The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 79. Nurturing Your Email List with Amy Katz

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Do you know how important email marketing is for your blog? Amy Katz joins us today to talk about the importance of email marketing. On today's episode Amy explains how she ultimately left her job in accounting to be a full-time blogger with her blog, Veggies Save The Day. She shares her email marketing tips and shares more about email marketing  in general to drive traffic to your blog.  If you are wanting to learn more about email marketing, you won't want to miss this episode!Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsConvertKit is the email marketing hub for creators like you. Check out our affiliate link for more information.SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode79

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. Here on the podcast, we talk a lot about how important it is not only to have a blog, but also why your email marketing is so important. And we've had a couple guests on before talking about email marketing and what it is. And today we have a blogger who's here to talk about the importance of email marketing in her business and how it's helped. Amy Katz is a certified vegan nutrition health coach whose passion is creating vegan Mediterranean diet recipes to inspire everyone to choose plant-based meals more often. On her website, Veggies Save the Day, she shares simple, delicious recipes that are easy to make any night of the week. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast,

Amy. Thank you so much for having me. Well, we are excited to chat with you. It's been fun just to chat for the few minutes before hitting record about our passion for email marketing and how it is definitely an aspect of blogging that we don't believe that any blogger should ignore. But first, before we kind of dive into that, I would love for you to just tell our listeners a little bit more about you and your blog and when you got started. Sure. Yeah, I started Veggie Save the Day in 2015. And at that time, it was really a hobby as you know, a lot of bloggers start off as a hobby. And I shortly realized that, you know, I could actually do something with this and make some money from it.

And I've always enjoyed cooking. So when I became vegan about 10 or 11 years ago, I was sharing a lot of recipes that I made on Instagram. sharing a lot of recipes that I made on Instagram. And friends encouraged me to start a blog so I could actually post those recipes in some place where they would stay there forever and everyone could see them. So I didn't really know what I was doing at the start as most bloggers start off. We kind of just figured out as we go along. And the more I got into it, the more I really enjoyed it. And so eventually, I was able to leave my full time job, which was in accounting, which I did not have a passion for. And I was able to pursue blogging as

a full time job. That's awesome. I also left a job in accounting to be a blogger and I can totally relate to not having a passion for it anymore. It just didn't feel like I was making this big impact in the world. I worked in corporate income tax and yeah, it's not something that you will get super excited about going to work every day. So I'm glad that you also were able to make that switch and do something that was much more fulfilling to you. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It's definitely more fun for me to play around with food and take photos and write blog posts than it was just crunching numbers every day. And as you were kind of making this transition,

so were you still working and running your blog at the same time to start with? Yeah, absolutely. So first it was, you know, went from a hobby to sort of a side gig. And, and then I started making, you know, a decent amount of like kind of part-time income. I started making a decent amount of part-time income. And so I saved up all the money that I could from my full-time job. And then eventually, I just took that leap of faith and gave notice at my job. But I had a long transition period. And I figured that if worse came to worse, I could always get a part-time job outside of blogging to make ends meet. But I was fortunate that I was able to pretty quickly grow my income. I did a few side gigs here and there, but I never really had to go back and get another job. I love that. I love that you had a passion and decided to dive in and make it work.

And I think that's part of the hurdle of just making blogging work is being willing to figure it out along the way. I think that's what we're all doing. Yeah. Just kind of figuring it out along the way. Email marketing is an essential piece of blogging. Thank you. email subscribers. That's where ConvertKit comes in. ConvertKit is the go-to marketing hub for creators like you that helps you grow and monetize your audience with ease. ConvertKit allows you to grow your audience and reach, put your funnels on autopilot and earn an income with your email list,

