[00:00:00] Arsen: We figured it out. We figured it out. Yay. Technology. Yay. Awesome. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Top Hat Chats, episode 54. We’re talking today about, email marketing, your email math, and just everything around it. We, we, we, we’ve been mentioning … We’re just talking about this.
[00:00:22] Arsen: We’ve been mentioning email marketing on our webinars. We started SEO for Bloggers webinar, about, f- five years ago, six years ago.in 2019 was the first episode.and what I’ve done is I’ve put all of the webinars in NotebookLM. I’ve uploaded every single episode into NotebookLM, and what I’ve done is, is I’ve asked it, I’m like, “How many times did we mention email marketing and email list building across all the webinars?”
[00:00:55] Arsen: and we’re in episode 54 right now. 35 times across 35 episodes, we’ve mentioned email marketing. And I don’t think we’ve ever had an email marketing expert on our, on our webinar, to provide any kind of guidance. So we’ve kind of been like, “SEO, SEO, but, you know, keep your email list in mind because Google’s algorithms change and all, everything that we’re telling you will change, but your email list is a constant.
[00:01:23] Arsen: It’s your, it’s your, it’s your source of traffic and constantly engaging, engaging.” So with that, I wanted to have you on. So we have Ally with us, from Duett. Duett? Yes.
[00:01:35] Allea: Yep.
[00:01:36] Arsen: Duett. Duett.andwe’re going to be talking about email marketing, and how to grow your email list, increase your revenue- and I, you know, thank you, thank you for joining us.
[00:01:49] Arsen: I know we’ve spoken at, at a lot of the same events. Yep.m- talk- you know, conferences. but I wanted to have you on, and I wanted to, to, to, to have this conversation with you, especially through the lens of, of, of publishers, bloggers, content creators. So not so much like e-commerce, right?
[00:02:09] Arsen:or, or anything that’s, like, fully, fully enterprise. and I wanted to kind of just, like, frame this, conversation again, through the lens of, of a blogger and pretend like, okay, so we’re gonna have, like, I have a blog.
[00:02:24] Allea: Yep.
[00:02:24] Arsen: Pretend I have a blog. A food blog, and it’s Arsen’s World Famous Potato Soups, right?
[00:02:29] Arsen: Oh. And it’s all about-
[00:02:31] Allea: So niche. Wow …
[00:02:32] Arsen: all about, all about potato soups.so, so I wanna go through this with you, right? Yeah.and I want you to, to, to, to, you know, answer some of these questions for me.these questions were collected as people were registering for this webinar. So, we sent out the email blast, and, you know, you did some promotions, and as people registering for this email, for this, for this webinar, they were submitting questions.
[00:02:59] Arsen: And what we’ve done there is we’ve combined these questions with the amazing powers of artificial intelligence. We’ve combined these questions to make sure that we’re not asking the same question over and over.but these questions are directly from our audience, from our listeners. We will also have a Q&A, a little bit of time for Q&A at the end.
[00:03:17] Arsen:feel free to submit your, your questions in the comments. Just put a Q in front of it, because the, StreamYard doesn’t have, like, a Q- QA, uh-
[00:03:29] Allea: Option. Yeah …
[00:03:30] Arsen: thing. Option, right. Thank you.feature. and then, we also have Ai, on the call with us. She’s in the background pressing all the cool buttons.
[00:03:38] Arsen: She’s our client liaison. Some of you may have spoken with her. so submit your questions, and if we’re, if we have enough time, we’ll answer those questions live. With that, I want you to quickly, before I dive into this, I want you to quickly tell us about you, right? What? Like, like, tell us all, everything we need to know.
[00:03:57] Allea: Everything you need to know. well, you should know that I actually started out as a personal finance blogger in 2016. So I have been working with bloggers and publishers and creators this whole time. When I started Duett in 2018, that’s who I knew I wanted to work with, and by fall of 2019, I was invited onto the Food Blogger Pro Podcast, and I’ve been working with food bloggers primarily ever since.
[00:04:21] Allea: So it’s been a really great place for me. So food blogging is it. You know, that’s, like, the place where I spend the most time, but a lot of the same concepts apply to travel, beauty. I’ve had beauty and lifestyle clients as well. And yeah, I work primarily in automations, but we’ve recently started sending emails on behalf of our clients as well, like, on a regular basis.
[00:04:42] Allea: So- Happy to share kind of about my overall strategies, and so I- we’ll dive in. There’s a lot of questions.
[00:04:49] Arsen: Yeah, yeah. I’m, I’m excited about this. And obviously, like, automation is, is like… Like I, I feel that it’s, it’s, especially now with all the tech that we have available to us, that like you can r- like there’s no excuse at this point-
[00:05:05] Arsen: to not be v- very proactive with this.
[00:05:09] Allea: Yeah. Um- There’s so much, there’s so much we can do one time to have it live on for a really long time. And so- Yeah … but email tends to be something that people feel it’s very complex and really falls to the bottom of the to-do list after showing up on social media and whatnot, but that’s, it’s how you can actually connect with your people directly.
[00:05:29] Allea: Like, you hit send, it’ll land in 2,000 inboxes. And so, a- and it’s often overlooked, but we’re- That’s the beauty
[00:05:36] Arsen: about this, right? I know. That’s
[00:05:37] Allea: the, that’s the beauty. You hit send and it goes. There’s no algorithm like f-what’s it called? Throttling your content- Right … being- Right … by people who’ve actually chosen to follow you.
[00:05:47] Allea: You have a lot more control over it, which means, yeah, you can have much more of a robust strategy and outcomes than you can with other platforms.
[00:05:55] Arsen: It’s, it’s, it’s your ability to, to engage and re-engage a certain audience. Yeah. Right? And, and, and it’s not something that you can do, organically across any of the top two, three platforms that are the most, the, the biggest traffic drivers.
[00:06:16] Arsen: The, search and social, right? Yeah. Because even with social, the audience that, that’s captive, your, your, your, your audience, the algorithm is throttling you there also. So you, not 100% of people who follow you are seeing your content, right? They’re not even aware that it’s, that, you know, unless they’ve hit that button and all of that.
[00:06:35] Arsen: And same thing with Google a- and especially with, with, with AIOs, right? Where now you don’t even need to rank on page one for that keyword for you to be exposed to those eyeballs, to those users because of AIOs, because AIOs give you that topic outline, right? They give you that information.so and that’s constantly rotating.
[00:06:57] Arsen: So even if you are on page one for potato soup recipe ingredients- Yes … right? And there’s an AIO, my, me being number one there doesn’t do anything for me because if there’s an AIO, there’s going to be somebody else’s content above me. Right. So email, at the end of the day, and it’s just like, “You should have been listening, Haley.”
[00:07:17] Arsen: No. The, the old, the old guy, right?
[00:07:21] Allea: Well- We’ve been
[00:07:21] Arsen: telling you since… Yeah, go ahead. The
[00:07:23] Allea: people who come to me who are like, “I should have done this years ago,” or, “This has been on my list for four years.” And so- Well, when I started, what I saw in the personal finance space, so I went from being a blogger to serving bloggers in that space, I just saw so much existing content on their sites that’s so helpful.
[00:07:40] Allea: But as people are joining your email list, they have no way… That’s not being disseminated to them in a way that makes sense. Like, what are your thoughts on student loan repayment? What are your thoughts on investing in properties or an Airbnb or whatever it might be? And there’s just a sequence of, there’s a sequence to sharing your content with someone in a way that answers their biggest problems.
[00:08:02] Allea: Make sure that your products or your affiliate products or whatever you wanna make sure is in front of people, it’s happening automatically, so you don’t have to wonder- Right … “When’s the last time I… Have I ever told, like when’s the last time I told my list about my cookbook that came out two years ago?”
