How Pinch of Yum Creates a Product People Actually Want with Jenna Arend

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by AI

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 Allie 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.

Hey, hey, welcome to the Foodie Email Series, a special mini series here on Happy Subscribers. I have been dreaming about pulling together this series for a while. We’re gonna do a few email deep dives with some of the amazing food bloggers I’ve had the joy of working with over the years. In this series, you’re gonna hear from food bloggers who are trying new things, have tested things over the years, whether it’s with automations or how they sell things to their audience, boosting their traffic, growing their list, being consistent with sending a weekly newsletter, and even how they use team members to help them execute on some of these big strategies.

My hope is that you’re gonna walk away with some fresh ideas, some encouragement, and some opportunities for places where you can adjust your own email marketing strategy and try these things for yourself. Because your email list is full of opportunities and your subscribers are waiting to hear from you. I believe that you have really incredible content that they will benefit from. We just need to get more eyeballs on that content and earn more money so that you can continue to succeed as a business.

And if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, Allea, can you just take a look at my email marketing for me? Can you tell me what I’m doing right? Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong? The answer is yes. So I do this for clients all the time, but the way that we can do it in a really quick session is a free 15 minute coaching call with me where we can talk about where you’re stuck, what you want your email marketing to do for your business and how I

might be able to help. So spots are limited each month for these free coaching calls. So you’ll wanna head to duet.co slash apply for my one question application to snag your spot. All right, let’s get into the episode. Hi, hi everyone. Today I have a very special guest with me, someone I met in 2019. I can’t believe it. And she and her team hold the title of being my very first food blogging client.

I don’t even know if you know that, Jenna. I don’t know that. That’s awesome. I am excited for you guys to meet Jenna Ehrend. She is the general manager at Pinch of Yum, a food blog with thousands of recipes and millions of monthly visitors. She helps manage content production and lead growth initiatives on the website, social and email. And I’ve been able to see how Pinch of Yum has grown and shifted and tried new things over the years when it comes to their email marketing. So I’m so excited to sit down with Jenna and learn more about these strategies, how you connect with your readers and the decisions you’ve over the years. So Jenna, welcome to happy subscribers.

Jenna Arend: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Allea Grummert: Is there anything I didn’t share in your bio that’s important for people to know about you?

Jenna Arend: I don’t think so. My job has always been and probably will always be kind of like a jack of all trades. So I kind of like dip my hands into everything. Yeah, I think you covered it.

Allea Grummert: Well, we are fellow Midwesterners. We’re up in Minnesota. I’m from Nebraska. Yeah. And as far as Jack of all trades, I also know that you’re a designer because I’ve seen what we’re going to talk about with our plans. And I’m like, I’m sorry. What? Yes. so we know The Pinch of Yom was one of the first professional food blogs. And not only that, but Lindsay and her husband, Bjork, they went on to create Food Blogger Pro where they teach others how to start and scale their food blogs. So while Lindsay is planning the content and creating recipes for the blog, I’m so curious to get into the business side of how you use email marketing. What is your first thought when it comes to email marketing for Pinch of Yum? What’s something that just feels like people need to know this?

Jenna Arend: man, I feel like Lindsay, so Lindsay as you know, the like the Facebook blog, really from the beginning has always been such a personal brand. feel like most food blogs are, know, obviously that way, unless you’re a, know, Bon Appetit or Food52 or something like that. the thing that I love about our emails, and that I would say is just how personal they are kind of just a direct line from Lindsay to readers because you know, you can share something on Instagram, like a real or stories and, um, and connect with readers in that way. But it’s such a wide swath of people you’re reaching who don’t necessarily follow you. So you can still be personal, but what I love about email is that it’s people who have really opted in to wanting to receive that content. And they’re like receiving Lindsay’s voice too. So that’s what I love about our emails, um, is just the personal touch behind them and that there’s very, for lack of better term, like targeted, not like targeted in marketing, but they’re very targeted towards like what’s in season right now or what is Lindsay cooking in her kitchen right now?

Or what just like what is our team using and loving and our team being a very small team of three of us. but yeah, I think that’s why we put a lot of thought and intention and planning around our emails and they become even more thoughtful and intentional over time. And so I feel like we are in a good groove and it’s been fun to produce them. yeah.

