Episode 743: Turn Your Email List Into Your Most Powerful Blogging Tool With Matt Molen

EBT743 – Matt Molen

[00:00:00]  Supercut 

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[00:00:14]  Megan Porta

If your email list feels more like a chore than an asset, you are going to love this episode. I am joined by Matt Molen, CEO of Email Crush and the brains behind Email on Autopilot. 

Some of you may know and love him will show you why food bloggers in 2025 should be loving their email lists and how to make that happen. We talk about how often you should be hitting send, the real reason behind your emails, why you’re sending them in the first place, the growth tactics that actually are working right now, and a game changing new feature called Gated Print that will be coming soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that. Whether you’re trying to sell products, drive traffic or just build an unshakeable connection with your people, Matt has the strategies to turn your email into your most powerful tool.

[00:01:11] Intro   

Hi food bloggers, I’m Megan Porta and this is Eat Blog Talk. Your space for support, inspiration and strategies to grow your blog and your freedom. Whether that’s personal, professional or financial, you are not alone on this journey. 

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[00:02:47]  Megan Porta

Matt, it’s been a long time since you’ve been on but welcome back.

[00:02:51]  Matt Molen 

Thank you.

[00:02:52]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, too long. I couldn’t believe it. I swear it had you on within the past couple of years, but it’s been since 2020.

[00:02:59]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, you and I’ve talked. We’ve. We’ve talked multiple times outside of this. But anyway, it’s super exciting to be back.

[00:03:06]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, we need to do this.

[00:03:07]  Matt Molen 

I knew I was missing something in my life and this was it.

[00:03:10]  Megan Porta 

And now you know what it was. Well, here we are reunited on Eat Blog Talk hundreds of episodes later. We’re going to talk about email today, your love language. But before we get into that, do you have another fun fact to share with us?

[00:03:28]  Matt Molen 

Well, I have a mortal enemy. A lot of people don’t realize this, and that is zucchini. So I hope that doesn’t alienate everybody right from the get go. But, you know, my growing up, my family had an acre plus of land and grew all sorts of things from orchard trees, vineyard, vegetables, all the stuff that as a kid I just didn’t care about.

[00:03:52]   

And the one thing that just will not stop growing in eastern Washington state is zucchini. So I still have dreams where I’m haunted by stewed zucchini or these zucchinis that were bigger than my head that I had to. So anyway, my therapist is helping me through it.

[00:04:11]  Megan Porta 

Oh, do you have dreams of giant zucchini chasing you through forested regions?

[00:04:18]  Matt Molen 

I think zucchini nightmares. It’s a real psychological problem that there’s a portion of the population like myself that really suffer, so.

[00:04:27]  Megan Porta 

Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Is there anything zucchini related that you like at all?

[00:04:34]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, I like giving it away. I like it if I have it and then somebody else takes it from me. That’s my favorite thing.

[00:04:42]  Megan Porta 

Oh, wow. Yeah, I think everyone has that food. I beets for me. I can’t. I’ve tried every angle of beets. I can’t do them. I just. They. Yeah, I feel the same way about zucchini or beets as you do zucchini, so I get it. Okay, well, I will not send you gigantic zucchini as a thank you gift for the being on the podcast.

[00:05:06]  Matt Molen 

Perfect. Thank you.

[00:05:07]  Megan Porta 

Okay. Yes. Onward. Let’s talk about your business. Tell us about Email Crush. What are you up to these days and how do you serve food bloggers?

[00:05:16]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, the quick backstory is I’ve been doing. Been working with. With content creators since 2017. I can’t believe it. How much time has gone by. And it’s been awesome to work from A consulting and coaching perspective. That’s where I started and we’ve had some really great success there. Continue to do that. But I also have a done for you services business now that I’ve kind of kept a little bit in stealth mode where I help food creators of a certain size to grow their list.

[00:05:49]   

Know we write and publish and run the reports and do the list growth stuff. We do the broadcast stuff, we do all of it. And it’s been really fun to do that because I get a chance to both experiment with my clients and work directly with them and see what works firsthand. And it’s been real remarkable to see the changes that when people, when we buckle down and we focus on this area of the business, the impact that it can have as a traffic source.

[00:06:20]   

My whole goal is to help my clients to make money with email. Um, it’s not, we’re not into the theory, we’re not into, you know, we are all about getting the results that matter. And so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. I continue to do the, the course Email on Autopilot is still 100% what I teach and preach and believe.And so it’s fun to, to watch that help people make more of their email list too.

[00:06:50]  Megan Porta 

That’s so cool. I love that you’re expanding a little bit and doing more hands on work. You do learn so much that way, right? Just bringing that into how, I mean how you shape your course and how you teach and yeah, just getting that inside information a little bit.

[00:07:07]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, 100%. And there’s some things where it has. The great thing about email is the more things change, the more things stay the same. The fundamental truths are still what drive success. Consistency. As I’m sure we’ll talk about how much to send. These are principles that I’ve learned through trial and error with food.