[00:08:14] Allea: Right. Right. You do a launch, but then automations allow the, the, I don’t know, the promotion of something to happen in an ongoing way.
[00:08:22] Arsen: Right. Yeah. okay. So I have my, I have my world famous potato soup blog where I only write potato soup recipes or, you know, let’s not just focus on recipes. I, I, I, I, I’m a potato enthusiast and I travel the world eating potatoes, right?
[00:08:39] Arsen: Yep. So it’s a travel blog.and I also talk about the socioeconomic impact of potatoes around the world, so it’s also a finance blog at the same time, right? but it’s thriving and it’s great. and, and, and I’ve been slowly organically building an email list. People are coming to me, they’re reading my content.
[00:08:59] Arsen: I’m, I’m very engaging, have good retention rates. People are subscribing to my email list.
[00:09:04] Allea: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:05] Arsen: And now I am, I am, I’ve tried email, send, blasting emails. I’ve tried the RSS feed and I’ve tried the, the, the out of the box same crap that everybody else does and that automatically gets ignored because of our brain algorithm that’s already taught to ignore BS emails- Mm
[00:09:23] Arsen: right, in our head. We just, we don’t even, we, we scroll past that little snippet in our Gmail and we don’t even open it. So I wanna know through the le- through, through, through like frequency and cadence, what is the optimal email cadence? How often is too often for me to be sending, emails?at which point does it become diminishing returns?
[00:09:50] Allea: Yeah. I mean, I know people who send out daily email and I, I would say like three to four emails a week feels doable. If three of those are more like could, one could be automated, one could be an RSS feed email, that just goes out as like a roundup of everything that’s new on the site. you could have another one that’s seasonal content that you curate, and another could be like a personal note to your audience and asking them a question and engaging with them.
[00:10:18] Allea: So two of those are automated.
[00:10:21] Arsen: Right.
[00:10:22] Allea: And the other one- When you say
[00:10:22] Arsen: engaging with them, are you asking them to write something back to you?
[00:10:26] Allea: Yes Ask them to write or share something. You know, it could also just be maybe you swap that out with, like, an affiliate promo as part of- Right … the bottom part of the email, like a like to know it type section.
[00:10:39] Arsen: But when they respond, I have to read it.
[00:10:41] Allea: You do probably need to read it. Yeah. You can tell them- Yeah … like, “I read every response,” and you’d be like, “Even if I don’t reply, just know that I saw it,” like-
[00:10:48] Arsen: Right …
[00:10:49] Allea: depending on how busy your inbox gets.
[00:10:51] Arsen: Have you seen, have you seen, or have you measured any kind of differences be- when you say, “I do read every single response,” does that improve, improve the response rates?
[00:11:01] Allea: I don’t have stats on that, but I would assume so. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I encourage including that language because people wanna know that it’s actually going to someone. And it’s funny, when I end up replying to their reply, and they’re like, “Oh, I never expected to hear from you,” I was like, “I told you I would read it.”
[00:11:16] Allea: Like, and even if it’s, like, you … I have that in my welcome sequence where I’m asking people questions, and so some weeks I get a lot of responses, and other weeks I don’t. So it just kind of
[00:11:26] Arsen: depends. pros and cons of daily versus weekly, email sending.
[00:11:32] Allea: Yeah. The pros with daily, so this is kind of the email math, which I can break down, but you get more opportunities to get in front of your audience, full stop.
[00:11:41] Allea: So if you’re only sending one email a week, you’re really hoping everyone sees that one email- Right … or once a month or every other week, whereas if you’re sending out a daily email, you’re just showing up with a lot, well, more frequently, a higher cadence, and you have more opportunities for people to open, view, and click through to your website.
[00:12:01] Allea: So with email math, the way that I think about that is there’s all these kind of different levers. So the way that you get more traffic to your website, and therefore more revenue, could be any of these levers. So it could be if your open rate and click rate stays the same but you get more subscribers, that’s a still a higher total number of clicks, or if you don’t get new subscribers but you’re getting a higher open rate, higher click rate then comes with that, or the click rate even staying the same, or if the open rate stays the same but you increase the click rate, like, all of those equal higher total clicks through to your website.
[00:12:36] Allea: Right. And, you know, and I had a client the other day say, like, her traffic from email, her RPMs are, like, 10 to $15 more
[00:12:47] Arsen: per- I was gonna ask you that, on the monetization- It, it was … right? ‘Cause y- you would imagine- Yeah … that, that those visitors are m- a bit more engaged. They’re not impulsive clicks from Google or from social, right?
[00:12:56] Arsen: So they, they tend to dwell and visit more pages.
[00:12:59] Allea: Yes. And then, if you’ve got your tracking on for Raptive or Grow, what it’s doing is it’s also communicating better data to those, um- Those ad networks so that you’re getting better ads. So because we know more about the audience, we’re able to serve them better ads, then you get higher quality ads, you get paid more.
[00:13:19] Allea: So it kind of becomes a cycle that way.
[00:13:23] Arsen: That makes a lot of sense. Mm-hmm. so how would, how would I, as a, as a blogger, how would I balance that, frequency between traffic driving and promotional mon- And, and maybe you can give us, like, an example of what difference between the traffic driving and, and promotional monetization
[00:13:42] Allea: emails.
[00:13:42] Allea: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And also before I forget, let’s talk about the benefit of a weekly real quick because you did ask that. Okay. The benefit of a weekly is that you can also offer your subscribers the option. So you’re providing them an option of, like, if you just want weekly only, click here. And then you as the content creator, or as I like to say, like, the managing editor, as if you’re running a magazine, and, you get to say, “I wanna make sure everybody always gets my Saturday email.”
[00:14:06] Allea: Then that way they get to stay on your list, they’re still engaged, but they get a little bit more control over how often you’re showing up in their inbox. As far as balancing value add, traffic-based content, and promotional content, it really blends. You know, in a traditional, like, sales funnel, we would say there’s a three-to-one rule.
[00:14:27] Allea: So for every three value-based emails, giving emails that you share, you get one sales email, so that’s like a hard pitch email. But when it comes to content creation, content creators, like, part of it is you’re like, “Here’s a recipe, and also here’s the air fryer I use.” Like, it’s blended in there. And that’s not a bad thing.
[00:14:45] Allea: Right. It’s just like, “Well, if I’m gonna tell you about this, I’m gonna tell you about this.” Or if you have like a, “Here’s a baking checklist. Here’s where I get all my baking items. Here’s a cart for you just to go copy everything over and save it to your own or whatnot.” So it kind of blends in. But in general, we wanna build trust with people and give them good things before we pitch them on something.
[00:15:06] Allea: And sometimes people just need to see things often, so, like, having a snippet or if you’re in Flodesk, they call it a favorite, at the bottom of your email saying like, “Hey, check out my cookbook. Hey, check out my cookbook.” And then part of what gets people to actually buy is having some sort of urgency, which could be like, “This is only available for the next number of people.
[00:15:28] Allea: It expires this date,” or, “There’s a bonus available right now if you buy before Thursday.” And that gives people a reason to say, “Do I want it now? If I do, I’ll buy.” Right. Otherwise people are like, “Well, I’ll just get it next week.” So you can also weave in those kind of promotions throughout.
[00:15:43] Arsen: So this is, this is very s- very similar, and correct me if I’m wrong, this is very similar to, like, what, what-we would do typically with, like, social media marketing, where we would push out informational content, maybe some recreational content, educational content- Mm
[00:16:00] Arsen:something funny, something did you know, and then, you know, you start building up that wave of- of- of- Mm-hmm … you know, engagement so that you’re- you’re- you’re- you’re- you’re peaking, and then you inject, something that’s promotional, commercial in nature, right? So it’s kind of like a jab, jab, hook.
