Email Marketing for Artists: Lead Generation & Newsletter Growth

1. Email Marketing for Artists: Lead Generation & Newsletter Growth: Hi, everyone. I'm Carrie Cantwell, and I'm an illustrator. I'm an educator, and I'm also a community builder. So if you're an artist like me, you probably share your work on platforms like Instagram or Behance or Etsy. But here's the thing about those platforms. They can change the rules or disappear overnight. What happens if your account gets shut down or the algorithm changes? I don't want you to lose access to your audience just because of decisions that you cannot control. That's why I'm here to talk to you about something that you can control, your email list. It's one of the most powerful tools to build real lasting connections with your audience. These followers could be potential freelance clients. They could be customers. They could be fellow artists or fellow students. In this class, I'm going to show you how to take ownership of your community with an email list, which is the best way to build real lasting connections outside of social media and its ever changing algorithms. You don't need any fancy tools or tech skills or a huge following to get started. This class is perfect whether you are just starting out or already growing your creative community. You don't have to be salesy or super outgoing to make this work. This class, I'm going to walk you through how I use a tool called flow Desk to create what's called a lead magnet to attract the right people. If you don't know what I mean by a lead magnet, don't worry because I'm going to explain that in this class. You can create lead magnets using any email platform, but my personal favorite and the one that I'm going to show you is flow Desk. I absolutely love flowdsk because I have found that it is the easiest one to use, and it is beautiful right out of the box. You'd like more information about flow Desk, you can find that in the class description, which is just below this video, all you have to do is click on the About tab. Are you ready to take control of your creative journey and build a community that's truly yours? I cannot wait to help you get started. Let's dive in. 2. What Is A Lead Magnet?: So first things first, what is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is something valuable and easily sharable that you give away in exchange for someone's email address. Think of it as a little thank you gift for joining your list. It's a way to say, Hey, I see you, I get you, and I made this just for you. It doesn't have to be fancy or complicated. It just has to be useful, relevant, or inspiring to your audience. Think of it as the start of a relationship. Instead of just asking someone to give you their email address, you're offering something meaningful first. The goal here isn't to be salesy or spammy. A great lead magnet feels generous. It shows that you understand your audience's interests, and it gives them a reason to want to hear more from you. And here's the best part. You only need one good lead magnet to start. You can always tweak or add more later. When you're brainstorming what to create as your lead magnet, try stepping into your audience's shoes for a moment. Imagine yourself as them. Think to yourself. If I were them, what kind of freebie would make me feel excited, seen, and appreciated? Maybe it's something that would make life a little easier as a fellow artist or something useful or time saving. Or maybe it's just something fun or beautiful, something that would brighten up their day and make them feel like, Wow, this person really gets me. That is the sweet spot that you're aiming for. In this class, I'm going to walk you through how I actually create a lead magnet using flow desk, and it is gonna go from idea to finished email form. It will be super simple. I promise, Let's get into it. 3. Examples of Good Lead Magnets: So Alright, so let's talk about examples. Here are some types of lead magnets that work really well for artists and creatives. You can create printable art or wallpapers. Offer a downloadable phone or desktop wallpaper or a mini printable art piece. It is simple, visual and gives people a sense of your style. You can share behind the scenes content. Share a time lapse video of your creative process or a sketchbook tour or a studio playlist. So music maybe that sets the mood for when you are creating. You can share templates or guides. If you're a designer, maybe offer a mini template, or if you're a photographer, share a posing guide. Writers might offer a journaling prompt. Anything that is helpful and easy to digest works great. You can give away discounts or freebies. If you sell products on Etsy, for example, you can offer a discount code or coupon. Another great lead magnet example would be creative challenges or mini courses. Invite people to join a short challenge like five days of drawing prompts or a week of mindful sketching. It's a fun way to encourage and engage people over time. And finally, another great example of a good lead magnet would be a resource list. You can curate a list of your favorite tools, books, supplies, or apps, something that makes your followers feel like insiders. 