[00:07:30]   

What will grow the list? These are the same. I mean there’s certain things that have popped up. We’ve had a few new hacks since you and I last talked, but for the most part it’s still the same functional process, the same strategies to grow as it always has been. It’s just how do you, you know, how do you find the time to do that?

[00:07:50]   

What’s your system? What I’ve found is that most of my clients that either, you know, have success on their own or they have me have success by me doing it is that they simply just lack a system. And so much of what we do with content creation, with blogging if you will, is built around a system.

[00:08:09]   

You just, you can’t crank it out if you don’t have your mechanisms for constantly creating. And email is one of those things that most people simply just, they just haven’t built that system of knowing what to do and replicate it over and over and over again. And so I think the benefit of working with many creators all at once and managing all of those is I get to prove it.

[00:08:33]   

I get to see it firsthand and find out what works in the specifics. When you dive, you know, when you, when you go a bit more granular. So it’s been, been very rewarding, for sure.

[00:08:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that’s so cool. I think that system bit applies to everything. If you don’t have it in your system, it’s so hard to put it in your system because we get so used to doing the things, the way we do things. But email is so important. I, we always say that, we’ve said, we said that in 2020, it’s 2025 now, we’re saying it again.

[00:09:06]   

It’s still as important, almost more important now because of all the weirdness going on in our space. So yeah, just talk on that. How important do you think email is right now?

[00:09:19]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, I’m going to go real fast through the obvious stuff. I think everybody knows that AI and Google and Pinterest and Facebook, they’re all. The algorithm stuff is all changing, changing super fast. Owning your list. We always talked about that. I don’t think this is the first time people are hearing that email is great because you have the ability to have an audience where you can push them to your content, you can drive traffic to where you want them to go.

[00:09:43]   

And so that is tremendously important. My clients are seeing huge swings in the percentage of where they’re of traffic that’s coming from email versus other sources when they focus on it and when those other sources are changing, there’s another reason I think right now that might be more important than ever before and that is how email can serve a food creator to be different.

[00:10:13]   

From a positioning and branding perspective, I believe that email, when somebody makes the first recipe from you and maybe the second, that’s typically a happy accident. They stumble across you thanks to a Google search or however they get there and then maybe they’ll make a second one. The brand, the logo, the headshot, the name of your website.

[00:10:39]   

I don’t think that you really become their content creator until they’ve made the third and fourth and fifth where it starts to stick and ultimately isn’t that what we’re doing right now with our lists inspire people to know what to make, solve their problems, is what we always say. But in food, the problem that we’re typically solving is not so much educational.

[00:11:03]   

Usually. Sometimes it is, but usually it’s inspirational. Make this now, and here’s why. And if we can get them to click through and to make that recipe and tie in who we are and what makes us special. So that combination of those two things, that’s branding, that’s positioning. And one of the things that many of my clients struggle with a little bit is what sets them apart and what makes them different.

[00:11:32]   

So positioning is the real estate that we occupy in their mind, who are we to them? I would imagine that to some of the people who know me are like, Matt Molen is an email guy for bloggers, or more specifically the email guy for food bloggers, perhaps something like that. Of course, there’s a lot more to me, my love of fantasy sports, my fear of zucchini and frogs.

[00:12:01]  Megan Porta 

Forgot that one.

[00:12:03]  Matt Molen 

Moving past it quickly. Those are ways that you might not know me for those things, but you might know me for this position. So what is it for our audience and how can we use email to deliver that? It’s a, it’s an opportunity. Many people are thinking in terms of the newest recipe I just made.

[00:12:24]   

And really that’s an us thing. That’s not a them thing. The fact that we released a new recipe does not tap into what makes us special and what problem we can solve for our audience right then. So I love to think of email right now as a branding positioning helper. We can create a journey of what makes Megan special, what makes your brand of recipes different from everybody else’s.

[00:12:57]   

And email is a fantastic way to articulate that to somebody who discovered you through a Google search. If you’ll think through that journey.

[00:13:05]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, that’s a great way to look at it. So positioning, creating a story, letting, allowing people to get in to you and get to know you. Do we also use email these days as a way to get traffic? I imagine the answer is yes.

[00:13:22]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, that’s, that’s usually my, you know, our number one priority with each individual campaign is, you know, focus on what kind of clicks are we getting back because that’s an, you know, open rates are great, but clicks are the best indicator of are they engaging. And we do make money that way. Raptive and MediaVine and other ad networks, they show us or when they show ads, when somebody lands there, we win.

[00:13:51]   

And so the Trick is, I believe is inspire with what they need. So one of the questions I get asked a lot is how often should food creators be sending? And the short answer is, you can send way more than you think. So if you are at once a week, I encourage you to go to two.