[00:16:18] Allea: Yeah. Right?
[00:16:19] Arsen: The thing Gary V was talking about- Right. Yeah … many years ago, right, right.
[00:16:23] Allea: well, and then part of going back to why I like automations, so we do audience research for our signature offer, and one time we got the feedback back from the audience, and one of- some of the questions were, you know, “Have you bought my cookbook?
[00:16:37] Allea: What do you think about my cookbook? If you haven’t bought it, why not?” So many people were like, “Didn’t know you had a cookbook. Had no…” Like, so many people, and the client- Awareness, right … Yeah … and she goes, “We should probably tell people I have a cookbook.” And I was like, “Yes, we probably should.” So that’s what’s cool about an automation is you know everyone has at least heard about my cookbook.
[00:16:56] Allea: Even though it’s not top of mind for you ’cause you’re thinking of Christmas or you’re thinking of summer, you know, grilling or whatever your- your recipes might be about, everyone who’s joining our list is at least… If they’re not- they’re not necessarily being sold to, they’re being told, “So-and-so is a legitimate source on this.
[00:17:14] Allea: She’s written a book.” So it gives credibility, and you can also use that as, like, a basis for when you do wanna do a pitch or a launch later.
[00:17:22] Arsen: Interesting.
[00:17:23] Allea: So they already know that it exists.
[00:17:25] Arsen: That’s very smart. Okay. So, wh- when we’re talking about, like, measurements, so we talked about, like, y- you- you briefly touched on, like, open rates and click- click- Mm
[00:17:33] Arsen: click-through rates and response rates.let’s quickly talk about metrics and performance. What are good and healthy open and click-through rates, CTRs, specifically for- for, like, food bloggers or, or travel, or if you… Do you even, do you ha- do you, do you have this data? Do you have this intel?
[00:17:49] Allea: I mean, I have some data from what we’ve done for our clients or what we’ve seen our clients get.
[00:17:53] Allea: I would say, so the industry standard, or I would say, like, I’ve got stats here from MailChimp, MailerLite, and Kit are saying between 42 to 44% is a good open rate. I would say even 35% is good. Wow. Anything less than that, I’m gonna get a little concerned about the health of your list. I’d love to see it over 40, 45 for your broadcast.
[00:18:16] Allea: You’re gonna see higher stats, of course, for your automations because that’s when people are most excited to hear from you, especially in your welcome. Your average click rate for that is gonna be different than your broadcast click rate. Right. So what we’ve seen on average for the welcome sequences we’ve built for clients, which usually include five emails, we’re seeing a click-through rate of 9%.
[00:18:35] Allea: Over the course of those, right? Like, we are giving so much because sometimes the click-through rate is like, “Here’s a guide that I made for you. Here’s what I…” Like, we’re, we’re giving and we’re sending them to the website as well. Whereas with a broadcast, you know, you’re gonna see more of an average of 2 to 5%.
[00:18:49] Allea: Right. It’s just lower. And so I see a lot of food bloggers with like a 1.8 click-through rate, like it feels low. So we d- as much as we can get that up higher, we can. I think it also depends too on the type of email you’re writing. If it’s the one where you’re asking them to like reply back to you, it’s not really like a call to action heavy type thing.
[00:19:09] Allea: Right. But if you wanted to actually compare, so I did this earlier this spring, I created an Airtable base where I could actually take all the data from broadcasts, upload it into Airtable, and sort it by like highest open rates, top to bottom, and then look at the top 20, what do they have in common? Put d- in their subject lines, right?
[00:19:30] Allea: ‘Cause the subject line- Right … impact the open rate. And then you can do the same thing with click-through rate. W- If you’re looking at it, you’re like, “How can I tell the difference between like click-through rates?” You look at the actual emails, what’s the format? What are the calls to action? What’s the type of content?
[00:19:44] Allea: Maybe you have a challenge, like a baking challenge every month, and that just gets a ton of action. Great. You’re probably not gonna send six more of those in a month. Great. So then look at the next one. What kind of content is getting the most clicks through or the format? Is it a feature recipe? And look at the total number of clicks as well.
[00:20:03] Allea: Because if you just have one recipe, you can only have so many clicks to one recipe. But if you have like eight, do you see a lot more total clicks through to your website?
[00:20:14] Arsen: That’s very interesting. So, and then you would expect to have different kind of, y- key performance indicators for different type of emails.
[00:20:22] Allea: Yeah.
[00:20:23] Arsen: Right. Um-
[00:20:24] Allea: I mean, especially if you’re just asking them to reply back to an email. Right. That’s, that’s… Yeah. So you can’t like beat yourself up on averages. Like, look at the context of what you’re actually doing. And then like sales emails just get a lower click-through rate. Right. You’re not gonna get maybe eight- And this
[00:20:38] Arsen: is, this, this is what…
[00:20:39] Arsen: When, when you and I had our, our, our quick chat-
[00:20:42] Allea: Yeah … a,
[00:20:42] Arsen: a, a week or two ago, this is what we were talking about, right? The f- people are just giving up because they’re like, “Oh, this, this, this sucks,” right? “I’m not getting, I’m not…” But it, this is in s- for some types of emails, this is what you should be expecting.
[00:20:54] Arsen: This is- Yeah … going to be most likely the ceiling with very nominal up and down-
[00:20:59] Allea: Yeah …
[00:20:59] Arsen: between it.
[00:21:00] Allea: I, yeah. How do…
[00:21:00] Arsen: Go, go ahead.
[00:21:02] Allea: Oh, no. I got nothing.
[00:21:04] Arsen: and maybe this is where you were heading. So like how do, with that, like how do, how do, how do I improve my low open rates, y- you know, and, and, and, and click-through rates?
[00:21:12] Allea: Yeah. So with open rates, I mean, I think it look, going and looking at like what’s performing the best, look at those subject lines, and see like what are the little things. Is it, does it have an emoji? Is it asking a question? Questions for me get the most opens, except every, ev- every subject line I send can’t be a question.
[00:21:32] Allea: and it can’t be like, “What do you think about this?” Like, that would be- You know, or how can I help? Those kind of questions are really great, but you don’t wanna overuse them either. I tend to write subject lines that are, I want to build intrigue, I don’t wanna give away the farm. And, so building intrigue is using words like this.
[00:21:54] Allea: Like, did you know about this, or have you seen this? Using the word you is really helpful. Like, have you tried this recently, or six ways you maybe have… Six things you missed. You’re like, “What did I miss?” You know, so we’re building intrigue, but, I also like it to be really clear as well. So six things you missed, well, the article or the podcast that I’m sending out is about six things you missed, whatever.
[00:22:17] Allea: So it is, it’s matched. You don’t wanna, like, have a subject line that doesn’t match the body copy. Right. So, but you don’t necessarily have to be like, “Key lime pie 2026.” Okay. you know? Right, right. Like refreshing pies for summer. Right. Or six pies you…I’m really coming up with copy on the spot, didn’t plan on that.
[00:22:38] Allea: Um- Yeah, like six- Think potato soup … pies you want this- you’ll want this summer.
[00:22:44] Arsen: Right.
[00:22:45] Allea: Okay. You know? And key lime pie is one of them. And then as far as improving click-through rates, we’ve seen a few things trip upward with, like, perhaps… And it depends on every audience too, so there’s no, like, blanket statement.
[00:22:58] Allea: Like, look at your own stats, keep your eyes on your paper, see what you can do best in your own audience. But a few examples would be, like, feature just one recipe, and then bullet points to, like, three to five other recipes below it. Just the title of the recipe bec- or the title of the blog post, because you’ve already worked so hard on the SEO and it should be already really clear.
