359: 5 Mistakes Food Creators Make with Email Marketing with Amy Katz

This episode is actually sponsored by our sister site, Clarity. I've talked about Clarity before on the podcast as a tool that we use, so it's just come up naturally, but also as an official sponsor, as an official advertiser on the podcast. And the reason that we're advertising on the podcast is because it is a perfect fit for the people who listen to this podcast, people who are thinking about how they can optimize and improve their existing content. And that's why we built Clarity. It really came out of this need for us, as we were working on Pinch of Yum, to have a tool that would kind of facilitate our projects and the work that we needed to do on posts in a way that we were doing, but with a giant spreadsheet. So we created this tool called Clarity. It's C L A R I T I. So it's Clarity with an I. And the simple premise of Clarity is to build something that will allow you or to have an. It's a software app that will allow you to look at your content kind of at a high level, and you can filter and organize and understand your content, and then you can build projects around the things that you need to do. So what does that look like and how does that practically work? I can give you some specific examples of what Pinch of Yum is doing right now. One of the projects that we have is adding internal links to posts. And the reason why that's important is.

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Hello, this is Bjork. And as you know, because you press.

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Today.

We're going to be talking with Amy Katz from Veggies Save the Day, that's the name of her blog and her respective social channels around the web. And she's going to be talking about email marketing, something that's really important, and specifically going to be sharing five mistakes that food creators make when it comes to email marketing. She's been blogging since 2015, and her favorite way to connect with her audience is through email. And she has a really great open rate, 45 to 50%. So that means, like, out of all the emails she's sending, 45 to 50% of the people who get those open those. And she's going to be sharing what she's learned along the way and why she really focuses on email, why she likes that as a strategy and some of the things that you can apply to your email list in order to inch up towards. I'm guessing most of us aren't at that point. Maybe some of us are. But in order to get to that point where a lot of people, maybe even majority of people who are getting your emails are opening them. So before we jump into the interview, one quick little shout out. We mention this occasionally, but we actually have a little podcast community of people who are Food Blogger Pro podcast listeners. We like to see if there's questions that you might have for upcoming guests. And sometimes the guests will join the group after the podcast and answer any questions that people had after it. And you can get to that group by going to foodblockerpro.com Facebook that will redirect you to the page where you can apply to join. We have over 500 food blogger pro podcast listeners who have joined that little podcast community. And it's free to join and it's a way to continue the conversation because really we're having conversations on this podcast with guests, but we don't get to have a conversation with you. And we would love to do that. So again, you can go to foodbloggerpro.com Facebook if you want to join that community, that little community that we have. And now let's go ahead and jump into the interview. Have a conversation here with Amy. All about email. Amy, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks, Bjork. I'm happy to be here.

Yeah, we're going to be talking about email. It's something that we want to make sure that we talk about frequently because it's important, obviously really important, and there's a huge opportunity. And also I feel like in this niche, in this world, a lot of times it kind of gets neglected. It becomes kind of a back burner thing. So we're going to be talking about things that you've learned along the way with email and maybe some mistakes to avoid. But before we do that, I'm always interested to hear back, rolling the tape back a little bit to when people first started. And for you, that was 2015 with your site Veggies Save the Day. Tell me a little bit about what your mindset was at that point. And did you know you wanted to get into this to be really strategic and grow business or was it kind of a hobby? What were you thinking when you first started your site?

Yeah, it was definitely a hobby. I first started sharing food that I was creating on Instagram and a lot of my friends over there encouraged me to start a blog to share the recipes. So it was definitely a hobby at first. But as I started looking at other people's blogs, I realized, oh, wow, I can actually monetize this and turn it into something, you know, where I can actually make. Turn it into a business.

Yeah.

So, you know, I kept at it as a hobby for a little while and then I definitely planned on how I could turn it into a business. So I was able to leave my full time job in March 2017.

Awesome. So it took about two years. What were the things that you did during that period of time that really helped you make that transition? Because it's a relatively short amount of time to go from starting to the point where you could leave your full time job.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the things was definitely just having the faith that I could do it, that if I put in the hard work, I could make it happen. So it wasn't so much that I knew exactly how I was going to do it, but I knew that I would need to save some money and have a backup plan. So I just figured, well, I should give it a shot. And I saved up as much income from my full time job as I could and saved up a lot of vacation time that I got paid out on at the end. And I figured, you know, worst case scenario, I could always get a part time job. But I was really willing to put in the hard work and see where it could take me. So, you know, I Did a lot of sponsored work back then, and then eventually, you know, my page views were high enough that I could get on an ad network, so that helped a lot.

