• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
software stack logo

Software Stack

Get your Software Stack together

  • Knowledgebase
    • All Categories
    • Accounting Software
    • Automation & Workflow Software
    • Customer Relationship Management
    • E-Commerce Shopfronts & Payments
    • Marketing Automation
    • Online Courses & Membership
    • Project Management
    • Surveys & Forms
    • Web Hosting
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Podia

9 best email marketing platforms for creators and small businesses

Software Stack Editor · August 2, 2023 ·

Create engaging newsletters, build high-converting email campaigns, and understand subscriber behaviors with these 9 best email marketing platforms.

Jump ahead

In this article

You’re ready to get serious about email list building, so it’s time to find the right email marketing platform for your online business. 

An email marketing platform is a tool that helps you design emails, manage your list, create distinct groups of subscribers based on interests and behaviors, and track how well your emails perform. You can use your email marketing software to connect with customers and followers, promote new products, share informational content, and run automated campaigns. 

With dozens of email service providers (ESPs) that cater to small businesses, finding the right one takes time and effort. 

We’re here to help.

Today, we’ll take you through nine of the best email marketing platforms for creators. We’ll look at core features and pricing, in addition to calling out who they’re best for. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

9 best email marketing platforms to grow your list and build meaningful connections

#1 Podia

Podia is an all-in-one platform where you can
manage your email marketing
,
build a website
,
sell digital products
,
create online courses
,
run an online community
,
offer coaching
, and
work with affiliates
– all with a single tool. 

Podia Email
is easy to use and comes with in-depth analytics, segmentation, tags, unlimited automated campaigns, and unlimited email sends. You can also filter your recipient list based on what products they’ve purchased, how long they’ve been a subscriber, affiliate status, and time since last active. 

You can quickly create beautiful emails with Podia’s point-and-click email builder, or start with one of the professionally designed email templates to save time. You can also use previous emails as a starting point so you’re not reinventing the wheel. 

Best of all, Podia Email is automatically connected with your digital products and website so you can feel confident that your subscribers, tags, and customer lists are connected properly behind the scenes. No more worrying about clunky integrations or paying for dozens of different tools – with Podia, your whole business can thrive under one roof.

Podia Email features: 

  • Free plan

  • Unlimited email sends

  • Easier-than-drag-and-drop email editor

  • Customizable email templates

  • Unlimited broadcasts and newsletters

  • Unlimited automated campaigns

  • Segmentation and tags

  • Analytics, including sales per email 

  • Drip campaigns

  • Full website with unlimited website pages

  • Sell digital products (downloads, webinars, coaching, memberships, courses)

  • Beginner-friendly online course builder

  • Online community feature

  • On-page customer messaging

Who is Podia Email best for?

Podia is the best email marketing software for creators who want to manage their emails from the same place they sell their digital products and house their website. When all your tools are automatically interconnected, you’re less likely to encounter technical hassles while running your business. 

All Podia plans include unlimited email sends and full email marketing features for up to 100 subscribers. You can purchase an optional Podia Email upgrade if you’d like to add more subscribers, but you’ll still have all the same advanced features regardless of list size. 

Podia Email pricing

You’ll start by choosing the
Free, Mover, or Shaker plan
.

  • Free: Includes a website, community, one digital download, one online coaching product, and customer messaging

  • Mover: $39/month, includes everything on the free plan plus unlimited
    digital products
    , unlimited courses, and our intuitive
    online course builder

  • Shaker: $89/month, includes everything on the Mover plan plus
    affiliates
    ,
    webinars
    , and third-party code

All Podia plans come with 100 email subscribers for free. All plans, even the free plan, include unlimited sends each month and you get the full features of
Podia Email
, including templates, automations, tagging, and segmentation. 

You also have the option to add on email subscribers as you grow so you’re never paying for more than you need:  

  • Up to 500 subscribers: $9/month

  • Up to 1,500 subscribers: $17/month

  • Up to 2,500 subscribers: $25/month

  • Up to 5,000 subscribers: $42/month

  • Up to 10,000 subscribers: $63/month

  • See the full pricing scale here

Let’s say you have an email list with around 1,500 subscribers. You could sign up for a free Podia plan and add on your email subscribers for a total of $17/month. In addition to full email features, you’d also get your website, one digital download, one coaching product, and your online community. 

Now imagine your business expands and you’re ready to add online courses to your product lineup. You could upgrade to Podia’s mover plan for $39/month and keep the 1,500 subscriber email add-on for $17/month, which brings your monthly total to $56/month. 

At this price point, you’d have premium email marketing features as well as unlimited digital products, unlimited online courses, unlimited customers, unlimited landing pages, and unlimited email sends all in one intuitive platform. 

Explore Podia Email without paying a cent when you sign up for a free plan – your first 100 subscribers are completely free. 

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Sign up free

#2 Mailchimp

Mailchimp
is a big name in the email marketing software industry and it has a free plan that makes it easy for new entrepreneurs to get started. The free plan includes up to 500 subscribers and 1,000 monthly email sends, but if you want helpful features like email scheduling and automations, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. 

All paid plans include pre-built templates for your email newsletters and campaigns, as well as chat and email support. For more features, Mailchimp’s Premium plan includes advanced segmentation, unlimited audiences, and unlimited team seats. 

Mailchimp features:

  • Free plan

  • Subscriber limits on all plans

  • Email send limits on all plans

  • Email templates

  • Forms and landing pages

  • A/B testing on paid plans

  • Email scheduling on paid plans

  • Website

  • Landing pages

Who is Mailchimp best for?

Mailchimp is best for creators who need email marketing features but don’t need to send a high volume of emails per month, since all plans have email send limits. 

Mailchimp pricing

Mailchimp offers four different plan tiers and the price of each tier increases as your list grows. Each plan also has email send limits, so if you hope to send lots of messages to your followers, this is something to keep an eye on.

  • Free: Up to 500 contacts with 1,000 monthly email sends

  • Essentials: Starting at $13/month for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly email sends

  • Standard: Starting at $20/month for 500 contacts and 6,000 monthly email sends

  • Premium: Starting at $350/month for 500 contacts with 150,000 monthly email sends

#3 ConvertKit

ConvertKit
is a creator marketing platform with tools to help you build your email list, create automations, and sell digital downloads. Users like being able to design custom subscriber journeys based on entrance and exit conditions, and there are email styling features so you can make your messages match your brand. 

ConvertKit features:

Who is ConvertKit best for?

ConvertKit is best for users who want a visual automation builder so they can design custom email marketing campaigns and pathways for their subscribers. ConvertKit is also a good choice if you need unlimited landing pages and opt-in forms. 

ConvertKit pricing

ConvertKit has three plans that increase in price as you add more subscribers. 

  • Free plan: Up to 1,000 subscribers 

  • Creator plan: Starting at $15/month for 300 subscribers, $29/month for 1,000 subscribers, $79/month for 5,000 subscribers

  • Creator Pro plan: Starting at $29/month for 300 subscribers, $59/month for 1,000 subscribers, $111/month for 5,000 subscribers

#4 MailerLite

MailerLite
is an email marketing tool with email templates, digital products, and a website builder. You can set up automation workflows to keep in touch with your contact list even when you’re out of the office, and you can integrate MailerLite with most of the apps and tools you already use and love. 

MailerLite’s free plan includes up to 1,000 subscribers, but you have a limit of 12,000 email sends per month. You can build a website but are limited to 10 landing pages and cannot sell digital products. Additionally, free plan users only get access to support for the first 30 days.

When you’re ready to upgrade, MailerLite has two paid plans, Growing Business and Advanced, that both increase in price as you gain more subscribers. Paid plans include unlimited email sends, unlimited websites, and the ability to sell digital products like subscriptions and paid newsletters. 

MailerLite features

Who is MailerLite best for?

MailerLite’s paid plans are suitable for those who need multiple websites, the ability to sell digital downloads, surveys/quizzes, and paid newsletters. Paid plans also have unlimited email sends each month. 

MailerLite pricing

  • Free: Free for up to 1,000 subscribers with a limit of 12,000 email sends per month

  • Growing Business: Starts at $10/month for up to 500 subscribers, $15/month for 1,000 subscribers 

  • Advanced: Starts at $20/month for up to 500 subscribers, $30/month for 1,000 subscribers

#5 ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign
focuses on enterprise-level automation capabilities for managing email marketing efforts at a larger scale. ActiveCampaign also offers Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality, allowing you to track and manage leads and potential clients.