Allea Grummert: Yeah, I love it. I just want to ask about the planning. I’m curious about how, right, because there’s kind of the wide swath of planning of like what type of content, what seasons. But then I’m also curious about how you gather those personal details from Lindsay. So let’s maybe start with the first one. Like how are you looking at your email marketing strategy? You know, on a live, timely basis of what’s going on in the season or what you’re promoting?

Jenna Arend: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we obviously have two buckets. So we have the emails that are more automated. We use ConvertKit, so within sequences and automation. So there’s that bucket that are always running, ⁓ which I’m sure we’ll talk about that too today. But the other bucket is the live emails, the broadcasts that are going out throughout the week.

And so we stick to a pretty steady schedule. We kind of have, we’ve created three different categories or buckets of emails. So we have a recipe spotlight. So it’s an email that’s about one specific recipe. We aim to do that once a week. And then we have a roundup that goes out every Sunday that has a roundup of recipes that are seasonal or just kind of what we’re thinking about for that time of the year.

And then we also have a bucket for like products and affiliate marketing, which is like once a month. So it’s not very often, if even that, we don’t want that to be the focus of all of our emails. We want to really just focus on delivering recipes. So those are, we kind of look at it in those three buckets. And so our goal is one roundup a week and one recipe spotlight a week at minimum. Maybe there’s more some weeks, but that’s at minimum. And usually the recipe spotlight is the new recipe for that week.

Our schedule for posting content is usually one new recipe a week. So if you don’t have a new recipe a week, we’ll take something from the archive of a recipe that maybe was popular that week last year, or is something that has like seen a resurgence on social or within Lindsay’s own kitchen, what she’s making. So that’s kind of how we try to create buckets as much as you can to make things kind of easier and know what to expect. And as far as like the technical side of it too, we do use co-schedule as one of the tools that we use just for all of our content to plan out all of our blog posts. And so we also use it to plan out. We also put our our kind of email spots in there too, so we can see all of our content planning at once. So yeah.

Allea Grummert: I love that you have those buckets because the way that I’ve explained it to people before too is once you kind of know the format of the emails going out, it’s way easier to populate them with ideas versus like, yes, what do I send this week? And so even just picking like these are the two types of buckets of content, the types of emails I want to send out just makes it, yeah, it takes a lot of the decision making out of it. And then another on top of that deciding, and these are the two days of the week they go out. You don’t have to think about it anymore.

Jenna Arend: Yeah, exactly. Especially especially if you’re a small team like us or even just like one person doing it yourself. It just makes my like my own schedule so much easier of you know, knowing which days I’m drafting this email or scheduling this email. It just it just simplifies everything. It feels less less chaotic on our calendar. So we’ve really liked it.

Allea Grummert: that’s so good. And so I know that email marketing is a lot of for a lot of creators kind of falls to the bottom of the list of things to do behind like reading content, updating content, redoing photos. What’s the discussion been like within the pinch V.M. about the value of email marketing, especially because things are written by Lindsey or it feels like they are. We can get into that, too. But what were the discussions that led to this being such an important part of your business?

Jenna Arend: Yeah, I mean, we’ve always. Our email marketing has shifted a lot over time, but we’ve gotten into a more consistent flow in maybe the last two years. And I do feel like part of that was because of the Google’s like third party cookie kind of conversation. was always going to happen and then it didn’t happen. Maybe it’s going to happen again. It just, anyway, that was kind of the push for us to really make sure that we’re building our email list is because it’ like the one thing that we can control and own. We can’t control if a Google algorithm bumps our air fryer chicken from one to 11 or whatever. Like there’s things out of our control for that channel, but for our email list, like we can still deliver content directly to those. And we have like, from my perspective, and like my understanding is like we have a really good open rate.click rate and so to know that we have those things, we want to then just build on top of those and continue to utilize that.

So I that was kind of the initial like push towards really investing more time in it. But it’s also just been fun to like it’s just been it’s fun to be able to fold that in. We’ve been trying to look at our content overall just more holistically through all the channels. And so if we’re you know, sending out a roundup that week. Okay, let’s make sure that we’re slotting in those recipes to share on Facebook and maybe putting them on the homepage and making sure it’s aligning with maybe like an archived reel that Lindsay’s sharing on Instagram that week. So, and that maybe leads into like, how are we creating this content is like also looking at, oh, it looks like Lindsay is going to share a reel for.