[00:14:10]   

If you’re at two, I encourage you to go to three or four. I have clients to send daily. I have one client that sends twice a day. The thing with food is that people get hungry a lot. And so that gives us an opportunity to inspire them in the moment that they need the inspiration.

[00:14:30]   

I may be traveling today, so I don’t need to cook. All right. Doesn’t mean I’m mad at you. But when you hit me up this weekend with, you know, the meal plan for the next week, that’s perfect for me because that’s what I’m thinking about in that moment. So first of all, send more, get more clicks, and you’ll make more money.

[00:14:56]   

It’s kind of so simple, it’s elementary. But that’s. In order to do that, we gotta grow the list big, too. So that’s the formula for email. It’s not more complicated than that with food these days.

[00:15:09]  Megan Porta 

So with the types of emails food bloggers send, specifically, do you suggest varying that. Like, I don’t know, maybe it’s a new recipe once a week and then digging into your archives a couple other times a week, providing maybe a meal plan? Do we do a variety of different types of emails?

[00:15:28]  Matt Molen 

Yes, I think you can definitely mix it up. But it’s not like there’s this hard and fast formula here that everybody needs to follow. The only, the. The only real rule, I believe, is what is your audience thinking about right now? That’s honestly the only thing that matters because matching up what you have to their needs.

[00:15:51]   

Currently, you know, some people are looking ahead and they’re releasing their Thanksgiving stuff right now. Now’s not in August is not the time to do your. To send that out, even though that is the new thing that you just published. And if you’re in the month of August when we are, when we’re recording this, you’re.

[00:16:09]   

You might be thinking about back to school, you might be doing end of summer stuff, you might be doing prep for Labor Day parties or cookouts. You might be doing beginning of fall, might be starting to tease the pumpkin spice, everything. You know, what is your audience thinking about right now? And then how do you serve them?

[00:16:28]   

That could be. That could take any sort of format from a featured recipe to an entire meal plan, a roundup that’s, you know, what I usually do is a roundup. And within that, you’re solving one problem. Let’s say that the problem is quick and easy, back to school. Well, you could have your new stuff and your old stuff mixed together in that you’re solving one problem, and these three to four recipes solve that particular problem.

[00:16:56]   

It’s just not the problem. The opportunities, the variety that’s within that. There might be four different ways to approach it, but it’s solving one problem.

[00:17:04]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, this is something I hear a lot in our circles. How do I know what my people need? I mean, we can lean on. Like, my audience is very much like me and I know what I need, but maybe not. Maybe they need something else. And more specifically, do we reach out and ask them?Do we do a survey? How do we figure it out?

[00:17:26]  Matt Molen 

The first place I look is your past history and your traffic. So what you might try is look at last year at this time. Now, I know that this year is not last year, but there are a lot of similarities. And quite often I find that your sources of traffic, whether they go up or down, they still tend to be centered around your clusters of expertise, and your traffic may reflect that.

[00:17:54]   

So if I’m getting a ton of traffic that is specific to slow cooker recipes, then I’m going to probably lean into that, you know, at that same time next year, because people were searching for that and my audience might. Might do that. Now, I want to take that broader. I don’t want to lean in just because I.

[00:18:12]   

I ranked number one for the tuna maple jalapeno casserole. All right, that. That’s so obscure. And maybe you’re number one for that. Yeah, you probably rank for that. Megan, if you want to go.

[00:18:24]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I do.

[00:18:25]  Matt Molen 

You might rank number one for that. That doesn’t mean everybody and their dog wants it, but it is an indication of the type of thing that perhaps if people are coming in for that, then they might like casseroles as a whole. And so you could bring forward your casseroles. There is also the element of who do you want to be when you grow up?

[00:18:43]   

Like, you are the subject matter expert and you know that X, Y and Z recipes are the way to go. So your personal. I do not discount at all what you know to be awesome. I want your recommendations as the reader. I want you to say, hey, look, you have all these choices.

[00:19:03]   

Let me simplify it for you. Make these for back to school. You’re going to love it. So it’s kind of that those are the two areas that I go is what is the natural journey and where did they come from? What were they interested in seasonally at that time? Perhaps last year.

[00:19:19]  Megan Porta 

And then I imagine a little bit of experimenting, too. So evaluating at the end of a week what emails were opened, which ones had the highest click rates.

[00:19:30]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, 100%. So that’s something that can be tricky for folks. And it feels like you’re done. I did it. I put it out there. Now, my advice to folks when you’re checking your stats is that you do have to let it sit for a little bit. Okay. You’re going to know if immediately if it was a super bomb or a super hit.

[00:19:49]   

But when you start sending multiple emails per week, you kind of have to let them go for a few weeks and then go back and look at the month as a whole. The way that I would do that is now I’m getting into a little bit of the weeds here, but maybe this will help somebody out there is that I’m going to look at stuff that’s a month old I may look at if I’m sitting here in August, I’m going to go back and look at perhaps July’s campaigns because enough time has passed.

