Loading…

I thought email newsletters were dead until my bakery client made $2,300 in one weekend from a 400 person list | Digital Marketing Strategy - Opinions Matter

iris574•29d ago

I thought email newsletters were dead until my bakery client made $2,300 in one weekend from a 400 person list

Six months ago a friend asked me to help with marketing for her small bakery in Cincinnati and I pushed hard for Instagram and TikTok because who even opens email anymore, right? She wanted to try a weekly newsletter anyway so I set one up in Mailchimp with a signup sheet by the register and honestly I figured it would just sit there collecting dust. The list grew to about 400 people over four months and I kept telling her it was a nice little extra but not where the real sales were. Then the weekend before Easter she sent out a simple note about her hot cross buns with a preorder link, no fancy design, just a photo and three sentences. By Saturday night she had 61 orders and rang up $2,300, which beat anything we ever got from a boosted post that month. I sat there staring at the report feeling pretty dumb about all the time I spent chasing reels views. Turns out a list of 400 local people who actually chose to hear from you beats 12,000 random followers every time. Has anyone else had a client's tiny email list outperform their social stuff? I want to know if this was a fluke or if I should be pushing newsletters way harder for small local shops.

1 comments

1 Comment

tyler_wilson28d ago

That "400 local people who actually chose to hear from you" line is the whole thing right there. I've run newsletters for a few local spots and the open rates on those small lists are nuts compared to social, like 40-60% sometimes, because it's people who walked in and wrote their email down on purpose. Push it harder, but keep it simple and local: one email a week, one clear ask, and a signup sheet everywhere plus a QR code at the register.