Yeah. Would you do anything different when you look back at that period? Because I know a lot of people who are in the early stages. There's all different people who listen to the podcast. Right. There's people who are just starting out, really seasoned veterans who have been doing it for 10, 15 years, industry people. But let's say you're speaking to the people who are thinking about making kind of a similar transition and trying to figure out when do I do that and should I save up and if so, how much? What did you learn in that process and would you do anything different? Looking back on it now, I think.

That I did everything I could back then, but if I were starting off now, there are so many more resources that are available to new bloggers. I would have definitely invested in learning as much about SEO as I could. When I started, I really had no idea about keyword research. So there are just so many more opportunities now and the information is readily available. So I think that newer bloggers definitely have an advantage that way and I can see why a lot of them end up being able to go full time even sooner than I did.

Yeah. The idea being like, making sure that you're using as many tools as possible. It's not like you would have saved more or transition sooner or later. But really, like said, hey, I'm going to be strategic about the learning side of this to make sure. I really think of learning as like a multiplier to the time that you're investing. And we talk about the concept of 1% infinity, tiny bit better every day. But one of the things that you can do with that is you can apply that learning to then the time that you're working. So if you are working hard, that's going to be more impactful. If you have ideas of how to rank better, if it's search or improving your photography or whatever it might be. Um, so I love that. I think that makes a lot of sense and an important thing to balance. So you're not just working all the time, and you also can't be just learning all the time. You have to find that kind of middle ground with those things. So one of the things that you've learned along the way is the importance of email. It's one of the things we're going to be talking about today. What point in your journey did you say? You know what this is Actually a really important thing, and I'm going to focus in on this. Was it early on? After a few years, Relatively recently. When did that happen?

It was probably after a few years. I wish I had thought about it sooner, but it just wasn't something that bloggers were talking about. So I wasn't really aware of the power of email marketing, and I was just thinking about things that most bloggers think about, like social media. And Pinterest was really big back then. And I just wasn't thinking about something that should be so obvious because everyone has an email address. Not everyone is active on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, but I don't know anyone who doesn't have an email address. So looking back on it, I should have thought about it sooner, but I didn't feel like I had the resources available to actually know more about it. So I started off like most people do, with just the RSS feed and not very many subscribers because most people just don't want to get those kind of emails. And then I went into the weekly newsletter where I showcased a bunch of different recipes. But it wasn't something that was personal, and it just felt like I was looking at examples of maybe what commercial businesses do, maybe brands that sell products, but not as from the perspective of someone who's a food blogger. So it really took me a while to think about it and explore different resources and figure out what will work best for myself.

Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about your journey with email. You talked about RSS email. You could stand. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication or something like that. Really Simple Syndication. Really simple syndication. But the idea being what was popular for a season was you could have a, you know, you could subscribe to a blog. There'd maybe be like a tool that you'd use to subscribe to different blogs, and they would push that blog post to that tool and you could read it via an RSS and you could also have that connect your email. So you would publish a new blog post, and then using rss, this technology, rss, it would send out an email which would just be that blog post. So it sounds like for a while that's what you had. Similar to us, for a while, that's what we had. And then kind of evolved that to more of a newsletter subscription. But you said that was not super personal and maybe had good content within it, but maybe kind of generic like you would see with a brand or a product. And then my guess is the next evolution. It kind of sounds like was more personal. Did you view it more as like you writing an email to your readers, similar to how you would write an email to a friend? Or what did that next transition look like and what was the impact that happened from that transition?

Yeah, that's absolutely how I started thinking about it. So when I write an email, one of the things I see people do, which I kind of consider a mistake, is that they're not speaking in their own voice. So one of the things I started doing was actually using my language, the way I talk, and just trying to relate to the people that were on my list. And you can use tools to make it seem more personal, like having say like, hi, Bjork, how are you doing?

Or like inserting a first name.

Yeah. Where you add the first name and all that. But. And I think most people obviously realize that that's just your email software that's doing that. But it still makes a difference. It makes it feel like you're talking to them instead of like, hey guys, you know, or like you're talking to a whole group of people. I mean, you want it to sound like you're talking to just that one person and it's actually you and the way you talk. So, you know, maybe you use a lot of like pop culture references or you use a lot of like analogies to music or something like that.

Sure. Yeah. Clickable. If I were to write an email.