[00:20:18]   

I’m going to. I’m going to look at a couple of things. First, open rates, obviously, that’s the thing everybody looks at. Is there a pattern with the type of subject line or theme? Second, I’m going to be looking at the clicks. Total clicks, not click rate, although click rate is an indication. But I’m going to be looking at total clicks and I’m going to find the ones that are highest and I’m going to go dig into them and I’m going to try to decipher what happened.

[00:20:47]   

Why. Why did this get more clicks? Were there more unique clickers or did the same people just click more things inside of it? What was clicked? Do I see a pattern there? I want to learn from those things because here’s the thing you can do. Nobody believes me on this. You can repeat that bad boy sooner than you think.

[00:21:11]  Megan Porta 

All right.

[00:21:11]  Matt Molen 

You don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel with your emails. Once you kind of find a few things that work, you can roll it out again. Maybe change the theme a little bit for the season, change the subject line so it’s not the same thing. Maybe swap out a couple of the recipes in there.

[00:21:27]   

But if you. If you land on something that does well, I’m bringing that back every few months. In some way, shape or form, if not more frequently, depending on how often I’m emailing. And the reason for that is email math people. If you took it, let’s say you had a 50% open rate, that means half the people that got the email never opened it.

[00:21:49]   

If you had a 10% click through rate, that would be fantastic for food. That means that 90% of people that received that email did not click anything. That’s a lot of people. Does that mean they hate you? No, that’s just the way the email math works. So we fixate a lot on do I have to make this brand new every time?

[00:22:12]   

That wasn’t your original question, but as you think about what to send and how to test it, those are the things that I’m looking at. And then the action is going to be do more of that. I just lean into what has already worked. I guess I’m kind of lazy that way. And then I’ll just rinse and repeat.Because you’ll find if it worked once, it usually works twice.

[00:22:37]  Megan Porta 

Do you find that people are resistant to that, reluctant to resend something they’ve already sent?

[00:22:44]  Matt Molen 

Yeah. The reason I emphasize that a lot is because most people, it’s a common, common thing we do. We’re looking at this stuff, it’s all encompassing. Our content is our world. But the reason I bring up that email math equation is to point out it’s not the world for our subscribers. It’s important to them, but it’s varying degrees of importance.

[00:23:07]   

Some people are very casual email subscribers. Some are die hard super fans that we love, love, love, we love them all. But not everybody looks at our stuff the same way. I venture to guess that your own mother does not have your entire catalog memorized and so is not going to remember whether you had, you know, you sent the chocolate chip cookies a month ago or six months ago.

[00:23:34]   

They just don’t know. And so, and also one of the great things about that is, let’s say you had the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookie. The danger of sending that again in, let’s say in three weeks, three weeks, four weeks, is that somebody’s seen it. If they’ve seen it, they might like to see it again to remind them how awesome the cookies were or that they’d wanted to make it to begin with.

[00:23:58]   

So in E-commerce we call that abandoned cart. Right. You were looking at that. We show it to you again, we show it to you again until you buy. It’s kind of the same concept.

[00:24:09]  Sponsor 

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[00:25:33]  Megan Porta

If you do have the best chocolate chip cookie, which I do, by the way, I feel passionately about that cookie and I want to keep talking about it and I think that shines through. People are like, wow, she keeps talking about her cookies. They must be really good.

[00:25:48]  Matt Molen 

No, that’s super important. I’m glad you said that because that is so overlooked the stuff that we’re passionate about. Like when, if you take, if you take, sending is serving, sending is serving, then how are you serving? The best way you can serve is like, I know this works. You have to believe me, this works.

[00:26:10]   

Let me, I’m going to keep telling you because this works. It’s the world’s greatest cookie. Prove me wrong. You know, try the cookie and then tell me it’s not because you won’t be able to. Because it’s the world’s greatest.

[00:26:21]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, I mean, if, when I hear people continually talking about something, I’m like, okay, well tell me more. Why are you so passionate about this? I want to know where this passion comes from. This is so cool. And I might not care about chocolate chip cookies, which I do, but if I didn’t, I’d be like, please educate me.

[00:26:41]   

Why? Why should I eat this cookie? So it would. It would intrigue me even if the subject matter were maybe not on my radar, if that makes sense.

[00:26:50]  Matt Molen 

And isn’t that branding? Like, you’re just saying this. I’m Megan. This is what I. This is what I stand for. I stand for cookies.

[00:26:57]  Megan Porta 

I do.

[00:26:58]  Matt Molen 

I will fight for this recipe. And like you said, they’re going to. Either that importance is going to be contagious or it’ll chase them away, in which case they weren’t your person anyway because you’re standing for cookies.

[00:27:13]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:27:14]  Matt Molen 

And. And should not be afraid of that. I’m really glad to hear you say that because I think that sometimes branding is simply that it’s what makes me different is I have experimented and I know that this works.

