Episode 480: Email Marketing Simplified for Your Business (+How to Reframe the Way You Think About Email) with Liz Wilcox

EBT480 – Liz Wilcox

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers, hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom, whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you know that you are heard and supported. 

We all know with all of the uncertainty and changes going on in our space right now, how important email marketing is, but how often do we sit down and actually pay attention to it? I know from my own perspective, speaking personally, I do not pay attention to my business email’s enough. Liz Wilcox from lizwilcox.com joins me inside of this amazing interview. She is an email marketing expert, and she gives us all the scoop about why email marketing is so important for food bloggers. She talks through her email staircase framework and how you need to reframe the way you think about email. She talks through the different email components of a welcome series that you should definitely be creating and gives us permission to do it really simply if we need to get started. She also chats about weekly newsletters and how we should structure those, and she simplifies that process as well. So it’s not super overwhelming. There’s so much gold inside this episode. It’s definitely a new spin on email marketing compared to other things I hear in our space. So give it a listen. I hope you love it. It is episode number 480, Sponsored by RankIQ.

Sponsor 01:48

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Megan Porta 02:46

The Fresh Princess of email marketing. Liz Wilcox is an email strategist and keynote speaker. She shows small businesses how to build online relationships, package up their magic and turn it into emails that people want to read. And most importantly, purchase from Liz is best known for her 3,500 plus users membership, 20 minute newsletter technique, and the email staircase framework. She’s taught to tens of thousands of creatives, freelancers, e-commerce, shop owners, and small businesses across the globe. Liz, thank you so much for being on Eat Blog Talk. How are you today?

Liz Wilcox 03:19

I am so good, and I’m even more excited.

Megan Porta 03:23

Yay. I’m excited to chat with you. We can always learn more about email marketing. I know that’s your thing, your jam, but before we get into it, I would love for you to share just a little bit about your business. What inspired you to be an email marketer? Anything you want to share with food bloggers?

Liz Wilcox 03:40

Yeah, listen up my blogging friend. I am just like you. I started off as a blogger, right? I was actually an RV travel blogger, and I just found that all the email marketing stuff out there that was talking about funnels and high ticket coaching and how to sell to that and, you know, storytelling and all of that was just so much on top of trying to figure out, you know, Google and video and, you know, SEO and you know, everything, right? So I just kind of carved my own way with email marketing and as a blogger, the first product that I sold was just a book and just like food bloggers, you know, you’re selling a cookbook. I was selling, you know, a collection of stories, and it made something like $7,000 to an email list of 300 in the first few months. It got picked up by an international Sponsor, which, you know, as bloggers, we love to get Sponsored, and I just kept going. I ended up, you know, creating my own course, and when I launched my course, I had 141 people on the wait list, and by the time the cart closed, I did a five day open close cart thing. I had 141 sales, so every single person bought and yeah you kind of just heard Megan right now, whoa. So, but y’all, I was a blocker just like you. So I didn’t know that I wasn’t a marketer. I didn’t know that that wasn’t a thing. I didn’t know that conversion rates were one to 3%. I just took very surface level advice and made it my own, really talked to who was reading my blog and really knew what they needed. And, you know, that’s how I was able to sell. And so when I heard that other bloggers weren’t seeing results, I was like, okay, enough is enough. I actually sold that blog. I went all in on email marketing around, let’s say, the winter of 2019. And, you know, from then on out, I’ve just been on a mission to help other bloggers and content creators understand that email marketing can actually be really simple and as bloggers, you know, like writing and creating as our superpower, and that’s all we’ve gotta do with email. So, you know, we can, we can go way beyond what is considered average.

Megan Porta 06:06

I did not know this about you. This is so cool. So you were a blogger. I love that you were kind of oblivious to the numbers because do you feel like that weighed in your favor, just like not knowing the proper conversion rates and all of that? Like you just had your clean slate?

Liz Wilcox 06:21

Yes. Oh my gosh, y’all ignorance is bliss.

Megan Porta 06:25

Exactly.

Liz Wilcox 06:25

Ignorance can be a superpower. And I know as bloggers, like I said at the beginning, you know, we have so many things being thrown at us. Oh, you gotta worry about SEO, you gotta worry about analytics, bounce rate time on page, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook pages, you know, now we’ve got Instagram and TikTok, and you know, we, especially as food bloggers, like, we just like to cook, and we just want to spread those recipes around for the greater good, right? And so I just, you know, for me it was, I just love traveling. I love talking to people who like to travel and all that other stuff. I just kind of, you know, put my blinders on. And I, it really, to Megan’s point, it really helped me stay focused and get really good at email.

