That’s email marketing, right?

Well… technically yes. But also, kind of no.

And the gap between those two answers could cost you a lot more than you’d expect.

I’ve been talking to more and more home bakers, food truck operators, and farmstand vendors lately who are doing it exactly this way. And I get it – it works, at a small scale, and it feels simple. But there are some things hiding underneath that method that I really need you to know about.

So let’s talk about it.

The BCC Spreadsheet Method – and Why It Works Until It Doesn’t

Look, I’m not here to shame anybody. The spreadsheet-and-BCC approach is a genuine starting point and it does work when your list is tiny – like 10, 15, maybe 30 people who all know you personally.

But there is a ceiling. And underneath that ceiling, there are some real risks.

The first one is legal. The second one is technical. And both of them get worse the more your list grows – which, if you’re here, is exactly what you’re trying to do.

BIG BAD #1: The Legal Side You Probably Didn’t Know About

Here in the US, there’s a law called the CAN-SPAM Act. You’ve probably heard of it, but you might not realize it applies to you, even as a small home bakery business or food truck.

Any commercial email counts. That includes “hey, here’s what I’m stocking at the farmstand this weekend.”

That is a commercial email. And there are rules.

Important Rule A:
Every commercial email has to include a mailing address in the footer (it doesn’t have to be your home address – a PO box works, or I’ve personally made an arrangement with a local business to use their address).

You probably haven’t been including that, but that’s a relatively easy fix. The next one isn’t quite as simple.

Important Rule B:
Every email has to have a clear, working way for people to unsubscribe.

Granted, you can have a disclaimer on your emails that says something like “reply with the word “unsubscribe” to be unsubscribed from the list” and that DOES technically meet the requirements.

I’m betting if you’ve been BCC-ing from Outlook, you almost certainly haven’t been doing either of those things.

BUUUT here’s where it gets serious and why you at MINIMUM have to start putting those things in your emails.

If someone wants off your list and there’s no easy way to do it, the path of least resistance for them is to mark you as spam, which becomes a problem that I will explain below.

But – if they report you to the authorities for non-compliant commercial email, you could be looking at a $50,000 fine. Per email.

That is not covered by your business insurance. Because technically, you broke the law.

I’m not saying this to scare you into paralysis – I’m saying it because most people doing it this way have no idea. And a small list feels safe until suddenly it doesn’t.

If you’re outside the US, Canada and Europe have even stricter rules around documented, explicit consent to be on your list. So if you’ve been adding people who bought from you once but never specifically opted in – that’s a problem.

BIG BAD #2: You’ll Slowly Destroy Your Sender Reputation

Okay so that was the legal risk.

Here’s the one that’s almost guaranteed to cause problems if you keep growing your list this way.

Every email address has what’s called a sender reputation. Email servers are constantly communicating with each other, tracking which senders are legit and which ones are spammy. Some email addresses are outright blacklisted – their emails won’t even hit a spam folder, they just disappear entirely.

Your personal Gmail right now probably has a totally fine reputation. But here’s what happens over time.

As your list grows, some of those people are going to want to stop hearing from you. Maybe they moved. Maybe they changed their diet. Maybe they just had a bad day. And if there’s no unsubscribe link in your email, the easiest thing for them to do is hit “report spam.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re actually spamming or not. It doesn’t matter if you have a disclaimer at the bottom asking them to reply to the email and ask to be taken off.

PEOPLE are HUMANS and they will most of the time take the easy way out (and most of the time they will have absolutely zero clue that it has any negative impact on you at all).

For them, that’s problem solved, because they won’t have to see your emails anymore.

But for you, it dings your sender reputation.

One or two of those, the servers might ignore. But patterns get noticed. And once your reputation starts to drop, your emails start landing in spam folders – even for the people who want to hear from you. And if it gets bad enough, you could end up blacklisted to the point where you can’t even email your sister.

This isn’t a “might happen someday” situation.

This is a ” this will absolutely happen as you grow” situation.

If you’ve got 20 people on your list, you’re unlikely to see this happen. But as you grow… and you’re looking at more like 100… then 200… then 400… yeah, this is going to become a problem.

So the earlier you get ahead of it, the better.

What an Email Service Provider Actually Does

This is where email service providers – ESPs – come in. Think MailChimp, MailerLite, Kit (formerly known as ConvertKit), Klaviyo, etc – there’s lots of them.

These are companies that handle the whole thing for you.

They have the unsubscribe links built in, they have the address footer. They manage your sender reputation because they have established relationships with Gmail, Outlook, and all the major email servers.

The compliance stuff is just… baked in. You don’t have to think about it.

But that’s not even the best part.

With an ESP, you can actually see who’s opening your emails, what links they’re clicking, and what’s working. That data is how you get better at marketing over time. You can’t get any of that from Outlook.