[00:23:16] Allea: Right. You don’t have to come up with anything fancy. Okay. Another thing would be, like, a category page. So click here for more desserts. That gets great tract- great traction.
[00:23:26] Arsen: So that’s actually very smart because that’s the entry point, right? That’s like, that’s, that’s the broad match. Mm-hmm. Like, I’m not sure what I wanna make, but here is all of the-
[00:23:36] Allea: Yeah
[00:23:37] Arsen: pies, right- Uh-huh … that I have. And you’re guaranteeing at least two page views there, right? Yes. Because they’re going to land and, right.very smart. So, like, thinking, thinking p- like, it’s- you kind of have to wear both, like, your marketing and your creative hat at the same time when you’re doing this.
[00:23:54] Arsen: Yeah. speaking of, like, like, like, imagery, right? Like, um- Mm-hmm … and, and just links.and I kind of have this issue all the time when we send out our emails. Like, I try to not put embed images into it so the email looks a little more natural, and I think there’s, there was at one point, and again, I’m not an expert in this by any means, but I think there was, like, m- maybe something with spam filters when you’re putting i- images in there.
[00:24:16] Arsen: What is better, clickable images or plain text links?
[00:24:20] Allea:I do both. I do both. Well, part of it is also, like, if I work so much with food bloggers and they’ve worked so great, like, those f- photos are amazing. Like, if you’re- If you want to get more click rates, you, you could try around without not, without having the image and just, like, push them to the recipe without an image.
[00:24:40] Arsen: Right.
[00:24:41] Allea: part of it is it feels better, it feels more editorial to be like, “Here’s the key lime pie. Click here- Right … to, like, get the recipe.” Give them a call to action. So I usually do a text link, a photo link, and a button. So in the text, like in the blurb, Lindsay from Pinch of Yshe’s been doing this really well lately.
[00:25:01] Allea: It’s kind of like the phrase she’s clicking on, it’s like she doesn’t even mention the name of the recipe in the email. It just says, “Lately we’ve been making this,” da, da, da, da, da. And then, like, there’ll be a photo and it’ll say, “Get the recipe,” but you’re like, “What’s it called?” Right. Right. Like, click on it.
[00:25:16] Allea: Like, there’s ways to do it that don’t feel, deceiving. Like, you don’t wanna like, I don’t know, click here and hope that you get a good recipe, you know? Unless it’s
[00:25:27] Arsen: really good. I see similar with, I see similar with, with e-commerce emails where they’re like, you know, they don’t mention the price. Like, see the price.
[00:25:34] Arsen: Costco does this frequently, or log in to see the price, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. Um- And you’re like, “Just be honest
[00:25:39] Allea: with me.” So there’s a balance there between, like, wanting to create a really good experience for people and then just, like, wanting to get as many clicks as possible. You don’t wanna treat your audience like it’s super transactional, you know?
[00:25:50] Allea: So that’s why, like, the layout of, like, an image, I say blurb, that could be, like, a two-sentence explanation of the recipe, one sentence, and then a really simple get the recipe tends to- Right … work really well for us, and then bullet points or a link to a category page. Like, it’s a pretty simple, straightforward thing.
[00:26:09] Allea: M- a lot of the emails we create actually have images for each of the recipes. Like, we’ll feature name of recipe, photo, blurb, button, name of recipe, photo, blurb, button, and we’ll have like six, five. Like, and it doesn’t seem to be too many. Like, we’re not running into spam issues. Right. Because it’s also balanced out with text, if it was all images.
[00:26:30] Allea: So on that note, can we talk about Flodesk for like a minute?
[00:26:33] Arsen: Yeah, sure. Sure.
[00:26:34] Allea: Everyone’s like, “Here
[00:26:35] Arsen: it is coming.” Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. if you’ve followed
[00:26:37] Allea: me for any amount of time, you probably know what I’m gonna say. But, in Flodesk, if you’re going to use Flodesk, I’m telling you this so that you can use it better so it shows up in people’s inboxes, but you’ll wanna use the body copy to include all of the most important stuff.
[00:26:50] Allea: Assume nothing else shows up, no images, no, those little layout features that have like an image, text, and button. What happens while you’re in the editor and you’re typing in there and it looks like it’s separate, when you send the email, it actually generates as a whole image. So if you go to look at one of your previous emails and you go to drag that, the whole thing will move to your desktop, and that means it’s generating as an image, not text.
[00:27:15] Allea: So it’s not searchable in your inbox. If somebody’s like, “Who did the pumpkin puree?” Like, that’s, if it, if that’s the only way it’s showing up and not in the body text- Then it’s not going to show up for them unless it’s like in your alt text, like you just have to do- Right … extra layers, and it’s not responsive, mobile responsive.
[00:27:34] Allea: If they’re looking on their phone, the whole thing just gets smaller. So you can do both, just make sure it’s also in the body copy.
[00:27:41] Arsen: Right. And we’re kind of leaning into like, into content strategy at this point, and like, we have a bunch of questions here, so I wanna, I wanna- Yeah … I wanna get through, through, through these as quickly as possible.
[00:27:50] Arsen: Of course.so for me, how do I keep my newsletter fresh, if I don’t publish new content very often? And I think there was a question from- from, from Tracy, uh- Mm-hmm …on a similar topic.I, I don’t publish, publish content, often, let’s say like once a month.how do I keep, how do I keep this newsletter going?
[00:28:10] Allea: Yeah. Well, you could have automations that are sending out old emails, like as long as they’re, as long as you make them evergreen, so then you don’t have to worry so much about like making sure you’re sending out a ton of new content. And part of it is you get to set your cadence. If you only want to send two emails a week, that’s all I send, you know?
[00:28:27] Allea: Right. Go for it. Or you set up this automation where you use all of your previous emails, as long as they are evergreen and you’re not referencing like your kid’s, you know, kindergarten graduation and the- Right … kids are 18 now. You know, like tw- take that piece, those pieces out. But like you should…
[00:28:44] Allea: You’ve already got the content. You’ve probably already written all these emails. If you set up an automation where it goes out every Tuesday, Thursday, and then you just get to write a personal letter to your list every Sunday, or it goes out every Sunday, that could be a more refreshed way to think about it, ’cause you’re like, “I’m not cranking out content, I’m building relationships at this point.”
[00:29:05] Arsen: We used to do this, back in the day. w- we used to get the audience involved in n- helping us name content. Mm-hmm. I’m thinking about writing a blog post about topic XYZ, having a hard time creating, coming up with a title, and it gets people involved and they’re submitting. We used to do this on social and they would comment- Yeah
[00:29:27] Arsen: with this. And then that created a little bit of continuity because once we published, we would use one of their recommendations- Mm-hmm … for the title, and then we would hit that list again saying, “Hey, we’ve now published one of your titles made- made, made the cut.” Perfect. And that would improve, we’d noticeably, there was noticeable improvements in, in engagement when we used to do this.
[00:29:48] Arsen: But again, this was on social, so email is- is- is- Of course … obviously a different beast. what content should I share if I have a small, like a small inventory of content? Like I don’t have too much content. Yeah. And you- you said evergreen, but what other examples can you give us?
[00:30:06] Allea: I mean, you could publish just one recipe at a time.
[00:30:12] Allea: You don’t ha- or not publish, but send out one recipe at a time. Let that be kind of your format and just say, “Hey, to keep it simple, here’s a recipe to try this week.” Hm. You don’t have to like have a ton to fill it. Um-
[00:30:28] Allea: I mean, what else was I thinking? I lo- I looked these up earlier. Right. So
[00:30:32] Arsen: let me
[00:30:32] Allea: turn, co-
[00:30:34] Arsen: Wh- while you’re doing that, have… Are, are there tools that do- Yes … or have you played with any tools, or maybe you have these tools, that look at, like, the emails that you’re sending out? Like, look at the, like, bird’s-eye view and use the p- amazing powers of artificial intelligence to start recommending, like, “Here is what works best for you”?