4. Step 1: Create A Segment: Magnet. The very first step that you want to take for creating your lead magnet through flow desk is you're going to want to go to the flow Desk website, and then you will log in. This is after you've created an account. The very first step is you're going to want to create a segment. The way you do that is up here at the top, you will see an option that says audience. Go ahead and click on that. These are your subscribers. So these are the people that are subscribed to your email newsletter currently. But what we want to do is create a new segment. This is going to be a folder or a section just where the people who are getting this lead magnet are going to go. So if you click on segments, then you will see any segments you already have created. If you've never created one, then you'll probably just see this all subscribers here. But what we want to do is click on this little plus sign here that says new segment, and then we're just going to name it. I am just going to name this test, and I am going to choose a color for it. It really doesn't matter. Then I'm going to click on Save. Now we can see that I have this segment that I just created. I have a color code for it. Here it is right here, it is called Test, and it has no subscribers. You can see here that I have other segments with subscribers listed. So that is the first step. Now, the second step is we're going to want to create a workflow. This is basically an process where when someone subscribes to your email newsletter through the special link that we're going to set up, they will be getting their lead magnet delivered to them via email. But that is going to be happening through what's called a workflow. 5. Step 2: Create A Workflow: Now that you've got your lead magnet ready, it's time to set up the workflow and deliver it. The next thing that we want to do after we've created our segment is go up here to workflows, and then we're going to want to create a new workflow. This is basically the process that will send the email that delivers the lead magnet to your subscribers in that segment. So if you go to new workflow here on the right, and now you are going to see a few options. So flowdsk has a few different templates. Actually, they have a lot of different templates for workflows, and flowdsk may change this at some point. So if you're not seeing exactly what I have here, don't worry. But basically, what they want to do is provide some templates for a workflow, and they have a lot of premade ones. Right now, what I'm seeing is one of the options here says, deliver a freebie, that is the perfect kind of template that you want to use for delivering a lead magnet because basically that's what it is. So I'm going to click on that, and now you'll see here it says lead magnet delivery. This is actually a perfect premade template for delivering a lead magnet. Now, you can use any of these too, but this one really does a lot of the work for you and then you can customize it. I'm going to click on View Details, and now we're going to get to a new screen and it is going to let us actually customize this lead magnet delivery. I'm going to go ahead and click on customize it. And now we have a whole sequence of events here. So basically, the way a workflow works in flow desk and I'm sure in many other, you know, email newsletter platforms, um, basically, they have what are called triggers, and then it has, like, an action, and then it has another trigger. And you can add more triggers with the little plus sign here. But basically, remember when we created that segment that we called test in the previous lesson. So this is where that segment is going to come into play. So a trigger is basically an action. Like when something happens, do this. It's kind of like computer programming, but you don't have to worry about that. So basically, what we have here is a trigger. I just want you to click on the first little box here. It says, lead magnet delivery begins when and then add trigger. And now on the right hand side, do you see this little area that popped up? So the trigger is begin this workflow W, and then we have a couple of options. But the first option that I'm seeing, if you don't see it, you can make sure to click on it and look for it. But it is when a subscriber is added to a segment. So now we are going to choose the segment that we just created so that they are going to go through what's called basically a funnel. You don't need to worry about what that means. But basically, here, right below where it says, When a subscriber is added to a segment, you're going to want to click on the segment. And do you see here where this is the segment that we just recently created? We called it test, but I want you to call it something like your free color palette or free color palettes, or, you know, I don't know, five tips or whatever you're going to be giving away. That way, it's going to be really easy to keep track of what it is. So you see here, I have a lot of segments. I have a flower power one for my flower power class. I have a Skillshare segment. I have one for my plaid class, et cetera. But that way, I know what they are. And that's, I think, part of the reason why you want to color code stuff. So I guess, you know, I have a few overlapping colors, but it's okay. But basically, what you want to do here, this is now why we created that segment, you are going to click on this. So basically, what is going on here is this is kind of like a process. So this lead magnet delivery will begin when a subscriber is added to that segment that we just created, and that is the name of it. And then what happens? The next thing that happens is that an email is sent. See here where it says, send email. That means that when they're added to the segment, this email is going to be sent to them. And this right here is the template that is perfect for delivering a lead magnet. So I'm going to show you an example. So if I click here, this is basically the email template, and basically right now, I'm just selecting it. Now, on the right, you'll see here where we have a few options. So you can change who it's being sent from. I never change that, but you can also change your subject line, so you can have it say something like, here is your freebie or here are your free color palettes. You can even add Emojis. Isn't that cool? So you can also add preview text, which is basically a lot of email readers will show that. When you haven't opened the email yet, it's kind of like a summary. And I do use those because I think actually GML does show