Megan Porta 07:14

I know it’s good to know numbers, I think kind of sometimes, but sometimes it’s good to be ignorant. And I wish we could kinda erase the email numbers from our mind because they are in there like, you need, you’re going to get this conversion and you’re going to have this open, and this is good, right? So, I mean, is it possible just to like, rewrite, let’s erase the board. Let’s rewrite the script and know that email marketing does not have to be hard, like you’re saying, Liz, and we’re going to start fresh.

Liz Wilcox 07:43

Yeah, I love that Megan just said start fresh, because they actually call me the fresh princess of email marketing because I just like to keep things fresh. I like to keep things, you know, simple. You can’t see me right now, but I also dress really kind of funky, very like nineties themed. I love wearing a rainbow shirt and a, and a hoodie right now. Anyway, what I want to do for you today, and from here on out with email marketing is wherever you’re at right now, like, forget about what’s the ideal conversion rate, Liz, what’s that? What’s should be my open rate be, what should be my click rate? I want you to forget all that, you know, like Megan said, let’s have a fresh slate here. Let’s I’m picturing, you know, me taking the knife and putting, you know, all the food into the pot, and my cutting board is fresh, and I’m ready for something new to put on there, right? So that’s what we’re going to do with email marketing today. We’re just going to start where we are and improve from there. And anywhere you are right now, the strategies we’re going to talk about, the little tactics, the stories, they’re going to work for you. You can start this right now.

Megan Porta 08:56

So I think my listeners will have anywhere from, I don’t know, like a hundred email subscribers up to, I know food bloggers who have, you know, 50k subscribers and beyond. So how do we do this? We’re kinda starting fresh. We’re erasing the numbers from our brains. Where do we start?

Liz Wilcox 09:15

Yeah, so I like to call it the email staircase. So let’s start with just reframing how you think about email. I know when I was first starting out and when I was growing my list, it was really about like, what are the numbers? What are, you know, what are the analytics? What do I say with an email? Why do I say it? But I really want to just reframe things with the email staircase. This is my methodology framework, right? So it goes like this. First you have a follower, right? Somebody finds you, finds your blog, finds you on Pinterest, they start following you to Megan’s point, you’ve probably already mastered how to get them on your list. So once you have a follower, get them on your list, you turn them into a friend, and then you start emailing them. You start sending different varieties of emails, which we’ll talk about. You get them into a friend. And then once you have a list full friends, you, you can have a list full of customers because people buy from people they trust and people trust their friends, right? So the email staircase goes follower, friend, customer. So that’s the first, that’s the first thing that we need to notice. And then there are three kind of email components to climbing that staircase. So the first one is your welcome sequence. We’ve got to have a tight welcome sequence. I don’t like to tell people what to do, you know, I created my own methodology. And of course, I want you to use your critical thinking skills as you listen to this. But your welcome sequence is the foundation of your email marketing. It is, you know, maybe that first ingredient that, you know, puts the whole dish together, right? Or maybe we can think of it as, you know, it’s the plate or the bowl, right? Like, it’s very hard to eat your recipe if you don’t have a dish to put it in, right? So the welcome sequence is kind of that dish we’ll say. And with your welcome sequence, you’ve just gotta do three things. Number one, showcase a little bit of personality. You are not the only type of food blogger there is out there in the world. Even if you, you know, only do how to recreate gluten-free recipes from Disneyland, you’re probably not the only food blogger that does that, right? And so we gotta showcase a little bit of personality. Now, this isn’t to say, you know, we see a lot of like service providers and, you know, big ups in the online entrepreneur space that share a lot of stories, right? I’m not telling you to, you know, share all your dirty secrets, right? You know, we’re, these are our newfound friends, but they’re not, you know, our best buddies that we’ve known since kindergarten that we can tell everything to. But just that surface level personality, for example, I’ve already mentioned it. I love Disney. I’m drinking out of a Disney Cup right now, and I’m wearing a Disney rainbow shirt today. I love the nineties. Behind me, you can see Seinfeld in sync, a survivor hat, like a very late nineties, early two thousands vibes. But that’s just a little surface level personality. But just like Megan, you know, giggled a little when I shared that, you know, it’s a way of relating to people, right? So whether you share something in pop culture that you love, you share a food or a beverage that you love, what’s your favorite dish and why you love it? You know, oh, I love anything with pasta in it. Or I love anything that has turmeric on the top. You know, that’s a little bit of personality, right? Just like in your dishes, you might, you know, sprinkle cinnamon on top. Think of that kind of personality. What’s the thing you sprinkle on top that isn’t exactly the essence of you, but you know, stands out to people? It’s a little bit of your flavor, we can say. 