I’ll just say use this recipe as an example again, like for the air fryer chicken, it’s gonna be a real coming up that she’s gonna reshare it. And so it’s a good opportunity then to maybe include that in the roundup on Sunday so that somebody who has multiple touch points with Pinch of Yum, it starts to be like, I keep seeing this air fryer chicken. Like it was in the email, then it was on Instagram, I saw it on Facebook and look, it’s on the homepage of the blog. Like it starts to kind of create more of like a holistic feel of like these channels are all connected.

Allea Grummert: Yeah. I love that. I think that there’s often a fear of like, well, I already shared that and I don’t want to bother people. I’m always like, no one’s going to be mad about seeing your lasagna recipe a third time. Like, you know, so with the air fryer chicken. And so that kind of goes into even the idea of frequency, which I learned when I was in school for advertising, right? There’s reach, there’s how many people you can reach and then there’s frequency.

how often are they seeing something? And yeah, so that definitely kind of plays into that strategy as well. But I love it that it is holistic and that you’re able to use it, you know, your content strategy to make it all feel connected, which also reduces the workload and mental bandwidth of your team. Yes, absolutely. So being a copywriter and there I’ve had seasons where I’m like, I don’t even want to write my own emails. Like I’ve been so swamped and I want to outsource it.

Can you share, I got back to writing my own emails, but it was like a little like come to Jesus of like, girl, no one else writes like you. How are you, what’s the process internally? And this could be like, Ali, she writes in a Google Doc, but how are you getting Lindsay’s voice into the emails? Is she writing them? Does somebody else kind of draft it and she edits? Yeah, it’s actually a little different based on which content bucket we’re kind of talking about. So I am the first person to draft an email. So like from the beginning,

I’m the one bringing it together and we actually draft it in co-schedule. We try to keep everything in one place. And so I will draft it within co-schedule. ⁓ So if it’s a new recipe, I will go in and draft the email. So for recipe spotlights, it’s kind of taking like these are words that Lindsay has already written and I’m just going to transfer that into an email form.

and write preview text and then add some extras. We always add some related recipes and some images and things like that. Also, I would maybe used to try to write something from scratch that is in Lindsay’s voice, but then was realizing this isn’t very efficient. Great words about this have already been written, so I’m just going to use that to make the email.

For the roundups each week, am kind of like content directing those. And so I’ll think of the theme for the week. So I will write those. The nice thing is that I’ve worked with Lindsay for nine years now, which is crazy. so I, not to toot my own horn, I feel like I have a good sense of like her voice. Like I have been in her words for like nine years. And so I’ll usually like write.

those emails and draft them up, but she always goes in and you know, makes edits and reviews it. Yeah. So that’s how it kind of, yeah, go ahead. yeah, I was gonna say even just at the point of like as the blog post is being written for her to have her personal note written at that time for you to be able to use later. I mean, that’s just the process of, ⁓

Like for when I finished recording a podcast episode, like I write up all of the show notes right then and there. So it’s fresh. And so then my team is like, we can just copy and paste that into an email. And so the not everything has to be written from scratch. And we got thank you for sharing that because yeah, it’s like, how does one write in somebody else’s voice? And so it’s fun to hear that Lindsay is touching those emails as well. a great, is a.

good mark of responsibility, but also it’s prioritizing the care you have of connecting with your subscribers in a really authentic way. absolutely. And then I also know she does her her coffee dates. Yeah. That’s super fun too. Can you tell people what a coffee date is? Cause I’m like, yeah, talk about getting personal. Yeah. I mean, it was years ago, but like blogging, feel like food blogs specifically used to be like, have a ton of personal story within the blog post itself.

And then I feel like we moved to like adding like a jump to recipe buttons. You can just skip all over that. And now I feel like it’s moving more into like, let’s just simplify the blog post. And so the coffee dates are like, I would say in a way of bringing that back a little bit, but we’re not, we’re not making you read it to get to a recipe. ⁓ And so it’s just, yeah, a way for Lindsay to connect with readers. talking about, you know, what

maybe what she’s cooking or what like maybe there’s some products that she’s really liking. Or I think last month, she talked about, you know, like her kids being sick and what that’s been like for her own mental health. And so just a point of connection. And that’s, you know, a blog post on the blog that lives there, but then it also it does get sent via email. There are many readers obviously still who like have

follow Pinch of Yum for like the 15 years that Pinch of Yum has been here. so they, you know, obviously there’s like this personal connection with Lindsay. And so ⁓ I think it’s nice to still have those points of connection to, same with on Instagram, like with stories, especially, I feel like you get from all creators, like stories are a place where you can just share more of like your day to day real life instead of just like a rest.