[00:27:29]  Megan Porta 

Yes. And if you’re not a cookie stander like me, then it’s fine to say goodbye. Right? Yeah. What other purposes are there for sending out emails? We talked about branding, positioning, traffic driving. What about selling products?

[00:27:48]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, 100%. You’re going to hear from everybody that when you have a product that building a list is the best way to do that. The reason for that is that these people, you’ve worked hard to build up trust. The reason that I focus so much on the list growth and sending a lot and building that journey is because what we’re doing is building trust.

[00:28:10]   

People won’t buy from you if they don’t trust you. You and I don’t have the budgets of Walmart or Target or the brand cachet of Amazon. We just don’t have it. And so when we put something out, there needs to be a lot of backstory that says I can trust Matt enough that this is going to work.

[00:28:30]   

I had, just as an example, I had a. Somebody tagged me on Facebook, this is a few years back, tagged me on Facebook and said, email selling through email doesn’t work. I don’t know why they tagged me. I didn’t even know this person. Email sending through email doesn’t work. And so I jumped on a call, I said, I’ll bite.

[00:28:48]   

What’s going on? And they had gone through a health journey where they had transformed their life and created a book about how they got there. The challenge was that their subject matter expertise was fried chicken. And so they had built a list that they weren’t sending to very often around fried chicken. And so then they wrote one email about this book and sent it out and nobody bought it.

[00:29:14]   

Now when we look at it that way, it’s pretty obvious, right? The disconnect is clear, but it wasn’t to that person in that moment because they were hopeful that I created a product. I have a list, I send them and everybody will buy. And that’s not how it works. So the reason I’m bringing up this story is to illustrate the point of the flow here.

[00:29:33]   

You can sell right away for the first for your newbies that are on new people on your list. Don’t hesitate to do that. If you have a cookbook, for example, or a meal plan that you’re trying to sell, or a premium newsletter, that’s great, let them know that you have it. You’re more likely to sell more by nurturing that audience.

[00:29:52]   

Everybody says nurture, but really that just means consistently serving them over and over again, solving the problems over and over again through your inspirational recipes. And so they’re like, the free stuff I get from Megan is so great. When she comes out with the Super Duper Cookie Cookbook, I know that this is going to be worth my money because I’ve, I’ve learned to trust her through all the other stuff that she has sent me up to this point.

[00:30:18]   

So selling 100%. But let’s not get it backwards. Don’t be afraid to sell. But I think we have to set our own expectations about. It’s not always just a one time. Send something out and it’s going to work. That’s another mistake that happens too is you may have a product and then you send something out through an email or even though you did a launch and then you forget that you have this product.

[00:30:44]   

Meaning if you’re in marketing for a company that has a catalog of products, they are constantly thinking of promotions. How many food bloggers are thinking in terms of their meal plans, cookbooks, ebooks, in terms of a promotional calendar, email serves wonderfully well there. You can mirror it up with social media. You can put announcements on your website and do all those things and email is a great support of that.

[00:31:13]   

But most folks don’t. They’re not. They haven’t done the marketing thing in the, in corporate world where you have to outline your promotional calendar and think it through over and over and over again. If you will do that, go through the simple exercise of just lay out the next 12 months and say, when is the time to sell my cookbook?

[00:31:35]   

When is the time to really push my meal plans? Well, first of the year makes a lot of sense. Maybe Black Friday makes a lot of sense. Maybe every season change. And then what is the special oomph you can give it. What’s the bonus that you could give it into that promotion. What does that have to do with email?

[00:31:54]   

It gives you something to send. It gives you an excuse to go back to them and say, here’s why I’m talking about my cookbook again. Or it may be the first time for you, but right now I’m doing something special. The more times you do something special and unique, that’s just why we do promotional calendars.

[00:32:11]   

It brings it to their attention. And then you tie it to scarcity, it will go away. You can’t get this special offer. And so while that’s why I’m sending you an email right now that you have to act now, that was the super fast how to sell more stuff with email course. But those are the basic fundamentals.

[00:32:33]   

A lot of my clients just have never experienced or gone through or done or, or know it and have forgotten it and just don’t execute because they’re busy and doing the day to day of running their business.

[00:32:45]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. I was going to say it’s a whole other job. And anytime another job is entering our worlds, we’re like, no, thank you, I already have enough jobs. But yeah, I mean, it really wouldn’t take that much effort and time to sit down and like you said, just think through when would this be a good time to sell.

[00:33:03]   

And then thinking backward and it’s probably a few solid hours of work when in our brains we think it’s going to take us a week to accomplish, but so worth the effort.

[00:33:17]  Matt Molen 

And it’s a, it’s a muscle that you get stronger the more you flex it. So the first couple times just feels weird. Am I being so salesy right now, you know, or I put together a promotion and how do I, how do I exclude people who don’t want to receive these and not annoy them?