Liz Wilcox 13:04

So insert a little bit of that flavor, a little bit of that personality in your welcome sequence. And second, insert your vision for people. Now, I know you’re a food blogger, it’s like, well, I don’t have a vision other than, you know, I just need more traffic and I need, you know, I’d love for people to try my recipes. So what is that vision? Like, you might, maybe you want gluten-free recipes that actually taste good and make you start to enjoy food again. You want to, you know, share your grandma’s recipes so you know, kids of future generations can know what real cooking is like. Why do you get up and write these recipes? Why are you a food blogger? You know, what is that? What does that vision you have for the people that are using your recipes, right? And with the personality and the vision, we can put that very simply in our welcome sequence. For example, my personality, I said the nineties, right? And my vision for people is you make money with email. And so I might say in the very first email of my welcome sequence, my nurture sequence, Hey, I’m Liz. If you only know one thing about me, it’s that as much as I love the nineties, I love the idea of you making money with email even more. Boom, suddenly I’ve shared a little bit of personality and I’ve shared the vision. People have to know where you’re going, right? They have to know why they’re on your email list or why they’re reading your blog, and why they should keep reading it. Oh, this person wants me to actually enjoy food again, I don’t know about you guys. I keep saying gluten-free. I have over 50 food allergies. If I knew a food blogger wanted me to enjoy food, again, something that I very rarely do nowadays, I just eat because I have to eat. I would be so down for them, right? So share your vision with your people. If, if, and I’m also a mom, so if I knew a food blogger really cared about my kid having wholesome meals, boom, you’re the food blogger. I’m reading, I’m opening up every email, right? So share that vision. 

Liz Wilcox 15:04

And then the third thing is a little bit of values. Now, this might seem so weird for food bloggers, and I’m not telling you to spew your politics everywhere, but remember what I said, people want to buy from people they trust. And we live in this amazing market, this amazing time right now where people are done with kind of the, you know, I’ll say the, the do-do of the world. The, oh, I know this is just a money grab. Ugh, I, you know, I don’t want to buy from that person. It just seems sleazy, right? We want to buy from people we trust. And so, if you can share a little bit of your values, maybe, you know, your values are, I love food, and I think you should too, right? Maybe your values are family. So your, you know, a family food recipe blogger, you know, maybe your values are health. And, you know, for, for solo women, single women, right? What are your values? Put that in the welcome sequence so people know they’re in the right place. I’m a single woman. If you said, you know, I want to make sure single women everywhere have food, even though they’re cooking for one food that tastes good and is easy to make, oh, this person values me. Okay, this sounds good. I’m in, I want to open up more emails. So that is a welcome sequence in a nutshell. Megan, what are your thoughts?

Megan Porta 16:19

I mean, I agree. I think that it is so important to have a welcome sequence. Do you think that even for a food blogger who has a hundred follower or subscribers, it’s even important for them to have this?

Liz Wilcox 16:31

Absolutely. If you are at zero right now, and you’re thinking about getting an email list going, write your welcome sequence first. If you’ve already, you know, you have a hundred, you have a thousand, and you haven’t written a welcome sequence yet, you know, maybe you, here’s my free download, here’s my free eBook. Whatever you can take, you can write a welcome sequence right now and just email it out as what we call like newsletters or broadcast right now to make sure, you know, we’re welcoming people. I know all of you have probably been to a, let’s say, you know, like a high school class, or maybe you went to university that first day of class when your professor or your teacher handed out the syllabus and said, Hey, here are the assignments. Here’s what’s expected. Here’s how many tardies you can have before you get a demerit. Right? They set the expectations. That welcome sequence sets the expectations. Even this recording you’re listening to Megan, before we even started talking, was saying, Hey, this is what’s going to go down today. This is what we’re going to talk about. This is our guest. This is who she is. She set expectations for what is going to happen for the next 40 minutes. Right? And that is what you are doing. That is the equivalent in your email list of that welcome sequence. We’re setting expectations. We’re telling people who we are, why they’re here, what we want for them, et cetera, et cetera. You’ve got to set expectations. And you do that in the welcome sequence, whether you have one person on your email list, or you have a hundred thousand.