[00:30:54] Allea: Yes. I have used Claude for that. So, the thing with using AI is that you wanna gather your data and put it somewhere. Right. So first, start by storing your data over a time, and then Claude can actually make informed decisions based on that. It’s not flawless. Definitely check its lo- logic, and you’re like, “Hey, silly goose, that’s because it was a pitch…
[00:31:15] Allea: You know, that email went to 17 people. I only want the ones that include 1,700 or 17,000.” Right. yeah, you can use AI to do that. We have one AI copywriting client that we’re testing things out with, who we basically can tell Claude, “Don’t let us reuse any recipes that we’ve used in the last three months for this upcoming content calendar.”
[00:31:38] Allea: So, like, we’re also using it to gather reviews. Like, we’ve given it parameters for reviews that we can include in email. But, so I’ve got a whole skill that searches the website for the, the recipes that we are going to be using in those emails and pull three quality reviews for each one, and then it can pick one of those for when we use those recipes in an email.
[00:32:02] Allea: But that way, like, I don’t have to go search for it, or my team doesn’t have to go search for it. Right. But it’s things like this person has a name on it. It’s not just reader. Like, we want an actual- Right … published name, and not just like, “Thanks for the recipe.” Like, we want quality
[00:32:17] Arsen: reviews. Right. That, that makes sense.
[00:32:19] Allea: Um-
[00:32:20] Arsen: yeah, the tools you were, you were look- You, you, you were looking at Oh, yes.
[00:32:23] Allea: That’s the tool that I would use. I use Claude for that, and then what it’s doing is it’s keeping a reference doc, a library, of all of the reviews so then, like, a year from now maybe I shouldn’t have to… Hi, Nicole. It’s Nicole.
[00:32:34] Allea: I know. All right. I
[00:32:37] Arsen: was gonna say, “Hi,
[00:32:37] Allea: Nicole.” yeah, so that’s what we’ve been doing and so, yeah, smoothing out that process. So Nicole, do you like our process? She, she just gets the, she gets the pretty emails when the things are done. okay, so back to that question about the content-
[00:32:52] Arsen: Right, the, the, the small, somebody with a smaller recipe,
[00:32:55] Allea: uh- Yeah
[00:32:55] Allea:yeah. Would be, um… You could also do things like include a tip or a hack or a resource or a product you would recommend. So pair something along with- The one recipe that you’ve created. you can tell a story with it, like how did that recipe come to be? How would you, how would you present this? Like, oh, like I wouldn’t just serve it by itself, I’d also pair it with this or this glass of wine.
[00:33:20] Allea: Or- Right … I keep using food examples. If y’all are in other industries, holler at me so I can come up with other examples as well. but yeah. So you can pair it with things that don’t exist on your website, like your story or whatnot, or bring the story into the email. mentioned asking a question, and then I would, yeah, if you can automate…
[00:33:43] Allea: I mean, you mentioned RSS emails. I’m a huge fan. So if you are in a phase where you’re really working on creating new content, set up an RSS feed. Let it send an email every time you come up with new content or twice a week with like a little digest, because then you can focus on creating more content down the road, but you’re still sending emails to people who are on your list.
[00:34:04] Arsen: I like that. I’m gonna skip a few of these questions because I think you touched on them already. Yeah.let’s, let’s move into growth, and lead gen. Yeah.a- again, through, through, through, through the, through the lens of, of me being a blogger, like for me, what w- what would be the most effective non-spammy way to grow my email list?
[00:34:24] Arsen: Social media, social plugins, offsite sources- Yeah … relationship building, you know, r- running ads on Meta, to build your list, or w- w- what? Tell me.
[00:34:35] Allea: Yeah, yeah. So the, the five things I have listed, so Grocers List, using that as a DM strategy. I actually use Grocers List and I’m not a food blogger just ’cause it’s super, super easy to set up and use, versus ManyChat.
[00:34:51] Allea: So they have a DM strategy now too, so… Well, they’ve had it, but typically what you do is you like send your s- your person says, “Send me the thing,” and then they go to their DM and they open a landing page and they enter their information. Well now, Grocers List has made it so that they just have to type in their email address and it gets added to your landing page, so they don’t even have to click over to see it.
[00:35:10] Allea: Makes it a lot easier. Right. Another would be save this recipe or save this post. That’s really big for food bloggers and that’s really effective, along with print pass or gated print. That works really well for a lot of people. Some audiences hate it, and if you personally hate it, I’m not telling you you have to do it.
[00:35:27] Allea: and then pop-ups, which like- The SEO genius in front of me can tell me what he thinks about that. But as an email marketing person, I’m a fan of pop-ups. I know that there are really smart ways to use it. I believe Grow has the option now where that doesn’t… It has, like, the interstitial. I don’t know what it mean.
[00:35:46] Allea: It means basically, like, it’s not, you’re not gonna get pinged by Google. Right. Because what you don’t want is you show up- if somebody shows up on your site and they get hit with a pop-up right away, Google doesn’t like that. So Grow has it built in now somewhere that does it, like it doesn’t- Yeah. We definitely, I definitely
[00:35:59] Arsen: notice when I’m, when I’m doing my quick, reviews of sites or on consultation calls, I definitely notice, like, there’s
[00:36:05] Arsen: It- it’s just, like, a lot of them are not set up properly. They’re firing on every page load, they are not, keeping track of my session.there’s a lot of improvements that can be made there, absolutely. They’re, they’re, they’re… A lot of times they’re, they’re intrusive, those, those email pop-ups. and that all counts towards, you know, abandonment of, of the page by the user- Mm
[00:36:23] Arsen: which is one of the strongest signals for Google that your content is not being helpful.so I think optimizing that is, like s- like, you know, two birds, one stone kind of a thing.
[00:36:32] Allea: Yeah. Do you have a resource on that? Do you wanna come onto my podcast and tell me all about it? Sure. Yay.
[00:36:37] Arsen: I’ll do it. I like, ’cause I don’t know.
[00:36:38] Arsen: I don’t know all the stuff-
[00:36:39] Allea: Yeah, yeah … that’s involved.
[00:36:40] Arsen: We, we, I, I have all, all these resources. Yeah, absolutely. We can, we, I- I’d love to do that. okay.should I use, the same lead magnet across my entire site? How often should I change it?is it worth, applying some kind of, logic based on, on categories, products, what I’m writing about?
[00:37:01] Allea: Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of sequential with how much you’ve created. So if you have a lead magnet that you can apply to your whole site, start there. And then if you have a category of pages that just really pop off, like barbecue. If you have a bunch of different barbecue recipes, you can create one lead magnet for barbecue that just shows up on those, those particular bo- posts.
[00:37:21] Allea: Right. whether it’s a pop-up or Grow. Spotlight Subscribe is another one that you can add to individual pages in a really easy way, and make one tweak, and it can change it everywhere, all of that. So that’s a really great strategy if you’re like, “Okay, now I’m ready to dive into a particular type of content.”
[00:37:38] Allea: So those barbecue ones are gonna show up on barbecue posts. Maybe everywhere else you have five easy s- dinner recipes. Right. So that’s just another way you could kind of double down. If you want to test out different opt-ins, I recommend every quarter. That gives you a few months to test out a lead magnet itself, like how it’s being promoted on social, how it’s being promoted in your pop-up, whether you call it a guide or a PDF.
[00:38:05] Allea: Like, you can kind of test all those things. But then every year you’re trying out four different ones. You’re learning more about your audience, and maybe you will get to one that just performs really, really well and you’re like, “That works. I’ll stick with it.”