on the feed. but yeah, that’s kind of where the coffee dates were maybe born out of, but also kind of like reflective of where I feel like good blogging is now where it’s shifted from being super personal in the blog post. And it’s nice to still have this coffee date to be able to keep sharing that. So yeah.

what I love that it’s called a coffee date. So whenever I see it come through my inbox, I’m like, oh my gosh, a personal update for Lindsay. And yeah, like it’s kind of branded in its own way by having a name like that. So yeah, I think that that’s a great response to, and it’s not even a response. You’ve been doing it for a long time, but it is even more valuable now. And then to be able to send it out over an email instead of just hoping people see these updates on social. And it also shows Lindsay as a creator.

because she wants to sit and write and share her story. so that that kind of time and attention then shared with her audience makes us feel as readers like she wants to share these things with us. She wants to spend time with us. Like it does feel like we’re on a coffee date when we read those. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And I feel like the other and this is not, you know, related to email, a lot more of the past year or two. feel like on Instagram, Lindsay has shared a lot more of

like people’s stories that they share of cooking pinch of yam recipes in their kitchen and just kind of resharing them on her stories. I think that’s like a huge bright spot of like being able to get that personal connection, not like from us to readers, but to like receive it back and see like, ⁓ you’re like making these in your kitchens and like, it’s, it’s just, it’s really fun to see. Like, I just really enjoy seeing those. Yes. Well, I know that you guys work as a team, but so many

content creators are kind of solo operating in their kitchen and behind their computer. And so to have that like that positive feedback loop to be able to hear back from your audience and see the impact you’re making. Like as much as you, I’m saying this to the listener, as much as you can like create that within your business, like asking questions in an email or asking questions on Instagram or asking people to share, like it’s just going to keep you creatively afloat.

and emotionally afloat when you’re you’re busting your tail, creating new recipes and updating SEO and it can feel really lonesome. And so I love, I love to hear that that is also like a feather in Lindsay’s cap as well, the work that she’s doing. Yeah, for sure. Well, speaking of Instagram, can we talk about your list growth strategies? I’m so curious to know what has been working for you guys and what you see potentially working.

For sure. Yeah, we’ve been doing a few new things recently, so that’s a fun question. I feel like we always have, you know, like we’ll always on our site have opt-in forms with an incentive. Right now, I think it’s the free e-cookbook and we might change that up someday to like three free meal plans or something like that. ⁓ So that’s always been our like primary, like that’s where we started was just like opt-in on the site and get a free e-cookbook.

And that has worked and still works, but like definitely has like stagnated a little bit. And I don’t know, I don’t know the reasons for why that is, but ⁓ and so we’ve tried to implement some more strategies with that. And so on the topic of like forums on the site, and then I can talk a little bit about like Instagram, ⁓ but we have also done a lot of like more category specific opt-ins that have been really successful.

And then, speaking of going back to Instagram now, ⁓ and I’m sure many people have seen this in their feed and they may love it or they may hate it, but there’s a few tools, one of which is called ManyChat, and then there’s also one that we’re using now called Grocers List, and they operate in a similar way. They’re primarily like the comment this word and get the recipe in your inbox.

So you probably, a lot of people have probably seen that and like, again, they either like love it or they just absolutely hate it. ⁓ And so right now we’re using Grocery’s List and so it’s been like shout out to them, they’ve been awesome. And it’s been great to get our recipes in people’s DMs. But the really nice thing that we have with Grocery’s List is ⁓ when they get the DM of the recipe, they can

that there’s a button that’s like click to get the recipe and there’s also a recipe that says save to email. And when they sign up for that, they get on our list and they get recipes moving forward. But we’ve also like been testing out sending them like a kit landing page. We did it for our SOS series that just started. Lindsay shared a reel that had a bunch of SOS recipes in it it was like comment to sign up.