all with an easy to use platform that is approachable, even for beginners. Click the link in our show notes to learn more about the different plans that ConvertKit has and how it can help you propel your business to the next level. Okay, so as you were creating the revenue, you were growing this blog, there was probably a lot of different things you were looking at in terms of creating the stability to turn this into a full-time business. Were there specific aspects that you focused on the most? And how did you figure out where to put your time? Do you want to grow in social media? Do you want to grow your traffic? And then I know that email marketing was a really important piece to you. So how did you come about deciding to put your

emphasis there and spend time and energy to create and grow your email list? That's a really great question. I have to say that like a lot of other bloggers, I first thought that my focus should be a lot on social media. And I did spend a lot of time, especially on Facebook. Facebook was very popular back when I started, and you could quickly grow a Facebook page back then. And I thought that was really, really important. But later on, I started to realize that even though I was getting a lot of views on Facebook, they weren't converting to traffic to my blog.

So, you know, eventually I started looking at what are the things that actually move the needle with getting blog traffic, which then, you know, I would earn ad income from. So it's very important for me to get, and still is, to get eyes on my blog. very important for me to get, and still is, to get eyes on my blog. So I took a look at where that traffic was coming from. And I realized that not as much of it was coming from places like Facebook or Instagram. Or back then, even Twitter was still really popular for sharing blog posts. But I just wasn't getting the traffic that way. So I took a look at my analytics and I saw that, well, you know what? Most of the traffic is coming from SEO and from emails. And at the time I wasn't putting a huge focus on email marketing. I was collecting emails on my website, but I wasn't really sure exactly

what to do with those emails. So I started off, of course, as most bloggers do, when you don't really know what to do, you have that RSS feed so that whenever you post something new on your blog, people get an automated message that you posted it,. And you know, RSS feeds used to be popular, you know, people would use these services where they could scroll through various RSS feeds for different blogs, but that's just not popular anymore. So then I started doing like a weekly email newsletter. And I think that what I was looking at was the way that a lot of brands or, you know, maybe people who sell physical products, how they send out weekly newsletters. And so I was kind of, you know, putting in a lot of images and summarizing like

the week's blog posts and, you know, making recommendations that way. But I soon realized that that wasn't exactly what people wanted either. And so I took a look at like, well, why are people actually subscribing to my email list? What is it that they want to know? And I figured out that, you know what, they don't really just necessarily need a list of my latest recipes. I think that they want to know maybe more about me as a person and why I like these recipes. It wasn't just that they wanted to know, oh, what's the latest recipe on her blog? Because to be honest, most people don't care, oh, what's the latest blog post?

Like they want information that pertains to them at that time or that they can utilize in some way that's helpful for them. So it doesn't really matter if you posted it yesterday or a year ago. If it's good information that helps people, then that's really what they're looking for, no matter when you made that blog post. So I started experimenting with just sending emails. Maybe I went from that once per week newsletter style to just more of a simple email. And I started sending those like

once a week, and then I increased it twice a week. And now I actually send three times a week. And I've noticed that I have a more engaged community. And I think that that's important because that's one thing that people don't necessarily think about when they think about email marketing is that it's a great way to build community. So instead of relying on platforms like Facebook and Instagram to build a community, I think that emails are a really fantastic way to grow your community. And people get to know you, they trust you, that's a super important factor. And then they will want to click on your links and visit your blog posts. So I think that that is something to think about, that that kind of direct traffic where you are telling someone about a post and they are going and visiting your blog, that is some of the most

important traffic that you can possibly get. And if you're with an ad network and you look at your analytics that they provide showing you what the RPMs are that you're earning per visit, if you look at the breakdown of where that traffic's coming from, generally traffic from Google and direct traffic, which includes email marketing, those are some of the best paying traffic sources. I love that you pay attention to your analytics and that there is a purpose and you have a plan. And I know that Jennifer's over there like, yes, yes. Jennifer loves a plan and loves analytics. I love data.

