E166: You're Most Underused Sales Tool Might Be Your Inbox

In this episode of The WedPro Podcast, we’re tackling a big question: how can wedding pros use email marketing to bring in steady bookings without constantly chasing social media algorithms? The simple answer is to treat your inbox like an asset, not an afterthought, and build a simple email system that nurtures leads on autopilot. Roxy and Katie share how to protect your business from social media “rented land,” real case studies from a florist and photographer who boosted sales with email, and why they recommend Flodesk—especially before its unlimited plan disappears—so you can create a reliable stream of bookings all year round.

Episode Highlights

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why your inbox is your most underused sales tool and how it can bring in steady bookings without relying on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.

• The danger of “rented space” on social media and what happens if your account is hacked, closed, or your reach suddenly drops.

• How to turn your email list into a real business asset that quietly works in the background while you’re at weddings, resting, or off socials.

• Florist case study: how one busy florist used a simple welcome sequence and a few seasonal emails to sell out workshops, boost bouquet sales, and book more weddings.

• Photographer case study: how Tim turned a wedding fair into £11,000 in bookings by following up via email instead of relying on people remembering a leaflet or Instagram handle.

• Why email doesn’t need to be long or fancy—short, friendly, “one tip, one next step” emails are more than enough.

• The email platform Roxy & Katie swear by (Flodesk) and why its simple, drag-and-drop design is perfect for creative wedding businesses.

• Important Flodesk update: why the unlimited subscribers & unlimited emails plan is going away after 28 November 2025 and what that means for you.

• A 90-day plan to get your email list working: welcome sequence, monthly newsletter, seasonal campaigns, and wedding fair follow-ups.

• How to automate your wedding fair follow-up so couples join your list on the day and your nurture sequence does the heavy lifting for you.

• Why wedding fairs often “don’t work” (and how email marketing is the missing piece between the fair and the future booking).

Resources Mentioned

• Flodesk – Email marketing platform Roxy and Katie use and recommend, especially while the unlimited plan is still available.

  • Partner link & free trial: https://partners.flodesk.com/wedpro

• The WedPro Podcast blog & transcripts – Full transcripts of every episode:

  • https://www.theweddingbusinesshub.com/blogs

    
    

Full Transcript

Katie:Right, today we are talking about a tool that you’ve probably got in your business already that you are probably under-utilising. And before you think, “Email is boring, it’s old school,” stay with us. This is the thing that we promise can actually bring you steady bookings without posting more on Instagram, living on TikTok, or chasing algorithms.

And yes, WedCon is literally days away. So excited. Oh my goodness.

Roxy:You’re having anxiety about it already, aren’t you?

Katie:A little bit. It’s more the tech. I’m not completely comfortable with being in front of people, but you guys – you know us – and that fills me with a lot of confidence that you at least know me. And we’ve got lots of our coaching clients there as well.

Roxy:So… have you packed?

Katie:I have got stuff everywhere. I’m planning so it’s, you know, when you’ve got like five minutes in your car, you can’t really do anything apart from planning in your brain. So I’ve gone through things so I know what I’ve got to do. I’ve just got to bring it all together.

I’m feeling fine. I did some breath work this morning to get me out of my head. I did a guided meditation – I think it was titled “Big Day Ahead” or something.

Roxy:Oh, nice. Okay. Well, I sort of did. I woke up at 2am in the night – that’s my age – and I put a meditation on, but I don’t think it played, because it wasn’t still playing when I woke up this morning at six. So I don’t think it played, but whatever. I wasn’t back to sleep, so that was a bit ordinary.

I feel all right about it, I do. I think this has got to be number six or seven now. The more that we do, the easier it is. But then there are changes every single year, aren’t there?

Katie:Yeah, and this is what I was telling my anxiety, because it’s good to show it proof and evidence. I was like, “Look, anxiety, this is our sixth one. Every year afterwards – even on the day – you feel absolutely fine. So we’ve just got to get you to that day and then I’ll be fine.”