those. But basically, yeah, this is where you put the email details like here are your color palettes, et cetera. And then right up here, this is the actual email itself, so you want to hover over it and then click on Edit. And now, and this is a And now that you have clicked on Edit, now we have our email template, and I'm not going to go through all of the potential options that flowdsk has to create a beautiful email because there are millions of them, and there are so many ways to customize your emails. But flowdsk is so easy to use. They really make it very obvious, like what you can do. But really quickly, what I want to show you. So anytime you want to edit something in your workflow or your email and flow Desk, all you have to do is just click on it, and then you can type in there. You can change the font. You can change font colors, et cetera. There's just so many options. And they do have different kinds of layouts. So over here on the right, if you click on Layout, flowdsk has all these like premade layouts that you can even use, and then just put your own content into there. The example I'm going to show you now is, I have a little a color palette selection that I'm going to be giving away. You know, like, thank you for signing up for my email list. Here are some free color palettes. So here are your Oops. Oops. Here are your free color palettes. I think I spelled that right. I don't know. I would spell check that. But anyway, yeah, so you can just basically customize this however you want, and then you can say something here like, thank you for signing up for my newsletter as promised. Oops. Here are your free color color palettes. Now, I want to show you something really cool that flow Desk does, and I'm sure, maybe other email platforms do this, too, but anytime you're typing just regular text in an email or in a workflow, if you just click somewhere in here, just double click. Now we can actually it's going to highlight that word, but we can change things like we can bold the word, et cetera. But you see this little pop up here. So you can add links and attachments. But do you also see at the very end, do you see this little at symbol? It says add personalization. If you click on that, this is where you know when you get emails from people and it says hi and then it's your name, that's how everyone does that, and you can do it, too. So I'm going to click on First Name. And then if First Name is unavailable because when people sign up sometimes for an email newsletter, they don't enter their first name, and you don't have to so if you're delivering, let's say, color palettes to other artists, you could put fellow artists. Now, remember this is the beginning of a sentence. So we're saying, like, you know, care or whatever, but you want to capitalize it, so it's grammatically correct. So if the first name is unavailable, just display the words fellow artist. You can also say friend or, you know, whatever you want, and then I'm going to click on Insert. And I'm going to put a comma there. But now it's going to when this lead magnet is delivered, it's going to be personalized to the person that you are sending it to. And how it knows what the first name is is when we set up our form, it's going to capture that information and personalize each email to every single person, which really just gives it that kind of intimate touch that makes newsletters so special or lead magnet delivery. Anyway, this is basically going to say, Carrie, thank you for signing up for my newsletter or it doesn't if I didn't enter my first name, it'll say, fellow artists, thank you for signing up for my newsletter, et cetera. Isn't that cool? It's really easy to do and if you wanted to, you could do something like highlight free color palettes. And now we could add a link to a URL where you have the color palette maybe JPEG for them to download, or you can even add an attachment here. So I'm going to do a button attachment. But if you were to click on this, you can actually just upload it directly from your computer here. And then they would click on this and it would immediately, you know, just give them the file. So it's really easy. Now, I'm going to leave that the way it is. But here, you know, I don't know if this is really the best I don't know, template. This is kind of boring, in my opinion, but that's okay because flow desk has so many more. So what we can do is, this is a spacer, you know, that's basically you can delete it or whatever. But you want to click on the plus sign here, and we're going to have a new layout. So I'm going to click on the plus sign and then I'm going to go to layouts. You could also add a button and then have that button take someone to URL or say download the color palettes here, and then it would just give them the file. I'm going to look at their layouts. This will work. Okay. So basically, here we have you know, you can put a preview image, and then you can customize it. So I'm going to be giving away some free color palettes in this lead magnet as an example. So if you click here on the image, look on the right hand side, and now we can actually just, you know, grab any image from our computer. I have mine on my desktop, so I'm just going to grab the JPEG. This is my color palettes, and I'm going to click on Open. And now it is showing us the color palettes. Now, it's a little bit cropped. You know, you can kind of play around with that. Again, they also have other layouts that you can use. You could also just click on Image here and then upload it from here, and this is just, you know, kind of like the actual full size image. So you can add a button below that. Basically, what you want to do is find something that looks nice where it's really obvious to the person that's receiving this email how to get their freebie, their lead magnet. What's cool about this too is, if you click anywhere inside this