to get our top 10 SOS recipes before the series starts. And so when they would comment, they would get the link to the landing page and then they could sign up. And that was really successful too. And we’ll probably try that again in the future. we’re still kind of in like the testing phase of that, but that, they’re not testing, but just like, just seeing what the result is of it. But so far the result has been great. And so it’s nice to have, we’ve always struggled with like, how do we,

get Instagram users onto our email list. Like, we’ve sometimes, you know, shared a preview to an email and stories and been like, hey, this is going to be going out this weekend, sign up to get on our list. And that’s been great. But it’s, it’s not, it’s like a manual process. And we want an automated process as much as we can. And so using Grocery List has been really nice because it’s every time someone is commenting for a recipe, they’re also getting the chance to save it to their email, which basically like,

sends them that recipe via email and then adds them to our list. that’s been a fun little tool to try out and we’ll continue kind of testing things out. And then the last thing I was gonna mention was we use something called Slickstream on our site too. So this is site specific, it’s not related to Instagram, but it’s a tool where people can save favorites on Pinch of Young.

But when they do that and they like sign up to build a save favorites, they can also get added to our email list. And so we have seen another stream of signups from using that. So yeah, all these things together, it’s been fun to be able to create just new ways of getting people from different places in this like ecosystem that we’re using like Instagram and Facebook and Pinterest and YouTube and TikTok, like create those new.

those avenues of getting people to our email list. And it’s over the last month, especially with using Grocery List has been super successful. So it’s been really, really cool to see. I love to hear it. my goodness. Yeah, I have a few follow up questions. I was taking notes and while you were chatting ⁓ with the category pages on your site, are you kind of manually tracking where which forms on which pages? I mean, you have thousands of those.

And so, or is there, are you able to apply this form to these categories using some sort of plugin? Yeah, so within Kit, I have to be honest, I don’t know if this was like custom put in by our team or if it’s something that can be done for any Kit user. But when we are on a category page, like say Instant Pot recipes from our recipe index, when we’re editing that category, there’s just like a dropdown where we can select like show this form.

on recipes in this category. And so typically we’ve done like an exit intent form. And so if we see that they’re about to exit or time on page, and it’ll just pop up on the page of like, Hey, you like, do you want to learn more about the Instant Pot? Here are some recipes that you can get via email. And so when we’ve done those in the past, it’s been it’s been really successful. So it’s been fun to see. Yeah. And so are you primarily using pop ups then?

other than the Slickstream ones that are being embedded within each post? Yeah, when we were doing them, we were doing pop-ups. I will say we’ve moved more to doing more inline forms. ⁓ And that’s kind of another shift for us over the past few years. it kind of ties into a lot of things that I’ve already said, but like really trying to lean back into user experience and personally as a user, like…

there’s already ads on the site, like a lot of ads. And you know, that’s, that’s how we, we make our money and can pay people to make recipes. And not people, but Lindsay and myself. And so like, I think ⁓ we don’t want to then add something else that’s like popping up on the page and is getting in your way of seeing the recipe. So we’ve kind of tried to move away from pop-ups to do more inline.

And they’re obviously not like the opt-in rate is just not as high because it’s can get hidden or you know, they’re jumping to the rescue and they don’t see it. But it makes her just like a little bit better of a user experience. Like again, there’s already a lot like vying for their attention when they’re on a food blog ⁓ on a blog post. And so moving away from pop-ups is been nice. And I see like that that that theme kind of emerges in in a lot of

whether it’s Instagram or the blog or wherever, like it’s trying to lean into more like what is a good user experience and not focus too heavily on like wanting to get as many options as possible or ⁓ wanting to hit every SEO mark in a post. It hasn’t given us as much of a hit as we maybe would have expected. ⁓ And so as much as we can like, you know.

still focus on search and focus on growing our email list and these things. We’ve just been leaning a lot more into like, what’s a better user experience that makes people like want to keep coming back to Pinch of Young. As there was such a push towards optimizing for SEO and you know, obviously building an email list is important too, but also like it’s important for somebody to not like totally hate being on your site. So. Yeah. ⁓

Those are all important things to consider. Yeah, I think that there’s kind of a different perhaps time and place when you do have kind of the privilege of not having to have a pop-up versus like, you know, in a season where you’re like, I know I’m gonna like write a cookbook in the next year and I need to grow my list. Like that might change your motivation for like, I’m gonna do a pop-up for a while. Or there is a tension there with having to make those decisions. And I have to say, you guys just seem like the most put together team. Oh my goodness.