You also get to set up automated welcome sequences – emails that go out automatically when someone new subscribes.

I LOVE these.

Automated welcome sequences are the secret sauce to being awesome at email marketing (that, and writing your emails correctly, aka not like some shady used-car-sales-type marketer)

You write them once, and then every single new person who joins your list gets that introduction, that warmup, that relationship-building – without you doing anything. While you’re sleeping, at your market booth, while you’re doing literally anything else.

And speaking of joining your list – with an ESP, people sign themselves up through a form. No more squinting at handwritten email addresses on little slips of paper and hoping you typed it in right.

They put in their own email, hit submit, and they’re on your list. You can put that form link in your Instagram bio, on your Facebook page, on your Google Business profile, on a QR code at your booth. People can join your list while you’re not even there.

That is the kind of thing that scales. Whether five people sign up this week or five hundred, it’s the same amount of work on your end.

Guess what – that means it’s LESS TIME FOR YOU TO FUSS WITH IT.

And as I constantly yammer about – your time is your biggest business expense. It’s the one thing you can’t get back or get more of. Anything that protects your time is worth paying attention to.

(Also side note – most of them have free plans, by the way. So the “I can’t afford it” argument doesn’t really hold up. )

Why I Use MailerLite

I’ve used a lot of ESPs over the years – MailChimp, AWeber, Kit. Right now I use MailerLite and here’s why.

The interface is clean and simple. I prefer to write text emails with maybe an image or two, no fancy templates, and it’s pretty straightforward with Mailerlite. Their free plan goes up to 500 subscribers. And – this is the big one – their free plan includes automated sequences.

A lot of free plans don’t include that… which, btw, I think is completely backwards given that these ESPs won’t make money off us until we grow our lists bigger, and automations are kind of key to growing and engaging a list… but eh, who am I to tell them what to do!

So MailerLite wins, and is what I recommend, especially when you’re starting out.

Start Here

Here’s the thing. You don’t have to overhaul everything today. But if you’re currently doing the spreadsheet-and-BCC method, you are exposed. And the risk only grows as your list does.

The fix is not complicated. It’s actually easier than what you’re doing now.

I have a free download at bethanyarcher.com/start that walks you through the whole process of setting up your email list with MailerLite, step by step. It’ll take maybe an hour or two, and once it’s done, you’ll have a real foundation to grow from.

And yes – it’s worth doing this with just ONE person on your list. You’ll be set up right from the get-go and won’t have to worry about anything.

Go grab it at bethanyarcher.com/start and let’s get you set up.

The post Why Your Gmail Isn’t Cutting It: Email Marketing for Home Bakers & Food Truck Owners appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.

This episode is for you if the thought of email marketing to your customers makes you feel a little… gross.

Like, I don’t wanna bother people.

I don’t wanna be one of those spammy email people. No thank you.

Yeah. I hear you.

I used to say the exact same thing.

But here’s the thing I want you to sit with for a second: the fact that you’re worried about being annoying? That’s actually proof that you wouldn’t be.

People who actually are annoying don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether they’re annoying.

In my experience, the people who feel uncomfortable about email marketing are almost always the ones who’d be really, really good at it – because they actually give a crap about their customers.

So if that’s you, keep reading. I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

What is email marketing for local food businesses?

Email marketing for local food businesses means building a list of customers – people at your farmers market, your food truck regulars, your cottage bakery fans – who opt in to receive updates from you. It is not cold emailing strangers or buying lists. It is people who raised their hand and said, yes, please let me know what you’re up to.

First, Let’s Talk About Tomatoes

Stick with me here, because I’m about to make a food analogy and you’re going to get it immediately.

Jessica Sowards of Roots & Refuge once said “Store-bought tomatoes taste like disappointment.”

And… if you’ve ever grown tomatoes – or homegrown carrots, or honestly most things – you know that what you get at the grocery store and what you can grow yourself are basically not even the same thing.

That’s what I’m asking you to do with email marketing.

You’ve only ever tasted the store-bought version – the spam filter stuff, the big corporate blasts, the emails from companies that bought a list and are shotgunning promotions to people who never asked to hear from them.

That stuff is gross. I agree with you.

But that’s a mushy flavorless storebought tomato. Or chicken noodle soup from a can.

And what I’m talking about is homegrown tomatoes ripe off the vine, your grandma’s homemade chicken soup with fresh vegetables and homemade pasta.

Those are not the same thing.

The Three Biggest Myths About Email Marketing (Busted)

Myth #1: Email is pushy and salesy

It can be. Just like anything can be. But only if you make it that way.

The emails you send to your customers are just updates… from someone they already know and trust (you!), going out to people who literally signed up to hear from you.

They raised their hand.

They said, yes, send me your stuff, I want to know what’s going on.

Think about the emails you actually enjoy getting. They’re probably not pushy. They’re probably not salesy. They feel like hearing from a friend.