Yeah. Because you've been able to make informed decisions in your business, knowing that. And so do you track that just using Google Analytics for anybody who might be new to that idea? If listening to you saying, this is where I got that information. Can you just explain to them where you find that information from? And where I'm generally speaking to like newer bloggers who might not know? Yeah, absolutely. Google Analytics is a great place to find those traffic sources. But if you are using an email service provider like ConvertKit, you can actually look at your individual emails and see, you know, what is the open rate and what is the click-through rate? And that click-through rate is particularly important to me. I think that now it's harder to go by that open rate because a lot of the iOS, you know, and a lot of these different email providers, they kind of have a wonky way

of looking at what the open rate is. So it's not necessarily reliable. But if you look at that click-through rate, you know that that is actually a true number. So if you see that you sent out an email and you sent it to 100 people and maybe 50 people opened it approximately because we're not really sure, but you see that like 25 people clicked on that link. I mean, that is phenomenal because you sent out this email to 100 people and 25 of those people, that's 25%, clicked on that link and visited your blog. I mean, that is really high quality traffic. And you know that those people are invested in what you're doing because you sent this

out and they clicked on it and they wanted to know what you have to say or what you're sharing. So, you know, I think that that is super important because, you know, if we look at like, for example, back to Facebook, you know, you look on that, you share a recipe on your Facebook page and yeah, you can look at their analytics that show how many people, you know, look at their analytics that show how many people saw that in their feed and how many people maybe liked it or shared it, but it really doesn't help you with seeing how many people actually clicked on it. And the honest truth is that probably hardly anyone clicked on it. That's just the way social media is. We just scroll through. But email is different in that respect because people, you know, they get your email, they might save your email for later. You know, that's something that I've learned too, is that a lot of people,

they may put it in like, you know, a file or they may print it for later, or they may tag it like in their Gmail so that they can go back and look at your recipes later. So I think it for later, or they may tag it like in their Gmail, so that they can go back and look at your recipes later. So I think it's more, you know, last longer. And you know, those people that you reach, like they really care about your content, because they made the effort of actually subscribing to you versus a Facebook page where they just, you know, follow it, and they may never click on anything. Yeah. And I think a lot of bloggers forget about the value of bringing in traffic from your email list. You're always thinking about getting new people. Let's get new people. Let's get new people.

Well, what about the people that you already have? How can you stay connected? Those people, like you said, those are going to be the people that are the most valuable to you because not only are they coming to your blog once, but they're on your email list. They're going to click through on other things that you send. So they're going to be a traffic source continuously. And then you're also making that connection with them. And if you have a service or product or anything else down the road, those are the people that already know you and they're going to be more likely to buy from you. So those people are so, so valuable. Yeah, that is such a great point. And like you said about

if you end up selling something, I mean, really, those are the best customers you can possibly have. You know, I know like I sell a few low cost ebooks and I don't even bother marketing those outside of my email list because, you know, it's just not worth your time and effort. The people that really will be interested in buying what you have to sell are those people that get to know you from your email list. Yeah. I think something that you said there that's important too, is you use that statistic that if you sent 100 emails and 25% clicked through, that's a good rate. 25% click through is like a really good rate, actually. So when you go and start looking at your analytics,

don't be looking for like 80, 90% open rates and click-through rates. I mean, if you are there, then that is absolutely amazing. And I commend you and please email us and let us know what you're doing. But a 25% click-through rate is a really good rate, actually, to have people engaging. Because think about how many emails we get in a day. I know my inbox is flooded and I can't keep on top of it. So the people who are actually clicking on those and moving forward, that says something about their interest in what you're sharing. So don't take light of that number. Even if it's seven people, know that those seven people,

you are making an impact on them and you are helping them. So don't lose sight of that and get caught up too much in the numbers game. It's just data. Look at it as data and ask yourself, how can I continue to provide value to these people, which you obviously can do with emails. So do you generally then reuse some of your email content then? You've kind of touched on that already. but do you have like a way that you organize that or do you just kind of think about it as in time of year? Yeah, that's a good question. I love reusing my email content and I do it in a variety of ways.