[00:38:17] Arsen: What’s the best way to get signups to my email list from social media platforms?
[00:38:21] Arsen: We’ve done some stuff in the past where we ran ads on social, and those were the ads where they don’t leave the platform, they just, you know, the, the lead ads, they, they just give, you know- Mm … subscribe,’cause the email’s getting passed right away. Cool. And it was automation, so, like, it would hit the email list, it would send them a confirmation and all that.
[00:38:37] Arsen: And those were, were okay price. They, they were anywhere from, like, 75 to a dollar per, per email collected. Nice.I don’t know what the price would be now, but, that used to work. But what about, like, non-paid strategies?
[00:38:51] Allea: That’s why I would do, like, the, DM strategy through something like ManyChat or Grocers List.
[00:38:56] Allea: as I’m not an Instagram expert as to know w- exactly what produces the best results. I know Molly from What Molly Made, Molly Thompson, she’s had really great results with doing Reels. at Tastemaker last year they were talking about how a Reel that shows a handful of recipes performs better, because otherwise if it’s just one, they’re gonna go to your profile, they’re gonna actually make sure they like your stuff before they opt in.
[00:39:20] Allea: But with a Reel where you’re showing, like, the top viral recipes, top five, then they kind of see all at once like, “Oh, these all look good. I want it right away.” So just reducing some of that friction.
[00:39:31] Arsen: Let’s quickly dive into monetization.how can I monetize an email list without having my own digital product?
[00:39:38] Arsen:like RPMs, ads, affiliate strategies, um-
[00:39:42] Allea: Yeah.
[00:39:43] Arsen: Yeah. Mm-hmm. What can you recommend there?
[00:39:45] Allea: I mean, going back to email math, sending more emails, growing your list, or just, like, continuing to nurture the list you have too. We oftentimes look so much at list growth that we f- like, you worked really hard to get to 20,000 subscribers that you currently have.
[00:40:00] Allea: How are you taking care of them? So it could look like segmenting your list so that you keep people on longer. You know, it could even look at, like, which opt-ins the unsubscribes are really coming from, and you’re like, “Oh, is that- Right … the best opt-in to have there?” So just getting better about who’s joining your list so they stay on longer, and they click open more emails, and they click within those.
[00:40:20] Allea: So I would say the ad traffic is probably your number one. If you’re already getting ad revenue, just keep sending people back, and then that will grow with time as your list grows and as you improve other little things. I wouldn’t worry about running ads in your emails because it doesn’t really pay all that much, so I would skip that.
[00:40:40] Allea: But then an affiliate strategy, I think even if it’s like, you know, I’m big into creating a system, so if you have your newsletters and you’re like, “I wanna make sure that, every week one email links to an affiliate product or to my Amazon storefront,” just, like, making sure that it’s top of mind, not just the traffic to your website, but also making sure that’s in there.
[00:41:00] Allea: I got another example from Pinch of Yum. Lindsay did just, like, a bulleted list of, like, seven products. There were no images. It was, like, a sentence or two for each one, which is a link. Like, “Here’s what I bought, here’s what I bought.” And, like, you can do an email like that every couple weeks if you want.
[00:41:14] Allea: And you can also- That’s really awesome … add that to your automation. Right. ‘Cause what are the chances you’re really gonna change your thoughts on your favorite spatula?
[00:41:20] Arsen: Right. Very
[00:41:21] Allea: cool.
[00:41:22] Arsen: The, and, like, again, this can all be, like, pre-planned, organized with, with the help of AI, right? Like, you can do that.
[00:41:27] Arsen: Right. let’s quickly talk about e-books ’cause, or, or digital products- Yeah … ’cause a lot of, a lot of our audiences, they do this.what would you recommend, like, as, as, like, a, like, a, a way to start or getting into it? Is there, like, a sequence to lead up to, like, a, a, some kind of like, “And this is stuff you can learn from the book,” and, and then get to the pitch, or do you just come out with it right away?
[00:41:50] Allea: You know, I’m always big about priming. So, like, say you have, like, a general dinner blog, but you want to pitch an e-book on pizza. You know, be talking about pizza for a little bit before you pitch on your pizza e-book. If you can pre-sell it, that will save you a lot of time as well, and just say, like, “Hey, for the first 20 people who buy, you’re also going to get, like, an asynchronous Q&A or whatever.
[00:42:17] Allea: You can submit your questions- Right … and I’ll answer them on a video call, and you guys will get the link.” Something like that, ’cause then you’re not doing it if it doesn’t generate a ton of income. Right. And I will say the things with e-books is that it’s a lot easier when you have a bigger audience. So, like, if you have a list of 2,000 and you’re like, “I only sold four,” you’re like, yeah, but that’s not a bad conversion rate just- Right
[00:42:37] Allea: going cold from email. so you have to be willing to play the long game. Same applies if you’re doing, like, a membership or a subscription to something. I haven’t seen a lot of people really, nail it with, like, the meal plan subscription. Mm-hmm. So I wouldn’t necessarily put a lot of weight into that.
[00:42:55] Allea: I do, love the idea of, like, a tripwire. I know we probably haven’t heard that phrase in a long time, but it sounds so dangerous. Sounds like evil. Because it is. pretty sure that’s what it’s from. So but the idea is that somebody opts into your list for a pizza freebie, and then you’re like, “Hey, did you know that I actually have, like, an e-book with 10 recipes?
[00:43:14] Allea: You can get it for $5.” Right. Great. and then you can also in- pitch that in your emails about pizza. Just say, “Hey, did you know? You can get it here.” So it’s just something that, like, exists alongside of your content, and if it ends up, like, really popping off, then you can run ads behind it or something if you want.
[00:43:33] Allea: But that’s how I would do it.
[00:43:35] Arsen: when you’re doing that, and there’s a question here.um- Okay … obviously I’m not going to appeal to everyone on my list. Right. And if I am, if I’m focusing on, like, a specific topic, pizza, right? Yeah. but there’s people who hate pizza on my email list, which is- Yeah
[00:43:58] Arsen: well, highly unlikely. Uh- They love pizza … should I be worried about losing, losing subscribers e- e- when I’m sending out this type of content that’s very focused towards a specific topic? Like, what would be, like, a healthy, like, loss ratio?
[00:44:11] Allea: Oh. That I don’t really know. I will say if you’re running a promotion, people might be more adverse to a promotion than the particular content.
[00:44:19] Allea: And so you can just include a link, I call it like a, a link trigger, but with a mute tag. So like, “Hey, if you’re not interested in my Black Friday bundle, click here and I’ll skip sending these emails to you.” And what it does is it adds a tag or adds them to a segment in Flodesk saying, “Mute Black Friday 2026.”
[00:44:36] Allea: And then w- as you continue to send out those emails, just exclude sending it to those people. I love that. So you’re not gonna say I’m not gonna send it to you ever. But like if you’re launching a cookbook, darn it, tell everyone. Right. And if they’re gonna be mad about it, they don’t need to be on your list.
[00:44:51] Allea: Right. But I mean, they’re gonna hear about it again. You know? So if it’s something that’s pivotal to your brand-
[00:44:57] Arsen: Right …
[00:44:58] Allea: you don’t have to take it- Just like
[00:44:59] Arsen: ignore that. Right … ignore that. w- do majority of the tools that you recommend people use a- allow you to tag or to segment your audience based on, on, on, on interests?
[00:45:12] Allea: Yes. Okay. I’m pretty sure. Yes.
[00:45:16] Arsen: So we’re sending all of this out. We’re sending out emails. We have our sequences. We’re covering multiple topics.how do I get people to engage? How do I get subscribers to actually talk back and engage? Like w- some strategies, encouragement, participation. Like how do, how do we, how do we, how do we improve engagement?