That’s what this can be.

Myth #2: You’re bothering people

This one is SO common, and I get it – because when most of us think of email marketing, we think of all the stupid emails in our spam filters, sent by marketers we never asked to hear from and don’t want to have anything to do with.

But that’s not what this is.

The people on your email list are the same people who comment on your Facebook post a week after an event saying, Man, I missed it. I’ve been waiting for you to bring that thing back for three months and I didn’t see the post in time.

Those are the people who want to be on your list.

Those are the people who will open your email, see exactly where you’re going to be, and show up.

You’re not bothering them. You’re doing them a favor.

Myth #3: People hate email

No. People hate bad email.

People hate email that feels like junk, like fluff, like somebody trying to sell them something for the hundredth time this week.

People love hearing from people they actually care about.

There has probably been an email at some point in your life that you were genuinely happy to receive.

You can create that feeling for your customers. It is entirely possible.

What Good Email Actually Looks Like (A Story From My Own Business)

I used to have a six-figure online digital design business. At one point I had built up my email list to 55,000 people, with a consistent open rate of 50 to 60 percent.

But before I got there, I had a business where I didn’t do an email list. I was selling custom phone cases on Etsy, making about $4,000 a month in gross sales. Things were going well. And then Etsy changed their algorithm.

Within six months, I went from about $4,000 a month to $750.

That was the moment I knew I had to go get a job, because I had run out of savings and I knew it wasn’t going to recover. And in hindsight – I realized many years later that if I’d built an email list of customers, I would have been okay.

But I didn’t have one, because I had told myself I didn’t want to be one of “those” people.

Here’s the other side of that story: One day I realized that there were a couple mentors that I loved hearing from.

I read their emails religiously. I would save them.

I would literally wait until it was time to put the kids to bed, make a cup of tea, get my cozy blanket, grab my laptop, and actually look forward to reading their emails.

They emailed maybe once a month. And I read every single one.

That’s when it clicked for me. Email wasn’t bad.

Most people just go about it wrong.

If I myself loved reading the emails from these teachers – the ones who gave me glimpses into their lives, let their personalities shine through their words, and always gave so much value – then maybe the email itself wasn’t the problem.

Because when I heard from them the right way, I loved it and I appreciated it.

They weren’t emailing every day. They were sending emails that actually mattered, that felt like hearing from a real person. And people loved them for it.

So that’s what I started doing myself. And by the time I was done building that business, I had people telling me, I don’t even really like the product you sell, but I’m on your list because I love hearing from you. Reading your emails feels like sitting down for coffee with an old friend.

Yes. That’s exactly it.

Why Email is Especially Powerful for Local Food Businesses

Here’s something that I think gets overlooked: local food businesses have some serious unfair advantages when it comes to email marketing. And I mean that in the best possible way.

You already meet your customers face to face

Most online businesses spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to build trust with people they’ve never met.

WE don’t have that problem.

WE’re at the market.

WE’re at the window of the food truck.

We hand someone a cookie or a plate of food and watch the bliss on their face when they take the first bite.

That is a massive head start.

When those same people get an email from you, they already know who you are. They already like you.

They’re already more likely to open it, read it, and show up.

You’re selling food – and food is inherently relational

Food has been connection since the beginning of human history. What you sell is not some anonymous widget. It’s something people feel things about.

One of my favorite parts about selling from my bakery is watching someone take a bite of one of my giant cookies and just… light up.

That’s not a transaction. That’s a relationship.

That relational quality carries right into your email list.

Your product is perishable – and email solves that problem

Most local food businesses have a time-sensitive product. You need people to show up at a specific time, in a specific place, knowing exactly what you’re selling. S

ocial media is terrible at this, because you never know if your post is going to reach the right people at the right time.

Email hits the inbox. It doesn’t disappear in a feed.

And you get to include everything – where you’ll be, what’s on the menu, pictures of what you’re selling, prices, pre-order links, all of it.

Email is a cheat code for perishable products. I’m not kidding.

A Real-World Example: How One Algorithm Tanked a Whole Day of Sales

I work with a local food truck owner – incredible food, loyal regulars, genuinely beloved in his community. He has about a thousand followers on Facebook.

He does not do email marketing (YET! lol!!).

There was one day where almost nobody showed up. Even his most loyal regulars – the people who never miss – weren’t there.

He didn’t know why. Was it his food? Did he upset someone?

We were talking about it and he said, I barely even had anyone comment on my Facebook post. I usually get a bunch of people.

And I said: there it is. That’s your problem.

We went into the back end of his Facebook page and looked at the reach numbers.

And for whatever unknown reason, his post had reached a fraction of his normal audience – probably less than one percent.

Facebook’s algorithm just wasn’t in his favor that day.

Facebook will never ever notice or care, but these things affect us in very real ways.