So one of the ways like you mentioned is seasonally. So for example, like maybe every Thanksgiving, I like to share certain recipes. And they're recipes that are popular every single year. So remember, you don't just have to share new content, you can share all your tried and true content as well. So every fall, I'll go ahead and go back into my emails and I can look through the ones that I like the best or performed well, and maybe I'll tweak them a little bit. But even if you could send out the same exact email again, like every single November, and no one is going to remember that it's the same email. And if on the just odd chance that someone does

remember it, which is highly unlikely, they're probably going to say, oh, good. She's reminding me about that recipe or about that blog post. I did want to go back and revisit that. So you're not bothering people by sending the same information again. It's a great way to maximize your return on your emails because you already spent this time and effort creating the emails in the first place. So you might as well reuse them. And another way that you can repurpose them is by using them. If you do use social media, you can use either the full text of your email or just part of it as a caption. So that works really well, especially on Instagram posts I found. So you can take those highlights and just copy and paste them over in your caption. So there's

lots of ways that you can do that. And, you know, again, with the emails, I mean, you could have certain, you know, like we said, seasonal emails that you send out, but you can also send emails that are more evergreen and send them multiple times a year, you know, things that you don't want your readers to forget about. Or maybe you do offer like an ebook or a course or coaching or something like that. And you can reuse those emails, those sales type emails, because you can just tweak them to see like, okay, what part of it is, which ones are doing really well? What parts do I want to keep? Do I want to take anything out? And you don't have to start from scratch every single time. That's another thing to keep in mind as well, is that when you're getting started, it may seem like overwhelming to have to write all these

different emails. But when you're starting out, you can start with kind of a basic structure and just copy and paste it and just, you know, customize it for that particular blog post that you're talking about and you can go from there. I think that it is good to mix things up once in a while as well because when we have that pattern interrupt, people, it gets more eyes on what you're showing because it is different and it just makes our brains focus on it more

because they're seeing something new. But there's nothing wrong with having some patterns that you do follow. And it does make it easier to write emails. So do you have specific days that you send emails out? I do. Yeah. I tend to send emails Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So what I like to do in ConvertKit is I use their sequences to send out kind of evergreen content on Monday and Friday. So the people that are going through that sequence, they're not all getting the emails at the same time. So say, Jennifer, you subscribed to me four months ago, and Amy, you subscribed to me yesterday. So Jennifer, you're going to be ahead in that sequence. You're going to be four

months ahead of Amy and what you're receiving. But eventually, you'll both have received all the same emails on that Monday and Friday. And then on Wednesday, I like to send a broadcast email. And so that will be something that's more seasonal or could be a special offer. Like today, for example, I sent out an email about a podcast that I was on and it was a cooking podcast. So I included a link to the podcast as well as a link to the recipe that I talked about on the podcast. So something like that, where I want people to know about it now because it's something new and it is timely. But I may also send out other timely emails. Like for example, if I'm an affiliate for some kind of program

and they're having a sale or something like that, then I'll want to send that out as a broadcast so that everybody gets it the same day because it's important at that moment. And that makes me think of one other thing too, is a lot of people like to resend people that didn't open it the first time. But I am of the belief that that's not the best practice because some people may have your emails are just sitting there in their inbox, but they're waiting to open it until they have more time. So if you send out another email that even if you change the subject line, if it's basically the same email, the email servers may identify that as spam. So even if the person who's receiving the emails doesn't report it as spam, something like Gmail,