Megan Porta 18:04

This is something that food blog, okay, I’m speaking, kinda generally hear, but I know some people, including myself, I’ve done this in the past. We put this off because it seems like too much work. And we’d rather just, you know, send out the weekly emails and then we put this off, and before we know it, it’s been a year. And then we’re like, oh, I should go back and do that. So I love this prompt to just do it and set those expectations, welcome people, because they have no idea what’s going on, right? If they haven’t had expectations set, they’re like, oh, I’m getting recipes. I don’t, I don’t know what her vision is. I don’t know her values. So it’s something that we should definitely prioritize.

Liz Wilcox 18:40

Yeah. So the last thing I’ll say is, if it feels really, really hard, just let me write it for you. I already wrote this welcome sequence. You can get it as a freebie. You don’t have to pay me. Like I, and I wrote this welcome sequence as a blogger. Like, I love the email. If you don’t, let me just write it for you. Is that shameless?

Megan Porta 19:00

Oh, I love it. No, that’s perfect.

Liz Wilcox 19:04

Seriously, I just, I love the welcome sequence and really just make sure you can get in and get out. I recommend like four emails, but really, even if it’s just one where you’re saying, Hey, here’s your download, just moving forward, I send a weekly newsletter with a new recipe, whatever, whatever. Again, those expectations, what’s going to happen next? Oh, by the way, you know, my name’s Megan and I love helping food bloggers, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? You know, my name’s Lakendra and I love helping gluten-free people live, you know, a fun filled life. You know, whatever your vision is. Okay, I gotta go. Bye. See you next Tuesday, right? Like, that’s enough for right now. And I mean, that’s enough probably for a long time, honestly. Just set those expectations. Get in, get out and get on with it. You know, it’s a newsletter, it’s an email, it’s not a novel. So, you know, don’t feel like you have to throw in everything but the kitchen sink.

Megan Porta 20:01

So your freebie. Where do people find that?

Liz Wilcox 20:03

Yeah. you can go directly to lizwilcox.com. There’s a hot pink button in the top right hand corner. You can’t miss it. It says like, free emails or something. Just get it right there.

Megan Porta 20:14

Awesome. I hope a lot of people take you up on that. You touched on varieties of emails earlier. So we’ve got our welcome sequence. What other varieties of emails could and should we be writing?

Liz Wilcox 20:26

Listen. So after your welcome sequence, because I really want you to write that thing, remember, it’s like the firm foundation. It’s like the pot. You’re going to make the broth in. You know, the broth ain’t going to do much if it’s not in a pot, right? So get that welcome sequence done, and then like Megan said, those weekly newsletters, and if weekly seems too much for you right now, let’s just start a practice of once a month reaching out to those people that said, yeah, I want to hear more from you. Right? That’s the least we can do for them. And so with the newsletters, you just want to do three things. Number one, show that you are invested in them, right? Remember, we talked about that vision. I want you to enjoy food even though you have multiple allergies. I want you to enjoy Disney food, even if you live in Montana, right? Whatever your food blogger thing is, right? And so show you’re invested in that vision for them. You are a blogger. You are already invested. You’re, you know, spouting out recipes. You, you know, keeping up with the Google updates. Like we won’t go there, right? 

Megan Porta 21:29

Seriously. Yeah. 