So, you know, it makes. It makes the person feel like you're actually want to have a conversation just with them.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah. So I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah, totally. And you know, I think it was by. I'm trying to remember back. This was a few years ago, my father in law, I think was subscribed to the Blogger Pro email list for some reason just being supportive and he's like, it's some. It feels like you're talking to me. Like. And because we would use some of those things, like the first, you know, with email you can ask somebody put their first name in and their email address and then you have that information. So to your point, you can insert that in not only like when you're addressing somebody, like, hey, first name, you know, hey, Bjork. But then within the email itself, you could say, what do you think about that, Bjork? Like as an example, you know, and it adds a personalization that is impactful. You mentioned kind of some of these mistakes and I know you have actually five different mistakes that you wanted to highlight that you've either made or seen people make. One of them is not speaking in your own voice. Is there additional, some additional mistakes that we could talk through that people could be aware of?

Yeah, absolutely. If we want to start with, the first mistake I see people make is not making it easy for people actually to get on your email list. And along with that, you also have to give them a reason why they'd want to be on your email list. So I think back in the day we used to just say, oh, subscribe for the latest recipes or subscribe for updates, but people are not interested in that because if you look at your inbox, I know mine personally, I get hundreds of emails every single day and I don't want these emails that are just kind of generic and telling me what the latest post on your blog was. I'm probably not even going to open those. But if you give them a reason to sign up and make it easy for them to sign up, then I think that they're going to want to open your emails. So like, for example, if you go and visit someone's blog, you want to see like, oh, it's obvious how I can sign up. So maybe you put a subscription form like on the homepage and maybe have one in the sidebar. Maybe you have a pop up, maybe you embed them within blog posts themselves. So it has to be so that the average person who's not a blogger can easily figure out how they can get on your email list. And then the second part of that is it helps to offer them something of value so that they want to join your email list. So for example, it could be that you're providing them like a PDF, like maybe a free ebook or a guide, or maybe you're offering them like a free mini course. That could be like an email series. So there's so many different things that you can offer, but you really need to offer something of value in exchange for their email address.

Yeah, I think that's great. And one of the things I think a lot about is this idea of the more specific you can get to the need, the higher likelihood that somebody's going to sign up for it. In the travel world, I think of my wife Lindsey and I just did a trip to Anna Maria island, which is this beautiful island in Florida. It was just wonderful. And one of the things that we did was looking at like, you know, things to do in Anna Maria island. And on some of these posts it was like they had an email opt in and it was like Florida packing list. And so that was really good. But I didn't sign up for it cause I was already there. But even better would have been on this post about 10 things to do in Anna Maria island if it was like seven best meals that you can have in Anna Maria Island. Sign up to get this information in the recipe world. To your point, you can start with saying hey, sign up for all my recipes. Okay, maybe if it's a super fan and they're like I want to get every recipe and I love it. Or if somebody is on a post and it's a cookies post, it could be 10 fail proof tips for getting the best soft cookies. And it's like oh, that's actually really aligned then to what somebody's doing. So is that kind of what you're getting at? Like hey, don't make it generic, don't make it this like catch all. Give something to people that they actually want that they would really value. And that's where you're going to see the most traction. Is that generally speaking kind of what you're getting at?

Yeah, and I think that you know, you can do it like specific to different posts. Like say you are someone who has like a lot of baking recipes. So you want to provide some kind of cookie guide or maybe temperature guide or something like that. But it can also be something that relates to your audience in general. Like for example, so I have a vegan food blog. So one of my most popular opt ins is a free guide that's called Instant Flavor and it's the four part formula for turning your vegan meals from dull to delicious. So that's something that anyone who's visiting my blog and sees like oh, this is a vegan blog. And yeah, I am interested in trying some vegan recipes even if they're not vegan. Then oh like how I wonder, how can I do this? How can I make my meals more flavorful? So it's something that it appeals to most people who visit the blog. But then I could also have another opt in, maybe say I have a lot of instant pot recipes. So maybe within those instant pot posts I could have some kind of email series that they can sign up to understand how to use all the functions on an instant potential. So that could be just like a three or five part email series and that's very specific to those particular posts. So I'd only put that opt in form within those posts themselves.