Hotmail, Yahoo, whatever the provider is, they may identify it automatically as spam. So I'd like to say, unless it's something that's absolutely urgent, that it's very necessary that people find out this information. For the most part, I would say, just let it go. If they didn't open it the first time, don't worry about it. They may open it even weeks later if it's in the inbox, or if they didn't open it, no big deal. Just let it go. Not everyone's going to see everything you send. Yeah. I like how you're really simplifying the process in so many ways. Let's not make this a big stressful thing. Let's make this just another way to help

the people that we want to help to connect with those people and to just bring extra value to them. And you talked about the Evergreen series that you created. And I just want to touch on that just a little bit more for anybody who may not understand what that means. But it's basically creating a sequence in there that when somebody signs up, they're going to get all those emails. Because like you said, everybody signs up at a different time. So why should they be deprived of a great email that you sent out a month ago? They can all get those emails. Was it difficult to get that set up? How long did it take you to set up your evergreen series? And how long does it, I think people will be curious, I'm curious to know,

how long does it last right now? Yeah. Well, so right now, the actual sequence, it's ongoing. So I'm adding to it all the time. So sometimes I'll sit down and I'll look through old broadcast emails that I've sent out that are topics that actually could be evergreen. So it doesn't matter what time of the year people receive them. And I might copy and paste some of that over into one of the sequence emails. And then at the same time, I'm always adding whenever I post a new recipe. If it's something that can work any time of the year, then I'll add a new email to the bottom of the sequence.

So right now, I mean, I could not add anything more to it. And someone subscribing to my list today is going to have well over a year's worth of emails just in that sequence. So I just keep it going and going and going. And, you know, I will go in and, you know, one tip is that is to subscribe to your own email list so that you can see your emails. And so I will periodically go back and I'll subscribe again so that I start getting those emails again, because I like to see what they look like in my inbox, both on my computer and on my phone.

And the reason that is, is that, you know, most people I think these days tend to look at email on their phone. And I want to make sure that the format is easy to read. You know, one thing to keep in mind on your phone is that you want to make sure, you know, people can read the font, that it's big enough, that it's clear enough. And also that the subject lines may get cut off on mobile. So that's a good idea to always, you know, preview what your emails are going to look like on your phone. So you may want to shorten the subject line or tweak it a little bit. Or sometimes people use that preview text where it shows like a line underneath the subject,

you know, when they're seeing it before they open it in their inbox. And, you know, maybe that's getting cut off or something. So, you know, looking at what you're sending out on mobile is a really great idea, too. So, you know, I'll go back and I'll review some of these emails. So I may tweak them here and there. And then some of the most popular recipes, I may want to, you know, write a new email that's for that same recipe and have that later on so that people are getting that recipe, you know, every year in their inbox. So just adding it to that ongoing sequence, I don't need to worry about it because, you know, all of those recipes or those blog posts are already in there. And they'll just keep getting more and more traffic every year because people's eyeballs are on them.

Yeah, because your email list keeps growing. And you are taking content that you've already created and just making sure that people remember it. And I think that that's something that sets apart blog traffic versus social media traffic. On social media, we are constantly having to pump out new content. But when you create content on your blog, that lives there forever. People can come back to that often. And like you're saying, you can take that content that's on your blog and turn it into a lot of different emails that can lead back to that. Let's use use the holidays. You've said that for an example. And we're talking to food bloggers here, but no matter what blog you have,

like think of something that would pertain to a specific time of year. So with food blogging, yes. And like the Thanksgiving timeframe, there are a lot of people who will come for, back for specific recipes, like, or those recipes just seem to get found more that time of year.

But that doesn't mean that some of those recipes might not also work at Easter or another holiday as well. So they're more like a holiday recipe versus just a Thanksgiving. So how can you repurpose that to show up at a different time of year as well? So I think that that's the beautiful thing about email is that it allows you to continually get your content out that you've created. And it could be content that's like four or five, six years old that you're still bringing people to because we can't assume that new people who come to our blogs have seen every piece of content that we've ever created. That's highly unlikely. And if they get an email that they've already seen something, that's okay. It might be a recipe that

they liked. It might be a recipe, like you said, that they wanted to try that then they come back to. So I think that's something that a lot of people, I think that they feel apprehensive about is, I don't want to kind of work through that barrier of knowing like, if I want an engaged following, I know that I need to be consistent with my emails and three times a week has worked well for you. How do you kind of get through that barrier for somebody who's sitting down to write an email? And they're like, I feel like I'm bothering them. Yeah, I hear that a lot that people are worried about bothering people. But I think the thing to remember is that people signed up for your emails because they want to hear from you. And you know what? If they get tired of your emails or it's just overwhelming for them or it's just not the