Liz Wilcox 21:31

You know, we’re trying to build an email list, because some weird lady named Liz told us to. You are already so invested in all of that for them. So as bloggers, we can tell people that, you know, oh, I spent an hour learning how to write better emails. Stay tuned. They’re going to be really fun from here on out. You know, I spent an hour writing this recipe for you. I bought a new computer because that allows me to spit out more blogs for you. My old one was crashing every 20 minutes, right? I invested in a better camera so I can make the better videos and pictures of my recipes for you. And it might seem like they don’t care about that. They just want the recipe. Remember, people buy from people they trust. If we want them to buy our cookbooks, our courses, our videos, whatever comes next, whatever you’re working on, right? We’ve got to show them that we are invested in them before they’re going to invest back into us sharing how we’re invested in them. Even when it comes to behind the scenes stuff, shows them like we are the real deal. Like I said, like, you’re not the only food blogger out there, but I guarantee you’ll be the only one, you know, sharing regular updates behind the scenes stuff, et cetera, right? The second thing you want to do is just share in a relatable way. Just be relatable, right? Like you said, like it kind of takes the pressure off of you know, versus like, oh gosh, the market’s so saturated to like, Hey, I can be relatable and the right people will like my recipes, read my blog, buy my stuff, you know, bring me traffic, et cetera, right? And so share in a relatable way. Note, I didn’t say be interesting, you know, let’s leave being interesting to the celebrities, right? But we can all be relatable. Me talking about how much I love Disney. That’s very relatable. Even if you hate Disney, it’s got your wheels churning. Like, oh yeah, I hate Disney. I much prefer real movies, Liz. Like how immature, right? Like, you’re relating to me in some way, even if it’s the opposite, right? And so sharing something like, especially for food bloggers. Oh my gosh, when was the last time you burnt something? Or you know, you forgot to turn the timer on, or you went to throw in some turmeric and the top fell off and the whole thing was ruined. Stuff like that. You might think, oh, that, that makes me not professional. No, it makes you really relatable, especially to people who are looking for recipes, right? They’re probably not professionals. Professionals have their own recipes, right?

Sponsor 24:01

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Liz Wilcox 25:31

So just be relatable. And it doesn’t even have to be food related. You could say, I took my dog for a walk before I sent this email. You know, now she’s all tuckered out and I have time to, you know, work on my blog this week. And then the third thing, so we’ve talked about, you know, showing how you’re invested, sharing in a relatable way. And the third thing is just stay top of mind. And this is where most people cringe. Oh my gosh, Liz, I have so many other things to do. It’s hard enough to, you know, take pictures of my cupcakes, upload those pictures, you know, create the alt image tags, the descriptions. Like I don’t have time to stay top of mind. But here’s the awesome thing. When you show how much you’re invested in your reader, when you become incredibly relatable, staying top of mind becomes really simple. People feel like, and they do. They know you. They like you, they trust you. You know, you are the recipe blogger that you know has the best pictures of her cupcakes. And I know you have the best pictures because you showed me what camera you have, right? Like you told me you upgraded a camera a month ago and now I notice the difference, right? So staying top of mind, like I said, just start with once a month and you know, maybe you have an RSS feed on that’s going to help you as well. Or you’re already doing weekly newsletters. Just adding in that little bit of investment, that little bit of relatability, that’s what the key is to having newsletters that get read.

Megan Porta 27:01

So if somebody has the goal of going from maybe monthly or just being inconsistent all over the place to doing weekly newsletters, do you have any tips for making sure that we’re consistent from week to week?

Liz Wilcox 27:13

For me, sending an email equates to money. So that keeps me, there you go. Consistent. I dunno about you guys. Well, I’m sure a lot of you love food, right? , I could gather that. And I love to eat, but you know, eating costs money. And so I, you know, especially when I had a blog, you know, I needed that traffic. I needed people to look at my, you know, my travel blog because I had ads running, right? I needed people to open and read and click on my affiliate links. I needed people to check out my products, because I had my own products as well as I went along. And so for me, when I realized email was a moneymaking activity, that’s when I got my butt in the seat, right? Just like when you realize optimizing for Google is a moneymaking activity or building your list so you can get higher sponsorship deals is a moneymaking activity. Sending a newsletter is a moneymaking activity. You know, pause this, write that down, put it on a sticky note, put it on your fridge or your computer. It really is a moneymaking activity. Even if it starts really, really slowly, you’re just doing once a month. Even if that moneymaking activity is just getting more people to click over so you can get more ad revenue. It is a moneymaking activity. And that’s what gets my butt in the seat. That’s why I started the blog. That’s why I kept the blog for so long. It’s why I built the blog. It’s why I have, heck, I just started a blog a couple months ago. So yeah, it’s a moneymaking activity. I hope that helps you.

Megan Porta 28:53

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, yes, we love what we do, but the money is good, right? And especially with all of the changes that are happening right now in our space with Google and AI and some uncertainty, there’s a lot looming ahead of us That is, it kind of feels like a dark cloud at times. So yes, money email, I think that should be enough in itself.