Like most email marketing software, ActiveCampaign offers different plans and pricing tiers based on the number of contacts or subscribers you have. You can send an unlimited number of emails to subscribers, regardless of your plan, and there are audience segmentation tools so you can create targeted lists based on specific criteria and deliver tailored campaigns.

While ActiveCampaign doesn’t have an integrated website or ecommerce features, it can integrate with platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento.

ActiveCampaign features:

  • Email templates

  • Drag-and-drop email designer

  • Segments and tags

  • Automations and email scheduling

  • Landing pages

  • Unlimited email sends

  • Facebook custom audiences

  • CRM and sales automation

  • Lead scoring

  • A/B testing (also known as “split-testing”)

Who is ActiveCampaign best for?

ActiveCampaign is best suited for creators and ecommerce businesses who are familiar with complex email marketing tactics. The Plus plan is good for small teams with three user seats and the Professional plan is good for bigger teams with five user seats. There’s also an Enterprise plan for corporations.  

ActiveCampaign pricing

ActiveCampaign has four plans that increase in price as you add more contacts. You get unlimited email sends on all plans as long as your total subscriber count is below 250,000. 

ActiveCampaign plans:

  • Lite: $39/month for 1,000 contacts, $61/month for 2,500 contacts, $99/month for 5,000 contacts

  • Plus: $70/month for 1,000 contacts, $125/month for 2,500 contacts, $168/month for 5,000 contacts

  • Professional: $187/month for 2,500 contacts, $262/month for 5,000 contacts

  • Enterprise: Custom pricing 

#6 AWeber

AWeber
is an email tool where you can connect with followers, sell digital products, and use automation features to keep your business moving behind the scenes. 

AWeber has a free plan that includes up to 500 subscribers, but you can only send 3,000 emails per month. You’re also limited to one automation, one email list, and one landing page. The free plan also includes ecommerce functionality that works through Stripe, and you’ll have access to email and chat support. 

Lite and Plus plans increase in price as you add more subscribers, but you’ll get unlimited email sends. On the Unlimited plan, you can add as many subscribers as you want for a flat rate, but your email sends are limited to 12x subscriber volume per month.

AWeber features: 

Who is AWeber best for?

AWeber is best for users who need email marketing features like email split testing, sign-up form split testing, RSS to email, HTML emails, and web push notifications. These features are available on all of AWeber’s paid plans.

AWeber pricing

With AWeber, you can choose from the following plans: 

  • Free: Up to 500 subscribers

  • Lite: Starting at $14.99/month for up to 500 subscribers 

  • Plus: Starting at $29.99/month for up to 500 subscribers

  • Unlimited: $899/month with unlimited subscribers

#7 Brevo (Formerly SendinBlue)

Brevo
(formerly known as Sendinblue) is an email marketing platform for businesses that need a CRM tool to track leads and communicate with potential clients. In addition to email marketing tools, Brevo offers SMS marketing, WhatsApp campaigns, live chat, and Chatbot features. 

Brevo also offers subject line A/B testing so you can figure out which subject lines perform the best (although these
email subject line formulas
should get you on the right track). 

With Brevo, plans are determined based on features and how many emails you’d like to send per month. You can have unlimited contacts, but there are email send limits on all plans. Plans go up to one million monthly email sends, but if you need more than that you can contact Brevo for a custom plan. 

Brevo features:

  • Free plan

  • Email marketing

  • WhatsApp marketing

  • SNS Campaigns 

  • Chatbot

  • Email template gallery 

  • Push notifications

  • Transactional emails

  • Workflow editor

Who is Brevo best for?

All Brevo plans come with unlimited contacts and pricing is based on email sends. If you have a large list but don’t communicate with them very often, this could be a good solution. Brevo is also a good choice for users who are looking for email marketing coupled with transactional emails, in-depth sales tracking, and chat tools. 

Brevo pricing

  • Free plan: Email limit of 300 sends per day

  • Starter plan: Starting at $25/month for 20,000 monthly email sends, $69/month for 100,000 monthly email sends

  • Business plan: Starting at $65/month for 20,000 monthly email sends, $129/month for 100,000 monthly email sends

  • Brevo Enterprise: Custom pricing

#8 Flodesk

Flodesk
is known for having nice-looking email templates and layouts. There are two sides to Flodesk – email and checkout. The email plan gives users unlimited subscribers, emails, forms, workflows, and segments, and the checkout plan lets users set up unlimited sales pages, checkout pages, upsells, and digital download deliveries. 

All Flodesk plans are unlimited. On the Email plan, you can have unlimited email subscribers and send as many emails as you like. On the Checkout plan, you can sell unlimited products to unlimited customers. There’s no free plan with Flodesk, but they do offer a 30-day free trial so you can test out their features. 

Flodesk features:

  • Unlimited emails and subscribers

  • Unlimited landing pages and email opt-in forms

  • Automations

  • Segments

  • Upsells 

  • Checkout pages

  • Transactions and digital file delivery

Who is Flodesk best for?

Flodesk is best for visual brands that want to send photo-heavy emails. The Flodesk templates are well-suited for ecommerce, and their checkout tool is a good fit for businesses selling digital files. 

Flodesk pricing

Flodesk has three plans, Email, Checkout, and Everything. 

  • The Email plan costs $38/month and includes email marketing features

  • The Checkout plan also costs $38/month and lets you sell digital products

  • The Everything plan includes the tools of email and checkout for $64/month

#9 GetResponse

GetResponse
is an email marketing tool that offers a range of plans based on the number of contacts you have. They have a free plan that includes up to 500 contacts and 2,500 email sends per month, along with a visual email editor and pre-designed templates. You can also set up a website with 10 pages for free. 

As you upgrade to higher-priced plans, you get additional features like unlimited monthly email sends, A/B testing, email automations, and email scheduling. Features like automations, autoresponders, and welcome emails are only available on paid plans. 

To access ecommerce and features for making online sales, you’d need the top tier Ecommerce Marketing plan and integrations with your online course platform or digital store. 

GetResponse features: 

  • Free plan

  • Email marketing automation and campaigns

  • Unlimited email sends per month on paid plans

  • Basic and advanced segmentation

  • Website builder and landing pages

  • Promo codes and webinars

  • Ecommerce marketing and abandoned cart recovery

  • Responsive email templates

  • Autoresponder 

  • Analytics and reporting capabilities

  • Email and chat customer support on paid plans

Who is GetResponse best for?

GetResponse’s free plan is somewhat limited, but it works if you don’t need to send automated emails or sell digital downloads. The paid plans are a good choice if you need unlimited email sends, social media integrations, and complex automation and segmentation. 

GetResponse pricing

Here are the GetResponse pricing plans:

  • Free: 2,500 email sends per month

  • Email Marketing: Starting at $19/month for 1,000 contacts, $29/month for 2,500 contacts

  • Marketing Automation: Starting at $59/month for 1,000 contacts, $69/month for 2,500 contacts

  • Ecommerce Marketing: Starting at $119/month for 1,000 contacts, $139/month for 2,500 contacts

  • Max2: Custom pricing

Try these 9 best email marketing services to take your business to new heights

The right email platform can help you stay in touch with your target audience on your own terms. Your software of choice should be user-friendly so you don’t waste time setting up complex systems that you don’t really need, and it should give you all the tools you need to execute whatever email marketing strategy you like. We hope this list helps you find the best email marketing solution for you. 

Need a place to start? 

Podia is an all-in-one platform that connects your email with your website and digital products.
Sign up for free
. 

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Sign up free

Introducing Podia Email: Beautiful email marketing in the same place as the rest of your business

Software Stack Editor · July 31, 2023 ·

Jump ahead

In this article

  • Podia Email adds a visual designer, filtering, segmentation, tags, forms, and automation. Everything you need to run your business in one place. 

  • On August 31st, Podia Email will become an optional add-on to Podia

  • What have people like you done with Podia Email so far? Here are some examples from the 700+ beta testers

  • Robert Rodriguez,
    Robert Rodriguez Music
     

  • Moira Hutchison,
    Wellness with Moira

  • Zemekia Pearson-Lockett,
    Blooming Lotus Birthing and Womb Wellness

  • Leslie-Anne Eades,
    LMNTL

  • More to come (and how to enter the $2,000 August Fellowship)

What makes email — almost 50 years after the first marketing email was sent in 1978 — the most effective sales channel for online businesses?