[00:45:37] Allea: Yeah. I think it’s keeping in mind that people might not engage with key lime pie. They’re going to engage with you- Right … about key lime pie. So- Right … you know, Toni Okamoto from Plant Li- or was it Plant-Based on a Budget? She has a Friday email and that’s where she shares all of her personal updates.
[00:45:56] Allea: That’s it. She’s like, “It doesn’t go on social media, it goes to my email list,” and that’s where she gets tons of engagement and people reply back. And so I would just keep that in mind. Like if you’re expecting engagement from every recipe or every post, it’s not probably going to be there. But if you share a personal story about like, like I’m going to s-going to Europe this summer, so I get a blog post and it’s particularly about Barcelona, I’m going to reply because it’s timely to me right now.
[00:46:26] Allea: But even if it was somebody else just going on a trip to Prague and I’ve never been, I could… You know, at least I feel more connected to them, and they can ask a question like, “Hey, have you… Has, has Prague ever been on your list?” And I’ll be like, “Yes, for 10 years. I wanna go at Christmas time. It sounds amazing.”
[00:46:40] Allea: You know? Right. Like that kind of engagement. I go, I mentioned earlier putting it in a welcome sequence. If you can, I don’t know, explain to people early on like, “Hey, I’m a real person back here. I want to listen to you, you can reply back to any email.” I’ve always said that like on every podcast, I’m like, “If you’re on my list and you hit reply, you will hear from me.”
[00:47:02] Allea: And so just making that really well known. yeah.
[00:47:09] Arsen: I like what you said earlier about, I only share this type of content in email. Mm-hmm. It doesn’t go on social, it doesn’t go on my website. Is there, is there, like, is this, like, a, a, a, a pretty decent strategy to create that exclusivity? Like, “Hey, if you really want this information, this email is the only source for this type of content.”
[00:47:33] Allea: Yes, but I think it has to have a healthy amount of, like, ego check. If you’re like- Right … “You want to hear about my life?” Like, no. That’s not, like, how you’re gonna sell people on it. Right.
[00:47:42] Arsen: Right. Even just things- But it doesn’t have to be that, right? No. It can be, it can be other things, like learn, learn how I use whatever- Yeah
[00:47:48] Arsen: right?
[00:47:48] Allea: Well, like, we talk about lead magnets. If there’s something that you’re already sending to your list that is incentivizing, that is the incentive. So if you’re like, “Every Friday I send out a weekly menu or weekend menu,” that is an incentive. Just join- Right … the list and you’re gonna start getting that.
[00:48:03] Allea: They’re not receiving anything immediately, they just get the list for that. so that’s an option. Or, yeah, like I know, it’s, Real Food Dietitians does like a weekly grocery list drop every Wednesday. Right. And that list- Right … that particular segment gets so much engagement. And so, like, that in itself could be-
[00:48:26] Arsen: Well-
[00:48:26] Arsen: an incentive to join the list … most likely because it’s actually helpful, it’s useful, right? Mm-hmm. The, the content is, is worth the open. It’s not just like a, “Here, I wrote this,” right? Mm-hmm. It’s, it’s, it’s… And this makes sense, ’cause it’s like, it’s, it’s the same marketing principles that we use across different channels.
[00:48:44] Arsen: Same ingredients, different soup, basically- Yeah … right? Yeah. with email marketing, you still have to think about your audience. And there’s a question here also, like, you know, how do I… Like, do you poll your audiences? And this kind of goes into like, uh- Mm-hmm … what are the best ways to poll surveys to find out what the readers actually want?
[00:49:03] Arsen: Like, can I, can I create that segmentation within my list- Oh, that’s- … fairly early on, maybe with that, that initial sequence, right?
[00:49:10] Allea: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So like we, when I set up emails for Pinch Of Yum years ago, we included, like, what kind of home cook are you? I’m a beginner. I’m fairly comfortable. I’m an expert.
[00:49:22] Allea: And depending on what they click on, that actually determined which nurture sequences they went into, or which nurture sequence they got first. The beginners only got, like, an extra five emails to talk about how to cut up onions. You know, if you’re advanced, you don’t need to know about how to cut up an onion.
[00:49:37] Allea: So- Right … you want to know which blender Lindsay uses. And so yeah, that’s one way to do it. We just use link triggers in most cases. Like, just click one below, which one matters to you. A poll would be really fun if you’re like, “Which recipe should I publish next?” And you give them three options of recipes you’ve already got queued up-
[00:49:56] Arsen: Right.
[00:49:56] Arsen: Thanks, man. And that creates that engagement also, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right. It’s
[00:49:59] Allea: really like- Right … low bar stuff. yeah, and you could even just tell them, like even if you don’t have a follow-up nurture sequence for something, you’re just like, “I’m just curious to know who’s here. Tell me- Right … how big is your family?”
[00:50:11] Allea: Like, “How many people are you feeding?”
[00:50:12] Arsen: Right.
[00:50:14] Allea: And they just get to tell you. I love that. Get to learn- Right … about their audience that way.
[00:50:17] Arsen: And then as that data collects, you can use that-
[00:50:21] Allea: Mm-hmm …
[00:50:21] Arsen: again, with the proper tools in place, as a way to ideate new content- Mm-hmm … towards your audience, right? So you can really like, they have that cross-pollination between those two interest spheres, somebody who’s a beginner and is interested in how to peel different vegetables, right?
[00:50:37] Arsen: Yeah. Like, so y- right? Okay. I love this. Yeah.um- And
[00:50:40] Allea: then, I mean, we do like a deep dive survey for our clients with our signature service, and that’s where we learn kind of the whole scope of like, what were people looking for when they came to your site? What problem did they want solved? And then one of my favorite questions is asking like, “What is it about Michelle’s content that you already love?”
[00:51:02] Allea: And then they get to be like, “Here’s what I love about Michelle.” Right. Yes, Michelle, your name in the chat, that’s why you get a call-out. You know, and then it’s like my favorite thing to give over to the client and be like, “Do you see? What you’re already doing is awesome. We just need to-” Right … “build on that.”
[00:51:15] Allea: And that’s where the automation strategy comes from, ’cause you’re like, “How do I answer their biggest questions?” Or people will be like, “Oh my gosh, I love Tracy’s hacks and tips.” And so you’re like, “Okay, Tracy, what are your best tips, and how do we put them at the beginning of someone’s experience being on your email list so they don’t have to wait two years to learn how to freeze-dry herbs or whatever?”
[00:51:37] Allea: They just know
[00:51:38] Arsen: now. I wish that we, we had more time with you. maybe we’ll do a part two. okay. Yeah. I’m gonna s- I’m gonna skip through a few of these- Okay …just ’cause I wanna, I wanna make sure we touch on this.so we already kind of touched on automation and funnels.some of the questions here, what is one simple automation every publisher should have but usually doesn’t?
[00:51:58] Allea: A welcome sequence. Well, they, like you don’t wanna just drop people into your newsletter. You wanna give them a chance to understand who you are, what type of content you have, why you’re glad that they’re there, build some trust and rapport.
[00:52:11] Arsen: Right. Um,
[00:52:16] Arsen: let’s go, let’s go towards, what is the ch- cleanest low-maintenance automation architecture for a site with, with m-
[00:52:24] Allea: m-
[00:52:25] Arsen: many lead magnets?
[00:52:26] Allea: Yeah. So what I love about a welcome sequence, just to get really clear about this, is that everybody gets it. You only need one welcome sequence. You can have 15 lead magnets, I don’t care.
[00:52:36] Allea: And they can be quick start guides. They can be the five-day series or whatever. But they all eventually come into your welcome sequence, which I consider like your brand hub. This is how they learn about you, why it’s important they stick around, how you’re gonna solve their problem- et cetera. So the cleanest thing is that anybody from any lead magnet goes into the welcome sequence.