Roxy:I think it’s just, like anything, it’s very big. There’s a lot of moving parts, isn’t there? And a lot of those moving parts aren’t actually going to come together until 30 minutes before you guys walk through.

The big fear is that I’m going to forget something. I don’t know if you feel that – I’m like, “What if I forget one of the important things that are in this office?”

So I’ve got myself a shopping list. Two hours back, you’ll be driving from picking it up…

Katie:Well, that’s it. What’s the worst that could happen? Not a lot. A lot of planning’s gone into it. We’ve got a few team members this year helping us as well. It’s going to be great; I’m really looking forward to it.

But if you see us running around looking a little bit stressed or a bit excited, please say hi. Give us a little, “How are you?”

This chat today is important because we keep seeing the same thing with wedding suppliers: loads of time spent on socials and zero time or effort put into that list – and then they wonder why the enquiries drop.

Roxy:I know. And actually, what we see time and time again is that you are under-utilising your inbox. It is the most underused sales tool in your business. And if you get this right, it can change the whole way you bring in bookings – not just for now and for the upcoming engagement season, but for years.

Katie:Absolutely. So let’s start here. Social media is really great – we love it, we teach it – but it is what we’d call rented space. You don’t actually own it. You cannot control it. And it does not care how many hours you spent making that Reel.

An email list is fully yours.

Think of it like this – and we have seen this happen. If Instagram vanished tomorrow – and you’re probably thinking, “Well, it’s not going to vanish” – but we’ve seen people be locked out. We’ve seen accounts be hacked. We’ve seen Instagram take down accounts because – and, who does, to be fair – you’ve not checked out their usage policy and you’re doing something slightly wrong.

Maybe you’ve got a Creator account when you actually need a Business account, or you are running your business from a personal account. We have seen people lose three, four, five years of posts, traction, followers – and unfortunately, quite a lot of the time they’re running a lot of their business and a lot of their bookings from the visibility that they’re putting on Instagram.

Roxy:You know, if Instagram vanished tomorrow or you got locked out of your TikTok, or you couldn’t post on Facebook anymore… and let’s be honest, to some extent we have to pay to post, right? Organic only takes you so far. So we cannot just purely rely on the algorithm and that pushing it out to the people that want to see our stuff.

If Instagram did go down tomorrow or you got locked out of your account, how many couples could you still reach? How many could you still sell to?

Most of our clients, and the wedding pros that we speak to about this, say, “Actually, none.” And that scares them when they realise that. It is a really scary thought.

Katie:And what we want for all of you guys – and what we get our clients to do – is have more than one flow of leads coming in. You cannot rely on one source at all.

With an email marketing list, it is steady and it doesn’t tank when you take two weeks off. It doesn’t punish you for not posting. And people are so much more likely to see what you send because it lands right there in front of them. That’s amazing – you’re not fighting with all that noise.

We’re going to share just a couple of stories today of some of the businesses that we’ve worked with that have implemented some simple email marketing into their business and have seen big changes when they stopped hoping for reach and built a proper list.

So let’s talk about having your list as an asset rather than a task to do in your business. It needs to be up there with all the other marketing that you do.

Florist Case Study

Katie:Let’s talk about the florist first. One of our clients – when she joined us, she was super busy, but all of her sales were coming from Instagram. Which is great – bookings were coming in – but this is a very risky game and she wanted more control.

Roxy:Yeah. I think when you are posting on Instagram constantly, you are chasing the next post. You’re always having to think about that next Reel, maybe the next trend. But really what you’re wanting to build is something steady, something that is going to work for you in the background.

And this is exactly what we did with our client. We set her up with a simple email plan – and that word there, “simple”, is the absolute key. It doesn’t have to be overcomplicated; it just needs to serve its purpose.

She wrote a welcome sequence – not long, not fancy – just short, friendly emails that helped people understand who she was and how she worked.

Katie:Yeah. And then what we did as well was we looked at different areas of her business and where we could bring in some additional income. Alongside the nurture sequence, we set up some post-broadcast emails as well.

