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How to Build an Email or Text List for Your Microbakery | Episode 16

  • Nov 12, 2024
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


You post that your menu is open, and then you sit there watching orders trickle in slower than they should. It is not that people stopped wanting your bread. Most of them simply never saw the post.


A list fixes that. A list is a collection of contact information from people who have told you they want to hear from you, either email addresses or phone numbers. It is how you reach your customers directly instead of hoping an algorithm decides to show them your menu.


My text list is the number one way I talk to my customers, and the majority of my weekly revenue comes from people who order after they get my Sunday text. I will not stop shouting about this from the rooftops.


When to start: now, not later

Do not wait for a certain number of repeat customers or a certain revenue number. Start collecting contacts from day one.


When I was first opening my bakery, I started a text list in the first couple of weeks. I did not have an ordering platform yet, so I was manually texting people to tell them when to order and then again when their order was ready for pickup.


That personal contact did something I did not expect. It invited conversation. My customers could reach me easily, I could ask them for feedback, and we built real trust before I had any track record at all. I think that played a big part in getting my business off the ground.


The other reason to start early is that you are never scrambling later. When you have a holiday launch or a seasonal offering coming, you already have a list of people who raised their hand and said they want to hear from you.


Why a list beats social media every time

  • It lands. A text goes into someone's phone. I open just about every text I get, even when I do not reply. A post competes with everything else in the feed, and the odds of every one of your customers seeing it are basically zero.

  • It sells. When you have something new, an event, or a special offer, you can tell everyone who has opted in, all at once, and that turns into orders.

  • It teaches you what to make. With a direct line, people text you things like bring back the focaccia, or we loved those cookies. You can also send a link to a customer survey, which I walk through in my episode on running a planning week.

  • You own it. If Instagram or Facebook disappeared tomorrow, your list is still yours. On the days social media goes dark and everyone panics, you can still reach your people.

Keep posting on social media. Just stop letting it be the only way your customers find out your menu is open. If you want more on that, I cover it in 5 Ways to Grow Your Microbakery Without Social Media.


Step one: pick your platform

For email, Mailchimp is a solid all in one option and it has a free tier that may be all you need to start. If you already use Square, it has a built in email list you can collect contacts through. ConvertKit is another common one that does more and generally costs more. Any of these will work, so pick on price and on which interface you can stand to look at.


If you already run orders through a pre-order platform like Simply Bread or Hotplate, you are probably collecting contact information there already. Check what it holds before you build anything new.


For text, I use Project Broadcast, and I have researched a lot of the alternatives. Most mass texting platforms price by tier or per message and get expensive fast as your list grows. Project Broadcast runs about twenty two dollars a month, with per text charges kicking in somewhere past around five hundred messages a month. That is a marketing cost I am completely fine with, because I know my porch pickup orders would be a fraction of what they are without those texts.


Two things I like about it. It gives you a local number in an area code your customers recognize, separate from your personal number, so business texts stay in the app instead of your personal messages. And it keeps everything searchable, so I can look up a customer by name or a keyword months later.


I am not affiliated with them. I do have a referral code, and the code BLUEBIRD gets you half off your first month.


Step two: make it easy to join

Every extra step you ask for costs you signups, so remove the friction.

  • Put a sign up form on your website. Name plus phone number, or name plus email, and they are on.

  • Set up a keyword if your text platform allows it. Mine is the word bread. People text it to my number and they are on the list.

  • Make a QR code that opens their text app with the keyword already typed, so all they do is hit send. Canva is what I use to make QR codes, sign up forms and offer graphics, and the free tier does plenty.

  • Invite people online on a regular rhythm. Something like a monthly post saying if you are not getting my texts yet, here is how to join.

  • At a market, a clipboard and a sheet of paper still works. You will type the entries in yourself and some handwriting is hard to read, and it beats walking away with nothing.

You can offer a small incentive like a discount or a free cookie with a first order. I do not do that. I just offer the texts and let people opt in if they want them.


Step three: what to actually send

A list of contacts sitting in an app is not worth anything. Here is what turns it into revenue.


Welcome them right away. As soon as someone joins, send a short thank you, a quick introduction to your bakery, and what they can expect from you. If you promised a discount, that is where it goes.


Mine goes out automatically and ends with a question, because I want a conversation rather than an announcement. It says something like: you are on the list now! You will get weekly texts when my menus open on Sundays. In the meantime, what is a flavor or a goodie you would love to see on the menu?


Most people do not answer. Enough of them do that I have shaped real menu decisions from it, and when the same request shows up over and over, I start seriously considering adding it. I answer every single reply and thank them.


Then be consistent. I schedule one text every Sunday at 3:30, when my menu opens. It is short, usually a little personal update and a greeting, plus anything they need to know, like a week I will not be offering bread.


Pick your one day and schedule it on the same day every week. You will not procrastinate on it, and your customers learn when to expect you. After several months of this, if my text goes out late, people text me asking whether I am baking this week. That is the whole thing working.


If you are already a year or two in

Expect the list to build slowly. You will not have a hundred contacts overnight, and the number is not the point in month one. Commit and stay with it, because everything in this business grows on consistency, and if you try something once and decide it did not work, you never find out whether it would have.


Once the rhythm is running, start improving it. On email, test different subject lines and watch what that does to your open rate, then test different offers and different content. Check how your list is growing and how your messages are performing.


If you need an infusion of new people, run a giveaway or an incentive to promote the list and push it out everywhere you can, including local social media groups. Then lean into whatever is working and pull back on what is not.


Final thoughts

Building your list is one of the most useful things you can do for your bakery, and it is one of the few marketing assets that is actually yours. It is a direct line to people who already want what you make.


If you take one thing from this, make it this: pick a platform today and get the first ten people on. Your future self, the one with a holiday menu to fill, will be so glad you did.


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

More on getting in front of the customers you want.


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