Maybe it’s your soothing voice, Jenna, but I’m like, feel organized just listening to you. That’s hilarious because I also have major allergies right now. was like, my voice does not sound like my voice right now, but if it’s soothing, I’m happy with that. But also just like, you have just a calm presence about you too. It’s like, we have had these discussions, we’ve made these decisions, we’re tracking the things, we’re trying different things. And you’ve also had years behind you as well of things that have worked, that haven’t.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and I want to like, I just want to acknowledge like being in kind of like a place of privilege with like being a well established blog, being, you know, having a good like search reputation with Google, like, it’s really nice to be able to have the chance to like, test things out and try things and like also recognize like, you know, somebody else might be like, I just really need to go hard at building my email list or I need to go really hard at trying to get

to like a certain standing with Google search and that totally makes sense. And so I just want to acknowledge that too because I think I like what you said too about like, maybe there’s seasons of time where like, okay, maybe we will do the pop-up or maybe it’s, you know, like it’s a very specific set of posts. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. And like,

No one, I hope I didn’t make you feel bad for being such a successful established blog, but no, I think. But there is, yeah, there is like once you reach a certain level of blogging, then it’s less hustle and more strategy. It looks different. ⁓ And so, yeah, just acknowledging that. ⁓ I do want to take a minute to talk about monetization because I…

Yeah, I have conversations with clients often who are like, how do I make money? Like with a product, something productized. So whether that’s like a meal plan membership where they’re paying monthly and they get so much per week. And whenever we’re having these conversations, there’s so many decisions and things to consider. And knowing that your team has created these meal plans that are like a one-time purchase versus ongoing.

I’m just curious how you landed on this decision because the other thing with it is that they’re seasonal and so you’re not promoting it all the time. You have like a short window to promote it and then it’s done and you deliver and then perhaps you do it again the next season. How did you land on this particular type of offer and know that it would be helpful for your audience to get a PDF of recipes? Yeah, man, I have a lot to say about this. I’m going to figure out where to start.

We toyed around with meal plans for like probably a few years before we started actually monetizing them. And I think that was like our first like, this was a good decision. I’m just like, kind of seeing what the need was and what people liked. We did a few kind of just like random little rounds of like a January meal plan for like three or four weeks or we did like a summer meal plan of three, three meal plans. We saw that

It was something people wanted. ⁓ And kind of like what kind of came up at the same time that we monetized was like the emergence of Substack and seeing how that is a successful format for people to like monetize like weekly content kind of in a way. And that’s not ultimately like the platform that we went with and the format that we decided to use.

we decided to do like, let’s do ⁓ a 12 week set of meal plans and make it very, very seasonal, very targeted. ⁓ and just have it like, you pay upfront and then it gets stripped out for 12 weeks. And that’s kind of just like what we decided to start with. The reason that we did was because it felt good to have it be like very targeted to the season and also have it be.

within like a certain time constraint so it feels more exclusive. Like it’s not like, you can join any time. It’s like, no, the sales are open for like a week and you want to be part of this, you have to get in and sign up. And that was kind of like, let’s just try this. And also recognizing like we are a small team. We were, you know, a little bit bigger of a team then, but still a small team. And so like not wanting to commit to like

we’ll send you a meal plan every week indefinitely. Like the way that maybe a sub stack would be was just like, this is, we don’t want to bite off more than we can chew here. So it was like, it was so successful, which was so awesome to see people loved it. and we decided even like at the end of that fall, like let’s spin up one for winter too. So then in January we launched another set and again, like the response was awesome. and then we, so that the setup,

in convert kit, sorry, kit, ⁓ is under their like products. They have a products function. So we kept it all within kit, which was really nice. And you can, you can change the settings to be, you know, like a subscription, like sub stack, or just a one time fee. ⁓ And so we, you know, chose the one time fee. And so they paid it up front, and then they got it kind of dripped out for 12 weeks. And that’s just kind of the format like we stuck with because it worked. And so

Just actually this last fall, we then remarketed the meal plans to people who had not purchased them last year. Like we updated the design of them, but like we were able to repurpose them for another fall to people who maybe they weren’t subscribed at that point, or maybe they just were in a time of life where they didn’t want to do that or whatever it was. But we were able to like remarket them and repurpose them. And it’s just been great. It was a huge win.

over the last few years to see people engage with that and be really excited about it. And yeah, it was just really fun. Like that’s like probably like a highlight of like just my time at Pitch of Yom has been getting to do those and seeing how like the testimonials that we got from them and people who it just like really met them where they were at in their season of life ⁓ was really awesome to see.