The 2020s are the era of “the algorithm.” Social media platforms own audiences, promote the content they want to promote, remove content that “breaks” rules (even when it doesn’t), and generally change at a moment’s notice. In the last couple of years alone, Instagram feeds became cluttered with suggested posts, TikTok has flirted with being banned, Twitch overhauled and then immediately rolled back sponsorship rules, YouTube changed monetization of videos with swearing, ChatGPT and AI have threatened the very nature of search engines and blog SEO, Reddit policies led to blackouts of major communities, and Twitter changed its name to “X.” 

These networks can be incredible tools for growing an audience, and there are countless
stories of creators
who have had their lives changed by growth on a platform. But to rely solely on the good will of a giant platform is dangerous — and that’s why email marketing can’t be beat. 

An email list is an audience you own. You can build it over time, take it with you when you switch tools, and send messages that people actually read (instead of being seen by 0.01% of your Facebook fans). The email playbook of content to lead magnet to welcome series to email launch has persisted because it works. There’s no better way to communicate directly with your audience. No better way to show them your products. No better way to get sales. 

With over 100,000 creators on Podia, we’ve seen people have phenomenal success with email. We’ve also seen that despite the power of email as a channel, email marketing platforms still have some frustrating problems. They’re hard to use, get messy over time, and most importantly — it’s a huge pain to get them to connect to the rest of your business. 

Instead of having everything just work, you have to figure out how to get a new sale to trigger a new subscriber, who gets added to a list, who gets a specific tag, who gets added back to your main email list…it’s all an unnecessary headache.

Podia has had basic email marketing features for a while, but today we’re announcing a massive overhaul designed to take the headache out of owning your audience — and let you run your entire business from a single platform. 

[embedded content]

What does a great email platform need? 

  • You have to be able to send beautiful emails. This is non-negotiable; your emails need to be customizable so that they can feel like yours. Starting from a professionally designed template is a bonus! 

  • Your emails have to reach the right people. Segmentation gives you way more control over who you talk to and what you show them. It needs to be easy to segment your email list — and usually the hardest part is getting the right data. 

  • You need automated email campaigns, so that you can reach your audience when they’re most interested in what you have to say. Welcome emails and automated launches take a massive burden off you, but they also help you sell more because they trigger when your audience is most likely to take action. 

  • You need to connect it to the rest of your business. An email platform is no good without email addresses! Every platform has some way to get your subscribers into it — whether that’s forms, imports, or integrations — but the real question is what information you get alongside the email address. Ideally, your email marketing platform would have everything about a person’s history with you (what they’ve bought from you, what they’ve downloaded, how much they’ve spent). 

When we set out to rebuild Podia Email, we knew you needed to be able to send beautiful emails, to the right people, automatically, in the same place as everything else. 

So that’s what you can do. The new email builder lets you start from professionally designed templates, add (and link) images, use buttons, format text, choose fonts, change background colors, change text colors, customize headings, adjust email width, tweak line spacing, and generally make your emails look and feel the way you want them to look and feel. 

Segmentation and filtering are here too. And because Podia Email is in the same place as your website and products, there are some bonuses that are hard to find in other platforms.

  • You can see exactly how many sales you get (both number of sales and revenue) from each email.

  • Segments and filters let you filter your audience based on what products they have (or don’t have), when they signed up, how recently they were active, how much they’ve spent with your business, and other information that is hard or impossible to get into other platforms, even with Zapier or native integrations. 

  • Tags are available through forms/link clicks — and most of the time you won’t even need to tag your subscribers. Because the important things (like product purchases) are tracked for you without additional setup.

  • Lead magnets are hosted in Podia as Podia products, and you can offer them through a Podia website or landing page (or with embedded checkout on a third-party site). Nothing to stitch together!

As you can see, this is a completely new product that completely changes how email works in Podia (and gives you new ways to use email marketing in your business). There are tons more features I haven’t mentioned here, and more still that we’re in the process of building. 

And because of that, there’s also going to be a change to how Podia Email’s pricing works. 

On August 31st, Podia Email will become an optional add-on to Podia

As of today, everyone who uses Podia will have full access to test out the new Podia Email platform and send as many emails as they like. On August 31st, Podia Email will become an optional, paid add-on to Podia (although anyone with under 100 subscribers will still have full access for free). No one will be charged for Podia Email automatically. This is a fully opt-in add-on, and you won’t be charged unless you sign up.

I know this is a change, and not an entirely pleasant one. It’s never ideal to have a platform change pricing, and right now a lot of platforms in the market are announcing price changes. One of the things I value about Podia is that we try to be open and honest about the decisions we make and why, so I wanted to share some context about this decision and how we’ve been working to design pricing that’s as fair as possible. 

  1. The platform has to be great. You’re going to use email to communicate with your audience, and that means your messages have to look and feel like yours. The platform has to be easy to use, and it has to interact with everything else you have in Podia. We knew what we built would take a lot of resources, both to build initially and to keep improving over time — because it’s something you’re going to use to run your business. 

  2. Podia incurs a cost every time an email is sent from Podia, so it was never going to be sustainable to keep email as part of base Podia plans. But we wanted to get it right, and we’ve been working on this for two years — first to understand what would be fair, then to understand what we needed to build, and finally to build the new platform. 

  3. Whatever pricing we landed on would have to be fair. Podia is one of the most affordable platforms on the internet because anyone should be able to get the tools they need to start an online business.
    That’s why we introduced a free plan last year
    , and it needed to be true for Podia Email’s pricing too. 

The cost structure meant that we would need to eventually charge for email (both to cover costs, and to be able to keep investing in improving the platform). But rather than charge for the features Podia Email used to have — which, frankly, wasn’t something we felt comfortable charging for — we knew we had to build something that could compete with the rest of the market, feature for feature. 

As an all-in-one platform, there was an opportunity to offer tools that other email products can’t at a price that other tools won’t. 

To that end, we ultimately decided to price Podia Email based on the number of opted-in subscribers in your account (people with fewer than 100 subscribers get full access for free). As things stand, we’re pretty sure we’re the most affordable major email platform on the market, and
you can see the full pricing here
. 

This is where we landed after considering four other serious options, and I wanted to share why we didn’t think those options would best serve you. 

  • Keeping email as part of base Podia plans, without charging for email. Unfortunately, it costs money to send emails. As more and more people use Podia Email, the cost to operate Podia Email would increase — that would be unsustainable for Podia, but it would also prevent us from continuing to invest in the platform and building the new features you need.

  • Raising the price of Podia plans to offset the cost of email. I stand by Podia Email as an excellent product (that will only keep improving). But not everyone is going to want to use Podia Email, and that’s ok. You should be able to use whatever email platform you want, and baking the cost of Podia Email into base Podia plans would unfairly force some people to pay for a platform they don’t use. 

  • Having a flat rate for a Podia Email add-on. Flat rates are uncommon for email platforms because the people who send the most emails are also the ones who run up costs. With a flat rate, that means that the smaller creators are subsidizing the larger ones! A flat rate also makes it harder for new people to get started (because the flat rate tends to be higher than entry price in other pricing models), which is the opposite of what we’re looking for.  

  • Charging for the number of emails sent, instead of subscriber counts. There are a handful of platforms that charge based on emails sent instead of number of subscribers. We considered this option for a long time, but ultimately decided against it because it can create a lot of variability for your business and is hard to keep track of. You shouldn’t have to keep track of whether or not your bill is going to change every month, or weigh the decision to send a given email (and therefore have to pay more). Your audience is yours, and you should be able to communicate with them as often as you want without worrying about sending one too many emails.

Ultimately, pricing based on subscribers made the most sense. 

Whichever pricing we chose would have to scale in some way with how much people use Podia Email — it’s the only way to have prices that are affordable for people just starting businesses but also fair for big senders (in a way that covers the cost of sending emails). People with more subscribers also tend to send more emails, so pricing based on subscribers is the best way to keep the platform affordable for every stage of business. 

Subscriber-based pricing also lets Podia keep unlimited monthly email sends. A lot of email platforms put a cap on the number of emails each month (even if you pay for subscribers). Podia Email doesn’t, because they’re your subscribers. You should be able to talk to them as much as you want. 

As of today (until August 31st), everyone has full access to Podia Email regardless of your subscriber count. 

If you’d like to migrate your email marketing from another platform,
Podia is offering free migration services
.