Liz Wilcox 29:18

Yeah. So I’ll expand on that for just a minute. With email, just like Megan said, we don’t own Google, we don’t own Pinterest. You know, raise your hand if you were alive in 2022 and some billionaire bought a social media platform. And we have since kind of seen that social media platform implode, right? We don’t know what the future is bringing with all these other platforms. And so having an email list, getting your butt in the chair as I so crassly said, and sending that weekly email protects you from, you know, literally the billionaires of the world who clearly can do whatever they want. I had no idea one person had so much power, right? When we have our email list, you know, we own it. We can take it from active campaign to MailChimp to Keep to ConvertKit tomorrow, whatever we decide, and we can share the things we want to share. We don’t, with email, we don’t have to worry about SEO. We don’t have to write a subject line like, you know, five tips to make your, you know, cupcakes tastier without sugar, right? Like we don’t have to worry about SEO, we can write like we’re writing a friend. We can make real connections in the inbox so we can have real sales that don’t depend on anyone else but our connections with our subscribers. And that’s what I’m trying to teach you today, to make real connections with those people. So you can have like real movement within your business.

Megan Porta 30:47

For food bloggers, it’s really easy to include like 10 photos because we’re so photo and food driven that we want to include everything, you know, in our entire database inside of each email. But I feel like now we can simplify that so much. It doesn’t have to be all the photos, all the links. Do you agree? And how do we simplify so that it’s not such an overwhelming task?

Liz Wilcox 31:14

Oh my word , I’m going to say this with love. I’m going to say it with love. Everything I say today is with love. Please do not put 10 images in your email , that is going to trigger, I call them the internet gods, because who can explain what Google does, right? The internet gods see that as a big red flag. And you know, even though you only have like a hundred people on your list, or 50,000, so there’s not that many red flags, it’s enough to make your email too big where it doesn’t get delivered, you know, at all. They say, nope, this is too big. You know, it’s like when a package is too big, you don’t have enough postage, the internet Gods will literally reject it. yes. Just like the postman will say, oh, you only have $5, this is $10. Goodbye. You know, get outta here right next. That’s what’s happening when you put too many images in there. So here’s how, but here’s how we can combat that, because I know your images are so amazing. All your recipes are awesome. My mouth is watering, thinking about all the goodies you can deliver to me as your subscriber. But here’s what we can do. We can put one of our best images or maybe our second favorite image and we can say, you know, I can’t send 1,000,001 images in my email, but I picked my second favorite. Click over to this recipe from, you know, the, the top image is my first favorite. Oh my gosh, that creates intrigue. Oh, this picture’s amazing. It’s only their second favorite image of this cupcake. Lemme click over. They’re going to click over. We need people to click over, right? That’s good for ads, it’s good for Google. You know, shout out to the internet Gods they love when people click over, right? And so you can, you know, I don’t want this to feel constraining, like you can’t do what you want, but you can use it to your advantage to get even more clicks over.

Megan Porta 33:03

Okay, And then I am just wondering about like, copy, how much copy do we put in our emails? It’s, we’re bloggers. We love to write. You know, it’s really easy to just write novels in our emails. What are your thoughts on that?

Liz Wilcox 33:14

Well, remember, it’s a newsletter, not a novel. If you don’t have time to write it, chances are your person doesn’t have time to read it. How many times have we heard, oh gosh, I wish food bloggers would just get to the point. Why is there a story in this recipe, right? I gotta scroll and scroll and scroll until I actually get the ingredients right? So our customers, our readers, you know, every once in a while, you know, we all love a good story. Marketers are right, stories sell for sure. But remember, it’s a newsletter. We want to get in, get to the point and get on with our lives, right? That’s what we’re doing in the inbox. Even as users, we’re just searching for the thing that’s, you know, going to help us the most in that situation. It’s different than social media. We’re looking for the thing we need, right? And so when somebody opens your email, we want to be respectful of their time. We don’t want every email to be a long, convoluted story about, you know, the time you were whisking the brownie mix with your grandma and you know, she gave you some wise old wisdom, right? Every once in a while, those stories are beautiful. But really in general, my good rule of thumb is to keep the email 400 words or less. What you want to do in your newsletter is just give a short personal update. This is where you share, you know, how invested you are. Or share the relatable thing. Short personal update for me might be, you know, I ate lunch out in the sun today. I live in Florida and it’s starting to get cooler, so I’m still trying to soak up some summer vibes before Thanksgiving, right? That’s a very like personal update. It’s just two to three sentences. It was really quick for me to think of. And then you want to segue into your content. Anyway, what I really wanted to share today is the recipe of what I was eating. It was this really awesome butternut squash, turnip green southern soul food recipe. Click over to check it out. And then maybe I have a picture in my email because I’m a food blogger and you know, the picture is me sitting outside eating again. That makes me really relatable. You remember what I look like is brand recognition. And then that picture itself is clickable to the blog as well. So you just want to give that, I’ll repeat that quick personal update and then just segue into what you wanted to talk about. And segueing can be and should be as simple as, anyway, what I really needed to share is my new blog post, my new recipe, my new Instagram account, my new TikTok reel. Do they call them reels over there? I don’t know. So just segue into the content and then get out of there. And then when you really have that special recipe, that one that your grandma made with you, the one that means so much to you, and you do have that beautiful story, that’s when you share it, right? When you really have that story, don’t feel the need to share those all the time. Remember, newsletter not a novel.