So it was a huge, huge win for us. And also just like, so nice to just have it all be done in one place, like in a tool we were already using. So kudos to Kit for like having, adding that part of their tool to be able to monetize emails in that way. So that’s been, been awesome too. Yeah. I like that you have, it’s a set product for a set number of weeks, because as a creator, means you don’t have this like,

constant machine having to run in order to keep the money flowing. But then you also have created it. You created this last one one time and you created another opportunity to sell that same thing with an updated design. But still, you don’t even have to go back to the drawing board and figure out, yeah, what do I promote this week? The other cool thing that I appreciate about this kind of offer, because it’s not evergreen, you really get to like yap about it.

for a few weeks to sell it to your list. And then what’s cool is because you’ve had the feedback from your subscribers, or the people who’ve purchased saying, this is awesome, you know, I mean, that makes selling a lot easier when you’re like, this is why people love it, you will probably love it. Would you say it’s easier to sell just based on the format, but also because of the feedback you’ve had? Yeah, for sure. And that was that was a nice thing even for the first round of like monetize paid.

meal plans, it was nice to have done a lot of free content leading up to it. Because even from that, like we were able to get feedback and and just like better understand because I think we’ve been to a few surveys to to understand like what do people what how could this be improved? What would they have liked to see that we didn’t have and we got some great ideas to from that and to even be able to like, you know, take what people are saying and then like use that in marketing.

the paid ones of like people who have done our meal plans in the past have said this. It’s been great. So I’m really grateful that we did that even if the intention wasn’t necessarily like to turn it into a paid product. Like I’m really glad that we we did the free work to begin with to be able to kind of like bring that experience and feedback into into marketing the paid ones. I love it. I remember a survey going out prior to the paid ones.

And one of the questions was whether subscribers preferred new recipes or existing ones. What was the consensus on that? Yeah, so that was like kind of I would say like if we had like a main complaint, it was maybe somebody saying like all of these recipes are already on the blog. So like, what is what is the point of these meal plans if like these recipes are this and.

What we said and we still stand on is that we don’t want to put recipes into a meal plan that haven’t been made and gotten feedback from other people who have made them. So our reasoning was we only want to put recipes in the meal plan that are above, I think it was above 4.7 stars with a certain threshold of number of reviews. If we’re gonna sell you this product, we don’t wanna put a brand new recipe into it that

nobody else has been making and leaving comments and ratings. We want to only put like our best of the best. ⁓ And like, sure, yeah, you could go and find all these recipes on the site and make your own meal plan. But like, the point of the meal plan is you don’t have to do that. Like it takes you don’t need to, it tells you the five recipes to make that week, it gives you the grocery list, you know, like it, that’s not the point of it anyway. And so that was for sure like a

kind of something to work out. And I think there was one fall that we did try to fold in some of the new recipes, but from a process standpoint, it meant like we couldn’t work in advance. We had to like finish up right before. And so then you’re putting a recipe in that hasn’t been tested by readers and like feedback hasn’t been given by readers. Plus it adds, you know, like just logistically for our team was a hard workflow to work in. So we, after that, like we have

And if we do meal plans in the future, like I think they will still continue to be of that threshold, like above 4.7 stars and a certain number of reviews. Because like, we’re going to sell you a product, like we want the recipes to be like tried and true, not just by us, but by other people who have given feedback. So, yeah, that was kind of like our approach and reasoning to that and still.

they’ll stand on that. yep. Yeah. And like with that, you know, the role of the meal plan and who it’s for. It’s the person who wants trusted recipes picked out for them, simplified process, and then know that their recipes are going be delicious. it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. And so they can go pour themselves their own cup of tea. It’s not for everyone then. Exactly.

