Diversifying Income Series: Monetizing Your Email List with Matt Molen

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI.

Bjork Ostrom:: This episode is sponsored by Clariti. If you’ve been frustrated trying to discover actionable insights from different analytics and keyword platforms, Clariti is your solution. Clariti helps you manage your blog content all in one place so you can find actionable insights that improve the quality of your content. Not only does it automatically sync your WordPress post data so you can find insights about broken images, broken links and more. It can also sync with your Google Analytics and Google Search Console data so you can see keyword session page, you and user data for each and every post. One of our favorite ways to use it, we can easily filter and see which of our posts have had a decrease in sessions or page views over a set period of time and give a little extra attention to those recipes. This is especially helpful when there are Google updates or changes and search algorithms so that we can easily tell which of our recipes have been impacted the most. Listeners of the Food Blogger Pro podcast get 50% off of their first month of Clariti after signing up to sign up, simply go to Clariti.com/food. That’s C-L-A-R-I-T-I.com/food. Thanks again to Clariti for sponsoring this episode.

Ann Morrissey:: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Food Blogger Pro podcast. This is the last episode of our Diversifying Income series, and today we’re sitting down with Matt Molen, the CEO of Email Crush to talk about monetizing your email list. You’ll hear Matt talk about why email marketing is one of the most powerful tools bloggers often overlook. He’ll break down how to grow your list, why your subscribers are more valuable than you think, and how email can become a key revenue stream if you do it right. Matt will also dish out practical tips on creating lead magnets that convert writing emails people want to read and building trust through simple, effective sequences. Whether you’re starting from scratch or ready to level up, this interview is packed with email strategies you can start implementing today. We hope the insights you’ve gleaned from this series will be helpful as you think about monetizing your blog and introducing new income streams. And now without further ado, I’ll let Bjork take it away.

Bjork Ostrom:: Matt, welcome back to the podcast.

Matt Molen:: Hey, it’s good to be back. Thanks for having me.

Bjork Ostrom:: It’s been, I think like six years now, so this is overdue, but the great thing is it’s a testament to the work that you’ve done to continue to show up to serve people in this space in the specific niche of email. So talk a little bit about how you got into doing the work that you’re doing, that transition when that happened, and then we’re going to talk about some specifics around what does it look like actually make money from email.

Matt Molen:: Sure. The short version of the story is I’ve been working in small businesses for the last 30 years. My background was in startups. The last business that I was in was a daily deal website. We were a group on clone at the time when there were lots of Groupon clone and we used email in a big, big way. We had tens of thousands of dollars every year for this little tiny company that didn’t have any budget. Email was our primary source of getting deals in front of people who were deal a holics. So I learned all about how to grow the list, list engagement, segmentation, how to market the schlock that we were selling over and over and over again and what worked and what didn’t. And I was fortunate enough to get in with a really cool group here locally of bloggers. One in particular, really big food blogger, introduced me to this world and my wife and I were having a little blog of our own at the time on a Disney focus thing. And so I was learning all about it and I was implementing my email stuff into that situation and we grew our list really big, really fast. I started working with some other folks in the space and said, here’s what I would do if I were you. And then that worked, and so it turned into a course and consulting and now even a little boutique agency where I do it for food bloggers of a certain size. So it’s been a lot of fun to be on this ride to help creators kind of embrace email, which is over the last eight years has not been the number one platform that people have focused on, but doggone it, those that do have really enjoyed that predictable, reliable ability to tell stories to the people they want to tell, convey their brand and bring traffic back to their websites.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, that’s great. There’s somebody I know his name is Matt Paulson. He has a site called Market Beat, so a different industry and the site he’s public up about this makes tens of millions of dollars with a very high profit margin, and he has talked about email being the thing for him from a growth channel. It’s like they don’t try and figure out Instagram, they don’t try and figure out TikTok. They’ve just focused on email. And I think that as we were heading into this interview, one of the thoughts I had was over the last, let’s say for Pinch of Yum over the last decade, if we would’ve focused as much as we did on Instagram on email, and let’s say we had 1.4 million email subscribers as opposed to 1.4 million Instagram followers, what would be most valuable? Hypothetical you don’t know for sure, and Instagram for sure is an extremely valuable platform, but I would imagine that in a world where we had 1.4 million email subscribers that we’d be able to do some really impactful things with sending traffic, with getting awareness around a product. And when you think about it, it makes sense. It’s like an email lands in your inbox. There’s no guarantee that it’s going to be opened, but you can start to learn better around open rates and what that looks like. So for those who maybe aren’t believers yet, could you help build the case for why email is important and maybe touch on some of the first party data stuff that is relevant as it relates to ad income as well?