Yeah, I love that. And I also like the idea of hey, if you're not collecting email addresses, start with a generic one that's as best A fit as possible for your readers. You can put it everywhere and then like you said, maybe you can look at subcategories and then you drill down a little bit and say, hey, I have a subcategory of instant pots. Like, I'm going to create something that's a little bit more targeted for that kind of batch of content. And then you could even look and say, hey, I know I have these like two or three posts that are really popular. I'm going to create a hyper targeted kind of sign up for those people. And well, for Pinch of Yam, one of the things that we do in those instances is like we'll have people go through that specific series and then they'll go, after they go through that series, then they'll go into the more generic one. Do you do something similar or how do you view structuring your content? And then we can jump back into some of those, talking through some of those mistakes.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So once someone signs up for one of my forms, then they do get the emails that are specific. You know, it's almost like an onboarding process if they were a business, so that they learn, you know, what to expect from you. And it kind of trains them to open your emails. So as soon as they see your name in their inbox, they're going to say, oh wait, yeah, I want to read this. And then from there then they can go into your regular email sequence where, you know, maybe you send out like seasonal recipes, maybe you send out your latest posts, maybe you have some special offers, something like that. So first they're, you're warming them up so that they're used to getting emails from you and recognizing your name and then they go into the series with everyone else.

That's great. Cool. So you talked about that first mistake, not making it easy for people to get on the list. Like, hey, if this is something you want to prioritize, don't make people search for it. You don't want them to have to think like, hey, I want to sign up for this, make it easy, make it obvious, put it in places where people are going to see it, giving them a good reason to sign up, offering something of value, all being really important. What are some of the other mistakes that you feel like are important to highlight?

Yeah, this one may seem obvious, but it's something that I think is very common with food bloggers is not actually sending out emails.

Sure, totally.

So first, you know, we get all these people on our list and we're really excited because we have a certain number of subscribers, but if you don't actually do anything with those subscribers, then that number is just a vanity metric. It doesn't mean anything. So I think getting into a routine of sending regular emails, it doesn't really matter what your schedule is. I think people worry about, oh, what's the best day of the week to send an email, or what's the best time of day. But when it really comes down to it, it doesn't matter. Just send an email and send it on a regular basis so that people don't forget who you are. Because that's one of the biggest reasons why people unsubscribe from emails. I know myself personally, sometimes I'll sign up for something and I really liked the freebie, but then I don't hear from them for weeks. And then when I do get another email, I can't even remember who the person is. So that might make me unsubscribe. So I think just, you know, setting out some kind of schedule that you can personally stick with, you know, you can always modify it later, but just, you know, start emailing on a regular basis.

That's great. What, what is your schedule? What do you use for frequency?

I actually email my list three times a week. So, you know, there they get. They're used to it. They're used to hearing from me. So they get an email Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Occasionally I'll switch up that schedule if there's just something special or like a holiday or something where it makes sense to switch up those days. But for the most part, they can count on getting an email Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

Cool. And can you talk a little bit about email open rate? And I know that you have a great open rate. Do you think that has to do with emailing more or is that making sure that you give people the option to unsubscribe if they want to? What does that look like? And what do you kind of. Any of the numbers that you're willing to share with your email list?

Yeah, I think that as far as open rate goes, you know, it's a. It's a little bit harder to measure these days because with the changes with privacy settings. But, you know, myself personally, like, I found that my email list gets a 45 to 50% open rate. I think that has to do with a few factors. First of all, having that regular email schedule so that people know when to expect the emails and they recognize my name when they see that. Oh, Amy from Veggie Save the Day sent me an email. They know who I am and they're more likely to open it then the other thing is that having all these email subscribers on your list be great having this big number that you're shooting for. But if people are not opening your email, you really need to get them off your list because not only are you paying for those people to be on your list who are never opening, it's also affecting your open rate. So you can't really see how well your emails are doing if you have people on your list that haven't opened in three or six months. So I think, you know, quarterly is a great time to do it. So at the start of each quarter or at the end of each quarter, go through your email list and get rid of the people that haven't opened. And you know, if you'd like, you can do something where you send a few emails just, you know, letting them know that, you know, hey, it's okay, I know that you're busy. And if you don't want to get these emails from me, go ahead and unsubscribe. I totally get it. You know, something like that you can just, you know, you can send like either just that one email or you can send like a short series of emails just reminding them who you are. But you know, if they unsubscribe, it's nothing personal. It's just everyone gets a lot of email these days, so, you know, it's fine. I mean, just take them off your list and then you. Not paying for that.

Yeah, that's great. And I think the point about not paying is important too. Not all email service providers are like this, but a lot of times it'll be correlated. Your costs will be correlated to the number of subscribers you have. So it's not only is it a cost saving measure, but also to your point, hey, if somebody hasn't opened in six months, there's a very low likelihood that suddenly they're going to become a really engaged user. And different ways that you can do that. You could have an off boarding email. You say, hey, you know, if you want to stay on, you can click here. Otherwise, you know, we'll transition you off or whatever it might be. What, what email service provider do you use? And then can you talk a little bit about, just at a high level, what that process actually looks like that you go through once a quarter?