Megan Porta 36:07

You just gave us permission to simplify, which is good for us, but also good for the people reading our emails. I think that is good news all around. Do you have other types of emails that you recommend us putting together outside of welcome series and weekly newsletters?

Liz Wilcox 36:23

So within your, we’ll say like email rotation, if we’re thinking of you know, like Q1, right? That first quarter of the year, we want to be sending out those weekly newsletters. But within those weekly newsletters, you know, you want to plan for when you’re selling, or maybe you’ve got this big affiliate thing coming up, or you know, you know, an affiliate is having a big sale that you want to be a part of. Or you know, you know, in March you’re, that’s when you batch a ton of content. So a ton of new blog posts are coming out that month. And you know, in January you really, you could use some sales, it’s the first of the year. You could use a boost in morale. You really want to sell your cookbook or you know, your course on X, Y, Z, right? And so kind of look at that, think of that and just insert those sales messages where it makes sense. You can add sales messages within your regular newsletter in something like PS, don’t forget, I have this cookbook. It’s a free day on Amazon, so you can get my book for free. Click here. You know, you want to insert those sales messages and you can do that just in your regular newsletter. Another way to insert sales into your regular newsletter is to have something called a super signature. This is the PS of your email and it’s like the footer of your website. PS, when you’re ready, you know, here’s how I can help you become a better chef. Help you make better gluten-free recipes. You know, whatever it is you do. Very low pressure when you are ready. And then you list maybe 1, 2, 3 things. You know, read my blog here, listen to my podcast here, buy my cookbook here. And so in every single newsletter, you’re actually making, you know, making a case for a sale, right? You’re selling in every single newsletter. And then of course, if you want to do a bigger launch, I talked about at the top of the hour, you know, a Monday through Friday cart, open cart close type of thing. Just think, you know, you want to do that maybe two, three times a year. Maybe it’s a 24 hour flash sale. Maybe it’s a Monday through Friday thing. And you just want to, when you’re having the sale, you want to make sure you’re sending more than one email in a week. More than one email. In that 24 hour sales period. You want to make sure you know, you’re answering all the objections. You know, well, why would I buy this if I can get free recipes online? You know, what do I need a course for? Can I just Google this? You know, why does this cost $97? Things like that. So you want to make sure you answer those objections. And so you can send, if you’re doing a 24 hour flash sale, you might send three emails. Hey look, I’m doing a flash sale. Here’s how to get it. Hey, you got some questions about the flash sale? Here’s some answers. Hey, here’s the last chance for the flash sale. I’ve never offered a discount before. I’m not sure if I’ll do it again. Make sure you buy it. Those are three separate emails, right? If you’re doing the Monday through Friday thing, you forego your weekly newsletter and you send maybe one or two emails a day, depending on your comfortability level where you’re selling, your, telling people about your product, your service, you know, whatever it is you’re selling, you are maybe giving behind the scenes videos, right? Like, especially if you’re a food blogger, people love visuals. Maybe you make a little video, Hey, I’m doing this course on cooking. Want to see what it looks like? Here’s what happens when you log in, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Maybe show them a little preview. Maybe you make a trailer for your course. Something like that. Lots of different ways you can sell. And with food blogging, especially if you can show your face, show your recipes, show yourself in the kitchen, share why you’re charging, you know, why it benefits them to go this route. Instead of going the free like YouTube or Google route, you’re going to see some real, real movement.

Megan Porta 40:15

So much value. Oh my goodness. I have written mad notes here. I was just going to comment on one thing, your super signature. I used to use that and you just reminded me that I kind of got outta the habit of that. I need to go back because it’s such a good way to just like summarize what you offer in a way that is like here. If you’re ready, when you’re ready, I think you said you can select one of these options to make your life easier. So that is such a gem right there. Just putting together a PS that you can copy and paste and maybe modify slightly from email to email.