Matt Molen:: Yeah, you bet. You mentioned your friend that has experienced success and email’s a big part of that. That’s been my experience too in every other industry and bloggers have lots of other things and have had historically lots of other things to focus on to drive traffic, but email has been, the reason it stuck around is that it is so critical to just about every other business out there and it is a massive revenue driver for many, many, so 100% agree with you. The reason for that is that when you have access to a large list, it’s a more intimate engagement. You get to push your message to them instead of hope that a platform delivers it in front of their eyeballs in the form of an algorithm, which allows you to do all sorts of things, drive traffic where you want to go. Right now, there’s a lot of food bloggers that are excited about the percentage of traffic that’s coming to their website thanks to email, whereas before that really wasn’t something they focused on. It allows you to jumpstart new channels When the next whizzbang doodle thingy comes out, you can say, Hey everybody, we’re over here now and you instantly have a core group that can start with you. We’ve talked a lot in the industry about how do we diversify revenue streams right now? That’s a big topic for people. Well, how can you do that if you don’t have somebody to tell about this new revenue streams an affiliate offer, a sponsorship selling a product or a service or even a consultant or a cooking school, whatever it may be. And so those are kind of the core reasons. The last one that I would bring up for my food blogging friends is that brand building is quite often a missing piece in our business. We have enjoyed ranking with an algorithm for something, but you as the food creator are more than just a search term. These engaged readers who just stumble on your content, they care strongly about making that recipe. They don’t necessarily care about Pinch of Yum in that moment. They don’t know your story, they don’t know your brand of awesomeness, but when we are able to get them onto our list, email is a fantastic way for us to tell our stories, for us to differentiate from others and explain what makes us special and how we can serve. And so that driving traffic on your own terms is tremendously important. Telling your story and building a community is more important than ever now. You also mentioned the identity stuff, which that you really were talking about first party data. I guess a quick primer on that, our email address tells advertisers a lot about us. It might know that I have stayed at a Hilton and that I have eaten too many times at Outback Steakhouse and all of these things that our email address might convey about us can replace cookies or augment the business of cookies. And so when done in the right way, which are friends at Raptive and Media Vine and others are trying to do, they can take that email is a piece of information that a subscriber gives us, drop it into this privatized pool, but it spits back out information to the advertiser about us that leads to higher RPMs when they do come to the website. So it’s a straight-up money maker right now. So the bigger the list you have, the more clicks you get back to your website that have that ID associated with it. You just simply just make more money.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, the first party data thing is really important. Obviously cookies still exist in their form, but there’s that they have existed previously, but Google has kind of dangled this and has kind of continued to extend this idea of third party cookies going away within Chrome browser. Idea being, to your point, if you can’t identify somebody, it’s obviously anonymous. It’s not like they know this is Bjork Ostrom going to this page, but they know your behaviors. If they can’t identify that, then the ads have to be more generic, therefore they’re less impactful. But if you can get that first party data to your point, you can start to see then, oh, we know after this person clicks on an email and they go to Pinch of Yum, they have a pinch of Yum email and they go to Pinch of Yum, we know suddenly who that person is and we can start to identify where they’ve been, what information they might be interested in, and conserve ads that brands are willing to pay more for because they know who it is. So there’s this value suddenly to that first party data because it’s going to make that visit. Not only is it valuable because you get a visit to your site, but it’s more valuable because it’s identifiable. Do you have any way to, this is one of the things I’ve thought about constantly and I’m trying to figure out a good way to understand it, to understand if you get one sign up to your email list, what could that be worth? And I know that you have the calculator as well. Sure. But can you help us quantify, because I think that would be a piece of the puzzle when we think about, Hey, I added a hundred people to my email list this month. Do you have something that you could equate that to just from a value perspective?

Matt Molen:: I know you may be looking for me to tell you this one subscriber equals this $1. $1. Yeah. Let’s zoom out for just a quick second. Let’s talk about the first principles of email marketing. Great. First, if we don’t have a list, we have no audience to send anything to. We don’t have any way to monetize, whether it’s through Mediavine and Raptive or other ad services or selling a product, no list, no sales. So principle number one is we need to be growing an email list. To your point earlier, what if your list had been 1.6 million today? How awesome would that be and how much more powerful would that be? That certainly has been within your reach over the last 10 years as it is going forward for the next 10 years. Principle number two, we need to send more emails. Many folks have an email list. It’s growing perhaps, but you’re sending once a month, once a week. I don’t know. The frequency with which you send is a variable in this equation for how much money you can make. And so that’s why I have to bring that up because if you never send to it, then you’re not making anything.

Bjork Ostrom:: Nothing if you never send an email.

Matt Molen:: That’s right. I have clients that start out like many worried that they’re going to annoy their audience and then as we work together and I gradually move them up throughout that they’re sending and sending because with food I’ve just discovered that to send is to serve. People get hungry all the time. If you send an email yesterday about that, I don’t know, jalapeno quinoa, maple bar that nobody opened that day because they were traveling or whatever, but the next day they get the raspberry minestrone. You know what? That’s perfect for them right then, and it’s just how it is with food. So we can send more often than we think, and then of course the content has to be good. It has to be of value. It’s not spam if you’re providing value. So here’s the formula, grow the list big, send more emails, get more clicks, get paid more. Now you take all of those factors and then you can figure it out using a calculator like I have, and you can get it for free. It’s just a spreadsheet where you plug in your numbers and you can actually answer that question for you. For Pinch of Yum or for any food blogger, just go to emailcrush.com/rpm-calculator and you can get it, you can download it and you plug in those variables. How often am I sending? How big is the list? What’s my opening generally and what’s my click rate? Generally that’s going to tell you how many clicks you’re getting, and then you plug in your RPM from your ad provider and presto, you will have an ROI that perhaps you had never thought about before. And so that right there, when I share that with a lot of people, that opens their eyes to, oh, I’ve been looking at email as a cost center. This is actually a profit center if I simply send more. And we’re not even talking about all the other benefits that come from that, such as branding, telling your story, differentiating and selling other things. That’s just straight up making money from the ads on your website.

Bjork Ostrom:: Which is one way to create income from your email list of which there are many ways to do that. We’ve talked about how when we’ve had products to sell, we don’t do this often with Pinch of Yum, but a meal plan as an example. The two channels that have mattered the most are email number one. And then number two, Instagram around awareness and usually at its best is Instagram into email And then email as the channel to eventually put an offer in front of somebody, and that could be true for affiliate as well. And so we’ve definitely seen that to be true. Another great example of that is with Food Blogger Pro, different company, different business, different way of operating, but email is one of the most important channels for us. The business wouldn’t exist today if not for the ability to sell membership through the email. People get awareness through the podcast, through social, through mentions on other websites, but it’s really the mechanism of email that is helpful to actually get people into the membership and sell the product that we have. So that’d be great. Emailcrush.com/rpm-calculator, check that out. It’s a great way to just wrap your head around, okay, what is going to be the return on this if I do build this thing over time? And to your point, we’ve experienced this recently where two stories that I can think of, and it’s anecdotal, but my brother-in-law’s girlfriend came to Easter and she had muffins and we were like, these are so great. Lindsay was like, and she’s always curious how people came across the recipe and she’s like, did you get ’em from a site? And she’s like, yeah, I don’t remember where it was. I just found it on Google. Zero awareness of the actual site where it was from, but got the recipe, which isn’t bad, but it’s the example that you gave, which is transactional. I needed a recipe for muffins. I made them. We also had an interaction with our babysitter and she’s like, Hey, my mom has really been excited about Pinch of Yum recently. And they, through conversation eventually found out that’s what we do, and then I think she probably told her mom about it, but her mom signed up to be on the email list and she was saying, Hey, we’re going to make this salad this weekend, and it was the salad that Lindsay had mentioned in the email and it’s anecdotal, but what Lindsay said to me three days ago was people wouldn’t have never been able to come across that recipe to find that recipe, if not for the fact that we sent out an email two days before Easter where Lindsay was like, Hey, here are my five favorite recipes that I like to make for Easter or that I’m making this year. I don’t know what it said, but it was such an interesting way for me to observe the two ways that people are interacting even with our own content, which is transactional via discovery on search or maybe social, and then a more personal interaction, which would come through email or like a social follower if Lindsay’s mentioning within stories or reel or something and somebody’s following and they see it and they, oh, I know this. I’m familiar with it. So those first principles, can you review those again, it’s getting your email list. In general, it’s the sending frequency of emails, so starting to send emails and it’s not just once a month and maybe not even once a week, but for Pinch of Yum, we’re sending two three times a week now and we haven’t noticed any significant dip in subscribers. What were the other ones that you’d point out?

Matt Molen:: Principles? Yeah, list. We need as big a list as we can get, and that requires a mindset to stay focused on it. It’s not I set up one form or one lead magnet, I’m done. Second, send more emails, whatever that means, and I’m going to push back on you a little bit. If you’re sending two or three, you haven’t noticed anything, what happens if we soon the fourth? Sure. Yeah, I’m just saying. So then making your emails worth reading, valuable, and in our case, man, this is important with food making our emails worth clicking because getting more clicks is one of those fundamental principles. Grow a list, send more emails, get more clicks. It boils down to that. Now that’s great. A couple of tips along those lines. People don’t read emails, they skim. Now, this is a constant battle that I have there within myself because there’s this battle, not battle, but this debate of design and voice and results. I just got done doing an audit for a client who has the most beautiful email template, I’m not kidding, the most beautiful email template I’ve ever seen on Kit, which is the platform that I use, and I got all caught up in it. How did she make this? Who did she hire? I need to hire this person. Guess what? Her click rates were less than anything I’ve ever sent ever. The beautifulness of that template had zero bearing or perhaps the other direction. I doubt that, but zero bearing on the actual clicking meaning the consumption of the content by the reader. So it really still comes down to my advice to people is yeah, you want it to be on brand, you want it to be beautiful. You don’t want it to embarrass you, but it acts as a conduit between you, the reader and your content. You mentioned Food Blogger Pro. I’ve got to believe that it’s been super helpful, of course with sales, but would I get my stuff from you every month? It’s that same concept of, oh, this is what we’re researching this month. This is what I’m learning about this month. Bring me that. I wasn’t even thinking about XYZ topic, but you brought me there through email, just like Pinch of Yum. Brought your babysitter’s mom to that recipe through that. So the point is, let’s get people to engage and whatever that means I’m giving you, if you’re hearing me and you get caught up on how things look, I’m giving you permission to let that go. We’ll come back and fix it later. Okay, we’ll make it pretty later, but if that is the reason you’re not sending emails, you’ve got to wipe your hands of that and do the simplest thing possible and just start sending something that’s of value and you’ll win.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yep. I love that. And value doesn’t always necessarily mean perfect branding, perfect design value means information that’s helpful for somebody, and it could be, this is really true in the world of sales and marketing, sometimes just a plain text email that is seven sentences long can be the most compelling email that you can send for somebody who’s never sent one to send out an email and say, Hey, super excited sending out emails. I just made this recipe this week. It’s a top five recipe for me. The thing is, it’s super simple and it’s also delicious. Click here to check it out, and you press send and people will be like, oh, that’s really interesting. It’s compelling. I want to figure out what that is. I’m going to click on it. And that is the interaction that you’re wanting, especially if you’re monetizing via clicks and traffic to your site. So that at its core makes sense. You’re growing your list, you’re sending out emails, you’re encouraging people to click, and those emails have to be valuable for the people receiving it. One of the things that I know people ask is, that’s great. How do I actually start to grow my list? What can you do in order to get more people onto your list?

Matt Molen:: Well, this happens to be something I have spent a lot of time thinking about. So there’s a truth that I believe wholeheartedly, and that is your existing traffic is your best source of list growth. Prince of Pinch of Yum has enjoyed traffic of differing sources. You started out it was a trickle at certain points during Covid, it was probably a river and it changes over time and certain recipes are bringing in traffic over time. I’m going to use an example from my own life when I had the Disney website for a while there, before we just let it all go, we ranked number one for Disney cruise tips. If somebody Googles Disney Cruise tips and comes and lands on our website, what do I know about that person? Well, he or she is likely going on a Disney cruise and it is likely their first time, otherwise why do they need tips? So in that moment, I can let that transaction go by where that person clicks gets the information and is often on their way, or I can try to dangle that lead magnet carrot that says, Hey, hold up. I have the next thing that you need. In our case, it was something that I call a quick start guide. It was what to expect on your first Disney cruise. Notice what that’s not. That is not get updates about Disney cruising. Get the latest news of Disney cruising. It’s definitely not sign up for my newsletter because that person is not there for a newsletter, doesn’t need a newsletter, wants less email in their life, not more. But when I promise to tell them exactly what the next thing is that I know that they need to know what to expect on your first Disney cruise, that thing converts like crazy. And the same is true with food. I know that this seems harder with food. If somebody is, I don’t know, googling a particular recipe, and you’re like, well, what is the tie here? What I advise my clients to do is to think through the motivation, and I’m not talking about side wide Bjork. I’m talking about even to the individual recipe if we need to. Some of you have recipes where it’s 20% of your page user more why? What’s their motivation when they Google that or seek that out on interest, and then what do you have that can solve their next problem? Is it seasonal? We’re coming up on a season where spring is summarized, is right around the corner. Perhaps they have seasonal interests and needs. Is it a slow cooker recipe? Well, that tells us something even more that they have a slow cooker and you can’t just throw any old recipe out there and expect that to work with a slow cooker. So a lead magnet related to the slow cooker is going to work much better for that individual. There’s lots of ways that we can then put it in front of them, forms and popups, and we can have a whole conversation about that. That’s a different thing, but that’s the core principle. Your existing traffic, what’s their motivation solve their next problem,

Bjork Ostrom:: And it’s going to be different obviously for every site in terms of how much of could you create something that works for every single post within your site? Maybe if you have a really specific, maybe it’s a certain dietary restriction that you have and all your recipes are matching that dietary restriction, but the more general you get with your site pinch of being an example, I think the more specific you probably have to get with each individual page or category, when you think about something that is going to mat the intent or the problem set Of somebody who’s coming to your site and for Pinch of Yum as an example, if there’s a recipe, let’s say it’s a cottage cheese pizza recipe, cottage cheese crust pizza. Part of what’s hard about it is you are solving the problem, the main problem that that person has by providing the recipe. So then you need to think strategically and say, what are the additional problems that people might have around this? So it requires some creative problem solving, some creative thinking, but to your point, if you spend some time with it, you’ll probably be able to get to something pretty quickly that matches the problem set that that person might have, even if it’s adjacent. In this case, it would be other high protein recipes as opposed to sign up to get my recipes. You can start to think about why is this person using cottage cheese? Because well, maybe they want lower carbs, higher protein, and so if I create something that’s going to be an attempt at matching that, we’ll see how that works and how that performs. Do you have thoughts on kind of like a trickle down of, Hey, start with just a site wide, something on every page that’s generic, get those email signups and then start to do something category level and then look at your most popular post and create something for that? Or is it the other way where look at your most popular post, create something individually, an individual offer for that post and then start to get more wide across your site?

Matt Molen:: I’m going to give you exactly what I do for my paid clients. This is probably a bad career move. I’m going to tell you exactly away exactly what I do. Okay, great. I’m going to tell you exactly what I do and I’m going to tell you exactly what I do for my agency clients too. First of all, I will go into your Google Analytics and I will look at the last 90 days because traffic patterns change. I might also look at the next, what’s coming up if we’re staring June of the following year in the face, then I might go look at last June to see what the traffic patterns were. What do I observe as far as where’s the traffic going? It might be all high protein stuff like you’re talking about, or a lot of it, it might be that the site is really specialized in air fryer or it could be more general food site where we say, you know what? It’s all over the board. So I’ve got to make a guess about these people who are, at least we know that they’re wanting to cook at home, so they’re the ones that come summertime are the ones making the no baked desserts and taking the thing to the potluck. So I’m going to tackle it perhaps seasonally site-wide first. Then I’m going to look at categories. Quite often the device is an easy one. You can go into your pages in engagement screen. I can’t remember what it’s called off the top of my head, but there’s a report in GA4 that you just look and you can type in the URL slug air dash fryer, boom. It’s going to tell you that 20% of your traffic was air fryer. You can create forms and popups that show up only on the air fryer category, so those people see something specific. Then I would go to the, if there’s a runaway post that just makes sense that’s getting a lot of traffic, then I would probably create something specific for them. The thing is that these lead magnets, I use quickstart guys all the time. That’s what I teach in my course. These are simple to make once you figure it out, and what I’m encouraging my clients to do is figure out, one, spend the time on one and then discover that duplicate button and do it for mother’s day and do it for Memorial Day and do it for June and do it for it, and you change ’em up because people’s needs and interests change Is not complicated. I know a lot of people out there go, no way. I can’t do that. So if that’s you, start with one, start with the season that’s in front of you and ask yourself, do I have something that is more compelling sitewide than never miss an update or an ebook that you made forever ago? I kind of have, me and eBooks, we have a history. I’ve made up a fictitious enemy for reasons, and it’s like a generic ebook. My problem with eBooks, and I know they work in a lot of cases, is that a lot of people are on their phones, so they download that thing. They never know where to find it after they got it, and then if they did, they’re not clicking on anything in there. You can compost the exact same thing with the email series that will arrive spread out with bigger links and buttons that will actually bring it back to your website and you don’t have to pay a designer to make it. So that’s all my ebook beef. Right.

Bjork Ostrom:: Well, and I think the thing that sometimes happens, which is really true for myself, is that we think that more equals better, and so we create this exhaustive PDF or series, email series. But I think oftentimes really what, and I think about this as a podcast, I listened to on a run, we did a family vacation with Lindsay’s family was like to this boring customer, it was like a podcast on customer service, but there’s one thing that has stuck with me, and they were saying that within the world of customer service, it doesn’t matter necessarily. If you have all this flowery language and you go on and on about how great somebody is, what really matters is that you get back to somebody quickly and you solve the problem. And I think about that all the time because I think it’s true outside of the world of customer service as well. If you can shorten the length that somebody has a problem and you solve it, and you do it in a way where you’re actually solving the problem that’s going to serve you really well. And I think the same applies for us as content creators. If we are offering a thing and the payment that we are asking for that thing is personal information. If we are able to deliver on the promise that we are giving them in the most simple and quick way possible, that’s going to be a great start to the relationship. And so much of what we’re trying to do is establish trust to let people know that we are a credible source for them moving forward. And so it’s not about how long is the PDF? It’s not about how great is the ebook. It’s like, are you offering to solve a problem? Is it a specific problem that person has? And a problem could be entertainment, it could be a dietary need. It could be figuring out what to put on the table when you don’t know what you’re going to have. There’s a lot of different problems that people have. So I think it’s a really good point that you make, which is the more specific, the better and bigger and longer and more complex isn’t usually better, more succinct, more action oriented is generally better. So what are the better? When you are working with people or let’s say observing people who are doing email, what are some of the traits that you see with people who are doing it well that you would come in and say like, wow, that’s awesome. That’s aspirational for people who want to be building an email, building a component of their business that’s email based. What are those things that you look at as best case examples of creators who are doing email right now? You don’t have to name names, but you can just talk about what they’re doing.

Matt Molen:: I want to answer that question with going back to something that you just said. I get this all the time with my food creator friends, is that it’s unclear what problem they’re solving. The people who are doing it the absolute best are the one who have figured out who they serve and repeatedly do it over and over again. So they have figured out that their brand position is the real estate of somebody’s mind that they occupy when somebody thinks of them and then they deliver on that over and over again. We know that Rick Steves is going to give us incredible travel advice for European travel, and I can trust Rick Steves on almost anything that he tells me because I’ve tried his stuff, I listened when I’ve gone to Europe, I’ve listened to his audio, I’ve done the tours. He’s on it every single time. So with food, what is the main problem that we’re solving? I would suggest that it’s inspiration. You talked about it earlier. In some cases it’s not. I have a client who is an advanced sourdough specialist. That is a very specific scientific kind of thing. They don’t necessarily need all the inspiration. They might actually need the science and the chemistry, but for somebody that is the one that was willing to bake the Thanksgiving pie, what do we know about that person? Guess what? You can buy pies at Costco. They sell them there. That person has access to it, probably could have purchased one, but yet was willing to bake a pie. What problem do we solve for that person? And so the one that the creators that have really figured out how to bundle together this inspiration in the form of solutions, and it’s hard for me to say exactly without. It’s kind of one of those things when you see it when the messaging is all over the place, when you’ve got the trip to the farmer’s market here and the picture of the dog and then you’ve got a hodgepodge of what’s new this week doesn’t quite nail it for me. Now, it might if you’re Taylor Swift and I just want to follow everything that you’re doing, but at some point if you were

Bjork Ostrom:: A celebrity, yeah.

Matt Molen:: To begin with, you’re not a celebrity. I don’t care about Rick Steve’s until I go try his Rue Claire audio tour in Paris once and then I realized, oh, this guy’s got it. So what is that for food? What is that for you with what you should be sending? It’s not necessarily what’s new because what’s new, it’s all new to them. I would venture to guess that whoever’s listened to me probably couldn’t name off their entire catalog and their own mother doesn’t know all the things that you’ve made. So it’s all new to your audience. So let’s frame it for them at the right time, at the right season with the right kind of message that ties to what they signed up for.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yep, that’s great. One of the things that you just pointed out that I think is important to remind everybody of is that one of the opportunities with email that exists different than social, I think is the ability to even through a automated series that you set up and that just always runs point people to your shining stars. So as quickly as possible, people join and a week in two weeks, in three weeks in, they’re starting to get the pieces of content that you are most proud of that perform the best that people have the best success with. And you can do that to some degree in social. You can call back to something, but not in the same way where you can’t have something on Instagram where every new follower who signs up is entered into this series. That just doesn’t exist in the way that it does with email, which is another one of the benefits is you can set up this system that is going to be serving you, but also anybody who signs up right off the bat and it just doesn’t exist in other platforms or in other places. I love that fact, that

Matt Molen:: Aspect of it, and that’s part of telling your story. So you got this person who was transactional that was interested in the cottage cheese pizza. How do you then explain who you are? Well, they’re not going to listen to your whole backstory. They don’t care that you worked as a personal trainer for 25 years when they just came for a recipe. The way that you do that is by leading them down a path to where they start to care that for most food creators is by delivering your very best food content that segment or that individual would be interested in.

Bjork Ostrom:: Yeah, that’s great.

Matt Molen:: I know that you have a lot of folks that listen to your podcast that are familiar with email marketing or perhaps they’ve heard my shtick before and I just want to mention to them that if you are thinking that, okay, I’ve heard this all before, I need you to just pause for a second and think back through these fundamental principles that we’ve been talking about because it happens over and over and over again. Everybody’s looking for the shiny new silver bullet, and I’m telling you that is really comes down to grow your list in the way that Bjork and I have been talking about today. Second, think through what you’re going to send in the order that it makes sense to send it. There’s tons of information out there about evergreen sequences, about creating automations that go to certain audiences. If you want to know more about that, come see me. But there’s lots of information about that. Figure out how to deliver on your brand promise and explain who you are and how you’re different at that point. If you do those things, rinse and repeat, you will make more money. Raptive is quoting 40% increases on RPMs, on newsletter clicks that are IDed. Mediavine. I haven’t seen their numbers, but I know it’s something similar. So you will make more money by sending more emails. So going all the way back to our first principles. I know everybody’s wanting some super duper whizzbang new thing, but we are core principles here and that is list growth, send more, get more clicks and make more money.

Bjork Ostrom:: Love that. There’s going to be a group of people who think, I love the idea of that. I feel like I don’t have time for it or I don’t have the expertise. And the good thing is you have some solutions for them. So can you talk about what your current offerings are under the Email Crush umbrella? I know that you referenced them a little bit, but as we come to the end, I want to give a little moment for you to talk through how you work with creators, bloggers, both with kind on-demand training and then also it sounds like some work to help people actually stand these processes up within their business.

Matt Molen:: Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, I’ve had a course for a long time Email on Autopilot. I keep updating it. It is still very relevant if you are interested in the main things that we talked about here, which is list growth, what to send that will get opened and clicked, how to automate it so you don’t break your back doing this stuff all the time. And basically the system, my experience, Bjork, is that bloggers are really good at systems. That’s how they get the reliability and if it’s just simply if they’re not good at email yet, it’s just because I haven’t built the system. So I’m offering a system whether it’s perfect, it’s a start. It’s a place to start. So that’s emailcrush.com/emailonautopilot.com if you go check that out. I do one-off consulting with folks that want me to do a deeper dive into what they have going on, and then basically I get in there and act like a know-it-all and tell you what I would do if I were you. And that’s a six to eight week engagement, kind of a personalized coaching experience. And then I have an agency I haven’t really talked too much about because it’s been all word of mouth and it’s for people with a lot more traffic where I have a done for you services for food greater specifically, if that’s something that you’re interested in and you have 30,000 email subscribers or half a million page views a month, email me and we could talk and see if it’s the right type of thing for you of what you’re interested in. But I appreciate the opportunity to be on here with you and to talk about my second favorite topic. First being, oh, my fantasy football team. Of course, you didn’t even ask that. I know it’s not the season, but I am thinking about which

Bjork Ostrom:: You’ve won in your fantasy before.

Matt Molen:: I have one once.

Bjork Ostrom:: So if people want to email you, what is the best place is the best way to do that, go to your site, or was there a specific email I should use or

Matt Molen:: [email protected] will get to me directly. I do invite everybody to go get that calculator. It’s free. That’s emailcrush.com/rpm-calculator. Go get that.

Bjork Ostrom:: Cool. That’s great. Matt, thanks so much for coming on again. Really great to talk to you and we’ll have to have you back on soon. Thank you.

Matt Molen:: Thank you, sir.

Emily Walker: Hello there. Emily here from the Food Blogger Pro team. We hope you enjoyed listening to this week’s episode of the podcast. Before we sign off today, I wanted to mention one of the most valuable parts of the Food Blogger Pro membership, and that’s our courses. In case you don’t already know, as soon as you become a Food Blogger Pro member, you immediately get access to all of our courses here on Food Blogger Pro. We have hours and hours of courses available, including SEO for food blogs, food photography, Google Analytics, social media, and sponsored content. All of these courses have been recorded by the Food Blogger Pro team or some of our industry experts, and they’re truly a wealth of knowledge. We are always updating our courses so you can rest assured that you’re getting the most up-to-date information as you’re working to grow your blog and your business. You can get access to all of our courses by joining Food Blogger Pro. Just head to foodbloggerpro.com/join to learn more about the membership and join our community. Thanks again for tuning in and listening to the podcast. Make it a great week.