Sure, Yeah. I use ConvertKit and they make it really easy because you can sort your email subscribers by cold subscribers. So they classify cold subscribers as those people who haven't opened your Email in three or four, three months or more. So what I do is I just send just to those cold subscribers, those, those few emails asking if they still want to be on the list and reminding them who I am and, you know, why they signed up or how they got on the list. And so I'll usually send two or three emails and I'll space them out within a couple weeks. And then on the last one, I'll say that if I don't hear back from you, or you can unsubscribe yourself, or if you don't click this link telling me that you still want to be on the list, then I'll go ahead and delete you. I give them a week to let me know. What you can do is with any of these email service providers, you can set up a link to a landing page on your website. And once they click that link, it'll just be a landing page that says like, oh, thank you for being a subscriber, or something like that. And that's all you need. And then that way your email service provider will measure that they opened it and they click the link and so it will no longer have them as a cold subscriber.

Yeah, got it. So a way to filter them out essentially is to send out an email just to that group and say, hey, if you want to stay on, you can click here. They click it takes them to a page that says, thanks, looking forward to being in touch with you soon. But essentially that then moves them out of that cold subscriber group. So the process could be once a quarter, once every six months, whatever you want it to be. You email that group, ask them to click that if they want to, and then if they don't, then you remove them from the list, knowing that, hey, they're not actually going to be opening these anyways, so might as well not pay for them. And it's a great way to kind of like. It's almost like weeding the garden a little bit. Like you don't want to have things that you don't want. In this case, it's people who you're paying to have as part of your email list but who aren't actually opening emails.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, some people worry about, well, what, what if they really did want to be on my list? Well, you know what, they can always go and subscribe again. It's no big deal.

Sure. Yeah, that's great. I think, you know, to this point, not the mistake of not actually sending out emails. I think one of the Things that would be motivating for people and would encourage them to send emails out would be like a clear purpose behind it. So when you think of your emails, what are you thinking of in terms of the value that you're getting from that? Is it traffic? Is it sponsors? Is it just like being top of mind? How do you look at that for your business?

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, I think that email is not only a great way to connect with your audience on a personal level and kind of create those super fans, it's also a great way to generate income. And there are multiple ways that you can do this. First thing I want to point out is that if you're with an ad network like I'm with AdThrive, and I can look in my dashboard and I can see what the RPM is from different sources, and if you go and look at your numbers, it's pretty much guaranteed that direct traffic is going to be one of your highest RPM generators. So Google is always one of the highest. And then direct traffic, which is email. Direct traffic also includes other things like people going directly to your site. But for the most part, it's going to be a lot of email and it's a lot higher than RPM from Pinterest and especially a lot higher from social media like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. So besides getting people over to your site, you're going to earn more ad revenue if they're coming directly to you through your emails. So that's one thing to keep in mind, that it's always great to put links to your posts in your emails because you are going to generate more ad revenue that way. But then another way you can earn more income through email is by selling things. So maybe you're a food blogger and you have an ebook or you have a course. So you can not only tell people about your offers within your emails themselves, you can also set up what's called a tripwire. So what that means is that when someone comes to your site and signs up for your email list, they'll put in their name and email address and then it will direct them to a page thanking them for signing up. And then you can say on that same page, well, hey, you know, since you signed up for this instant pot email series, did you know that I also have an instant pot course? And you could offer it to them at a discount, like maybe 50% off, saying, hey, thank you for being a subscriber. Check your inbox in a few minutes. But while you wait, I would love to tell you about this course I have. And because you're a special subscriber, I'd like to offer it to you for the next 20 minutes at 50% off or something like that. And because, you know, they're already interested in instant pot because they signed up for that and email list, then it's a natural fit that you're going to tell them about this product that you have.