right time, they can unsubscribe. That's the great thing about emails is that on the bottom of every single one, it's a legal requirement to have a link that allows them to easily unsubscribe. And if they unsubscribe, do not take it personally. It's not about you. And they can always, I find that when I look at through my list, I find people that unsubscribed maybe a year ago, and then maybe six months later, they'll go back and subscribe again. So we don't know what's going on in people's lives. It may have just not been the right time for them.

Especially for myself personally, I'm sharing vegan recipes. Well, maybe they're at a time in their life where they don't have time to cook, they don't have time to figure out ingredients, and they're just taking a pause. But later on, they might find, you know what, I do want to try to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into my diet. So I am going to go back and look at her recipes and Hey, you know what? I do want to get her emails again. So, you know, it's just one of those things that you can't take it personally. And it doesn't matter per se, how many people are on your email list. You want people that are engaged, that do want to hear what you're talking about. So I think the best thing you can actually do for your list is to go through

on a regular basis and get rid of the people that are not opening your emails. Because why should you pay to send them emails when they're not interested in getting them right now? So, you know, I like to do that actually quarterly. I just, you know, that way it helps me remember that I'm doing it, you know, every three months and I'll go through and, you know, ConvertKit is really easy. You can see how many people are what they call cold subscribers that haven't opened your emails in, I believe it's three months or more. And then you can either, you know, just take them off your list if you want. But I like to go through and send those people an email and say,

hey, you know, I know that that you're busy, you know, or life gets overwhelming and maybe you're not interested in getting these emails anymore. And that's totally okay. You know, if I don't hear back from you, I'll go ahead and take you off the list. But if you are still interested in getting my emails, click here and you'll still be on the list. And I do find that every time I send out these emails, you know, sure, there are people that are not going to open them, they're not going to even see them in their

inbox. But there are always several people that do click that link, because they say, Hey, you know what, I you're right, I haven't been opening your emails lately, but I still want to get them. So, you know, keep me on the list, you know, and that's, that's another thing too, is that you can ask your readers questions in your emails so that they do respond. And that way you can get to know them better and see like, Hey, what kind of information are they interested in getting? Or what kind of recipes do they want to see in the future? Or for me, I like to always ask in an early email, because my website, I advertise that it's for everyone, no matter their way of eating. But I just like to find out, hey, how do you identify? Are you vegan or vegetarian? Do you eat everything, but you just

want to try to eat healthier? Are you just trying to incorporate a few more plant-based meals into your routine every week? Hit reply and let me know. And you'll be amazed that when you ask a question, people are really happy to answer. And if you can reply back to their answer, that's even better because they say, hey, you're, you know, wow, she's a real person. You know, she is interested in hearing what I have to say. And, you know, that's, you know, going back to how emails are great for community connection, you know, that you're not necessarily going to get something like that from people just going on your blog and, you know, people don't tend to leave so many comments anymore.

Or, you know, people on social media, they might just say like, oh, looks delicious, you know, that's it. But, you know, with email, you can get that deeper connection. Back to your question about, you know, overcoming that barrier to sending emails, I think you just have to take that leap of faith. And just go ahead and hit send because, you know, there's a reason why people want to be on your list. And, you know, you just have to believe that they do want to hear from you. And just don't be afraid to send that email and just keep sending them. I wouldn't take the unsubscribes

personally. And that's something I think it always does kind of hurt when you're like, oh, gosh, why is that email so triggering for somebody? What made them unsubscribe from that email? But I think that it's just normal. I think it's just normalize people unsubscribe from email lists. We do it all the time. I'm sure that all three of us here, I've unsubscribed from lists this week. And for the same reasons that you just said, it just didn't serve me anymore. And so just know that that's okay. And that is just part of your email marketing strategy is knowing that people will unsubscribe and don't take it personal because it just allows more room for the people who are there for the content that you're