[00:33:34]   

There’s all those things that you have to go through. But, but it’s more of when you. If this is for everybody. The reason that I’m, I’m bouncing this kind of hard is because many people right now are turning to additional sources of income.

[00:33:49]  Megan Porta 

Yes.

[00:33:49]  Matt Molen 

And they’re creating products. So I guess that’s my advice is this is not a one and done thing. You’re not doing yourself any favor if you look at it that way. You know, if you’re going to invest the time to build the product, then plan ahead for the next year.

[00:34:03]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And people are so turned off by selling it, especially at first, like you said. But when you see it as you are offering something so valuable to the people who love you and want to know what you’re offering and they want your products or services or whatever it is, it transforms the way you see selling.

[00:34:24]   

It’s. You’re not bugging them. If they’re the right people buying something that’s valuable from you, that’s great. That’s a great transaction.

[00:34:32]  Matt Molen 

I think it increases the perceived value too. Like, this is important enough for me to charge for it. So this is not just anything that you can get for free anywhere. This is my secret sauce and so that’s worth more. I’m proud of it and I know you’ll love it. The way that I help kind of get over that imposter syndrome a little bit is step number one is get a ton of testimonials.

[00:34:57]   

So testimony is like email gold. Because when you’re like, what do I, how do I sell this? Again, if I’m sending you, if I’m sending my list, an email about email and autopilot course, instead, I could send an email and say, in here you’ll learn this, this and this. It’s more effective for me to say, hey, you’re going to learn how to grow your list.

[00:35:16]   

But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what Megan had to say when she increased by 5 billion percent by implementing email on autopilot. And then there’s what Megan right there. Okay, so testimonials, just grease that skid and you’re like, hey, you don’t have to trust me, trust them. So even if you don’t have, if it’s a brand new product, this is why cookbook authors or book authors everywhere, go get others to endorse those books before they go to market with them.

[00:35:46]   

So go get a bunch of testimonials. Even if you have to plant the seed for, you know, the email for free with some of your super fans so that they can check it out. The exchange for those testimonials is great. Second, the other thing that makes life a little bit easier is if it’s a digital product, just give a money back guarantee and just save yourself the angst.

[00:36:06]   

This comes from personal experience of worrying about people stealing my stuff. Okay, they’re going to buy it, they’re going to steal my stuff, and then they’re going to ask for a refund. What I found is that people just don’t have time for that. I’m not that important. And so if it doesn’t work out, and sometimes it doesn’t with my course life happens to them.

[00:36:28]   

They had good intentions, they get in there, it’s not what they thought it was going to be. I’ll just give them money back, no problem. Like, I’d rather you not out there saying, wow, this was not right, this vibrating negative feelings. My mom might read that, you know, I don’t want my mom to see that.

[00:36:43]   

So for her sake, I give a money back guarantee to just keep people happy. And that, that makes me feel better about selling because I know that if it’s not for you, I’m going to give you your money back. It’s no problem.

[00:36:54]  Megan Porta 

Right? Yeah, that’s easy. Are there any other reasons to send emails? We’ve talked about positioning, branding, traffic products. Anything we’re missing?

[00:37:03]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, there’s a lot of things happening right now without getting into it into too deep. There’s, there’s ads and emails now. You know, there’s a variety of companies that are making it. So you can have programmatic sponsorships in the same way that on your website you might have Raptive and Mediavine serving up ads, you can also have those in your emails.

[00:37:20]   

Now there’s Kit has that, Substack has that, Beehive has that. You can go set it up directly through a company called Live Intent. There’s, there’s lots of. And I’m just scratching the surface of all the options you have the opportunity to double it up with. If you’re doing sponsored posts, package it together with your list and include.

[00:37:44]   

Even if you would have given it to them for free anyway. Assigning your list of value allows you to increase the value of your overall sponsorship packages with your brand partners. Affiliate, you know, all the things we talk about selling stuff also applies to affiliate marketing. So yeah, lots of good reasons that way.

[00:38:05]   

And then there’s. Sometimes we’re going to go try something new. We’re all moving to this whiz bang doodle platform. Come with me. And you know, a list is a great way to establish a first audience on a new platform too.

[00:38:19]  Megan Porta 

Right. Direct people. And I know a lot of people who are getting into memberships right now. So that would be another thing to offer through your email list. Yeah, yeah. All right, cool. So we need to send more. If you’re doing one, do two, if you’re doing two, do three, you’re doing a million a day.To do 2 million a day. What are some good strategies for growth? I know that’s a question that I hear a lot being bounced around. Do you have any magic strategies for us?

[00:38:48]  Matt Molen 

There’s so much magic here. Let me wave the wand a little bit. So the first thing, I’m not going to spend any time on this because I think table stakes by now, but save this recipe is like the magic hack. If you’re not doing that, just email me directly and I’ll tell you.