Liz Wilcox 40:51

Absolutely. And if you’re not doing sales right now, like you don’t have your own product to sell. I also, especially when I was a blogger, I used to put, it was kind of a super signature, it was a PS, here are the resources of the week, or yours might be, here are the recipes of the week. And I would put three blog post links, not just one. I would say, you know, if you are interested in my cupcakes, you know, click here for a new recipe for, you know, a special holiday treat. If you are interested in how to make sure you have the best Turkey this season, click here for my Turkey recipe. You know, if you are foregoing all of the holiday nonsense, you know, click here for a video I made on, you know, this or that. Like something completely unrelated. That way people have choice. I really, really don’t like, especially for bloggers, we’ve all hear, we’ve all heard that, you know, one email, one job, right? You know, only put one link to one thing. Well, guess what? If you sent three newsletters with recipes that I don’t care for, then by the fourth newsletter, I’m done opening your emails. because They were, they’re not good for me, right? They’re, I’m not using them. So maybe I unsubscribe or I just become cold. because You know, you, for three weeks, it was kind of a bummer to read your newsletter. And so I’m out of here. So especially for bloggers, and this helps you because you’re going to get traffic to old, you know, post use you made two years ago. You can recycle these in your footer. You know, PS you know, here are the, you know, the foods of the week, you know, click here. If you have a sweet tooth this week, click here. If you’re looking for something savory, you know, click here, if you just need a new set of knives, here’s what I recommend. And that’s an affiliate link. The last one’s an affiliate link, right? So you’re selling that way too. And so this is a great way to recycle your content, get even more clicks, because people love options, right? Who doesn’t have options? It’s like a little menu. It kind of makes it fun. Oh, here’s the menu of the week. That’s genius. Write that down. Somebody That’s good stuff, right? I’m just, I’m getting going. Megan.

Megan Porta 43:01

You’re on a roll. This is great.

Liz Wilcox 43:03

But yeah, so that’s a great, great, great way for bloggers to increase their traffic, increase their click rate, get more engagement, and keep people excited about your newsletters and selling.

Megan Porta 43:17

Wow. So much stuff packed in here. I feel like we could probably go on and on, but I will let you go on with your day. Liz, thank you for all of this. This was so valuable and definitely some new spins and takes on email. So we really appreciate you. Do you have a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with today?

Liz Wilcox 43:38

Yes, of course. So when I started blogging, I, y’all, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anyone. I had to Google the word entrepreneur, that’s how ignorant I was. But I had this one mantra and I have it every day. I say, you know, it’s like I’m in my eighth year of business, I’m on my third business. I still say every day and it’s why not me? Why not me? And that’s what I’d like to leave you with today.

Megan Porta 44:06

Three simple words, so powerful, right? I love that. Alright, we’ll put together show notes page for you, Liz, if you want to go look at those, you can head to eatblogtalk.com/lizwilcox. Tell everyone where they can find you. And also, I mean, I know you mentioned your freebie, but do you have any other promotions going on right now? Anything that can benefit food blogging businesses?

Liz Wilcox 44:28

Absolutely. So of course I’m an email marketer. I’d love for you to join my email list. You can go directly to lizwilcox.com. Hit that hot pink button in the top right hand corner. You’re going to get a welcome sequence, like I mentioned earlier. But you’re also going to get three newsletter samples to show you how to get people to click, how to get people to buy, and how to get people to reply. Just from your newsletter, you’ll also get 52 subject lines. All of that’s for free. Lizwilcox.com hot pink button. And if you’d like for me to just write your newsletters, if you think, yeah, I think this lady knows what she’s talking about, when you go to lizwilcox.com, there is a bright yellow navigation bar and you can click that and you can look at my $9 a month email template membership called Email Marketing Membership for just $9 a month. Every single week, I send you a newsletter template for you to take and make your own. This is especially awesome for food bloggers because remember I started off as an RV travel blogger, so I know what it’s like. They’re simple. They follow all those frameworks we talked about, and so you know, I do all the thinking for you all. You gotta do copy, paste, jeuje it up and hit send: $9 a month.

Megan Porta 45:36

Nice. Love it, everyone. Go check out everything Liz just mentioned. Thanks again, Liz, for being here, and thank you so much for listening, food bloggers. I will see you in the next episode. 

Outro 45:48

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. Don’t forget to head to forum.eatblogtalk.com to join our free discussion forum and connect with and learn from like-minded peers. I will see you next time.