Yeah, that's great. It's. When I think of where we see that most in most obvious ways is Food Blogger Pro. Like, it's one of the main ways that we are interacting with people and letting people know that they can sign up for FoodBlocker Pro is through email. And that's why you see, when you go to foodbloggerpro.com, one of the first things that we have is an offer to sign up for the email list. You know, it says, start, grow, monetize your blog with FoodBlocker Pro. And then our value add is, you know, discover the 16 ways you can make money from your blog, first name, email address. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about that because it's really true for us when we are selling a product. And I think it's one of the ways that a lot of food bloggers are missing the opportunity. And opportunity is by selling a product or a course or something that is helping people within the specific niche that they're in. So it's cool, it's cool to hear that. So idea being, you know, different types of traffic have different types of value. And what you were saying is direct traffic is really valuable traffic from an ad perspective, which you can verify by looking at your dashboard within an ad thrive or potentially mediavine, whatever the ad network it is, you can see how that's kind of broken out. So that's one thing that's valuable traffic. And directing people back to your blog is an important way or a good way to do that. Second way, the second thing is like, it's a great way to let people know about something you're selling. And especially if it's a niche thing that's connected to the niche thing that somebody just signed up for. So if they signed up for something instant pot related, you have something to offer those people that's instant pot related. Of course it makes sense to mention it and probably to mention it as a part of kind of an automation. So you write the email once and everybody who signs up for it continually gets that. Some of the great things about online businesses is you can set up stuff like that. So I love that. I think it's super smart. One of the things we're also trying with Pinch of Yum is we're starting to do email sponsors. And so you know this. Yeah, I think you have to be at a certain level in terms of email subscribers, but working with brands to say, hey, do you want to sponsor an email? When we send one out, we know this many people will get it, this many people will open it. Here's what we charge for that. So it's not Instagram, it's not a blog post, but it's in the email that we get as a subscriber. So before we move on from this, I'd be curious to know, so if you're sending out three emails a week, what do those emails include and how long does it take you to write that? Because I'm guessing some people are like, I'm trying to do two blog posts a week, and then if I have like two emails or three emails, and then I'm trying to do social, like, it could potentially seem overwhelming. So what do those three emails that you send include in terms of content and how long does it take you to draft those and send them out?

Yeah, that's a great question. So the way that I do it is I have one email is dedicated to something either seasonal or a new blog post or maybe an updated blog post. And then the other two emails are more evergreen. So what I do is in convertkit is the one email is sent out as broadcast is what they call it, and then the other two emails are part of a sequence or a series. So the series emails, I can set those up way ahead of time. So I can have just like your onboarding sequence when our welcome series or whatever, when someone signs up, you can have like maybe three to five emails there. I can have like a year's worth of emails set up, ready to go. That is just part of a sequence so that once they're done onboarding, they're automatically put in that sequence and they automatically get those two emails a week. So I can set those up ahead of time and I don't have to be continuously writing those. So what I'll usually do is I'll batch that so that, you know, maybe like once a quarter I'll go through and I'll add more emails to that sequence. And then the nice thing about that is you're getting continuous traffic to those blog posts because everyone is going through that sequence, but at a different time. So. And then on the broadcast email Everyone on my list who's already been through the welcome series is getting that broadcast. So I want to keep that relevant for now. And those are ones that I can write once a week. And it will take me, you know, maybe 20 minutes at the most to write that email. So it's not a big, you know, effort on, on my part doing that. What I do is I work it into my regular process of doing my blog post. So, you know, once I'm done with the blog post, ready to publish it, you know, it's kind of like your process of maybe you go in and pin it to pin Pinterest. Well, I'm gonna go in and write my email and schedule that one for the week.

Ah, that's interesting. I love that idea of a hybrid of batching along with like real time emails. And that would be the broadcast. Broadcast simply meaning you're going in, maybe you schedule it, but it's not like you're scheduling it three months from now. You're scheduling it maybe like an hour or you're essentially sending it in real time. You could talk about something that happened yesterday. It's going to go out, you know, in time for people to see it and read it and know like, hey, this is relevant. Whereas my guess is for the other two emails that you're scheduling way ahead of time, it's not like you're going to reference current events, but you are going to include a piece of content that's going to be helpful for that person for that specific, you know, subscriber and whatever bucket they're in. So you could say, hey, three months from now, I know this, you know, vegan burger recipe is still going to be good and maybe it doesn't really matter when it is that it, that it goes out, it's going to be helpful. And so I can just schedule this. And is, is the idea that you're building that out and when you say once a quarter, are you essentially just extending that longer and longer? So every quarter it gets three months longer. So somebody who signs up a year from now, at that point there might be like three or four years worth of two emails a week scheduled for them to receive. And every quarter you're just kind of building that out. So you have this really long funnel where people will, even if you decide to not touch anything with your blog, they'll still get these two emails a week. But if, if you also then show up and, and broadcast an email, then they'll get three. Is that right?