template, you can customize what is shown. You see where it says show header here, that's this. If you just toggle that off, then it hides it. I'm going to leave the divider and the button. I definitely want the button, but we can just write grab your free color palettes. Now we can change the button. I'm going to click on this. You can even change your button style and let's say, let's change the text, so I'm just going to click in here. Download now. We are delivering the color palettes to the user in this email, and we want to make it really obvious and really simple. So yeah, now this download now button, you can do all kinds of stuff with us. So you can make it a link. You can also attach a file. So do you see here, when I click on button on the right, it gives us all kinds of options. You can change the way the button looks. You can change, like, for instance, the color of the button now, of course, you want to pay attention to things like see now, you can't read the text, but that's okay. So you can also change the font. Let's change the font color to something that's more visible. You can also change it here to something that's more bold. So it's really obvious. You can also make it bigger. Where this download Now button is, just put yourself in the position of the person who's receiving this email. So basically, let's say you get this email. You want to know what is this email? What's going on? What are you giving me? You want to know that it is what you signed up for. So you want to thank them. Thank you for signing up. Here are your free color palettes. And what I recommend you do unless you're giving away something that is a huge file size, I really just recommend attaching your freebie directly to the email so they don't have to go anywhere else that it's all inside the email. If I click on this button here, now, if you go to ink on the right, it says Link, but it can also be other things. So see here where it says file and now I can grab the actual JPEG. This is the freebie from my computer. And basically, what happens is, when they click on that link, it is going to directly give them that JPEG directly in their email. So they don't have to go to another website. They don't have to do anything else. What you want to think about is you want to make it as easy as possible with as few steps as possible because if you put yourself in their shoes, you don't want to get a freebie and then have to go through like a whole rigamarole just to get it. You want to make it easy. You want them to know that you value their time. You have other options, too, so you can give them the file, and when they click on that, it can also add them to other segments. It can add them to workflows. It could remove them from this workflow. So you just have so many options, and, you know, a flow desk is just really infinitely customizable. But that's it. And, you know, you can add more. If you just hover over any section, you click the plus sign, you can add text. You could add another button. You know, the possibilities are endless. You could add your Instagram feed, and image, whatever. So, you know, that's basically and you can also add spacers, too. I don't know if you guys saw that dividers. So yeah. It's really, really easy to use. But what I recommend is with your first email in this workflow, don't go crazy sending 1 million things. Don't start pushing and selling things or, you know, trying to push yourself, what you want to do is make it short and sweet and say, here it is, thank you. That's. The shorter, the better, and, you know, it really is just about showing the customer or, you know, the user that you just want to give this to them, no strings attached as a thank you, and that's it. Now that let's say we're finished with our example color palette, lead magnet delivery. You can just click up here on the right where the finish button is, and now we can see a preview of it. So now we're back to our workflow, and it says the lead magnet delivery begins when a subscriber is added to the segment we just created, and then they will get this email. Now, you can add more to this workflow. So just between any of these little boxes here, you can click a plus sign, and you can send them another email. What would happen is it would be identical to this. So what you can do, and this is a great tip for you if you click Email here, you can also just create a whole other email. You can create a new one over here on the right. You can duplicate an existing one. But basically, this is a really great opportunity to introduce yourself to whoever signed up for your email newsletter. So don't just give them the freebie and then say thanks and then never send them another email. You want to really engage them and invite them into your world and that's where you do this. Don't use this as an opportunity to sell something because people really get turned off when you give them something, and then the next time you contact them, you're like, Oh, and by the way, buy this. It just feels really salesy and it's unnecessary because you really want to nurture trust. Create an email that's like, Hi, share a picture of yourself. Here's who I am. Let me introduce myself. Welcome to my world. Thank you, because basically they've just joined your little inner circle here. So giving them the color palettes is great, or the freebie is great. But welcome them into your world, right? So, you want to really make them feel included, like insiders. And you can add all kinds of triggers. So right now it just says No email selected, but you can always add some. And you can also do all kinds of things. So let's say you want to deliver this lead magnet, and then you want to introduce yourself, but you don't want to do it immediately after, which I recommend. I do not recommend sending an email at the same time or 5 seconds after you sent your freebie. You probably want to wait