We looked at the different areas in her business:

• her wedding side

• one for Mother’s Day

• one for wreath workshops

• and one for her anniversary flower subscription.

Roxy:She wrote each one of those once, set them up, and then let them go live. The anniversary email goes out on autopilot every single year because couples already trust her – and the ones that do then go on to carry on buying with her.

And that first year that we set up her Mother’s Day emails – we looked at that and started promoting four weeks before Mother’s Day – her sales went through the roof. And for the last two years, her wreath workshops have sold out. And she’s also been able to get more wedding bookings as well.

Katie:This was not about doing anything new on Instagram. This was about making sure that she had good emails. That was it.

Once you set it up once, it works consistently, time after time again in the background for your business. And this is what we mean when we call email an asset – it keeps on working even when you’re at a wedding, even when you’re tired, even when you are hiding on the sofa eating pasta, watching Netflix. It doesn’t matter what you are doing – that system can keep on serving you and getting you bookings.

Roxy:And I think that’s one of the things we really like to do for our clients – have a level of stability and also have highly repeatable systems that actually work five years from now, five weeks from now, six months from now. We’re all about the systems, the automation – anything to make your life easier.

Keeping Email Simple

Roxy:So now let’s talk about keeping it simple, because most wedding suppliers think that emails mean long letters – and it really doesn’t. That’s the old way of thinking. We need to bring this into the 21st century for sure.

Katie:I think it’s about breaking it down. You are able to write how you speak. You can use it like you’re speaking to a friend. You don’t need full essays.

And actually, when we work with a lot of our clients on building these out, we strip a lot back, don’t we? You don’t need a theme. You don’t need fancy Canva graphics. Actually, please don’t add any Canva graphics in there – it slows everything down. It’s about just keeping it as simple as possible.

Roxy:Send short emails with one point, one tip, one next step. That is really enough. People are busy. They want quick and helpful. They want to be able to extract the information that they want and need, and then move on.

Photographer Case Study – Tim & the Wedding Fair

Roxy:So we worked with Tim, who was a photographer. He joined us because he wanted better bookings and he also wanted to leave his full-time job in the NHS.

He was doing a lot of wedding fairs and he was absolutely brilliant in person at what he did. But after the fairs, he was relying on hope really – that people would remember him. And although he was giving out a business card or a leaflet – that was just going in a bag – he was trying to get people to follow him on Instagram, but then he was fighting an algorithm.

Katie:Right. And I wonder how many of you are relying on hope – in hope that the algorithm shows your content to the people who are interested in your content. But not only that, that it shows it at the right time, to the right people.

Because your clients go through a booking cycle, and you are constantly churning new clients through. You want your posts to be seen at the right time by the right people. Social media does not do that for you unless you’re throwing loads of money on ads.

Email marketing is such good value for money when you break it down like this, because you can send timely emails right at the right time that are so much more likely to be seen and read than anything on socials.

Roxy:And this is why these sorts of emails really work when they are tied with a wedding fair. Those couples that Tim was giving business cards to – “Follow me on Instagram” – that’s great, but you’re putting the power in their hands and then hoping that they’re going to remember who you are first, and then secondly, get back in touch with you.

But they’re not going to remember him after, are they? No one remembers things like that after a long wedding fair. They get a bag full of business cards, they probably go to three or four events and speak to 10 photographers.

What we did is we set up a simple nurture flow for him – a welcome email, three or four follow-ups, a reminder with a link to book a call. Everything was nice and structured.

Katie:And he booked £11,000 in wedding bookings across a three-day wedding fair this year. This year, guys – not five years ago, not pre-Instagram. This year. This is the sort of strategy that you need in your business – and it’s still working.

People met him in person, they joined the list at the fair, and then his emails did the job that they needed to do. They were simple, they were friendly, they were clear, and there was no pressure.

And if that does not show you and convince you about the power of email, then I actually don’t know what will, because this is such a good strategy. Guys, get on it.