What have people like you done with Podia Email so far? Here are some examples from the 700+ beta testers

Before Podia Email was available to everyone, over 700 beta testers joined the new platform to report bugs, stress-test features, and suggest improvements. The result of that process has led to a more powerful platform, changes to make the interface easier to use, and the addition of new features — and our team is going to keep working on Podia Email as we keep getting feedback. 

Podia Pros
are tech experts who spend a lot of time using and comparing different platforms, so it was important to get their perspectives on the new Podia Email. Here’s what Pro
Adrian Dalsus
had to say about the new platform.

Adrian Dalsus, Despegue Musical, Optimination

“Designing a single email with images, gifs, buttons and formatting takes me about 30 min on another platform. In Podia Email it was half, and without leaving the platform where I have all my business. It’s extremely easy, like everything in Podia.

I feel like Podia managed to simplify (and make exciting again) a process that the rest of the email marketing industry has made complicated. Creating a campaign or broadcast with Podia is as easy as writing an email in Gmail, but better.

Sending a simple email with any email marketing platform can mean wasting an hour configuring technical aspects, jumping from menu to menu, confirming and reconfirming details. Today, I feel like I’m genuinely one email and five minutes away from communicating with my audience.”

But you don’t have to be a pro to use Podia Email — and you shouldn’t have to be. Podia Email is designed so that anyone at all can create beautiful emails and send them to the right people.

The feedback from beta testers has been overwhelmingly awesome to read, so I wanted to share some of the emails they’ve been sending and what they have to say about the experience. 

Robert Rodriguez,
Robert Rodriguez Music
 

Robert Rodriguez, Robert Rodriguez Music

“Podia’s new email update is a total game-changer! It feels like they’ve taken a giant leap forward, making the entire platform work together so smoothly. And the customization is absolutely fantastic, letting me tweak my emails to match my style and website.

Also, the new formatting features let me play around with image and text sizes until everything looks just right. But the real winner here is the template feature. Whether I’m using a premade one or crafting my own, it’s a breeze. I’ve been wanting to launch a newsletter, and the old Podia Email format wasn’t quite there. Now, I can create newsletters using my own custom template, saving me time and effort!

This update has truly empowered me to connect better with my audience. I’m excited to see what’s next!”

See Robert’s full email in your browser

Moira Hutchison,
Wellness with Moira

Moira Hutchison, Wellness with Moira

“Using Podia Email has supported me in streamlining the way I connect with and stay in touch with my clients, students and community. Having the email service in-house, so to speak, with my courses and products creates ease and cohesiveness in my business.

The visual editor is intuitive and easy to use — I am very happy with what I have been able to create thus far. I am thrilled to notice that not only have my open rates improved using Podia Email but my click rates have also improved!!

Thank you Podia — I look forward to my continued use of your service and support.”

See Moira’s full email in your browser

Zemekia Pearson-Lockett,
Blooming Lotus Birthing and Womb Wellness

Zemekia Pearson-Lockett, Blooming Lotus Birthing and Womb Wellness

“Podia Email was a game changer for me! The templates made it super easy to create attractive, professional emails. Since using these templates I have gotten great feedback from my subscribers about how vibrant and engaging my emails are.

Utilizing the campaign setting, I’ve even generated a custom welcome email that is automatically sent out to customers that have enrolled in my course. The “lead magnet” and “newsletter” templates are my personal favorites. With the content suggestions, I have so many ways to creatively and uniquely express the different elements of my brand.

Podia Email has allowed me to create effective, eye catching emails while saving tons of time.”

See Zemekia’s full email in your browser

Leslie-Anne Eades,
LMNTL

Leslie-Anne Eades, LMNTL

“Having all the tools to run my business in one place allows me to focus on the heart of what I do instead of constantly managing the operations & multiple platforms. It conserves my time, money & energy resources.

Podia Email allows me to utilize pre-existing templates or create my own so I can quickly draft and send custom emails to my subscribers and community. The entire system is intuitive & easy to understand as a creator, and leaves me feeling empowered and efficient.

Sending a monthly newsletter, general updates on offerings, and keeping in contact with my people is simple with Podia Email.”

See Leslie-Anne’s full email in your inbox

More to come (and how to enter the $2,000 August Fellowship)

This is still just the beginning of Podia Email. We’re going to keep working to make this platform the best it can be, so that you have more and more tools to grow your business.

As part of that work, it’s helpful to have as many of you as possible join in and give Podia Email a spin. That’s why entry into Podia’s August Fellowship (and a chance to win $2,000) is simple — all you have to do is send an email using Podia Email and you’ll be automatically entered to win. You don’t even have to fill out an application.

I can’t wait to see the beautiful emails you’ll send. And, as always, I can’t wait to see what you’ll build next. 

Creativity professor Juan Muñoz published his newsletter for 162 weeks in a row. Here’s how his experiments paid off.

Software Stack Editor · April 26, 2023 ·

What if school got learning wrong? Here’s how university creativity professor Juan Muñoz is making more impact as a creator by first becoming a better student.

Jump ahead

In this article

On the first day of class, creativity and innovation professor Juan Muñoz told his students they could turn in their homework any way they wanted.

“It can be written down, it can be in your own handwriting, it can be typed on the computer, it can be a video, it can be a podcast–you can do whatever you want to do. If you want to send a messenger dove with your homework, that’s fine. You don’t have to be confined by a piece of paper or Google Doc,” he instructed.

But even with this freedom, his university students still turned in identical PDFs with the same formatting every single time.

“I was so frustrated,” Juan remembers. “I thought this was the simplest task in the world. How are they going to learn creativity if they can’t even get this done?”

As the pattern continued, Juan wondered if there was a bigger issue at play.

“Students have been programmed for ten, fifteen years in school. They’ve been taught that, whether you’re great or not great, you’ll get a worse grade if you deviate from whatever template that teacher gave you. There’s an intrinsic fear of deviating from the standard path.”

Juan could see that this internalized programming was hurting creativity, and he wanted to change things.

Juan loved teaching, but he felt constricted by university rules. In his free time, he read TechCrunch and other entrepreneurial publications, which gave him the idea to start a business.

At the time, there wasn’t an active entrepreneurship ecosystem in Juan’s home country of Costa Rica, so Juan decided to help get the ball rolling.

“I have a civil engineering degree, and I knew people would think, ‘What does this guy know about business?’ So the first thing I did was I wrote all of my ideas down in a blog and spread them around. I launched my creator career by sharing my ideas online and sharing the things I can do.”

Today, Juan teaches creativity, goal-setting, entrepreneurship, and business through his online learning platform,
Épico Academia
. He offers online courses, a library of free workshops, and a paid weekly email newsletter to help people live more creative and epic lives.

Here’s how experimenting, taking unexpected paths, and continually learning helped Juan build a thriving online business and unlock a holistic approach to entrepreneurship that’s fulfilling and fun.

How to provide content in a way that doesn’t feel like school

With his experience creating courses as a university professor, making content wasn’t a challenge for Juan. He just had to figure out the most impactful way to deliver that content.

“The biggest friction is getting people to consume the content we make,” Juan shares.

“People will buy a course and only a handful will go through it. It feels like school. Even if nobody’s making me do it and I’m really interested, my brain goes back to school mode. There’s a teacher, there are modules, there are classes.”

So Juan started experimenting with other ways he could get his content to his audience.

“What if I try an
email-based course where you receive a cool email every week for a year
? Or TikTok-type content, just 30-second videos. Can I create a course with tons of 30-second videos? I don’t know, maybe. I’ll try it out and see if it works.”

Having the right technology in your corner can make experimenting with different delivery methods and content formats easier. Before, Juan used
Gumroad
to sell his products, but he felt limited because the platform was mainly for PDFs and files.

When he switched to
Podia
, Juan gained access to a wide variety of product types so he could test out different formats and make his lessons more exciting.

“I love how Podia allows me to do basically whatever content I want in whatever order I want. I can make a course that’s just 100, 30-second videos and have people go through them.”

Podia is an all-in-one platform that makes it easy to
sell online courses
,
digital downloads
,
community
,
coaching
, and
webinars
about the topics you love. You can also manage your
email marketing
,
affiliates
, and
website
from one streamlined dashboard. If you have a lot of ideas, Podia can make them happen.
Register for free today.

SIGN UP NOW

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Start free →

One experiment that paid off was a pro-Monday email newsletter

Speaking of experimenting, when Juan tried something different that went against the norm, he ended up creating one of his favorite assets:
The Monday newsletter
.