[00:39:04]   

I’ll point you where to go on how to get it set up. Depending on who your ad platform is and what your platform is, just send me an email at [email protected] and I’ll point you there. It’s usually just a technical thing, but everybody should have it if you’re in food. Second, and this is a topic for an entirely different discussion is the whole question about Print Pass or Raptive calls it gated print at the time of this recording.

[00:39:34]   

It’s enclosed beta. But it is certainly on its way to everybody very soon. And for those that don’t know what that is, it basically it forces somebody to give you an email address if they want to print a recipe. This works great at growing your list. The big question I had and when Print Pass came out from Mediavine a year ago, I was very much against it because I thought it was a terrible user experience.

[00:40:02]   

Still not a fan of it because if you think about it for a second, everything else that we do from lead magnets and pop ups and stuff, typically I want to get something via email from you. That’s the deal. This is like I just want to get past this.

[00:40:18]  Megan Porta 

Yeah.

[00:40:18]  Matt Molen 

So I can print. So I was very concerned about the engagement of the subscribers where we just gonna fill up our list with cold subscribers and ultimately get spam complaints. And so I’ve. That was my first, that was my initial reaction. I have since done a lot more research and I have. It’s a 30 minute video where I share all the data that I have and if anybody wants it, I’ll.

[00:40:45]   

I’ll give you the link for the. It’s free, but I’ll give you the link for people to get to it after this. So you can put it with the show notes if you want people can go watch the specific data. The short version is that I believe that it is working. If you can stomach the user experience, it is definitely working to keep some.

[00:41:04]   

However, it also can clog your list. So I have a very specific process that I outlined in that free video about what I would do and how I manage that. So just for the sake of this discussion, go check that out. And I think for those that want to try it, it’s kind of one of Those things where it’s not again, it’s a user experience decision first and then second, the list growth.

[00:41:30]   

If you implement my system, I think you can protect yourself and keep the people who are worth keeping. And it’s not nobody, it’s not everybody, but it’s also not nothing like I assumed it would be. The other thing that has not changed over the years is the fact that your existing traffic is your best source of list growth.

[00:41:49]   

So what does that mean? Somebody’s coming to your website right now, they don’t know you most likely. Statistically speaking, this is their first time. They came there through a, maybe a Google search and when they’re looking for the jalapeno quinoa corn dogs and they land on your website and they’re like, oh, this is interesting.

[00:42:09]   

In that moment we have a chance to dangle a carrot called a lead magnet where we can get them onto our list. The same is also true. And that’s where I teach about a quick start guide that’s in my Email on Autopilot course. But it’s basically just a series of roundups for five days in a row or so.

[00:42:29]   

That is exactly what they need in that moment. And those are the types of things that I set up in my done for you services. There’s also right now on social media, same concept, create a lead magnet and then share it on social in exchange for your email address as it relates to what they’re interested in.

[00:42:47]   

Grocer’s List is a wonderful tool for that. Manychat is. It’s kind of the predecessor there. So if you’re new to that, you have to learn that tech implementation. But the gist of it is still it’s always a value exchange. What do you want right now? What are you interested in right now? And what can I offer you that solves your next problem?

[00:43:07]   

This is why things like never miss an update grow very slowly. Never miss a recipe is not something that the searcher wants. They can get recipes from anywhere. They want less email in their life. Now there’s going to be some die hard superfans that want that. Yes, but they already know you. The people who don’t know you never sign up for that.

[00:43:29]   

So that’s why we have to kind of say, hold up before you leave, I got something for you and I’ll give it to you in exchange for your email address. So people who are doing this, well, they create more lead magnets than less because the person that’s coming might be coming in August, September, October, November, Just think about those four months that I just mentioned and it applies to all of them, how different they are from the same person and what they’re interested in in that season.

[00:43:59]   

They might be different if they’re coming for air fryer, for gluten free, for ooni, pizza oven. All of those are different needs. If we do a one size fits all, you’re not going to grow as fast as you can than by creating more lead magnets. So that’s not a, you know, you ask for like what’s working.

[00:44:21]   

That’s what’s working is lean into it more, do more of that and figure out how to, to replicate these quickly.

[00:44:29]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And I think it was you who recommended this years ago and maybe a course I took from you, I can’t remember, but like logging that and then revisiting the next year and what worked and then maybe fine tuning it. Was that you? I hope that was you.

[00:44:50]  Matt Molen 

Well, it certainly makes a lot of sense because. So if I came out with a Thanksgiving lead magnet, whether it’s an ebook. I don’t love ebooks, by the way, but you know, I, I think they’re a waste of time. But I have, I guess I have two things in life. It’s zucchini and ebooks.

[00:45:06]   

But apparently, but, but you can, because you can do the same thing in emails and people actually open the email and they, you know, they know where to find the email. Nobody knows how to find the ebook on their phone, you know.