Tools – Why We Love Flodesk

Katie:Okay, let’s talk about tools, because whilst strategy does matter more than anything, the tool that you use definitely helps. And we see wedding suppliers stick with Flodesk more than any other platform.

Roxy:Yeah, and the reason is it’s simple. It’s clean. It’s really easy to use – even I can use it. And I was a complete newbie to email marketing at one point, never been inside a system like that, and I found it super easy to use.

It gives you lovely emails without all of that faff. And it’s perfect for creative businesses who want their emails to look tidy without messing about with code. We’re not about code.

Katie:No. We use it for our own emails. It makes everything fast. It feels fun – which is rare for email tools as well.

When we moved from Mailchimp over to Flodesk, we were really frustrated, feeling that email marketing wasn’t really working for our business. Even though people were signing up and wanted to hear from us and wanted to receive our emails, our deliverability was about 2%. Our open rate was 1–2%. Which, you know, industry standard will say is average, but who wants “average”, right? One to two percent – when you’ve got a lifecycle on your wedding client – isn’t going to get you anywhere.

So we were kind of in this bit of a quandary where we’d heard that email marketing was great, but it wasn’t really doing anything for our business. And Mailchimp was really clunky, really… I found it very difficult to use, very haphazard, not very user-intuitive.

We came across Flodesk, and it’s quite like Canva in that it’s very drag-and-drop. The templates are beautiful. You can take payments through the system. You can build beautiful landing pages, you can build beautiful guides, add links…

Once we moved over to Flodesk, one of the first email campaigns we put inside of our business, we made £6,000 from one email that we sent out to our clients.

Roxy:Now, fast-forward three years on, we are regularly making income from our email marketing, and I would say actually it’s one of our number-one sources of income inside of our business.

I’m not going to say “leads”, because our leads come in from other areas, but then we put them into our email marketing system and that is where we are nurturing them. We’re warming them up, they’re getting to know about us, they’re getting to know about what we do differently. We are sharing helpful information with them.

And then guess what? When they come to need some support, seeing our emails pop up, they’re more likely to reach out. And that’s the same for you in your business as well.

Statistics show that even if they do not open your emails, the fact that they are seeing your business in their inbox, week in, week out, means they are more likely to remember you when the time comes that they need your service.

Katie:Flodesk feels like fun. It feels super easy – which, I promise you, we have tried lots of other systems. It’s rare for email tools to feel this easy and simple.

Important Flodesk Pricing Update

Katie:We do have an important update for you: Flodesk is actually changing their pricing and they’re removing the lifetime unlimited plan.

Roxy:Yeah, so after the 28th of November 2025, new members will not be able to get unlimited plans or unlimited subscribers, and this is one of the best features about Flodesk.

So if you are on the fence about Flodesk, I would move quickly on this, because most email providers have tiered pricing. That means that when you – the more subscribers you have or the more emails you send – the cost does go up.

One of the best things about Flodesk, and one of the reasons that I love Flodesk, is because I don’t want to be penalised for growing my business.

So if you are frustrated with the email platform that you have already, maybe you haven’t tried email marketing yet because you don’t know what you’re doing, or it all sounds a little bit crazy, or you think that the tools are going to be difficult to use – I really implore you to try this out.

We’re giving you a free trial, and then if you do decide to lock in that unlimited plan, you’ve got 50% off that price as well.

Katie:Yeah, and if you do want to join, get in there before that cutoff date. If you do that, you keep the unlimited emails and subscribers for as long as your plan stays active. You’re getting in there before they change over to their new tiered model.

And if you already have Flodesk, nothing’s going to change for you.

Roxy:Yeah. So this is your last chance to get that unlimited plan. Once the date passes, unfortunately it’s gone. And if you are planning maybe to build your email list properly next year, you are going to want the version that lets you grow without those extra fees.

So if it’s something that you know you should be doing and you just keep on putting it off, this is your kick to get it done.

Katie:Absolutely. And we’ve put the link in the show notes for you. Use it right now if you want to lock in that unlimited plan while it still exists, because after the 28th of November 2025, you’re not going to be able to do that.