In the early days of his online business, Juan noticed a trend.

“Every Sunday night and Monday morning, people would post memes about how much they hate Mondays,” Juan says. “I thought, there’s always going to be a Monday. You can’t escape it. So why are you still hung up on this?”

“I started realizing these are the same people that come to me and say, ‘I don’t like my life, I don’t like my job, I want to get better,’ and there was a pattern. I love marketing and branding, and I thought this would be an interesting brand idea because it’s easy to hate Monday. There’s already a club for that, and it’s a big club. But how do you do the opposite?”

Juan started a newsletter all about how much he loved Mondays where he shared one tip, concept, or idea that would help his readers make the most out of their day.

“It attracted a lot of people because people were unhappy with something in their life and I was talking about ways to make their life better. It made people question, ‘Why do I hate Monday?’”

Juan published his Monday newsletter for 162 straight weeks and the
consistency compounded his follower count and impact
. He took a break when his daughter was born, then brought the newsletter back when he had more time during lockdowns.

Today, this experiment-turned-newsletter continues to grow through word-of-mouth referrals, and Juan still loves writing it every week.

To become a better creator, learn as much information as you can about the topics you’re interested in

Not every idea comes together as seamlessly as the Monday newsletter, and Juan found that the best way to get clarity on product and content ideas was to become a student again.

“I’m always mind blown about the fact that we get to live in a world where we can learn from anyone and anyone can learn from us. It’s amazing. If I’m into marbles, I can find someone that’s so much more into marbles that they’ll teach me new things. They can be in Singapore, I might not even know their name, but I can learn from their content.”

To become a successful creator today, learn as much as you can about the topics you love.

“I urge people to consume whatever they’re curious about,” Juan recommends. “Often you can even find free content on social media. And when you consume content, you realize, this is not that deep. This guy is talking about marbles. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in a subject.”

“There used to be experts,” Juan explains. “There were people that knew everything about one subject because there was only a limited amount of information available. There wasn’t infinite information like we have today, and that information was sequestered somewhere. So there was someone who knew everything about it, and they were the expert. But that’s not the case anymore.”

“There are a lot of people that know a lot, and there are a lot of people that know a little, but there’s always someone that knows less than you. So you can make content for them and still have a big impact.”

Simply put, the more you get out there and learn, the more knowledge you’ll have to share with people around you. If you’re feeling stuck on what or how to teach, try switching roles and becoming a student again to reignite your inspiration.

What if you created things just for the sake of creating them?

One of the most profound lessons Juan learned in his entrepreneurial journey is that there are many different routes people can take to share their passions.

Juan says, “We have these preconceived notions about how things should work. We look online and see how other creators are running their businesses and think that’s exactly how we should run ours too. Instead, get inspired by what others are doing and pick and choose things that work for you. If you go to Podia’s website,
there are dozens of creator profiles
. Read these profiles and you’ll see that there are so many different ways you can do this.”

Creating also shouldn’t be all about reaching a particular outcome, financial milestone, or follower count. Instead, find a balance between Telic and Atelic goals.

“Telic goals are things that have a very fixed outcome that you can measure. Atelic goals are good to do for the sake of doing them. I think people should approach creating with both types of goals in mind,” Juan shares.

“Sure, it would be great to get a million dollars a year out of your course, but if that doesn’t happen, just having
created the course
is good in and of itself. There’s growth aside from the money.
Building an audience
is the same way. If you only focus on the number of subscribers and followers, it’ll be frustrating. But if you focus on creating excellent content every day, just doing that is beneficial to you and to that audience,” Juan reminds.

“If you’re actually helping other people out, then it doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a million.”

Plus, there’s value in your work simply existing in the world.

“If you send out a tweet,
Instagram post
, or video and nobody sees it, it’s still there. Someone can find it eventually. Also, getting likes on a post and helping people through your post are two very different things. I enjoy a lot of things that I don’t double-tap. Just because nobody double-tapped your post or retweeted your tweet doesn’t mean it wasn’t beneficial.”

“Creating is a visceral thing. It’s emotion, it’s vulnerable, it’s very honest,” Juan relates. “It’s a picture of who you are and what you think, and putting that out there and having no one engage with it is horrible.”

“But even if nobody buys it, it’s still valuable. You still learned a lot. You can use that knowledge in consulting or your next job or anywhere. Nobody can take that away from you. That’s soul bound.”

To stay in touch with what really matters, Juan explains how important it is to remember where you came from and celebrate everything you’ve achieved so far.

“I recommend that creators keep journals and think about what you’re doing now through the eyes of yourself five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago. Ask yourself what you would think about your work now. Because past you would probably think it’s great.”

Finally, Juan reminds creators that the most important thing is getting your work out there. It isn’t about getting record-breaking sales, likes, or clients.

“I think it’s arrogant to assume people won’t want your product. It’s arrogant because you’re making a decision for someone else. Let them make the decision. If they want it, they’ll buy it. If they don’t, they won’t. You just have to make it available to them. Be more mind-blown by the world, learn as much as you can, and make things–other people will make their own decisions.”

“Create your thing and put it out there, Juan says. “You never know what will happen next.”

Personal finance educator Dana Miranda’s first audience wasn’t a fit. But when she made this shift, she started to grow.

Software Stack Editor · April 24, 2023 ·

When Dana Miranda shifted her target audience to provide training and resources for educators and non-profits, she found more alignment and fulfillment in her business.

Jump ahead

In this article

In the two years Dana Miranda worked as a personal finance journalist, she noticed a trend. “Most of the personal finance content out there, most of the advice and education, is from a singular point of view, which is usually white, male, heteronormative, and from a middle-class background.”

“I come from a working-class background,” Dana shares. “I’m a queer woman. And I kept seeing that there was a lack of representation and understanding of the nuances of these different kinds of experiences that people have with money.”

Instead of reproducing the same information that everyone else was sharing, Dana decided to change the narrative.

Today, Dana Miranda is a personal finance educator and the founder of
Healthy Rich
, a platform for inclusive, budget-free financial education. Here’s how Dana built her online business and ensured that her work reached as many people as possible, even if that meant going a nontraditional route.

Have a new business idea you want to try? Join Podia for free and build your website, sell a digital download, offer coaching, and grow an online community. We can’t wait to see what you create!

Just because a monetization strategy is popular doesn’t mean it’s right for your business

Healthy Rich began as a side hobby that Dana ran while working as a freelance writer.

“I started Healthy Rich as a project to tell different personal finance stories. It was just a blog and there was no money coming in. I wasn’t quite sure what monetization would look like, but I knew that eventually, I wanted to grow it into a business.”

“I didn’t want to monetize through advertising and affiliates,” Dana explains. “That’s really common in the personal finance space, and I didn’t like what I had seen on sites that I’d worked for. To make sure we were providing value for the end user, I wanted to take ads out of the equation.”

With ads and affiliates off the table,
selling digital products
was the best revenue option for Healthy Rich. Dana spent months creating personal finance classes for her target audience–individuals in need of financial advice and support–but when launch day arrived, she learned a difficult lesson.

Dana loved the course content she had created. She also enjoyed talking to her students, hearing feedback, and answering questions. But something felt off about selling to her followers.

“I hated the entire launch. I hated the whole sales process of convincing people that they have some pain point and I have the solution–none of it felt right for me,” Dana remembers.

Selling products to individual audience members was not the way forward, which was a big problem. Even though this was Healthy Rich’s monetization plan, she wanted her followers to have access to the information for free. She needed to bring in money but didn’t want that money to come from the pockets of the people she was trying to help.

When creating products for your target market feels wrong, try shifting your audience

To get more perspectives, Dana had conversations with educators and community organizers. From those talks, she realized that there was a huge need for
personal finance curriculum
–and she could be the person to provide it.

“The need for personal finance education is growing,” Dana explains.

“There are a lot of states passing mandates that you have to have a personal finance class to graduate high school, but most of those are unfunded and there’s not a specific educational track for someone to become a personal finance teacher. Educators coming into the space are often just told to teach a personal finance class and don’t feel prepared for it.”

The same issue existed among non-profit workers and those who serve vulnerable populations.

“People who work in a non-profit organization may be helping people in another area of their lives, but it’s all inextricably connected to money. They’re fielding questions about people’s finances that they don’t feel confident answering. I want to help people understand this subject so they can deliver that information with confidence.”