Yeah, that's exactly right. And that brings me to another point that, you know, I think a lot of people don't think about is that you can reuse your content. So, you know, these emails that you wrote once, it's not something that, oh, I just, I sent it once and that's it. I spent all this time on it and went out once and that's the end of that. No, you can reuse these emails. You can actually, if you write sort of shorter emails, you can easily use the same content for your social media captions as well. Works very well, like as Instagram captions. But you can also take parts of your email and send it again later on. If you have hundreds of blog posts, no one's going to remember that you sent out this one veggie burger recipe two years ago to them. Even if it was six months ago, they're not going to remember.

We're so close to our content, we forget that. And I think sometimes we're hesitant be like, hey, I publish this on my blog. I don't want to then send an email about it too, because I don't want to disrupt people. It's like, oh my gosh, like, people have so much going on, they have no idea.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And even if someone does have a really good memory, it's when they see that email the second time, it will probably spark something like, oh, yeah, that's right. I wanted to try that recipe. I'm going to go back and do that now. So it doesn't matter if they do remember that they saw it before, they're still going to want to get that information again. So I think that, you know, reusing repurposing content is such a great way to save time and, you know, it's good for your audience as well.

Yeah, that's great. So we've talked about a few different things here. Number one, we talked about, well, we talked about not speaking in your own voice. Is that an official one of the mistakes?

Yes.

That is so trying to relate to, to people, making sure that it's. You're. You're speaking in your own voice, not making it easy for people to get on the list. So like, hey, make sure that if you have this list that it's. People see it, but then also they have a good reason to sign up. The third one, which I think is really important, really overlooked and like you said, obvious, but also so important, like people need to send out emails. It's a mistake if you're not actually sending out those emails. And then this idea of reusing your own content, or the mistake is to not reuse your old content and making sure to look at your content as it relates to email. It doesn't have to be new. It can be stuff that you already created that you want to make sure that people continue to see and shining a light on that old content. So anything else that you'd point out here in terms of mistakes that you see people make often when it comes to email?

Yeah, I think that that's about it. But also, don't forget about the one to make money from your emails.

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.

And you had a good point about sponsored emails. That's something that I would like to get into. But even if someone isn't there, yet another way that they can make money from their emails is through affiliate marketing. And when I say affiliate marketing, I'm not talking about Amazon, because as you know, Amazon does not allow you to put links to products within your emails. But of course you can send them to a blog post. So say you had a blog post about like, I don't know, well, like Fourth of July party essentials or something like that. Then you could have the links within your blog post and you're sending them to that blog post from your email. So that would be one way with affiliate marketing, particularly Amazon. But if it's something that's not Amazon, like, say you're an affiliate for a brand, like say you signed up for their affiliate program, or maybe it's even like a friend of yours that has, like when we're talking about that instant pot course, maybe it's a friend of yours that has the instant pot course and you're an affiliate for them. You can certainly put in your emails about that product and share your affiliate link there.

That's great. And we. This is a. I don't remember the specifics of it, but this would be worth pointing out if somebody has a contact that they have with Amazon Associates. I don't remember the specifics of what we did, but we have a separate agreement with Amazon and a separate tag that we do for tracking that allows us to do affiliate content within emails. So it'd be worth mentioning for people if they want to dig into it. Worth noting is that it doesn't perform very well. So it's not like this thing that we're able to, like, create a lot of income from, but it was something that we did connect with Amazon and they're like, well, under a normal agreement, we can't. But we can set up a separate agreement for email that they monitor and track differently. And I don't remember the specifics of it, but I wanted to point that out in case anybody would want to want to look into that. So a few different things to recap. Again, not speaking in your own voice, not making it easy for people to get on the email list, not actually sending out emails, not reusing your content and not making money from your email and really seeing it as a valuable profit center for your business. One of the things you said is your email open rate is really good. 40 to 50% is awesome. Part of that has to do with making sure that on a quarterly basis you're removing cold subscribers. But I'm guessing there's some other things that you're doing that are strategic around making sure that you get that open rate up. Would you have any advice for people who maybe have lower open rates in terms of how they can increase that open rate and get more people to actually open and interact with the email?