So the link for those of you that want it is:https://partners.flodesk.com/wedpro

We’ll get that link in the show notes for you so that you can go and sign up to your free trial. It’s not going to cost you anything to try. And then if you do decide to stick around, our code is the best deal you’re going to get on the internet and it gives you 50% off as well.

And more importantly, you’re going to lock in that legacy pricing, which is such a good deal.

Your 90-Day Email Plan

Roxy:Okay, let’s finish with what you can do next. If you really want your inbox to work for you, here’s where we would focus our time in the next three months.

We try and encourage our clients to really work in 90-day sprints anyway, because this is where you’ll start to see the difference. Too many people in the wedding industry do things a little bit slapdash – a little bit like, “I’ll try a bit here, I’ll do it for a few weeks.”

Consistency is difficult. I absolutely know that. Although I’ve been a member of the gym now for maybe four months, sometimes I only get to go once a week, other times I go three times a week. Consistency is difficult to stick to. And I think anyone that’s ever had a gym membership or tried a diet or anything really understands that.

However, in business, if we want to be able to measure what works, we want to be able to spot patterns and look at what might need tweaking, we really need you to do it consistently – and that doesn’t mean constantly – for the next 90 days.

So here’s what we would focus on if we were building our email list from scratch between now and the next three months.

Katie:Firstly, come up with and write a welcome sequence. These are three simple emails telling people who you are, what you do, and how you can help them.

Roxy:Yeah. And then after that, you want to be sending – at first, until you get a little bit more confidence with this – one easy monthly email. It doesn’t need to be long.

You can share a helpful tip, a recent story, a recent couple that you’ve worked with. You could share news in your business, such as wedding fairs that you’re going to be attending, a venue that you visited recently, a blog that you’ve written. Something that is really helpful.

We’re not about Sales Sally and really ramming… no spammy Pammy, ramming anything down anyone’s throat at all. This is about nurturing. It’s still about providing value, so that when the time comes, they feel that they’ve got that know-like-and-trust with you because you’ve shown up consistently, you’ve shared helpful knowledge, you’ve set yourself up as an expert.

Katie:Thirdly, we want you to think about seasonal emails. So if you are a florist, cake maker, stationer or even a stylist, this is where the money is – Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day… What workshops can you do? What events? Behind the scenes… How can you get what you are doing out there? It’s by email marketing.

Roxy:And then as well, if you are wanting to take this a little bit one step further, what we would say is having a different sort of follow-up for people who meet you at wedding fairs or at open days.

Don’t trust your memory here. The last thing you want to be doing when you sit down after that wedding fair, and you drive home and you unpack the car and the kids are hanging off you because they haven’t seen you all day, is then having to sit on the sofa with those lists of emails.

Putting them all into your CRM or manually typing them into Gmail – because we know, I hear this week on week, we know you are doing this – and then having to, at 8:30 at night, with a cold roast dinner on your knee, be sending this out. Or forgetting. Or just not being bothered and thinking, “I’ll send it out on Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Well, you are already behind the people that have this automated in their business already.

So really what we want for you is that couples at the fair can scan something – you can give them something – where they can give you their email address automatically at the fair.

And as well, we can set things up so that it’s very intuitive so that as your couples scan – because they put their email into their phone on different things all the time – they don’t actually have to stand there typing it out either.

So you get their details straight away and then automatically they are added into your sequence.

You go home, you unpack the car, you put your feet up, you spend time with the kids, you eat your warm roast dinner, you have a glass of wine – and you forget about it. You’re not trusting your memory or the fact that you’ve got one more thing to do at the end of those long weekends.

Let your email marketing do the heavy lifting here for you.

Katie:Yeah. And if you do these four things – what we’ve just spoken about – your email list will go from a dead file to a real asset in your business, and one that does the heavy lifting for you.

So that is your plan. Your inbox is probably the most underused tool in your business, but it’s where a lot of the money is hiding and it’s going to be the thing that brings in the most steady bookings.