Dana realized that she could bypass selling products to end consumers and instead serve educators and trainers with a much wider audience. Her message could reach more people, her business could earn money, and she could feel good about her impact.

“I like to give content to the people who need it for free as much as possible. Serving community organizations and schools is a way for me to make this education available to the people who need it because individuals are participating in those programs and classes for free,” she shares.

“This opened up a new audience for my business because I was able to empower facilitators and instructors. I can work with both audiences without directly selling classes to each individual person.”

When Dana started to build out her new program for educators, it clicked.

“My first course launch was a good experiment. I’m glad that I learned what I did, but I’m also glad that I learned quickly and moved on to the next chapter.”

Dana needed a place to house all her new offers, and she found
Podia
while researching different online creator platforms.

“I use Podia for my membership,
which is technically a community
, and I’m setting it up as a library of resources for educators. We’re using the community space as a library and also as a community forum for people, just like a brick-and-mortar library would have,” Dana explains.

“I am using the
coaching feature
because I’ll be scheduling consulting calls and virtual training with people. And I plan to do
webinars
with members, so I’m kind of using the gamut.”

In the future, Dana also plans to
build an online course through Podia
. She hopes to make a self-study training option, and having everything in one place makes it easy to grow.

“Podia gives me the flexibility to create what I want. I love it that way.”

Your ideas aren’t limited, and your technology shouldn’t be either.

SIGN UP NOW

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Start free →

To find potential clients, connect on LinkedIn through shared work

To find her first clients in her new target demographic, Dana turned to
social media
. On
LinkedIn
, Dana found that connecting with people about their current projects and achievements was an easy way to start a conversation.

“People like to talk about the work they’re doing. Follow the organizations that you would want to work with and see what they’re up to,” Dana notes.

“It’s been really helpful for me to know the niche that I want to work with, which is educators and nonprofit organizations. I live in Wisconsin, so I’m starting locally with organizations in the community. I can reach out as a fellow community member and say, ‘I care about the work that you’re doing in my community. Let’s talk about how we could work together.’”

By reenvisioning her target audience and the products they need, Dana transformed Healthy Rich into so much more than a blog about personal finance advice. Today, it’s an opportunity to completely change societal conversations around money.

“The way that we talk about money is a problem, and I want to do it differently. I want to provide resources that educators need and also make sure that it’s being taught with a more inclusive and nuanced lens, instead of just the same old budgeting and debt paydown stuff that I was seeing.”

By shifting her target audience from individual people to educators and non-profit workers, Dana stayed true to her values and found a better way to share her knowledge with those who needed it most.

Blaze new trails and avoid comparing your journey to others

Dana reminds creators that “there’s no perfect path for what this career looks like. You have to just experiment and figure out what works for you.”

Part of finding your own path means not comparing yourself to other creators. Instead, Dana recommends looking to the past to see how much you’ve grown.

“Everyone is always at one stage wanting to be at the next stage. What’s really helpful for me is to think about myself five or ten years ago,” she says.

“When I started freelancing, I wanted to be a writer. I started taking on some freelance gigs and blogging, and for my first few years, I was earning very low pay. Whenever I feel frustrated with where I am in my business, I look back at me then and remember what I’ve achieved.”

“I was able to get a full-time job as a staff writer,” she shares. “In the last couple of years, I made six figures freelancing. Now I’m pivoting into a new phase where, instead of my revenue primarily coming from freelance writing, I want it to come from
my business
.

“It’s frustrating figuring out how to make it work, but if you told me twelve years ago that this is the position I would be in, I would not believe that it could happen. I’d be really astonished.”

At the end of the day, taking the leap to follow your creativity is a huge win, and you’ve probably come farther than you realize.

“I think that pursuing this kind of dream is a huge thing to celebrate no matter which stage you’re in.”

We couldn’t agree more. If you’re ready to begin your own creator journey like Dana, Podia can provide the tools to help you get there.
Get your free Podia account
today and have fun blazing new trails.

SIGN UP NOW

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Start free →

How Asha Downes started a natural hair coaching business based on science and self-acceptance

Software Stack Editor · January 25, 2023 ·

Learn how Asha Downes turned her own natural hair journey into an educational coaching business centered on radical gentleness, science, and self-love.

Jump ahead

In this article

From a young age, Asha Downes dreamed of having long hair. She loved playing hairdresser with friends and experimenting with different styles, but she was always told that it was impossible to grow her Afro-textured hair to the long lengths she desired.

Everything changed when Asha was in her late teens. While browsing YouTube, she discovered a creator with her same hair texture who was growing long, natural hair. Despite everyone saying that it couldn’t be done, the creator’s hair was healthy and full. Asha knew that if this creator could do it, she could too.

Asha dove deep into the science behind hair growth. As she learned how to nurture and care for her hair, Asha shared her journey with the world and amassed a significant following on
YouTube
and social media. She launched
1:1 coaching
and
educational products
to better serve her audience, and along the way, learned that growing long hair is much more than achieving a specific style. It’s a radical movement of self-acceptance.

Today, Asha runs
Naturally High Hair,
a company that helps other women grow their natural hair through personalized mentorship and
info-packed workshops
. She won Podia’s 2022 Fall Creator Fellowship, and we were wowed by her gentle, holistic approach to caring for her clients. On top of that, she’s working towards an advanced qualification in trichology to deepen her expertise in her field.

Here’s how Asha turned her passion into a coaching and education business that’s transforming women’s hair — and lives — for the better.

Turning a passion project into a creative business through authenticity

When Asha started learning about natural hair care, she wasn’t alone. Other women around the world were also documenting their natural hair journeys. She recalls, “This was before YouTube was the commercial space it is now, so people were just sharing their tips, recipes, trials, and tribulations.”

“It was paradigm-shifting to see so many Black women talking about this together, even though we’re all in different countries. We’re all going through this experience, and now it has a name: The natural hair movement.”

When Asha decided to share her story publicly, she was drawn to YouTube because that’s where other creators in the space were already spending time. “I was joining them,” she explains. “I didn’t know where I was headed. I just wanted to be part of it.”

On her channel, Asha documented everything as she began to unlearn and relearn how to take care of her natural hair. It was a passion project, and Asha focused on sharing her authentic self. Her audience loved following along, and over the years,
her YouTube channel
and
Instagram account
grew.

“While I was documenting my journey in the very early stages, I wasn’t looking at the views or the subscribers,” she remembers. “It was a place to share my journey with my hair. People found it interesting and started to follow.”

As Asha’s social media reach expanded, her content creation process became more strategic, and she brainstormed future resources to help her viewers.

Meanwhile, Asha was working full-time and living in different countries across Europe. She looked into hair-related jobs for big companies, but none of them felt quite right.

Asha became a creator just to share her personal experience. Her upbeat and transparent videos resonated with people, and she realized that she could have a real impact. She knew that monetization would allow her to invest back into serving her audience and growing her expertise. In her mind, this passion project was transforming from a hobby to a business opportunity, if only she could give it her full attention. Then everything fell into place.

Asha was between jobs visiting the Caribbean when the pandemic forced worldwide lockdowns. With nowhere to go and time on her hands, it felt like a sign to take the plunge.

“There wasn’t an opportunity in front of me to do what I was passionate about. It was during lockdown when I had that time to myself that I decided I would make my own opportunity.”

So Asha got to work.

The power of a super simple launch

Asha initially planned to sell physical haircare products, but a mentor looked at her substantial online presence and suggested that she offer personalized consultations instead. That advice, combined with difficulties sourcing supplies during a global pandemic, sent Asha down the digital path.

Asha’s first product was a 1:1 regimen-building consultation. She wasn’t sure how her audience would respond, so she kept her launch plan simple. She made a Typeform application and
posted the link on Instagram
with an explanation of her coaching services.

“I talked about what I was doing and encouraged people to apply,” she shares. “I got over 200 responses. They were only applying to be coached by me, so they didn’t have to pay, but they gave me their email addresses and shared their hair concerns. Then I responded to them and included a booking link.”

This is a genius way to test an idea without a huge upfront investment. Asha made her product attainable and gauged how much interest she had from her target audience.

Through the applications, she learned what her audience needed in their own words and grew her email list. Those who felt like it was a good match became her first customers, and she proved that her idea had legs before spending countless hours and dollars on a big launch.

Asha started meeting with clients, but she quickly learned that her audience’s needs went deeper than recommending products and creating customized hair regimens.

“I realized this work involves more than just picking products and styles. We’re going to have to do some mindset work.”