Yeah, I think that one of the things that we already mentioned was sending on a regular basis so that people are expecting emails from you and they recognize your name in their inbox. That helps a lot because it's like if your friend emailed you and you saw their name in your inbox, you're going to open it right away. So I think if you can build a relationship like that with your subscribers, that helps a lot. And I think a lot of that comes down to the first emails that they get from you. So, you know, if you're offering them like a free ebook or guide or whatever it is, you know, you want to make sure that those first emails, you are really, like a lot of people, call them a nurture series because you're really nurturing that relationship and, you know, maybe you're asking them questions to get to know them better. You know, you want to just make sure that you have that nurture series or that that welcome sequence down. So it's good to review that from time to time as well. If you're not getting a good open rate on those first emails, that would be the first place that I would start. And, you know, maybe you need to just tweak those a little bit. But also having your subscribers respond back to you is always a great thing to do as well. You can ask them questions, you can ask them what they need help with. I know a lot of people do that, like, what's your biggest struggle with blank? But I think that gets to be a little generic. So I think if you can narrow it down a Little bit. You can have it specific to what that actual email was about. Like say you sent out that veggie burger email, even asking them something more specific, like what's your favorite topping for burgers? Do you like ketchup? Or do you like mustard? And then it makes it easy for them to just reply back, oh, I like mustard, I hate ketchup, or something.

So talk about why that's important. Like the act of them replying. What is it about that that's important and why does that play into open rate?

Yeah, it's important for a few reasons. First of all, like if you use something like Gmail or even Hotmail as this now where there's emails that go into different folders, so you want it to go in their primary email folder. If they respond back to you, then their email considers that one of their more like a contact friend. So it will put it in their main inbox versus the promotions. And hopefully it will definitely end up not in the spam folder that way. So having them reply back to you is a great way for that. But it also helps with the, with the tracking because, you know, now with all the privacy controls, it's harder for the email service providers to measure that open. But if it's someone replies back to you or they click, then it's definitely going to measure that as an open.

Got it. Yeah. So point being, one of the things we're trying to do as we interact with people is become less of like a generic brand, sending product stuff that isn't valuable and more of an email that somebody's looking forward to and they actually open and they actually interact with. And I think as we often talk about on the podcast, it's important to like look past the like tip. I think with it to see like what is actually happening. And what's actually happening is these tools, Gmail, Hotmail, whatever it is, they're trying to distinguish between what's something that's not valuable that we should like deprioritize and what's something that we should place a stronger emphasis on and put it more in front of you. And the things that they want to put more in front of you are the things that you actually like and enjoy and you interact with. And so a huge piece of that, and probably why you have a good open rate is because it's content that's actually valuable for people that they're getting something from that's relevant to where they are in life. And I think it's important to point that out within all of this is that's always what we should be doing is figuring out how do we get as close to that as possible. And it's cool to see you doing that, where you get to these really high open rates. So coming to the end here, I'd be curious to hear your advice to yourself starting out. It's one of the questions I like to ask when you go back to 2015. What would you say to yourself that you know now that you wish you would have known at that point when you were starting?

Well, I definitely wish I had known more about email marketing back then. I would have just told myself not to worry so much about what everyone else is doing and just stay true to myself and send those emails out and build a relationship with people. Because really, that's one of the reasons why a lot of us get into food blogging is because we do want to share our knowledge and our recipes and that sense of community with people who follow us. So email is the perfect way to do that.

Yeah, that's great. Amy, do you talk about this on your site or where can people follow along if they just want to follow you and your recipes and try those out? What's the best way to stay stay in touch? My guess is sign up for the email list. That would be one of them.

Yeah, that's a great way. You can visit my site@veggiesavetheday.com and I'm also on social media everywhere at veggiesavetheday, particularly on Instagram. I'm more active there, so feel free to send me a DM if you'd like to discuss email or send me an email. Amy Katzegisavetheday.com Awesome.

That's great, Amy. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks so much, Burek. It's been great being here.

Hello.

Hello, Leslie here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We really hope that you enjoyed this week's episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Before we sign off, I wanted to mention one of the most robust features of a Food Blogger Pro membership, and that's our courses. So in case you're not familiar, as soon as you sign up for a Food Blogger Pro membership, you immediately get access to to all of our courses on Food Blogger Pro. And we have lots and lots hours upon hours of courses for you to check out, ranging on all different topics from SEO to photography to video to all types of social media. Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube. The list goes on and on. And all of these courses have been recorded by our Food Blogger Pro team or by our industry experts, by all of the Food Blogger Pro experts that we have on our team and we are constantly going in and updating old courses so you can rest assured that you're getting the best information possible as you're working to grow your blog, to grow your business. The courses are the best way to learn how to do that. So like I mentioned you can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. So if you'd like to do that you can go to foodbloggerpro.com join to learn more about our membership and join the community. We really hope that you enjoy checking out our courses. They are one of my favorite parts of a few Blogger Pro membership just because we have so much knowledge for you to check out there. I think that's everything we've got for you this week though. Thanks again for tuning in and for listening to the podcast and until next time we hope you have a great week.

Sam.