I know that you’ve probably get this question a lot, but will there be a pinch of yum cookbook at any point? Oh, you know, I probably get that question. I mean, actually, I used to get it probably once a week. Now it’s maybe not as often, but I will. There’s really no plans. Sorry. I had to ask because I’m like, but it’s cool because this is this is a different type of product that shifts and changes that you can the meal plans that you can promote differently multiple times a year. Whereas like a cookbook, is it going to be a different type of sales process?

and promotional process. it’s just a different animal too. It’s a lot of work. It’s years in the making. So yeah, I have no information to provide on that. I figured while I had your ear, I would ask on behalf of everyone. A lot of people have asked, but it’s…

Yeah, to my knowledge, there’s no plans. I was hoping to get the first scoop, Jenna. ⁓ No, just kidding. Before we wrap up, I always like to ask, what is the pinch of yam soapbox? What is it about the content you create in the community you have that matters to the world and to your readers? I think one thing we’ve really wanted to lean into, especially maybe the last five

or more years, always been a value of ours, but like, especially now is looking at like, what are the needs that we can meet? Like we are in a place where, you know, there’s, I do kind of feel like this came about around the time of COVID, where you have a lot of people who are cooking at home. People are, you know, like not maybe struggling like with their, their capacity and their mental health and

maybe also, you know, there’s this need of like, ⁓ then and you know, now too, of cooking is really expensive, or groceries are really expensive. And that’s obviously a theme right now. And so like, I think, like, kind of seeing like, wow, there’s suddenly like all these needs in the sphere of like, cooking at home is what we kind of saw during COVID. And so I think that’s what like, I feel like our soapbox is, is like,

we want to like meet the practical needs of people that are following Pinch of Young. And so you see that especially reflective and like we started doing an SOS series is what it’s called ⁓ years ago and it’s just kind of stuck and we’re actually like in the middle of one right now on the blog. ⁓ And it’s basically just like life is really busy, whatever your life looks like and here are recipes that like

can be made with minimal ingredients with, you know, a dog yapping at your foot or your child yapping at your foot. I don’t know. Like, when, you know, you’re trying to get dinner on the table, just truly trying to like understand like, what is it that people like really need right now? And how can, you know, how can we like meet that need really practically?

What I’m hearing after spending this time with you is that your whole team is dedicated to being good listeners. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, and that’s definitely evident in the type of work that you are doing, but how you’re presenting that work as a meal plan, Lindsay writing, know, her, you know, adding her personal details to emails, making sure it feels really timely and relevant. I think as

creators, can get so caught up in the creativeness of it all, the busyness of it, that we just like crank out content. But it seems to me that you guys have a pace and a mindset of how is this helpful and how is it helpful in this time and place for these people on our list. And I just want to acknowledge that. That’s awesome. Yeah, thanks. And I think I would also add just really quick of like, we put a lot of energy and I want to like to Lindsay and other people’s

horns on our team of like a lot of energy into making sure our recipes are really well tested and really high quality. So it isn’t just like a content machine. ⁓ and cause it’s like, nobody wants to go out and buy a bunch of ingredients again, like coming back to like, you know, groceries and whatnot. Like nobody wants to go and put the energy and time and money into making something that like, maybe doesn’t have the right results. And so that’s been a huge focus. Like

really, especially in the last few years for us of like, that’s why, you know, the pace of our content maybe has gone down to just being one a week or sometimes, you know, maybe there’s a week where there’s not a new piece of content because it’s, we want it to be a place where it’s like, it’s been tested by not just Lindsay, but other people too. And it’s, it’s worth the time and money that somebody is going to put into it. Cause I think that is our responsibility as a, as a food creator. So.

Absolutely. Thank you. On behalf of other Pinch of Yum followers, thank you. Let me tell you, I have tested that carnitas recipe, that crock pot carnitas recipe so many times. Highly recommend. It’s like the easiest, tastiest, and I love myself some pork. So ⁓ that one has been tested in my household. ⁓ Thank you. Thank you. Yes, of course. As we wrap up, I want to make sure listeners can connect with Pinch of Yum.

learn more about your work, follow along. Where can they do that? Yeah, I think first and foremost on the blog, so pinchofyam.com, you can always, there’s many places on the site to sign up for our email list, which is the best place to get notified of new content. And then I would also say on Instagram, so at pinchofyam on Instagram, you can kind of get more, like it’s a little more personal connection with Lindsay, especially on stories.

So yeah, those are the two places where you can, the best place to get all of our new stuff that’s coming out and then just hear from Lindsay.

Allea Grummert: I love it. Thank you, Jenna, so much for spending this time with me today.

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