[00:45:16]  Megan Porta 

Right.

[00:45:16]  Matt Molen 

Plus it takes time and money to create those unnecessarily. People don’t care about your format. It’s not like we’re a magazine or something anyway. But as far as the point is, November rolls around next year, do you have to reinvent the Thanksgiving Quick Start guide? Probably not, but you might want to just go check it out, update it, turn it on at the right time, turn it off when the season’s over, do more of those and you’ll find that your conversion rate goes up dramatically.

[00:45:40]  Megan Porta 

Yeah. And you mentioned social media, so tapping into maybe your Instagram community to sell or to provide things that will grow your email list as well.

[00:45:52]  Matt Molen 

Yeah, it’s just a, we’re just offering them. It’s just a value exchange.

[00:45:56]  Megan Porta 

Right. What are we missing? Matt, is there anything here in 2025 regarding email that we just absolutely have to talk about before we say goodbye?

[00:46:05]  Matt Molen 

I think it probably would just speak to somebody who has listened this far and is feeling a little overwhelmed. Because if you’re not at that stage, then hopefully you’ve taken a nugget and it’s just go improve on this. Most people who are successful with email have prioritized it enough that it has become part of their system.

[00:46:26]   

As we talked about our content creation, usually in order to have success, you do the same things over and over again. And the reason that you’re not having success yet yet with emails, you just simply haven’t prioritized the system. So this isn’t meant to be a big sales pitch, but that’s why I created Email on Autopilot.

[00:46:45]   

It’s like literally start here to grow your list. Here’s what to send on a regular basis and here’s how to rinse and repeat. So whether you follow a course like mine or just get started by creating something that will start growing the list and then setting up your calendar and being consistent about sending, that is step number one.

[00:47:06]   

For those that are struggling, everything else forget what we said, all of that comes. You will discover that as you go. It doesn’t happen until you start with your first lead magnet where the list starts to take off and you’re like, okay, people might actually care about this. It’s no fun to do when nobody is signing up.

[00:47:25]   

But when people start to sign up for your list, then you’re like, I got an audience I can serve. And that provides motivation and energy. So just commit to the process, trust the process. You’ll find that most people are successful. They’re doing just like with the rest of blogging, they’re doing the same fundamental blocking and tackling and you just figure out what those are and just rinse and repeat.

[00:47:53]  Megan Porta 

Great inspiration. Thank you. Great way to end. And you mentioned some of your offerings earlier, but I would love for you to reiterate if people are looking for help, do you. Are you taking on clients if they want to take part in your course, how to do that?

[00:48:09]  Matt Molen 

Yeah. Okay. So the course is the is kind of the gateway, really helps everybody. And like I said, I have a hundred percent money back guarantee. If it’s not right for you, I will, no problem, give you money back. Email on Autopilot. Go to emailonautopilot.com and literally hundreds of people, if not thousands, have gone through that and have had great success.

[00:48:29]   

If you are looking for help with after you listen to the print pass gated print, little video and you want help with that, send me an email again. I’ll share that. I have a little mini setup that I’ll that I can tackle for you if you’re using Kit. If you are a food creator that has a list of, I don’t know, 40 or 50,000 or more, or you have, you’re getting paid views of 500,000 or more, then you might be a good fit for my done for you services.

[00:48:59]   

If that’s the case, just email me and I’ll, and I’ll explain it in more detail. So I just appreciate the opportunity to be on here and to talk about, you know, one of my favorite topics. And it’s fun to see. It’s highly rewarding when people will do some of these basics. The change can happen quickly and that’s highly rewarding right there.

[00:49:21]  Megan Porta 

Well, your passion always shines through for email, so thank you for letting that shine here and also for delivering so much value and for sharing about zucchini and frog. Okay, so I forgot that was your last fun fact that came to me as you were saying, as you said the word frogs. I was like, oh, right.

[00:49:40]  Matt Molen 

Is that what I said five years ago?

[00:49:42]  Megan Porta 

Yeah, it is. Frogs, zucchini and ebooks.

[00:49:47]  Matt Molen 

It occurs to me that that’s, that’s a, that’s a pretty foolish move on my part to reveal fears because I’m going to show up one day and there’s going to be a zucchini on my pillow with a frog sitting on it or something. Somebody really evil is going to get me.

[00:49:59]  Megan Porta 

You have stirred that up in the universe. Yeah, it’s your own fault, Matt. Sorry.

[00:50:05]  Matt Molen 

True.

[00:50:06]  Megan Porta 

Well, thanks for joining us. We so appreciate you. And if you do want to go peek at Matt’s show notes for all the goodies that he’s mentioned, you can head to eatblogtalk.com/emailcrush2 so go there for all of that. And thanks for being here and thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time.

[00:50:29] Outro   

Thank you so much for for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to rate and review Eat Blog Talk on your favorite podcast player. Thank you and I will see you next time.