“There’s a strong connection between self-acceptance and growing your hair long and healthy for the first time. Your hair can only be preserved and destroyed. It’s a dead fiber. You can’t revive it, so everything you do to your hair, your hair remembers and will affect its future.”

With this understanding in mind, Asha shifted to a more holistic approach
focusing on hair acceptance and self-love
.

“One of the core tenets of my program is this idea of radical gentleness. To be gentle with your hair, you have to accept it. You have to be patient with it and be okay with it looking a certain way. I realized there’s this connection between radical self-acceptance and gentleness and preserving your hair so it can grow longer.”

Listening to her audience helped Asha expand the content of her coaching program and define the shape of her business as a whole. As she continued to work with customers, Asha discovered that one-off coaching was helpful for proactive clients who already had a positive relationship with their hair, but it wasn’t working for clients who needed more accountability.

This inspired her to create a comprehensive coaching program called Longer Lengths™, which provides sustained support over a longer period of time while customers build healthy hair mindsets and habits.

Today, Longer Lengths™ is Asha’s signature coaching offer and the primary way she works with people individually. To accommodate clients at all stages in their hair journey, Asha also offers a
90-minute Grow-Your-’Fro Long Hair Crash Course
.

Asha sells her on-demand crash course as an evergreen product so customers can have a quick win any time, and she takes batches of Longer Lengths™ clients a few times per year.

Having an intentional mix of programs is a great choice for creators who offer coaching. Self-serve products are more affordable and scalable, giving customers an opportunity to interact with you before making a bigger investment. Higher-ticket 1:1 programs are ideal for clients who want more hands-on interaction. By having both, you can reach more people in your target demographic.

Up next, we’ll explore Asha’s approach to overcoming challenges and maintaining a sustainable business aligned with her passion and her audience’s needs.

Asha’s tips for getting out of your own way

Every business has hard moments, but Asha has learned to handle obstacles with confidence. Her secret? Bring in experts, wrangle imposter syndrome, and lean into individuality.

Asking for help is a time-saver

Whether she’s working with mentors to iron out business ideas or bringing on
video editors
and social media consultants, Asha always asks for assistance when she needs it.

Since deciding to go all in on her business, Asha has
worked with several freelancers
, specialists, assistants, and coaches, including a free mentor provided by a UK nonprofit for early-stage entrepreneurs, to keep her on the right track.

“I know I don’t have all the answers.”

She says, “It’s easy for me to see the value in consulting with somebody specialized in marketing or accountability or selling online courses because I understand that, while there are free resources online,
time is worth so much more
.”

“I know I don’t have all the answers… Speaking to an expert helps me cut through the clutter and avoid wasting time. That’s why I place a high value on that kind of insight.”

Need help in your business but don’t know where to start?

Take a page from Asha’s book and see what resources are available through your local chamber of commerce, or look for business and entrepreneurship nonprofits in your area. You can also join the
Podia Creator Community
to get feedback on your work and bounce ideas around with other creators.

Finding proof to face imposter syndrome head on

Everyone feels
imposter syndrome
in their business sometimes, but Asha has reframed this as a positive sign
she’s growing and expanding
. To keep her inner critic at bay, Asha has a few tricks.

First, keep a positive record. “I keep a record of anything good that I do,” Asha elaborates. “I have a list of my accomplishments, so I start programming my mind to focus on positive things in my life.”

To create your own positive record, set up a folder on your computer where you save five-star feedback and kind notes from customers. When you feel down or uncertain, open your file and remember how awesome you are.

Second, become an expert in your subject area. According to Asha, “Another way to battle imposter syndrome is to become really obsessed with the thing you’re offering. I don’t mind being obsessed with something to the point that other people think it’s a bit strange. I have a whole database about hair. I’m constantly reading about hair and hair science.”

Diving into your niche and gaining knowledge can lessen those feelings of uncertainty. You can do this through personal research, practice, or
investing in higher education credentials like Asha
.

Third, be prepared. One of Asha’s most intense experiences with imposter syndrome happened when she sat down to
film a YouTube video
after taking a break for a few months. Flooded with negative thoughts about her content, she felt paralyzed.

When she spoke with her accountability coach about the incident, they realized that a lack of specifics made it hard to film in the moment — the video script wasn’t fully formed, and the purpose was unclear. Once she defined her goals, revisited her video, and made improvements, her feelings of imposter syndrome faded.

Now, Asha asks herself, “How can I prepare the task so that even if I’m experiencing those feelings, I still feel okay? Why am I creating this video, and what do I want people to do after they watch it? Once I have that answer, it’s easier for me to sit through any discomfort I’m feeling.”

Simply put, imposter syndrome is a part of life for creators, but it doesn’t have to be a dealbreaker. As Asha puts it, “The great thing about facing that situation is that you begin to become the kind of person who doesn’t run away in the face of fear.”

Lean into the things that make you unique

Embrace the characteristics that make you stand out as a creator. Having a particular personality trait or skill set can set you apart from the competition and connect you with more customers.

“Apply yourself and go for it,” Asha says. “And then continue applying yourself in other areas to bring your unique twist to whatever you are doing. In my case, I can also provide consultations in German or Spanish.”

Asha also has a research background that gives her content a special scientific spin.

“Don’t focus so much on the specifics of what others in the space are doing. Bring your unique angle and continue to strengthen those things that make you stand out.”

By asking for help, managing imposter syndrome, and sharing your special skills and traits, you’ll be on the way to
creating a business you’re proud of
.

“Follow your passion. I’m really glad to have created this program that involves self-acceptance, empathy, hair science, cosmetic science, accountability, styling, nutrition, and health and to merge all of that into one.”

Want to follow in Asha’s footsteps?
Create your website
,
offer your first coaching product
, or
create a digital product
for your audience, all
for free with Podia
. We can’t wait to see where your passion takes you.

SIGN UP NOW

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Start free →

How Casey Richardson is bringing access to knowledge, community, and capital to Black female entrepreneurs

Software Stack Editor · January 17, 2023 ·

Learn how Casey Richardson used her experience in tech funding to found BLAZE Group and empower a community of Black women entrepreneurs.

Jump ahead

In this article

Two and a half years ago, Casey Ariel Richardson’s life looked a lot different. She lived in the Bay Area and worked for Bank of America, structuring multimillion-dollar loans for tech companies. But she found that she was always the only Black woman on the team — and in over ten years of working in finance, she never saw funding given to a Black business.

“It showed me that not only was the knowledge not getting there, the capital wasn’t getting to my communities,” Casey recalls.

In October 2020, Casey decided to change that.

Armed with her experience in tech funding and business, she quit her 9-to-5 job and founded
BLAZE Group
 — Building Leaders & Accepting Zero Excuses — to provide knowledge, mentorship, and community to the historically underserved community of Black women entrepreneurs.

Fast forward to 2023: BLAZE Group offers online courses through Blaze Knowledge Academy, group coaching programs, an online community, an app, in-person retreats, a semiannual virtual summit, and proprietary research, all led by Casey and her global team.

How did she do it in just two years? A combination of providing resources that meet a specific, underserved need, intentional audience building, and choosing the right tools and team.

From corporate finance professional to game-changing entrepreneur

Before she became a full-time entrepreneur, Casey was a finance professional, structuring multibillion-dollar loans for tech companies. It kept her on the cutting edge of new tech — but she also saw disparity in her team and the businesses they were funding. “I was always the only Black woman on the team. It showed me that my education, my knowledge, my exposure just was not available in my communities.”

Black women are the
fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs
in the United States — but only 3% have “mature” businesses, and 61% self-fund their startup capital. There’s a major disparity in the funding and resources available to Black women entrepreneurs compared to their white male counterparts.

In the summer of 2020, Casey joined the protests against police brutality. She found strength and community that were missing from her day-to-day work. “I felt more alive protesting than I had in all of my years of doing those sexy deals,” she says. “I was rubbing shoulders with the people who were bold enough and courageous enough to lead things that actually matter.”

By October, she was done with the limits of her corporate finance job — not in spite of how successful she was, but because of it. What else could she do with that talent? How could she use her expertise in tech and finance to help other Black women succeed?

“I’m really good inside of these four walls. But I would put money on myself any day to believe that I could take up even more space in the world. So I quit.”

She quit her job, moved to Africa, and started building BLAZE Group, a location-independent business that empowers Black women around the world to do the exact same thing.

