As I sat down to write this, I thought, is this going to be a really dry post? However, I cant’ let that stop me. I’m trying my best to be honest about what I’ve been up to, even if it doesn’t seem like the most exciting thing from the outside. I hope at least one person finds this interesting…

As I mentioned in last week’s Musing (Test Season Has Arrived). In the absence of my garments being ready to sell, I’m going to start growing my email lists. This is a brand new task for me, but something I’m really excited to take on. In terms of what I’ve had to create to set this up, I’ve had to embed email capture forms in key places within my website. So far that’s my home page and on my Musing’s pages. Now as I write this I’m wondering if I should add one to my Story page…it may not be a bad idea.

My thinking is that I need to make it as easy for someone to decide, ‘Yeah, ok I’d like to join the email list and come along for the journey.’ At the moment they’re thinking that, I’d like them to be able to take the action as easily as quickly as possible.

Resulting Site Updates & Choosing Email Management Software

So I’ve been making those integrations and updates to the site over the last week. I also had to build a specific ‘join the newsletter’ landing page for all my tests I’m going to run. I’ll be able to look at my Google Analytics profile to help determine the source of the traffic to that landing page. This will be crucial in determining which channels are paying back the most efficiently when it comes to encouraging people to sign up to the site.

I’ve also been doing a lot of research and playing around with different email management software. As I’ll be sending out a regular newsletter (I’m thinking monthly), as well as any key milestone updates via email, I needed to decide who to go with. It’s a tough decision because I’m not an expert in the field. There are lots of providers from Mailchimp to Klaviyo to a lot of website builders offering their own solution. For me, I’ll always need solid basic functionality, however my brand values are so key, I’ve prioritised someone that will give me strong design credentials (let’s just pray the emails get delivered!).

I decided to bet on the (relatively) new kids on the block, Flodesk. I found out about Flodesk a few months ago, in passing, from a designer friend. However, since then, I’ve recommended them to someone very close to me and so far he hasn’t had issues and is enjoying the experience! Here’s my affiliate link if you’d like to give it a go. Also I have a relatively small email list at the moment, so this is the perfect time to try them out. I’m really trying to make everything I do with Mummy’s Muse a beautiful experience, those emails have go to fall in line too!

Landmark Coding Moment

Other highlights of this week included coding my first line in .php myself. Line is an exaggeration…I put a few symbols and numbers in the correct order and it seemed to work. However this is huge for me. I used to see the combination of letters .CSS and .PHP and run for the hills. Always reminds me with a good teacher and a willing student, anything can be learned.