creating. And I also think it gives you a better understanding of who is really engaged on your list instead of those vanity metrics that are like, Oh my gosh, I have X amount of email subscribers. That's amazing. What if they're not engaging? What if they're not opening? What if they're not buying what you're selling? All of that. Then that number is a little bit offsetting. It doesn't really give us a true picture of what our email list can do for us. And that truly is the point as bloggers with having an email list is to be able to serve those people. But also that's a part of the business strategy is how can I engage with these people and help them be an integral part of this blogging

business? Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. And I like to think of those really engaged readers who get my emails and open them every single time and click on the links. You know, those are your super fans. So they are going to be interested in every single thing that you post. And, you know, it doesn't matter if there's algorithm changes, you know, on whether it's Google or Facebook or Instagram, you know, those people that are your super fans, they're going to be with you no matter what. So, you know, I think those are the people that we should strive to have on our list. And I think the best way to get those people and to keep those people is by sending those consistent emails.

So if you find that you only have the capacity to send one email a week, send that one email a week, but send it every single week. And people are going to expect that, okay, on Thursdays, I can open my inbox and I'm going to see Jennifer's name or I'm going to see Amy's name. And they're going to just get used to that they recognize your name and they know that they want to open that email. But if you send haphazardly, maybe only once a month or something, you know, I may see an email in my inbox and not recognize that person's name, like not remember who it is. So you want to get that familiarity where people, you know, they see your name and even if they don't open it right away, maybe they're saving it for later. They still, they know exactly who you are.

So I know a lot of people ask about, you know, what should the subject line be? What should the email format be? What should, you know, should you put images in your email? Should you not put images? Should it be this many words or that many words? But the number one thing that's going to get people to open your email is seeing your name in their inbox and if they recognize your name. So that's where that consistency comes in. That's such a good point. And I don't think I've ever heard anybody say it in quite that way. I think you've really pointed out a lot of really important things to think about in terms of how you're going to email your list and how you should think about it and the importance of it. And speaking of the importance of it, we've really talked about the really true and authentic connections you can make. But I think one question,

and I know we've slightly touched on this, but I think one question that people are really going to have is, okay, I'm going to put this work into this. It's got a lot of benefits. But the other question I have is, can I make money by having an email list? And so can we just kind of touch on some of those things that we talked about briefly about how you can make money off of your email list? about how you can make money off of your email list. Yeah, you know, making money from your email list, that's one of my favorite things,

absolutely, in this business. And, you know, I think we all know that email service providers do charge us a lot. You know, let's be honest, like ConvertKit, it's not cheap. But if you really use it and send those emails, I think it's going to more than pay for itself. So the first way that I like to look at it is if you do have ads on your website, like with Mediavine or AdThrive, the RPMs that you earn from those clicks on the links in your emails is going to be very high. So that alone is going to pretty much, I would say for most people pay for their email list and more because the more clicks you get through your emails, the higher ad revenue you're going to earn. So that would be the first way.

But then other ways you can earn money is by selling things. And you can either sell your own products or you can be an affiliate for other people's products. And when we think about affiliate marketing, a lot of people think about like Amazon, but I'm not talking about Amazon. Like Amazon, you actually'm not talking about Amazon. Amazon, you actually cannot link to specific products in your email that is against their terms of service.

So do not do that. I'm so glad you just said that. I'm interrupting you there because I'm so glad you said that. I get so many emails that people put Amazon links in their emails and you're like, that is going to get you shut down when they figure that out. So please don't miss what she just said there. Do not put your Amazon affiliate links in your emails that you're sending to your people. You can put them in your blog posts, but don't put them in your emails. Okay. I'm sorry. I mean, I had to interrupt. No, no, that is a great point. So you could link to the blog post that has the Amazon link in it. Or if you do have an Amazon storefront, you can link to the actual storefront, but not the items in the storefront.

