can simply sign up for a free account here.
Grow has a native integration with several email providers including – Kit, Mailerlite, and now – Flodesk.
The Grow tool itself has many features – but the one that I am implementing in 2025 is the Automailer. This tool “generates a digest email based off of articles on your site”. This email is sent out weekly to your subscribers.
While I have been using many of the other features that Grow offers for years, I always hesitated on setting up the Automailer because in the past there was no way to manually unsubscribe people from your email list. Previously, I would import sign ups into my email provider and – as is typical of the industry, some people would unsubscribe using the link in my emails. I needed a way to make sure I could remove these addresses from my Grow list before turning on Automailer.
Well, finally, Grow has implemented ways to sync your unsubscribes and also manually remove addresses. If you have an older list, the process of making sure all your lists are in agreement is tedious and involves downloading and cross referencing csv files from Grow and your email service provider. In the end, my list was a somewhat manageable size and I whittled it down as best as I could. This help article also states that Grow will send a double opt in email to imported addresses without an IP address which also gives me confidence that emails will only be sent to persons that actually want to receive them.
Concerns About Grow Automailer
While the idea of having my email newsletter go out automatically is very appealing I do have concerns.
First, my blog is 10 years old – and some of my old content might not be noteworthy in the present day. However, these articles still do well in the search engines so I don’t want to delete the posts – yet I don’t necessarily want them to go out as part of my newsletter weekly digest.
Luckily, there is a way in Automailer to exclude content but I need to learn more about it and how to implement it in a way that makes sense.
I am also worried about how this type of weekly digest will be received by my audience. Will they like it? Will they engage with it? All of that is yet to be seen.
Email Marketing Strategy
It’s kind of funny because it is so applicable – but this Grow help article states that Automailer is for
➡️ Publishers that have yet to devise a specific email strategy
Yes, yes – that is me!
Right now my email goals are to:
- grow my subscribers
- drive traffic to my blog
- open up my time for focusing on creating new content for my blog
- send out occasional relevant offers to my list
- communicate consistently with my list
- and segment my email list by interest so that I can refine my strategy as time goes on.
Next Steps
Having arrived at this point – my next step is to take a closer look at the email sign up forms and process on my blog and simplify this.
In the past, I had several different sign ups, freebies, and welcome sequences based on the various topics that I blog about. While it seems like a good strategy – and what all the experts tell you to do, I simply could not keep up with it.
I plan to create one sign up form (or perhaps multiple sign up forms) that all lead to the same welcome sequence and the one newsletter from the Grow Automailer. My hope is that readers will self-select the content that is relevant to their situation.
To see if that is working, I will monitor my sign up numbers, click through rates, and other metrics that are relevant.
Do You Use Grow with Flodesk?
Tell me about your experience in the comments below.
Email Marketing Resources
Here are some resources that I currently use or have used in the to manage my email marketing:
