We’re Nothing Without Our List: What Kept Healthy Foodie Girl Afloat When 60% of Their Google Traffic Disappeared with Shawna & Ella Clark

Allea Grummert (00:12)
Hey there, welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Ali Grimert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert, and founder of the Done For You Email Marketing Agency, Duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers.

Be prepared for some advanced email talk as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

Shawna and Ella are the mother-daughter duo behind Healthy Foodie Girl, where they create delicious, lighter recipes from high-protein favorites and creative cottage cheese recipes to easy everyday meals and healthier takes on comfort food. Together they share their love of food and cooking, creating flavorful, approachable recipes that make healthy eating feel easy and enjoyable.

So I met the two ladies behind Healthy Foodie Girl at the start of the summer in Boise, Idaho at Kids Craft and Commerce event. We bumped into each other during like some little social interaction in between sessions. And now we’re here and we get to learn from them and learn more about their story and the strategies that they have with email. Ladies, welcome.

Ella Clark (01:41)
Thank you. Thanks for having me so

Shawna Clark (01:43)
So

excited to talk email. I know Ella’s excited about the techie.

Ella Clark (01:47)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (01:48)
And yeah, email is yeah, you need to jump on that party train because if not, it’s not gonna be a good situation.

Allea Grummert (01:55)
Guys, listener, they’re not talking to me. I’m already on that party train. They’re talking to you. so we were talking before the call. Shauna, you’re so sweet. You’re like Allie, it is your moment with email. And I and I was just curious, what is it about email? What’s changed in the last few years that you really have, you know, become favorable towards this marketing strategy maybe more than you were before?

Shawna Clark (02:17)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that happened is we started our blog and we didn’t know what we were doing. So we had to learn everything, right? And then we realized that we were making money through ads, which another thing, like everyone who’s online, they are selling something or they have a product that is outside of the food blogger world. And that’s one of those things that it took a hot minute to actually figure out, like, wait a second, why is our model different than everyone else’s?

So you really need to look at that and think, hold on a second, like what are we doing? And Google is changing search. And so we lost 60% of our Google traffic to AI overviews. And we were scaling really well and everything was going great. And then that happened. And prior to that happening, I had said to Ella, I had said, we need to grow our email list to a point where we can survive solely on our email list.

Well and then we lost our traffic. And honestly, it’s keeping us afloat because we’re getting so much traffic from email. We have so many different things that we’re sending out, different little little sequences.

Ella Clark (03:30)
little sequence of sale series.

Shawna Clark (03:33)
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s just if you’re not doing email

you need to do email because it’s the only thing that you can control and it’s the only way to get to your audience because if Google y you know, we’ve lost sixty percent of our Google traffic, what happens if we lose the other forty percent?

Ella Clark (03:51)
Still

need to be able to communicate with them and drive traffic to the blog.

Shawna Clark (03:55)
Yeah. I mean, it’s a business and I just I think email is amazing. I think it is it’s just as important as our website, the email list. And if you have those two things, you’re going to be fine. And if you don’t have those two things, you need to start doing the email. Especially if you have traffic coming to your site. You need to capture as much of those email people as you possibly can because there may be a day that they’re not coming to your site anymore. Then how are you going to get email signups?

Allea Grummert (04:24)
Right. How are you going to get people to, you know, funnel that traffic back to your site, get that revenue?

Ella Clark (04:31)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (04:31)
No,

Allea Grummert (04:33)
how how are you currently focusing your email strategy? Is it just driving traffic or do you have products as well?

Shawna Clark (04:40)
No, we’re in the midst the in between. The in between. We’re in the in the in between and we are trying to get ready to launch some ebooks, trying to figure that out, trying to also figure out we’re gonna launch a community and so like ad free because we wanna see but I don’t know how long honestly that’s going to last because if there’s a point where AI is taking over the internet and they’re getting the answers

Are people going to be visiting your site anymore? So I’m not sure. So that may be a short lived thing.

Allea Grummert (05:12)
Yeah. But something to experiment with.

Shawna Clark (05:14)
Yeah, definitely. So so we are d what

Ella Clark (05:18)
Primarily driving them to the site.

Shawna Clark (05:20)
Through email and whatever doing. What

was the goal?

Allea Grummert (05:24)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (05:27)
yes. Eventually

Ella Clark (05:25)
Where are we going? Driving

them back to the website but then eventually selling related things.

Shawna Clark (05:33)
That

they want based on tagging them with their interest so we know how to target them for the things that we’re say s going to sell and specifically sell certain things f for those people. However, we are in that we don’t know. Because the other problem is, is we have an email list that is incredibly engaged, but we’ve never really tried to sell them anything. So it’s

I mean, that’s not true. I mean, we do have Amazon links, but that doesn’t really count as selling. That’s more just like a recommendation of something that we’re truly using. I don’t look at that as like selling. I mean, I would think they would want our product because they’re coming for our recipes. However, I can’t say that this is gonna be a gold mined or not because I haven’t I haven’t done it yet. But that’s what I’m in the process. I’m trying to get three ebooks done before January and then try to launch them in January. Or you know January’s a great

great time of year for for healthy recipes and starting. So Puss is too busy with the holidays and stuff now. But that’s that’s the goal, but but that’s like I hope it works. But we

Allea Grummert (06:37)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Clark (06:38)
do have a strategy that is working.

Allea Grummert (06:40)
Yes. And that’s currently how that’s sending more emails. How many emails a week are you sending?

Shawna Clark (06:46)
We were sending three, bumping it up to four. But also the the email strategy that I wanted to share that is really also saving us is yes, we’re collecting emails. And this is one thing I would say. If you’re starting with your website, you need to experiment with a a either you’re if you’re doing a pop-up or an inline, whatever you’re choosing to do, you need to make sure that’s converting. Because otherwise

You’ve got that traffic, you need to capture it. Like I can’t stress that enough. And with our drop in traffic with the Google AI overviews, we’ve lost so much of our traffic that it’s taking longer to grow the email.

Ella Clark (07:25)
See those leaves.

Shawna Clark (07:27)
Yeah. So that’s some things that people should be thinking about is maybe you haven’t lost your traffic, but at some point you’re going to. I’m sorry. It’s just what’s happening. And so how do you capture, capture as much as you can now? It’s like SOS. If you’ve got it, grab it.

And then the other thing that we’re doing, which has actually helped us immensely, which I would consider to anybody that is doing YouTube, first of all, start a YouTube channel because I think that’s one thing AI is not going to be able to take over. But the other thing with a YouTube channel is you can create a guide, something related to whatever that video is on. Give them the guide. It turns into a landing page. They sign up for your email. We are probably getting

It it it varies, but about half of our email signups right now, because we’ve been doing this a long time. So don’t think that this is just a lot of Yeah.

Ella Clark (08:16)
Videos

Shawna Clark (08:18)
Don’t think that this is one video with one landing page because that’s not going to work. But what you need to look at is if you do that and you do that for enough time on enough videos, you will be getting email signups from every single one of those videos.

And so half of our email signups are actually coming in from YouTube. So I am so happy that I started doing that. That was like an aha moment a while ago.

Ella Clark (08:44)
half like they can be up to like three times more engaged on the click through rate so you them

Allea Grummert (08:49)
Less.

Ella Clark (08:49)
too because they’re more engaged. Yes. They’re

Shawna Clark (08:51)
And why are they more engaged?

Ella Clark (08:53)
targeted to market they’re watching a video on something they’ve selected to watch that they’re interested in and then if the offer is similar and you’re providing that content that they want versus just guessing or more generic.

Allea Grummert (09:05)
I love that. And then did you guys know I used to work in video production?

Shawna Clark (09:09)
No.

Allea Grummert (09:11)
So I’ve always been a huge proponent of video, like so even having a welcome video when people first opt in, things like that, just because that likability in that relationship building you can do with a stranger, but just over video is so much like they’re just it’s more potent in the sense of like you feel like you actually get to know this person, even if it’s just a minute and a half long. And so that kind of relationship building too probably means that when they’re joining your email list, they already feel like they know you.

A lot more than just some stranger on the internet.

Shawna Clark (09:41)
Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

Allea Grummert (09:44)
can I ask two questions? I’ve been holding on my questions. You ready? one, real quick, so for determining which kind of lead magnets or opt-in forms have been working, what kind of strategies have you done for testing or trying out different offers to get subscribers onto your list from your website?

Shawna Clark (10:03)
Yes. Well we know specifically they love high protein. That’s like and that’s also very trending right now. Yeah. And cottage cheese. We do a lot of cottage cheese. We know they like that. So one thing that you could do to answer this, like for anyone that’s out there, simply go to kit, use the MCP, and ask Claude.

To say what are my best click-throughs on the recipes that I’m sending out and have them have it do your top five. And from there, that is where you could build specific

Ella Clark (10:36)
But there’s

Shawna Clark (10:37)
landing pages for what they’re most interested in. You need to understand who your audience is and what they want. So that doing that little connector and really diving in, which would take so much longer if you had to do it yourself.

really helps you to understand and Ella’s even doing that. talk about your strategy about how the email’s going out now. You’re looking back at what worked last year. That’s really important.

Ella Clark (11:00)
yeah. Like before I would go back through all the pages and look at manually like all of the emails that we sent out and see what had the highest click-through. But you can use the MCP and be like what were the top click-through recipes last fall? So now I know what to send out. Like still sending out all the content, but like what needs to go out first that they liked the most for the most click.

Allea Grummert (11:21)
Six.

Yeah. What needs to go out first or what needs to be highlighted in a subject line. Yeah. Strategies like that.

Ella Clark (11:27)
Subject lines perform the best. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (11:30)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I love that. So, dear listener, if you’re wondering what the kit MCP is, it’s if you’re connected to Claude, wait, if you connect your kit, you can just ask Claude questions and it will go pull it from kit. It’s crazy sauce. I had it pull all the data for the last like 18 months or to compare different seasons. Like, okay, so these are the stats over the last three months when this new client, you know, after we set up their welcome sequence, this is what their broadcast look like. How does that compare to previous summers?

Because me just comparing it to when they started in December, totally different time of year, different content, different audience. And so that kind of tool, it’s truly incredible. You can have it like add a add a tag to everyone who clicked on a slow cooker recipe.

Ella Clark (12:15)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (12:16)
Isn’t it crazy?

Shawna Clark (12:15)
Yes, we’ve done

Yes, we’ve done that. Yes,

Ella Clark (12:19)
Yeah. Saved so much time with

Shawna Clark (12:21)
yes, yes. I think the thing we need to get across here though is that the MCP is super like first of all, I didn’t even know what an MCP was six months ago. So don’t be freaked out if you’re like, what are they talking about? Yeah. You just need to connect it. It is not that hard. And what I we’re using it with Claude. I don’t know if it does it, will it work with other other ones too?

Allea Grummert (12:41)
That’s a great question. I only use it with Claude. Yeah.

Shawna Clark (12:44)
Same. So the thing is is like these are tools that are actually helping that embracing the part of AI that’s actually helping humans. And this this has saved us so much time and energy and it’s made us better at our jobs. So yeah, if you’re hearing this and you’re like, I don’t know what that is, I don’t know how to do that, you watch a video. It’s not hard even and you can get it put together, there would be a really good YouTube video. yeah. How to how to set it up how to set it up to email.

Allea Grummert (13:13)
Yes.

Shawna Clark (13:14)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (13:18)
If you have been busy and not keeping track of all the updates happening at Kit this year, that’s okay. That’s why I’m here. I’m gonna gather those updates and share them with you. One of the big things that has happened this year is the Kit MCP. So this means you can actually connect Kit with Claude. And instead of having to like pull data from Kit and add to a GPT in order to help analyze your data and what’s working, you can actually just connect it directly to Claude and say, hey Claude.

Which of my last emails in this format or with this subject line have performed best as far as click rates go? And it will just go in your kit, gather that information, and report back to you. I recently did that. I asked about the different formats of how I’m sending out my podcast to my email list. And it said, actually, there’s really no difference between one way or the other. And I was like, great, thanks so much. So then I didn’t really have to worry about it. But if it had said, hey, using this button with this text actually performs better, then I would know that.

So I want make sure that you get the chance to sign up for kit if you’re not already a user and get used to it, because that is a tool that is available when you’re on the creator plan. So go to duet.co slash kit and sign up for my kit from scratch email series. It’ll make sure that you are up to snuff.

On how to use kit and how to get it set up and start working for you right away. If you are already a kit user, be sure to go connect kit with your Claude account. If you are an AI user, I highly recommend it. It does so much for you. If you want to say tag everybody who clicked this link in the last five emails, it’ll do it in a matter of seconds. It’s going to blow your mind. So if you are further along in kit and you’re already wanting to use it in that way,

Get in there, go for it. If you’re new to kit, go to duet.co slash kit to sign up for my free email series kit from scratch.

Well and even I had it do a review earlier this spring and I said review all of my nurture emails and see what feels on brand or off brand based off of my new updated personal branding or whatever. And it went through my nurture emails and it was like, like this service is ri sh you know, I think I think you’ve retired this. Like so I’ve trained AI to think like me and like my business, but it could go back through and say, Hey, are you still offering this product? At least like to give me a list to cross check and make sure everything is up to date. So super cool tool. The

Other big question I have for you before we dive into what I want to talk about next. But in beforehand, I want to ask. So when you decided email marketing is the thing that I want to dive in on, what were your steps from that? Because that can kind of feel nebulous. You’re like, do I grow my list? Do I email my list? Do I email them more? Do I start segmenting? Do I create a product? Like, how did you lean into it so that you felt more secure in the last few years’ time?

Shawna Clark (16:06)
Do you wanna take that one off?

Allea Grummert (16:08)
Take it Ella.

Ella Clark (16:09)
We’ve always been sending out an email when a new recipe comes out or when we update something and we were just sending like three a week, but then trying to dive into the sequences and more landing pages, like 30 cottage cheese recipes over five days, air fryer recipes just increasing like the types of emails but making them more specific. And then starting to segment them and send the more related things versus just three emails to everyone a week.

Shawna Clark (16:35)
But also

what I’m gonna say is that you we wanna make sure that there’s like a quick little like who we are and what we’re about. It doesn’t have to be super long, but remember they don’t know who you are and they’re getting whatever your landing page is, they need to know a little something about you. And so we make sure that that is there and then you can send them a welcome sequence after that. Do

Allea Grummert (16:55)
Mm-hmm.

Shawna Clark (16:56)
you have some cushion of they just signed up for, you know, save this recipe. They don’t know who you are. Thanks for

Another thing we’ve done. yeah. When they save this is actually I need to We need to we need to granular like tag this

Allea Grummert (17:13)
Again.

Shawna Clark (17:14)
granularly tag this better. But what we’re doing is with save this recipe, right? We’re s we’re do we look

Ella Clark (17:20)
Did

we tag that? No, no, it’s just automated.

Shawna Clark (17:22)
Okay. So yeah, so we’re send we’re sending them a welcome so they know who we are and then we’re like, thanks for saving the recipe. This is who we are. A little bit, not too much, because nobody wants to read that much. And then we give them the top five recipes that we think they would enjoy. So

Ella Clark (17:38)
The

top five saved recipes. If you want to check these out.

Shawna Clark (17:41)
Yes.

Another opportunity to click back to our site to get to know us a little better. So that’s another thing that

Allea Grummert (17:47)
I love that. And that’s in that template email that sends out the recipe.

Ella Clark (17:52)
No, it’s well

we have I think through Slickstream or whatever you’re using it sends them the recipe they’ve saved. But then if they’re tagged with like the save this recipe tag, then they just get an email from us.

Allea Grummert (18:04)
Yes. ‘Cause the way that I’ve set it up before is though I have like WP Forums as them to Kit and then from within Kit there’s like different custom fields or whatever, but goes into this email. But that would be a good place too to say, Hey, so glad you’re here. Where’s Shauna and Ella? Da da da da da And then and here’s what’s coming next. Those folks, as well as like the creator profile, creator network, they’re just much more cold. They don’t really know you. Right. Versus especially like if they came from YouTube.

Like you can see the complete difference of like if they’re introduced if you’re introducing yourself on from you to YouTube people and they’re I know, I know, I know, I’ve already binged eight videos. And it’s like that’s a cool vibe. But for the people who just came in from Save this recipe, that’s really cool. What we’ve done also done is sometimes we’ll send a second email afterwards that’s just saying, Hey, like, do you want more of our recipes? If so, click here. So allowing those people to kind of get the recipe and leave if they don’t want to be subscribed. Because that just impacts deliverability.

And it makes your welcome stats look dreer. If you’re like, no, all these lovely strangers who don’t want my emails are getting them and that doesn’t feel good. And like I said, it also affects your deliverability. So

Shawna Clark (19:10)
No, absolutely. I think the thing is is at this point we have more knowledge than we’ve been able to implement. So that other thing

Allea Grummert (19:17)
That’s a brag. That’s I love that.

Shawna Clark (19:20)
always learning. I mean that’s the crazy thing about this. We’re always learning. I mean when we first started I mean our our emails before to now. my gosh. But I’m gonna be able to say that a year from now. So that’s the thing is like we’re constantly learning and because email there’s so many amazing things that you can do with it. You just have to start somewhere and then improve it. Like we did a ton of landing pages with sequences and things.

in the very beginning and now we’ve gone back and we’ve looked at them and we’ve fixed them and we’ve made them better. So it’s one of those things that you just have to start and it doesn’t matter if it’s perfect. Ideally you just want to keep going with it and make it better.

Every time and you’re gonna constantly learn. It’s like that’s why I’m saying I feel like we’ve learned a lot of stuff. Like we need to ask more questions. Like you were saying, do you wanna get these recipes? That needs to be in there. Have we implemented that? No. Have we asked them specific questions of what they’re interested in? Like air fryer, yeah. That’s on the list.

Ella Clark (20:20)
That should be when the first

Allea Grummert (20:24)
yeah.

Tell me tell me about that list, guys. I have my own list of to-do. Yeah.

Shawna Clark (20:29)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (20:29)
My welcome sequence, I wrote it in twenty nineteen.

Shawna Clark (20:32)
Wow.

Allea Grummert (20:33)
And I’ve like added an email for when I started the podcast. But bef after this will no, it’ll be before this airs, I will have done a workshop.

That goes through like how my team roasted me. I had them do an audit of my own. Cause I’m like, like ask me the question, what is the purpose for my email marketing? Like I need a container for me to think through these things. Like ’cause I also have a nagging list of like, I hate my template. my gosh, I hate my template so much. I loved it three years ago, three and a half years ago when I got a rebrand, but now I’m like, why does it irk me so much? And just like that’s I knew it means something’s growing.

Shawna Clark (21:06)
You’re you’re growing and you’re learn I mean, that’s actually really good because honestly, if you’re looking back at something you did three years ago and you’re still thinking it’s genius, I’m gonna question that. Right. And and but it’s beautiful. We look back and we’re like, my gosh. Sometimes it’s like that

Ella Clark (21:20)
It’s amazing two days. I’m like, what

Shawna Clark (21:24)
was great, you know? I I think you have to embrace that and think, you know what? It was good at the time because it’s all I knew, right?

And at least I started and at least I knew something. And it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can see how to improve it. And you know and I’m telling you, you’re gonna go back from today, a year from now, and you’re gonna think, like I love the basic aha moments when I realize, like, why is that not in there? You know, something’s so simple.

Ella Clark (21:52)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (21:54)
Man, my list my list was long. But I just even going back to the idea that like we have it’s normal to have this list of to-dos because we’re constantly learning. If you’re in this space, we I mean, I was telling the gals beforehand, I was a personal finance blogger. I’ve just been learning for ten years about how to do this and that and this trend changes and this tool changes and board booster just disappears and you’re like, Okay, I’ll try something else. And you’re just like we’re riding the wave and we’re learning as we go. But that to be said, it’s just

Your to do list never really ends. And it that applies to email too. And that’s like why we exist as a company. It’s because people are like, I this has been on my list for four years. Can you just do it? And so yeah, like that’s totally normal.

Shawna Clark (22:36)
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I think the reality is any entrepreneur who’s got an online business, there’s way too many jobs. So you you need to actually sit down and prioritize what you’re gonna focus on because something isn’t going to be able to get the attention. And if if you’re not into being able to figure out email, that’s why you’re here and it’s brilliant because then someone can hand it off to you.

So there’s so you really do need to look at your business as a whole. You need to figure out what’s driving traffic, what’s making a difference. And you either need to lean into it yourself or you need to hire it to somebody because there’s no more there’s no more like just wait and see. There’s no wait and see, there’s gonna be no more Google traffic. Then what are you gonna wait and see? No deliverer or like what are you gonna like it’s it’s so important. It’s it’s so, so, so important.

Allea Grummert (23:24)
Yeah. And like I o I had to pay my team. Like they’re not working for free. I had to make that same investment. And then once I got the initial report back, I gave a good portion of the tasks to someone else. I was like, You can go update this setting. You can go do this. So then what’s left for me is the most important stuff. What messaging is missing? How might I rearrange my welcome sequence? Y’all, when I wrote my welcome sequence, I didn’t even have a website. There aren’t

The the click rate is abysmal because there’s nothing to click through to which is fine. It served its purpose. It’s still serving its purpose. It’s still currently in that state. But we’re gonna fix it eventually. But

Shawna Clark (24:00)
Yeah, but the thing is is you knew, you learn like that’s the thing. You I think the harder part too is is when you’re starting out, it’s a and we’re still kind of like in that space. At least there’s two of us, I will say that. But it is hard when you don’t have a team. I wish I had a team of twelve and I I could like kick back at the pool with a glass of rose and in an inner

Ella Clark (24:23)
There’s no

Shawna Clark (24:23)
two create a recipe for the part. But you know

You have to but the thing is is that you need to understand f understand foundationally how all aspects of your business works. Yes. But a quote from someone I absolutely love, which will not be named, but ’cause no no no gets really sick of me talking.

Ella Clark (24:46)
This one

Allea Grummert (24:46)
Is

it Mel Robbins?

Shawna Clark (24:48)
No,

no, no, no, not at all. No, it’s a friend of mine, really intelligent man that I knew I’ve known forever. And one of the things that he told me that has always stuck with me because I want to understand and I want to learn everything. And I do think that it is important that you have a grasp on all aspects of your business. But this is solid advice. He’s like, you do not need to know how to do everything as an expert. You just need to be smart enough to hire the expert to do the things you can’t do.

And that is so true. So

Allea Grummert (25:20)
Two.

Shawna Clark (25:21)
And if you can’t afford to get the expert when you’re starting, you just need to start. And you just need to

Allea Grummert (25:28)
Scrappy.

Shawna Clark (25:29)
you need to Yeah, we are we’re we are so.

Allea Grummert (25:32)
That’s how blogging is. Like everyone who’s ever started a blog is like, I’m just I’m gonna put this blood, sweat, and tears into this for a long time before I get acknowledged. yeah this space who’s, you know, been doing it for a long time got here because they like stumbled into it. Even

Shawna Clark (25:49)
no, no, no.

Allea Grummert (25:50)
when I st even when I started, I remember telling people like in awe of like, I can’t call myself I can’t say that I’ve been blogging for five years until I’ve been blogging for five years.

Like you just have to put in the miles. It’s not it’s not a quick achievement. And so and what did I do? I blogged for two years, barely. And then I started and then I hard pivoted it to a business instead and quit my job and all that. So one big thing

Ella Clark (26:16)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (26:16)
So what did you say? I love it.

Shawna Clark (26:21)
I was like, let me show you how to start a business from the ground up. Like, my God, didn’t know that this one was so involved. You know, let me show you

Allea Grummert (26:32)
yeah.

Shawna Clark (26:32)
how to grow a business from the ground up. Like

Allea Grummert (26:35)
Like I feel like I d I talk about this with people all the time who aren’t in this space. I’m just like, do you know how much work vlogging is? Like, do you know what people are doing or like what they’ve become experts at? It’s wild. but the big question I wanted to talk about today, which I haven’t even really teased out to dear listeners, the guys I should have. That would have been a really good hook. I didn’t hook it at all. But

Ella Clark (26:57)
So they have

Allea Grummert (26:58)
stay till the end in our last nine minutes of chatting about this. But

One of the things you shared with me when you were telling me about your email marketing is that you quote, treat your list like a community of friends, no matter how big it gets. And I want to talk more about this because y’all, friendships are my number one hobby. Like I don’t I play softball once a week, but I’m on a phone call with a friend like four days a week, just any friend, or getting coffee dates. And so I want to talk a little bit about friendship and then we can kind of transition into what that has looked like for your email list. Cool.

Shawna Clark (27:31)
Yeah.

Yeah. Do I get it?

Allea Grummert (27:33)
Well what are your what are your initial thoughts? What do you want to share with people that that kind of stirred up in you?

Shawna Clark (27:39)
Yeah. I mean, do you wanna do you wanna start with this? Or do you want me to start with this? Where do we wanna go with this? So you can Yeah, I think we’re like we’re

Allea Grummert (27:46)
I can ask more questions.

Shawna Clark (27:48)
gonna drop. We’re gonna drop. Some solid information, I promise. no, I think I think the thing is is when you when you’re starting with email, someone is signing up. What are they signing up for? In our case, they’re signing up for a recipe.

But there’s so much more to it than that. You want to build a relationship with these people so that they feel like they can reach out to you and ask you questions. And so much so that our readers literally email well, first of all, they’re the sweetest. And and sometimes they’re like, thank you for the recipes. They’re they’re the best. But I think the other thing is is like they literally reach out to me and they ask me, like, can you make this recipe for me? And

And the thing is is if it’s aligned with our blog, I do it. I totally do it. And my favorite one recently is from a reader who reached out and his his wife’s favorite muffin was a chocolate chip muffin. But very specific one. No banana. No banana. And no chocolate chocolate chip, but vanilla with chocolate chip. And it was her favorite muffin. And and I talked with him before and what I love though, he was like, I want to make this for her anniversary. And

Our anniversary. Thirtieth

Ella Clark (29:06)
Their thirtieth in

Shawna Clark (29:07)
anniversary because it’s her favorite muffin. Right. But wait. The anniversary was the next day.

Allea Grummert (29:12)
Call it.

Ella Clark (29:13)
You can’t do this to me.

Shawna Clark (29:15)
And

and I was like and I think he thought I was like Yeah,

Allea Grummert (29:18)
The magician?

Shawna Clark (29:20)
I don’t know, but I was like, You can’t do this to me because I actually wanna deliver this to you, but I cannot create a muffin in a day. And

Allea Grummert (29:26)
Fantastic.

Shawna Clark (29:28)
took it all with that and put it on the bug. But you know, so I said to him, I said, Look, I said I said, I’ll absolutely make this for you because it aligned with our brand, it was perfect and I was like, you know what, if he likes this, somebody else is gonna like this. So I explained to him that I couldn’t actually get it to him

the next day. But what I did tell him is that I would create it that week. And as soon as I had it, I would send him the recipe even before it went on the blog. And that’s exactly what we did. We photographed it, I think two days later. We sent him the recipe. And then I and then I said to him, then this is the important part where like back to like friends and stuff. This is really important. So I didn’t like I thought this was so

Such a sweet story that he wanted to do this for his wife that I wanted to share this with our email list, right? But I was like, okay, hold on. I need to like email him to make sure I can share his story because he’s gonna get really mad if I’m like sharing a story that he didn’t say I could say sure. Although I didn’t think he would mind, but super important. So I emailed him really quick and I said, Can I sh actually I went a step further. I said, Can I share this story on our blog post on our website? And can I email put this story in the email?

And he said, Of course, and let them know she loved it. And so the thing is here though, is putting it on your post, right? So somebody who comes along and finds your website and they read that, they’re gonna instantly know that you have a connection with your audience and think maybe they can reach out to you and maybe they can ask. And with our existing email list, they’re getting this email and they’re saying, Hey

They just made this for this person. Maybe if I email them, they’ll make something for me. And also, I want to finish this up, is I have had people email me things that there’s just no way I’m gonna make. Like let’s be real, I’m not gonna do it. Because it doesn’t align with something that I’m feeling like is a fit for our site. But you cannot leave it there. So what I will do is I will actually spend the time to try to put something together for them that I think might work.

And I say to them, but I’m very honest about it. I say, look, I haven’t tried this recipe, but I think if you do X, Y, as long as it’s not super complicated, right? Yeah. And I’m developing recipes every day. So I’ve got a like 99.9% chance this is gonna work out for them.

Allea Grummert (31:52)
So

Shawna Clark (31:53)
I send it to them and I say, listen, like I ha I thank you so much. I I can’t get to this one, but I’m going to give you this idea. I think this would work if you want to try it. I haven’t tried it. So I’m never leaving somebody ignored.

They’re never ignored. They’re always getting an answer back. And whether it’s like, you know, a s a an answer like that or an an answer where they’re getting something that, yeah, we haven’t really tried it, but you know what? Yeah. You you can try this. Because I think that sometimes they they don’t they they view it differently than how you view your list. So if you reach out or they reach out, you need to talk to them.

And you need to actually talk to them in a way that’s like you’re talking to a friend. And that’s another thing that we’ve done too with with the week. Yeah, bring it in.

Allea Grummert (32:45)
Tell me Ella.

Ella Clark (32:46)
that’s like SEO optimized for the recipe on the website will change it to be like a little blurp that’s more personal or like a little story or something going on like for the email that’s more personal than just like a generic text for the email like to promote it.

Shawna Clark (33:00)
But not super long.

Ella Clark (33:01)
No no like two to three sentences more personal though than the website.

Allea Grummert (33:06)
How do you make it personal? Like what are you willing to share? How are you kind of what’s the inspiration for that? Because you’re sending four emails a week.

Shawna Clark (33:13)
Yeah. Yeah. Well right now we’re doing three, but we’re adding a fourth. And then the other thing I’d like to bring up about that is I think you could actually send them one every day, but I think what I’m what we’ve this was last

Ella Clark (33:24)
The aha moment laps

Shawna Clark (33:26)
week, right? Is it doesn’t actually have to be a recipe. Like you could send something else.

Ella Clark (33:31)
Or

it doesn’t have to go to the whole list. You can send to like a smaller segment.

Shawna Clark (33:36)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (33:36)
You guys are becoming pros. I love this. Because like what does that do what does that do for you knowing I could just send something that’s not a recipe? What kind of creative ideas have you come up with?

Shawna Clark (33:45)
Well, it’s more that it frees the stress of having to put out another recipe, right? So I think what you could do is you could look at your list for the week and you could tease out like what is something like what I think we haven’t done this but we’re actually getting ready to work on this is like tips and tricks, right? So you could do some tips and tricks, but within the tips and tricks, you could have top three, I don’t know, Amazon something.

Allea Grummert (34:12)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (34:13)
But

Also, you’re not just linking the links. There’s a picture of you holding the product and there’s a personal story about why you use that product. If you’re just linking links for the sake of linking links, you’re not gonna get any of

Ella Clark (34:25)
But if you’re holding the product in the image, yeah.

Shawna Clark (34:28)
Yeah,

so we do that a lot too. So we’re looking on putting like a master helpful list together that gives them some value of some things that and we never recommend anything that we don’t use or don’t believe in. So that’s super important too.

Ella Clark (34:42)
Or we’ll send them videos from our YouTube channels. Yes, yes. That’s a good one that isn’t a recipe and then promote back to that.

Allea Grummert (34:49)
Yeah.

Ella Clark (34:50)
Or we’ll give them like if we have a guide that we made as like a lead magnet, we’ll sometimes just send that to the list as well. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (34:57)
Yeah, this is this is the menu of ideas. It’s like if I’m creating something that’s going out into n like a new territory, have I shared it with my existing people? Yes.

Shawna Clark (35:05)
Yeah. And honestly share it before it goes out because you don’t want them seeing it out there thinking, Why didn’t I get it?

Allea Grummert (35:12)
Yeah.

And it’s like an answer at a perk. well, first of all, I just want to point out reflect back to you how much integrity I hear in your work.

Shawna Clark (35:21)
thank you.

Allea Grummert (35:22)
Yeah. That like you reply back to every email. Like that just says so much about who you are and the kindness I’m sure that you reply with. And that’s I know that there are people listening to this going, I don’t want more people emailing me or thinking, How the heck does Shauna have time for that too? Like

Shawna Clark (35:39)
Yeah. But it listen though.

Allea Grummert (35:44)
But the but the trade off is good.

Shawna Clark (35:47)
Here’s but here’s the thing you actually need to like you actually have to reframe this. And what I’m gonna say to anyone who’s listening, and I don’t care if your email list is a million subscribers or two, it doesn’t matter. Here’s the thing. You have the list because they want to they want your stuff, they want to know you, they want you. So like you’re nothing without this list. Like

That’s the thing that I think is so crazy to me. Like, even if we had a million subscribers, we’re nothing without that list. That list is why we exist, right? So, like, yes, yes, sometimes I’m exhausted. But you know what? GPT can help me write a response letter when I tell him little chicken scratch of what I want it to say, and he can help me write that email faster. And you need to respond to these people because

They’re your gold. And the more that they know that you’re there for them, and the more they know they can reach out to you, the the this isn’t about like should I or do I have time. This is about the whole reason you exist as a food blog is because of these people. Because Google traffic, yes, that’s helpful, but we don’t know how long we’re gonna have that. So the email list is the most crucial thing, and if you don’t treat

those people as I am so lucky I am here today because of those people.

Ella Clark (37:16)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (37:17)
You gotta come from a place of gratitude. It’s true. Like I think I think sometimes when people scale, they forget. Yeah. You know, because they’re like

Ella Clark (37:26)
The people that got them there and making the recipes and coming to the site.

Shawna Clark (37:30)
Yeah,

you never wanna forget that because you’re they are the only reason you are where you are. And so if you change that framing a little bit, you’re gonna be so happy to respond to them because with be happy that they’re asking questions. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re so sweet. But I think I think that’s the mindset. And I even said that to Ella the other day. I said, I don’t care if we have a million subscribers, we

always need to come from this place because they are the ones that are buying gonna buy our cookbook. They’re the ones that are gonna show up. They’re gonna buy my ebook. They’re gonna buy whatever we’re gonna create. But I’m not looking at it in a sense like that. I’m just more like, these are our people. They’re here for a reason for us and for our you know, not all of them are here for us. And not the rest of these. But no

Allea Grummert (38:20)
They unsubscribe, it’s fine.

Shawna Clark (38:22)
Exactly

they’re like, can’t deal with those two.

Allea Grummert (38:26)
And then like go find less elsewhere. This is this is what you get here.

Ella Clark (38:30)
Right.

Allea Grummert (38:31)
I just think of like every friendship that you’ve had. Like one of I’ve known one of my best friends for nineteen years. We met the day we met in call like the first day of college. And just thinking about all of the touches and conversations that we’ve had in that amount of time and the amount of prioritization that it takes to like maintain those friendships. And some friendships I talk with them once a week, sweet Jenna.

I I talk to her on the phone maybe once a year, but I go back and I see her when I’m in Nebraska. And she had a baby two days after I left in May. And I was like, I’m coming back a whole week before my brother’s wedding. I’m coming to see that baby. Like you prioritize things. So you’re prioritizing how you respond to your audience because the actions that you set out with or the decid the decision of we are always going to reply and we’re always going to feel this type of gratitude, like

You’ve made that decision and that impacts your business. How even like the way that you create your content or the way you sit down to write an email, it’s way more fun when you’re like, guess who I get to write today? Like I love writing an email to my list. I’m like, I don’t know if they think I’m as funny as I think I’m funny. And I’m like, that’s on you. It’s just I know that I’m funny, best best of luck. whether you get the joke or not. But yeah, it’s it takes the chore out of it.

And it also adds so much humanity to it when you think about the actual people receiving it.

Shawna Clark (39:55)
absolutely, a hundred percent. And I think the other thing too is back to your thing of like, my gosh, another email I have to respond to. And sometimes that’ll happen where like they’ll ask me a specific thing about the recipe and in my brain I’m like, that is so obvious. Like, you know, but here’s the reality that I wanna point out here is at least they’re not asking chat.

Or or Claude, they’re actually coming to me. So if you really look at that, that’s huge. Like I may think it’s very obvious in in that certain circumstance or whatever, but like, you know what? At least they’re not thinking I’m gonna go to Claude or Chad Trusting

Ella Clark (40:34)
Yeah.

Shawna Clark (40:36)
me. Yeah. And so that’s so huge. So remember that too when they email you with something that you think is is very simple that you’re like, Why are they emailing me this or whatever? But you know what?

Thank gosh they’re emailing me and not Claude.

Allea Grummert (40:50)
Yes. I love it. You too. I can see why your audience loves you.

Shawna Clark (40:54)
Ha ha ha ha.