[00:52:56] Allea: And once the welcome sequence is done, then they start getting your newsletters.
[00:53:00] Arsen: Got it. So they, it needs to complete before they’re exposed to whatever else?
[00:53:06] Allea: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:53:07] Arsen: Okay.
[00:53:07] Allea: Yeah, take it easy. We’ve gotta, we gotta incubate this relationship. We can’t hit them with too much.
[00:53:13] Arsen: So it’s like there’s a, there’s the, there’s a nurture, process almost, like, where you’re, you’re priming the audience and, and essentially you’re, you, the, the, the content that you’ll be pushing out in the future- Yeah
[00:53:27] Arsen: through this. And I, I, I love that. That’s, that’s… You’re not relying on third-party data to tell you. You’re collecting directly from the source.
[00:53:37] Allea: Mm-hmm. Yep. That’s it. Love it. And then, I mean, just think about, like, if somebody were just to start getting your emails from you, but they don’t, maybe they came in from a quick start guide that has Crock-Pot stuff- Right
[00:53:47] Allea: and you’re hitting them with grilling. They’re like, sure, they could be like, “Oh, that’s cool. She’s got grilling.” But you have an opportunity to tell them, you know, “This is, this is why I started my blog. Maybe you felt the same way. This is my personal story.” Or like changing to gluten-free, you’re like, “My son got diagnosed with celiac, so I’ve decided to make this shift.
[00:54:06] Allea: Have you?” Like- Right … “What got, what got you here?” Right. Or, “Are you new to, to a celiac diet?” Right. And those can be triggers. They could be ask and reply, whatever, but, like, you actually get to build that relationship before you just start hitting them with recipes.
[00:54:19] Arsen: Are there tools that will track from the click-through from your email, the user’s path through your website, the initiate and the initial, initial click-through came from your email- Hmm
[00:54:33] Arsen: and then you can track
[00:54:35] Allea: w-
[00:54:36] Arsen: based on that email and that segment of your email list who opened and which pages on your site resulted as i- in visits- Mm-hmm … from this particular user to get an understanding of almost like cohort behavior? Hmm. 75% of people who opened this email went to the initial page and then went to this page and, like, w-potato soup category page, clicked on the potato soup, and then clicked on, how to peel potatoes, right?
[00:55:03] Arsen: Yeah. 70%. So, like, to really understand, like, the, the, the, the after effect of this email, instead of just saying it generated a click-through-
[00:55:13] Allea: Yeah … to
[00:55:13] Arsen: really learn, like, almost, like, engagement-based decision-making for your future emails.
[00:55:18] Allea: Mm-hmm. I don’t know of a tool like that other than, like, I don’t, I’ve never set up Google Analytics in a way to be able to track that.
[00:55:25] Allea: But I did see recently someone’s, ad, like, ad revenue dashboard that was, like, basically, like, for every email click they visit X number of pages.
[00:55:35] Arsen: Right.
[00:55:36] Allea: So.
[00:55:37] Arsen: That’s interesting. Okay. Um- Sorry if that answer- A few, a few, a few questions about, best email platform for small websites on a limited budget.
[00:55:46] Allea: Mm-hmm Do some name
[00:55:48] Arsen: drops
[00:55:49] Allea: I mean, Kit is my go-to, but it, and they have a free plan. So if you’re looking to grow your list and email your list, but n- like in one automation, you can get by a really long time on a free plan. It’s when you want a second sequence, second auto- automation, et cetera, that you’d wanna, add on.
[00:56:08] Allea: Just know you can always switch platforms. So my other alternative I would say would be MailerLite. I think it gives you a lot more control similar to Kit. So like MailerLite’s as if like f-Kit and MailChimp had a baby. so it’s got a lot more builder-esque things in it the way that MailChimp does.
[00:56:27] Allea: Flodesk is fine. I’ll
[00:56:30] Arsen: post some of these in here.
[00:56:31] Allea: Yeah. Flodesk is fine. It has its limitations that kind of frustrate me. I have a blog post on that, if y’all would join my list or ask for it, I can send that over. Subscribe. I’m like, I know we’re running out of time. We’re running out of time. So I mean, in that way, if you wanna go to duet.co, that’s my website, I’ve got all sorts of resources on the resources page.
[00:56:53] Allea: There’s an opt-in to join my email list on the homepage, and a way to contact me if you need to. Yeah, yeah. But I really like MailerLite because it allows, the same way as Kit, it allows you to have like your tags and segments. So you have like tags are the ingredients, segments are like the recipe. So you can build these things knowing I’m g- I’m gonna send it to this group or this segment, these newsletters, knowing I’m not sending it to anybody who’s currently in the welcome sequence.
[00:57:19] Allea: You just have a lot more control over it that way. the most important thing is that it’s a platform that you will use. If any of them give you the heebie-jeebies or it’s hard to use, like then you’re not gonna send email, and that’s not in favor of you. So use the one that you’re going to use, and then you can always change later once you realize like, “Oh, I actually wish I had a platform that did this and this and this.”
[00:57:40] Allea: You’re not making a huge mistake by signing up for any one of these.
[00:57:45] Arsen: We have another… We have a, a bunch of questions that didn’t get answered. What I’d love to do is, we’ll clean this up and maybe get you to potentially, um-
[00:57:56] Allea: Come back. Please, can I come back? C- c-
[00:57:58] Arsen: yes, yes, absolutely. You can come back.
[00:58:00] Arsen: but, y- what, what I’d love, what I’d love, to do is also maybe get you to answer some of these, maybe record a video so we can put it up with the- Oh, yeah … with our, we, we do like an afterwards page on our site.
[00:58:14] Allea: Yeah.
[00:58:15] Arsen: before we bounce, tell us how people can get in touch with you. I know you, you, you have a special offer for, for listeners.
[00:58:24] Arsen: Ooh. I’m trying to, to p- pull that up. Here we go. I’m gonna give you a link. I’m gonna give everybody a link.
[00:58:31] Allea: Yeah. Um. So like I, yeah, like I mentioned, I work with clients, so we do the work for you. That’s part of the name Duett. And so it’s been, it’s been a pleasure of mine to work with content creators for almost, it’ll be eight years- In August, which is bananas Wow Love it.
[00:58:47] Allea: and so we’ve got our signature offers, but the offer I have for you today, that if you have just, like, a question or three, that you’re like, “Can I get an answer to this, this, and this, and I don’t need, like, a full deep dive audit, I just want answers to these questions so I can take action,” I’ve got something called the Email Strategy Edit.
[00:59:06] Allea: it is not always available, so I’ve opened it for the next few days just for you guys so that… You know, it’s a new offer. We wanna make sure that we serve our clients well. And so as people come in, we’ll do one a week and refine our process. And y- what you get is expert eyes on your setup in a way that, in, when one e- one week, you get a few answers to your particular things, your particular questions, an action item.
[00:59:32] Allea: and then if you do continue to work with us, the price of it gets credited to whatever service maybe- I love it … you sign up for.
[00:59:41] Arsen: Thank you so much. We will have a part two. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot, ’cause like I said, this is, like, I don’t know a lot about this. I know it’s important, and I know we’ve tried it.
[00:59:53] Arsen: and I might p- also be reaching out for, for you to help us with our, with our email list.
[00:59:58] Allea: Yeah, stop by.
[00:59:59] Arsen: Al- Allie, thank you so much for, for joining us today.look forward to having you on again.
[01:00:03] Allea: Thank you, and thank you everyone for your questions. Thanks for being so engaged today. I appreciate it.
[01:00:08] Arsen: Bye, everybody.