Yep. So that is something that, you know, definitely keep that in mind because you don't want to get your Amazon account suspended. But there are lots of other affiliate programs out there. Personally, I like ShareASale. They have where you can look up different vendors or companies that use ShareASale for their affiliate program. And then what they do is they add all of those commissions together so that you get paid with all the, depending on like, you could be an affiliate for like 10 different products, but if you make like 50 cents here, a dollar there, it's all going to get added up together in your final payment.

So that's one service that I like to use. So you can link to those kinds of links, or maybe you have a friend that sells a course. Maybe it's about blogging, or it's about email marketing, or it's a cooking course, or it's a craft workshop, or something like that. If you're an affiliate for their program, you can certainly add those links to your emails. You should still put some kind of disclosure in your emails. You can put it within the body or you can have it automatically in the footer of all your emails that this email may contain affiliate links, just like you would on a blog post in the header.

But anyway, so maybe it's some course that you took and you really enjoyed it, so you became an affiliate and you can share that course with your readers. And then anytime you make a sale through the link, then you'll get a percentage. So there's all sorts of affiliate programs out there. And then what we touched on earlier is if you want to sell your own products, maybe you sell an ebook or your own course, or even some people sell physical products, or some people have print on demand, maybe merchandise like t-shirts or mugs or anything like that. Those are great links to put in your emails. And these are all links that you could put in

blog posts as well. So maybe you have a recipe and you link to some equipment or a special ingredient that isn't commonly found in supermarkets or something like that, then you can try it both ways, like link to the blog post or actually put that affiliate link in your email. So there's all sorts of ways to make money. And I know some people even do sponsored emails. So I haven't personally done this myself, but if there's a brand that you really enjoy, and you like working with them, you could pitch them, hey, you know what, I have this great audience in my email list, and they're very engaged. You know, how about I send an email that talks about your product, and why I like the product. And then they can click on the link and

buy the product. So if you think outside the box, there's all sorts of ways that you can really maximize your email list that way to make money. Yes. I want to highlight what you just said there too. Something that we haven't really touched on is that if you want to work with brands, we haven't really touched on is that if you want to work with brands, that your email list is very attractive to brands because they know how valuable email subscribers are. So you can talk about your blog traffic, you can talk about your Instagram followers, your Facebook followers, or whatever. But always highlight how many email subscribers you have as well. And I think that that's just another way that you can add value to a brand if you were to do brand work or anything like that.

Because you do have that engaged following who said, I do want to continually receive your content. And that's people saying, I want to be in a quote-unquote relationship there. I want to make sure that I stay in connection with you. I want to be in communication with you and learn from you. Or I just really like the way that you share things. So they're valuable. I hope that that's something that everybody's really taken from today's episode as Amy has shared so much goodness in this episode. This has been fantastic. Yes. And I hope that you really are invigorated to make sure that you are paying attention to those people who have decided to join your email list. And we recognize that we all started

somewhere. We all started with like 5 email subscribers and getting creative on how to grow that list and just continue working on that. But that is definitely an area of your business that I think the 3 of us very much agree is very important and comes up about second next to your blog is to focus on your email subscribers and make sure that you are adding value to them on a consistent basis. So thank you, Amy, for sharing all of your knowledge about this. I think it's been incredibly helpful. And I know that people are going to want to connect with you and I'm going to get on your email list because now I'm curious. So how can people connect with you and

join your email list? Oh, thank you so much. You know, I always enjoy talking about email marketing. And if anyone would like to get on my email list, you can visit my website at veggiesavetheday.com and you'll see various places where you can subscribe. Awesome. We will also put a link in our show notes so you can find that very easily and find Amy over at Veggie Save the Day. So thank you, Amy, for coming on the podcast today. Well, thank you very much for having me. Thank you. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration.

You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the waitlist for the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.