Allea Grummert (40:55)
That was not a question. I already knew that, but I can really, really see it all fleshed out with how much you care about your audience. What you care about your work and the quality of experience that people have with you? Yeah. Ella, can we close that one loop because it’s gonna drive me nuts? How do you sit down to write an email and make it feel personal? I just we that’s a that was a lingering question I had. How do you decide what to share to make things personal in your

Ella Clark (41:19)
I think we’ll just kinda see like what’s going on in our life at the time we’re like we just picked up strawberries at this local farm like

Allea Grummert (41:26)
Yeah. I

love it.

Ella Clark (41:28)
Maybe that’s not right in the beginning of the blog post for SEO purposes. Like maybe it’s in the blog post, maybe it’s not, but instead of these blueberry or these strawberry muffins, but for SEO. It’s like a whole story. Or include a photo. Yes. Yes. Or even us holding the recipe. Yes. Like we made our chicken parmesan, but then we held it up on a plate and like put that in the email instead of the recipe photo. But the

Shawna Clark (41:52)
The other

but the other thing that I wanna s that I wanna say about that that I think is really, really important is like I’m a recipe creator because I have a passion for it and I’m like obsessed with it and I’m really good at it. So the thing is is that sometimes there’s a story. Like just as people are reaching out to me, there’s a story about a recipe they want. There’s also a story like I’m a very creative person versus this other stuff. So

example back to her your question. I’m circling back there. Ella and I were at a restaurant and she was she ordered a burger that was a ricotta burger, right? And she loved it and she thought it was amazing. So what did I think in that moment? I was like, you know what, we need to make this for the blog but I need to use cottage cheese, right? So

Ella Clark (42:37)
We have to mention this.

Shawna Clark (42:39)
No, but the thing is is what then happens to your point of how do you come up with the email and make it personal?

Ella Clark (42:46)
Stop

Shawna Clark (42:46)
That was the story.

Allea Grummert (42:48)
Yeah, what’s your inspiration behind it? Of course.

Ella Clark (42:51)
And then we put the photo like

Shawna Clark (42:53)
We

literally took the photo of her at the restaurant with the burger. It was like and now we c

Ella Clark (42:57)
also

in the blog post, like in the why you’ll love it section, like I think that human element, even in the blog post, if you do have a blog and not just the email, to like put that on the blog so it’s Yeah.

Shawna Clark (43:09)
So

but I think that I think that like yes

But trust me, there are many stories about how these recipes come to be. And so but the thing is is like because I’m invested in that, because that’s what I love to do. Like I create them and so like, I love that. And so there’s usually some craziness happening in my brain that’s there’s a reason it’s being created. Or we went out and like I love going out to eat just for the simple fact of I don’t know what’s gonna pop in my head that I think I need to create, like this burger, right? And so that

It’s just a obvious how do you make this personal? Well, let me tell you, this story actually happened. So Yeah. So I think you can lean in to your personal story about it, right? Or you can come up with the other things. But I did want to share that because that was actually genuinely something that happened.

Allea Grummert (44:04)
Having some sort of like menu of ideas to choose from. Like what is something we did today or yesterday? What like going back and looking at your camera roll? Love that.

Ella Clark (44:12)
Wait,

Shawna Clark (44:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Allea Grummert (44:15)
I am curious. You that ricotta burger ended up becoming a business expense, right? You wrote that on? It’s

Shawna Clark (44:21)
Yeah, totally right.

Allea Grummert (44:22)
like and they wrote about it in an email. Thank you, thank you. You like take that IRS I would like to write that.

Shawna Clark (44:30)
I

think the trip to wine tasting in France, yeah, somehow I’m gonna have to work that into a recipe.

Allea Grummert (44:35)
We could talk about that. We could do talk to your talk to your CPA about Per Diem. Because

Shawna Clark (44:39)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Allea Grummert (44:41)
I created so much content while I was overseas. So ended up getting a little bit of a a retoff myself. So ladies, I want to be respectful of your time. thank you so much for sharing everything you did today. I know we could have we could have gone around two, to be honest. I’d have to eat lunch and then we could come back.

But before we wrap up, share with solicitors how can they follow along with you? How can they join your email list and reply back to your emails and get their very own muffin recipe?

Shawna Clark (45:09)
Yeah. Yes.

Ella Clark (45:12)
You can

find us on our website, healthyfoodiegirl.com. We also have a YouTube channel, Healthy Foodie Girl, and then an Instagram at www healthyfoodiegirl.

Allea Grummert (45:22)
Go.

I will link to all of those in the show notes. Ladies, thank you so much for your time. I’m so glad that we met this summer and I know that we’ll stay in touch.

Shawna Clark (45:29)
Absolutely the picture.

Ella Clark (45:30)
Yes!

Allea Grummert (45:31)
Son.

Thanks so much for listening to Happy Subscribers in our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action, even if it’s a small change, so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously, thank you guys. If you want to hear more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with your email subscribers, be sure to subscribe to Happy Subscribers so you don’t

Miss an episode. If you have a few seconds, I invite you to share this episode link with a friend or post it on social media so your peers and community can benefit from it as well. And if you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate if you’d leave a written review of the podcast, since that helps more people hear about it. And I believe we need more creators sending more valuable emails to their audience with more confidence. If you want to reach out to me directly, the best way to do that is to join my email list through one of my top freebies listed in the show notes. You’ll get regular emails from me that are packed with value. And if you hit report

Reply to any of those emails, it’ll land in my inbox, and I can’t wait to chat with you there. Until next time, let’s Duett.