He lost hundreds of dollars in sales because of one bad algorithm day.

And this is one of the people who has told me, I don’t want to do an email list because I don’t want to bother people.

But here’s the thing – people love talking to him. They sit at his food truck and chat away. Of course they’d want to hear from him.

He just has this idea in his head that email had to look like one specific thing, and it doesn’t.

(Don’t worry, I’m still working on him and I know he will rock it when he starts his list finally)

What Email Looks Like When You Do It Right

Okay, so you’re maybe a little more open to this. Here’s what I want you to know about how to do it in a way that actually feels good.

Ditch the fancy newsletter format

The emails that made me fall in love with email marketing (the ones I saved and read with a cup of tea) were not fancy styled newsletters.

They were not magazine-style layouts with perfectly branded images and tip-of-the-week sections.

They were just… emails. Written by a real person, in a real voice.

Maybe with some bold text or a photo dropped in. That’s it.

And that’s what works for local food businesses.

You’re not Target. You don’t need to look like Target.

People are on your list because they like you, not because they want a corporate newsletter.

Write like you’re writing to a friend

Here’s how I write my emails: I just… write.

“Hey, here’s what’s going on this week.”

“Here’s something funny that happened.”

“By the way, here’s my menu for Tuesday’s drop. Here’s where I’m going to be, here’s the address.”

That’s it. I wing it. And people respond to it, because it’s authentic and it’s genuine.

You don’t need perfect grammar. You don’t need to sound like a corporation. You don’t need to follow a rigid schedule.

You just need to be yourself.

Forget the ’email every other day’ rule – seriously

There was a teaching that went around for years that said you had to email at least every other day, otherwise people would forget about you. And that is absolute garbage.

The mentors I loved emailed maybe once a month.

And I looked forward to every single one. Contrast that with the people who email every day: I unsubscribed.

Because it became noise.

It was fluff – a bunch of words that didn’t actually mean anything – and I stopped caring.

Email once a week if you want to. Email once a month if that’s what feels right.

What matters is that when you do email, it’s worth reading.

What to actually include

Here are a few things you can put in your emails as a local food business:

• Where you’ll be and when (this alone is worth the price of admission)
• What’s on your menu – photos if you have them, because food photos are incredible sales boosters
• A story from your week – what you’re working on, what made you laugh, what’s going on
• A sneak peek at something you’re working on
• Occasionally, a special just for your list – loyalty discounts, early access, pre-orders

That’s a whole email right there. You don’t have to overthink it.

The Scalability Thing: Why This Gets Better Over Time

Here’s one more thing I want you to understand about email, because it’s really important.

It takes you the same amount of time to email 10 people as it does to email a thousand.

That’s not true of almost any other marketing action. It’s one of the only things in your business where your reach can grow without your effort growing proportionally.

And over time, you’ll start to develop a core group – the people who open every single email, who respond, who become your true fans.

They will buy anything you make. They will try anything on your menu. They will show up in the rain.

I have a customer on my bakery list right now – my list is under 100 people at this point, just to be transparent – who, when I had to take a few months off, came back and told me, You are not allowed to leave us ever again.

That’s a true fan, and that’s what email builds.

Common Questions About Email Marketing for Local Food Businesses

Do I need a big list to make email marketing worth it?

No. I have seen real results from lists of a few dozen people. The point is not the size of the list – it’s the quality of the relationship. A list of 50 people who love you is worth more than a list of 5,000 strangers.

How often should I email my list?

As often as you have something worth saying. Once a week is a solid rhythm for most food businesses because you can tie it to your schedule – where you’re going to be, what’s on the menu. But once every couple of weeks is fine too. Just make it count.

What email platform should I use?

I use a platform that has a free tier to get started – you don’t need to spend money on this until your list grows. I put together a free starter pack at bethanyarcher.com/start that walks you through exactly how to set up your list for free. It’ll take about an hour, and then you’re set up and ready to go.

What if people unsubscribe?

They will. That’s okay. Unsubscribes are just the list cleaning itself – people who weren’t the right fit anyway. Don’t let it stop you.

Your Next Step

If any of this has shifted something for you – if you’re starting to think okay, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad – here’s what I want you to do.

Go to bethanyarcher.com/start and download the free starter pack. It includes a tutorial that walks you through setting up your email list completely free. Once that’s done, you’ll be ready to actually start implementing everything I want to teach you.

Because if you want consistent sales without feeling like you have to constantly post on social media and hope the algorithm cooperates? Email is where you put your time.

It’s not gross or spammy.

It’s just a relationship.

And you’re already good at building those… every time you hand someone something delicious and watch their face light up.

Go get your list set up. I’ll be here when you’re ready.

– Bethany

The post Email Marketing Isn’t Annoying or Sleazy. appeared first on Bethany Archer | Digital Marketing Strategy.