at least a few days, so you can add what's called a time delay. So, for instance, if you want to deliver your lead magnet, once someone opts in, this is where they would opt in using the form. They would then get the free lead magnet and then all you have to do below there is click on this plus sign and then add what's called a time delay. So let's say we want to send them an email a week after they get the freebies that is going to be an introduction to you, like welcoming them to your world. So just click on time delay here, and then on the right hand side, you can have it, say, wait for a certain amount of time, and you can choose seven days. That's a week. Then they opt in with your form, they get the freebie. Seven days goes by, and then if you just click on the plus sign, you can create another email. And this is where you are going to you can create a new one or duplicate one, but this is where you're going to create your email or put your email that is your welcome to my world. Thank you so much for signing up. Let me share a little bit about myself. And when you are ready, all you have to do is click Publish. Now, up here on the right, if you go to settings, this is new and flow desk, you can allow people to subscribe multiple times. So if someone goes to that form to opt into your email newsletter, and then later maybe they lose the freebie. They don't know where the color palettes are. A lot of the time, if they sign up with that form again, they're not going to get the color palettes a second time because it already knows that they're in that little funnel, but you can allow them to get the freebie as many times as they want. And I actually recommend doing that because, you know, how many times have we lost a freebie that someone gave us, and also you can exclude segments. So I have custom emails that I send to, like, clients and, you know, art licensing partners and whatever or other classes. You can actually exclude other segments. So if you don't want to send your freebie to, like, let's say, your client list, you can just exclude that here. And you can leave that blank if you don't want to deal with that right now. But I do recommend allowing repeat subscribers. And then when you're ready, all you have to do is click on Publish, and now it will publish your workflow. It can be tempting to jump straight into selling something in your next email, but try to resist that urge. People can tell when they're being pitched to, and that's usually when they hit Unsubscribe. Instead, think of your second email as a way to invite your audience into your world. It's a way to connect on a more personal level. Share a bit about you why you do what you do, what lights you up, or maybe even share a photo of your studio or your workspace. People join your email list because they're interested in you and your creative world. So be sincere, be real, and above all, be yourself. That's what they're here for. Your workflow is the perfect opportunity to share more about yourself and begin nurturing your email list with your audience in one or several follow up emails. 6. Step 3: Create An Opt-In Form: Okay. So now that we have our segment created and our workflow setup, which is the email that will send the lead magnet to your subscribers, the next thing we need to do is create a form because right now there's nowhere for anybody to subscribe. So while you're in flowdsk at the very top here next to emails, you'll see a little option, a button here that says Forms. Go ahead and click on that. And now you can see some examples of some of my forms. So, I had a 10% off for my Etsy shop. I have some freebies for one of my classes. I have freebies for another class. Anyway, what we want to do is create a new form. So this is going to be where you send people to sign up. So then they get added to the segment and then they get the lead magnet email. So if you click on New Form, there are all kinds of templates for this, too, and they have all kinds of form types that you can use. I recommend doing an inline form if you are going to be embedding this in your website. Here is an example of a web page on my website where I have embedded one of the flow desk forms that will be delivering a lead magnet. This is a form that I embedded in my Squarespace website. If you have WIC or another company that you built your website through, they should have a way for you to paste inline text onto any webpage. That's all this is. You can create something that is hosted on flow desk as well. So you don't even have to have your own website. You can have something like a full page. So for instance, when you click on full page here, this is going to give you a page, and this is actually not even hosted on your website. I personally because I have a website, I like to have the form on my website. Look for one that you think is going to work for you. And what you want to do is click on Customize it. Now, when you click on that, as soon as you do that, it's going to ask you it's going to ask you to choose a segment. And this is where that segment that we created earlier comes in. So if you just click there, there it is. See the segment we created earlier in the class called Test. That's it. Now yours is not going to be called test. It's probably going to be called you know, free color palettes, or whatever your lead magnet is, Or you can just call it like welcome you know, new subscribers. Anyway, I'm just going to click on the segment that we did create for the class, and I'm going to click on Save. So now, when people opt in using this form, they're automatically added to that segment, and that segment is going to deliver the workflow we created in the class. So now we can actually start customizing this, and I'm just going to click over here and look for what options I have. Now, remember, we're giving away in this class, I have an example of some color palettes. So if I just click here on this image, this is like an image placeholder. On the right hand side, I can then upload my free color palette preview. So it is really clear that you are going to be getting this freebie when you sign up for my email list using this form. You always want to make sure, and it's kind of a rule of the Internet. Don't make people guess what they're going to get when they click on something. Don't make people guess what's going to happen when they sign up for an email newsletter. So we want to make it really clear. And, you know, you can change all kinds of things like the background. I'm just going to change this to Let's try like a light pink. Let's try that. No. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. We can change our font color. Now, instead of get 10% off, you know, you could deliver a coupon, but this is get your free color palette. You see this text is white, it's hard to read. All you have to do is highlight it, go over to the right, and then you can choose your font color. You can change the font, you can change the size. Now we're making it really, really clear that this is what you're going to get when you put your information into this form. Now, there are other little options here. I recommend you also explain what this is. You don't have to go into a lot of detail. Let me change this to black so we can read it. But you can just say, sign up below and get some free color palettes. You will be added to my email list, and you can unsubscribe anytime. So you're really being clear and you're also making people feel like, you know, they have control. They're not going to get stuck in some sort of email funnel where they can't get out. Because there's nothing worse than that. Then all you have to do is basically customize the rest of this and you can change this too. You can have it say first name, you can make it required over here on the right. You can make email address. Now, email address has to be required. You can add a field and have it be last name or something else. You could even do a custom field. You can also change the way these buttons look. So if you click on style, see you've got options here. Now at the bottom, see, this is going to be your button. So when someone clicks on this button, that is the trigger that adds them to that segment and then starts delivering the workflow. We want to make sure this button is really clear what you are getting. So first of all, it's really hard to read this, so I'm going to change this to a solid color, and let's do o that works, something where we can read it. Now, instead of the words, send me the code, we want this to be really obvious. So get the color pallets now. And you can change this, if you don't like that it's two lines, you can go to font, and we can make it a little smaller, see, we can change it to bold. You don't have to make it all caps. But basically, this is going to be when someone clicks on this, what puts them into that little workflow that we created earlier. Then we want to go to settings on the top, right. Now, what is double opt in? Double opt in means first before you get these freebies, you have to then get an email and then confirm that you really want to join this list. I actually don't use this because it really adds another step and sometimes people don't want to do more steps, it's just more work for them. So I usually don't do that. I do have a notification setup so I can find out when someone opts in. You can have it B where this form will add people to multiple segments. And finally, let me close this. If you look at the top, you'll see where it says design and then thank you. If you click on thank you, now you are going to get a thank you message. This is what is going to be seen when someone goes ahead and subscribes to your email list, then they're going to get this thank you message. Now, you can change this. So there's, like, you know, little pre made templates here, but you can also write your own. So if you just click on this, you can say, thank you for joining your color palettes will be in your inbox in a moment. See, and I'm going to make this let's see. I'm going to go to Font, and, you know, this is not very readable right now. There we go. So now people will also even see a confirmation message that's also whoops. That's also a thank you message. So you can do that there. And then when you are ready to put this into your website, all you have to do is click on Embed. And this right here, this inline code, this is what I use on my Squarespace website. I literally just copy this, and then I'm going to show you how I added mine to my website. Right, so I just copied that code, and now I'm on my Squarespace website. So I'm going to need to add a new page so I can actually have it be just an entire page that is dedicated to this form. And I actually have several of those. Now, these are not Linked, which means they're not in my navigation. They're kind of hidden. But these are some of my other lead magnets. Now, if I just go down to Notinked, this is basically pages that kind of hidden. Unless you know the URL, I'm going to click on the plus sign and then I'm just going to click on BlankPage. And now I'm going to give this page a name. So I'm going to call it color palette, lead magnet. And that's because no one's going to see this, but now I know what that means. Now that I'm on this page, all I have to do is click on Edit, and I'm going to add a blank section, and this is just one example, but if I add a block, then I can go down to where it has embed. And this is where I can actually embed that inline code. So I'm just going to click on that. And then when that pops up, I'm going to click on Edit, and I'm going to go to code, snip it embed data, and I'm going to paste or ops Command V, that is the code that I got from flowdsk. So I'm going to click on Save. Now I can see a preview