BLAZE Group
specifically targets entrepreneurs in their first three years of business building, which Casey calls the “entrepreneurial phase.”

“BLAZE exists to really help them understand how to lead their companies in ways that keep them around. And we do that through tech-enabled solutions, Podia being one of them,” she says.

To serve that audience, Casey had to build genuine relationships with them.

Why you should build an email list (and how to start)

Casey knew that she wanted to create a business intensive online course from the jump — but it was important to build an audience before she launched her first product.

Building an audience is the
top challenge creators face
, and many launch their first product without any marketing or audience building. That can lead to a disappointing launch, a struggle to get their product in front of people, and content that doesn’t resonate with potential customers.

Casey didn’t want that to happen with the launch of BLAZE’s first product. So, she approached her initial audience-building activities with a clear goal: to build an email list.

Why email subscribers over social media followers? “I knew I wanted to be able to get and own relationships,” explains Casey.

When you
own your audience
, you build relationships with them on your own terms, using a platform or channel you control. You don’t have to rely on a social media algorithm to get your content in front of people — you have a scalable, direct line of communication, like an email newsletter or online community.

“On Instagram, you don’t own the relationship. You don’t know what their email address is, and if their handle changes, you better hope you know what the new handle is,” Casey says.

“I wanted to own relationships and be able to get in front of them often to build that brand awareness and trust.”

Casey used two main tactics to
build her email list
:

  1. Reaching out to her existing network

  2. 15-minute discovery calls with her target audience

1. Reaching out to her existing network

There’s a lot of advice out there about how to grow your audience, and many creators think that their first customers will be strangers who found them via social media. But when you start your audience from scratch, you’re missing out on a huge potential source of support: Your friends and family!

Casey reached out to everyone in her circle, letting them know she was starting a newsletter about entrepreneurship and asking if they’d like to subscribe.

“I started by going through my most recent text messages, Instagram DMs, Twitter, Facebook… I set the timer and sent as many as I could in five-minute increments,” she describes.

Many friends and family took Casey up on the offer, and she began building a solid email list leading up to her product launch.

2. 15-minute discovery calls with her target audience

When you get to know your
target audience
 — their goals, challenges, and values — you can create content and products that resonate with them.

And the best way to get to know them is by talking to them.

Casey posted on social media, sharing that she was building a course to help Black women understand business management. “If I can talk to you for 15 minutes and ask questions, let me know,” she added.

She knew that people who set up a call with her were her target audience: Black women interested in entrepreneurship.

Instead of discussing course content or marketing herself, Casey asked questions like, “What keeps you up at night? What is your biggest fear? In one year, where do you wanna be?” She used the time to make the women feel seen and understood. In turn, she learned what was most important to address in her course content.

“Just holding space for that and making them feel safe, that’s a huge part of the magic.”

“By the end of most of those calls, they were like, ‘Can I buy the course now?’” Casey remembers. She was still building the course, but she collected their email addresses and promised to let them know when it launched.

When the course was finally ready, she promoted it to the email list she built with these two tactics. “There was already this anticipation from all of those people. They were ready to enroll.”

The results? 80% of the women she spoke to on those initial calls converted to customers.

More than two years later, Casey still offers free discovery calls as part of her sales process. If potential clients have questions about the Blaze Business Intensive, they can schedule a
free Perfect Fit Call
with Casey.

“On average, it takes five follow-ups to close a deal. I don’t think enough entrepreneurs know that,” says Casey. “I use those calls to really seal the deal.”

Today, BLAZE offers online courses and masterclasses, group coaching programs, an online community, webinars, the
TablexTribe mobile app
, a semiannual virtual summit (a 2022
Webby Awards honoree
for Best in Business and Finance), and proprietary research.

How does she manage all of those things with so much intentionality and care?

Casey has put together an international team that helps her scale different parts of her business, including:

  • A content marketer and blogger based in Nigeria

  • A junior consultant based in London

  • A brand and production manager (her fiancé!) who grew the
    BLAZE Group Instagram
    from 1,300 followers in May 2022 to 70,000+ at the start of 2023

  • An executive assistant in Kenya

  • A research analyst who publishes
    research papers
    across industries, helping BLAZE find new consulting clients

  • A production assistant for the semiannual Blaze Virtual Summit

She doesn’t just hire people to join her team — she hires tools, too.

“I hire tools with a quickness,” Casey laughs. “And I love that because there’s scale.”

An increase in revenue doesn’t always mean your business is scaling, especially if you’re doing more work or spending more money to achieve that growth.

“The increase in revenue should not be the main goal,” explains Casey. “If you’re increasing costs at the same rate that your revenue increases, your bottom line doesn’t change.”

“Scale happens when you can increase revenue, and your costs and time spent barely change.”

Previous experience in tech taught Casey how powerful no-code tools, integrations, and automations can be. As she built BLAZE Group, she leveraged low- and no-code solutions like Podia and Zapier to keep everything running smoothly.

How Casey uses Podia for her courses, community, and downloads

“Podia was the first application I used to offer things at scale,” Casey shares.

Tools like Podia give Casey “more time to do intentional things,” like the one-on-one discovery calls she offers potential clients.

Casey built her first digital product, the
Blaze Business Intensive
online course, with Podia. It’s a six-week, self-paced course on “Business Building, Business Management and Business Excellence for Today’s Black Woman.”

“It was completely no-code. I actually built it back when Podia was doing the 14-day free trials,” Casey remembers. “I built the entire course within that window and started selling it before that expired so I could be immediately profitable.”

(Want to follow in Casey’s footsteps?
Sign up for a free Podia plan
, take as long as you need to get your course content set up, then upgrade when you’re ready to start selling.)

The course is part of the
Blaze Knowledge Academy
, a collection of business education resources Casey built on her Podia site. The Academy also includes:

Casey initially ran the Blaze Women’s Network
on Facebook
, but she didn’t like how customers had to log into different places to access their courses and products.

When Podia launched its community feature, she
moved her community
over. Now, it’s on the same platform as her courses, webinars, and digital downloads, making it easy for her audience to access all of her content — and go from free members to paying customers — in one place.

“People can join the Blaze Women’s Network absolutely free,” Casey explains. We do virtual coworking sessions, I host webinars, and then that funnels people into the paid courses.”

In addition to introducing customers to helpful products, Casey’s community gives members a friendly and supportive place to connect with other founders.

“It used to be that ‘content was king,’ but now things are shifting to ‘community is king.’ People are looking for community-centric programs… and the communities that don’t feel like spam come across as genuine.”

(
Learn more about how Casey and other creators run thriving online communities.
)

Her experience using Podia has given Casey a rubric for what to look for in a no-code creator tool. “You have a very agile system that’s allowed me to do some end-to-end solutions, right on the platform,” she describes. “And I’ve taken that same scorecard when I assess tools because I want to be able to scale with it.”

“It truly is beautiful to use solutions like Podia to impact the entire world in ways that are cost-effective and very accessible to people who are marginalized today.”

Don’t try to do everything all at once

Given all of Casey’s accomplishments in just over two years of running BLAZE, her advice to new creators might come as a surprise: Do less — at least when you first get started.

“Keep the main thing, the main thing,” she advises. Hustle culture tells new entrepreneurs that there’s never enough work done or content created. But Casey reminds fellow creators, “There’s only so much you can do, no matter how amazing you are.”

“You don’t have to do all of the things outta the gate, and it’s going to be really, really hard to perfect several things at once when you’re just starting.”

She recommends starting with a signature offering, then building from there. “I started with the Blaze Intensive, my first course, and that is still my signature course. Entrepreneurs should spend time figuring out what their signature offering needs to be, what they want to be known for, before they start adding on a whole bunch of things.”

There’s a lot to navigate at first: your messaging, target audience, marketing, technology, customer satisfaction. But once you do? You open up the potential for so much more.

“I know we have the potential to do a million things. Maybe in 200 years. Because Blaze will still be around. But that doesn’t need to happen today.”

We’re so glad to be a part of Casey’s journey, and we can’t wait to see what’s next for her and BLAZE Group — this year, 200 years from now, and all the time in between.

SIGN UP NOW

Get your free Podia account

Join the 150,000+ creators who use Podia to create websites, sell digital products, and build online communities.

Start free →

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • Page 6

Get your Software Stack together. softwarestack.tech

Software Stack

© 2024–2026 - Software Stack is a trading name of SouthwestCIO Limited ac ompany registered in England & Wales 11319049

  • Knowledgebase
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us