Wedding Fairs, Your Website & ROI

Roxy:We have clients tell us – Leslie says to us quite often, she’s one of our clients that has put email marketing into her business – think about those couples that you did a fair with way back last March.

They weren’t quite ready to book then because they didn’t need what it is that you do yet, or they’d not booked their venue, or they wanted to get their bridal dresses sorted first, or they didn’t have the funds, or they needed to speak to mum and dad, or they didn’t know they wanted a magician.

Then they leave your stand – how are you ever going to get in touch with them again?

Katie:And it’s the same with your website as well. So if they come across your website, leave your website without taking action – like 97–98% of people – how are you getting back in front of those couples once they’ve gone?

Our clients tell us – Leslie tells us all the time, “I had somebody that was just on my list, that actually I spoke to at a fair 10 months ago and they’ve come and booked now.”

We’re making ROI not only on your email list, but on that fair you stood at anyway.

A lot of our clients and a lot of the businesses that we speak to will tell us that they’re not getting anything from wedding fairs. And the reason you’re not getting anything from wedding fairs is: 80% of the room aren’t going to be ready to book right now anyway.

So, those of you that are there, you’re marketing to 20%. And if we look at real numbers, some of those will already have what you’ve got, some of them might not be getting married in your area… So it is actually less than 20%.

What happens is wedding pros are focusing on the 20%, when we actually need you to focus on the 80%. That’s a huge pool of people – the 80% of people who aren’t ready to book yet – and to have a strategy for both.

Roxy:When wedding pros tell us that wedding fairs aren’t working for them, it’s usually two reasons:

1. They haven’t looked at their ideal client and they aren’t standing in the right wedding fairs for their client; or

2. They don’t have a follow-up system.

And we don’t mean a follow-up system that is just purely, “Okay, I send a couple of emails after the fair.” That’s not what we need. We need a robust nurture system – like the one that we mentioned.

That is why wedding fairs aren’t working for you.

We encourage all of our clients to track the ROI on everything that they do in their business. When you start to track the ROI of those wedding fairs, you will see – because the lifecycle of a couple can be up to two years, it can be a little bit longer for some people – that wedding fair that you did… we don’t know the ROI of that for maybe another 18 months.

So having a way for you to consistently get in front of those couples is how we manage and measure that – but also how you do get an ROI out of those fairs.

Wrap-Up, Flodesk & WedCon

Katie:So, if you want to go and check out Flodesk, remember you can do that for free. So why not go and have a look? Go and grab a free trial and then lock in that unlimited plan before the change. The link for that is in the show notes. Go and even have a look – if you’re on the fence, just go and have a look.

Roxy:And if you are coming to WedCon, we do have a Flodesk area on the day.

Katie:Good. So come and explore it, have a little look. We’re there as well. We’ve used Flodesk for years now, so we understand how to use it, we understand how to automate things. Come and have a chat with us.

We’ve also got business clinics this year as well, haven’t we, Roxy? So if you do need any support in your business or want to ask a question, come and see us in person. Our business clinics – it’s going to be unreal. We’ve sold out again. We’re very excited. It’s always all the feels. We’re always bringing new ideas, aren’t we?

But we’re really looking forward to those of you that we are going to see in the room at WedCon.

Roxy:Absolutely. But if you’ve loved this episode – which I know you have – make sure you share it with another wedding supplier who needs a nudge with email too, and hit that follow button so you don’t miss next week.

And please do leave us a review. I speak to so many people who listen to our podcast but yet have not left us a little review. So just take a minute out of your day for us – we’re showing up for you every week – please go and leave us a review.

Thank you. See you on the next episode – or see you at WedCon.

Outro (Roxy):Thanks for listening to this episode of the WedPro Podcast. Full transcripts of this episode, plus every other episode we have done, are available at www.theweddingbusinesshub.com/blogs.

Thanks so much for listening. If you do have any questions about this episode or anything else at all, you can email us at info@theweddingbusinesshub.com.

And if you are loving our episodes – which I know you are – make sure you hit the subscribe or follow button so you can stay updated with any new episodes that land. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.