of it. And this is the form that we just created in flowdsk. But, see, now it's hosted on my website, so I don't have to worry about hosting it with flowdsk. You absolutely can. But if you want to keep people in your little world, you know, why not send them to your website to sign up? Because then they can go and look at all your other content. So it's just a little branding tip for you. You know, if you want to keep people engaged and you want to really create a community it's better the more often you keep them in your own little world. So that is how I add all of my lead magnets to my website and it's pretty simple. It looks really cool. And yeah, this basically will put people into that funnel and the funnel will add them to that segment and then start delivering my emails, including the color palettes and anything else that I want to add. 7. Step 4: Share It!: So now that we've created our opt in form, it's time to share it. This is the fun part. So remember, if you go to the URL, this is in square space, but this is the URL for that form. So, for instance, because my website is carctwll.com, that means that my website address for this opt in form is going to be carcatwll.com slash and then this URL Slug. So for yours, yours would be your URL slash your lead magnet page name. So if I just copy this, I can paste this. So this is carrcantwll.com forwardslash, and then that little URL slug that I copied, I pasted it. So this is the page. This is the page we just created. Let me show you an example of one of my opt in forms that is actually hosted by Flodsk. I can also share this. So if I just hover over I can get the link to this page. So if I just do that, that is the URL. I can open a new tab, and then this is actually hosted on Flow Desk, but it is the same thing. It's another form. Now you have the URL. Now, this URL is like, right here, this form link is pretty long. See how long that is? It's a little awkward. So you can use link shorteners. There are some free ones out there to make something that's shorter if you want that then has it go to this URL, but that is what you would share. But because I put mine on my actual website, then I have the URL, which is carrctwll.com slash and then that URL slug. And then you can just share the actual, you know, maybe a preview of the lead magnet on social media. So for instance, you know, in Photoshop, right now, let's see. I think it's 1080 by 13 50 is the ideal size for Instagram. That may change. But do you notice that this is also a really good size for that color palette freebie that we're going to be delivering that lead magnet? So, all I have to do is I can take this, copy it, and then paste it into this size that is perfect for Instagram. Let me shrink it a little bit. But, you know, I could share this as a social media post. This right here could be an Instagram post. It can be, Do you want these six free retro Color palettes? And then you can share the link. You can put it in your biosite or you can put it in your Linktree. But basically, you just want to use this as kind of a teaser and show people what they'll be getting, and then you can drive them to go to that URL and sign up to get the lead magnet. And then you've got them in your world. So you have now captured the email address of someone who is going to be subscribed to your email newsletter, and then you can communicate with them directly. So basically what you're doing is using an Instagram post to basically get them off of Instagram to join your community, your world, which you have a lot more control over because you can send them emails as often as you want. And the rules and algorithm of that are not going to be dependent on someone else's platform like Instagram. 8. Summary + Class Project + FREEBIES!: Yeah. And that's a rap. I hope this class helped you see how powerful lead magnets can be to take control of your creative future and build your own audience off of social media. You now have the power to build a community that you truly own, and it is one that is not tied to algorithms or other people's platforms. For your class project, I would love for you to share what you used or planned to use as your lead magnet. It can be a screenshot or a sketch or even just a short description. It can be a freebie, a guide, or something totally unique. I cannot wait to see what you came up with and cheer you on. You can download my super helpful optional class workbook that will really be useful when creating your project. This will give you all kinds of ideas for specific lead magnet options and help you really start to form what you want your email list to be all about and how to get people to join. Link to grab this workbook is just below this video under the About tab. This workbook also includes a ton of free swipe copy examples that you can use when generating your email lead magnets. I also have a class bonus module that is available over on YouTube. And with this class bonus module, I'm giving you a free customizable form template for flow desk. This is for a link in bioform which is perfect for social media and perfect to be viewed on a phone. And I'm also going to show you how I create one of my favorite free lead magnets, a phone wallpaper, which is especially awesome for those of us who design patterns. To watch the class bonus module, just head over to my YouTube channel, and the link for that channel is just below this video under the About tab. Thank you so much for taking the time to learn with me. You can find me online at carry cantwell.com. And you can also follow me on Instagram at Carrie Cantwell Art. If you enjoyed this class, I would be grateful if you could leave a review. Trust me, I read every single one of them. And reviews not only benefit me, they help other students find this class so they can also benefit from this information. Thank you again, and I will see you next time. Bye.