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Text Marketing for Microbakeries: Build a List That Buys | Episode 134

  • Jul 16
  • 7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube


You post that orders are open. A few hundred followers could see it. Maybe forty do. Two of them order.


That is the part of social media nobody warns you about, and it is why I moved my ordering announcements to text nearly three years ago. I sat down with Jake Dempsey, the CEO of Project Broadcast, to walk through my own texting setup and hear where I am leaving money on the table. Most of what he said applies whether you sell ten loaves a week from your kitchen or run a storefront.


The numbers that make the case for texting

Email gets about a 20 percent open rate and about a 15 percent read rate. Send 100 emails and roughly 15 people read them.


Text messages have a 98 percent read rate, and 96 percent of them are read within two minutes of delivery. Send 100 texts and nearly everyone sees it, almost immediately.


The bigger point Jake made is about who controls the connection. When you post on Instagram or Facebook, the platform decides whether your followers see it, because their business is selling ads. As he put it, you are not Facebook's customer. You are the product they sell to their advertisers. Nobody is standing between you and your customer's text inbox.


That is the real reason to build a text list. You own it. If Instagram changes tomorrow, your ordering list still opens on Sunday morning.


Get a business number before you do anything else

Before we ever talked about strategy, Jake pointed out something I did early without thinking of it as strategy. I did not want customers texting my personal phone, so I got a separate number with a local area code.


That one decision does more than protect your evenings. It sets a boundary you can hold, it looks professional even when you are selling two loaves a week, and it means your inbox belongs to the business. Mine is organized enough that an employee could work out of it without ever touching my personal phone.


You do not have to automate anything to start. Plenty of owners use a texting platform for nothing but one-to-one conversations at first, and that is a fine beginning.


My actual setup, start to finish

Here is exactly how mine works.

  • I have one keyword, and I kept it simple: bread. Customers text that word to my business number.

  • Texting the keyword triggers an automatic welcome message with our hours, the days the menu opens, how to place an order, and a few common questions answered.

  • From there they go into a weekly campaign. Every Sunday they get a text that says it is time to order, what the flavors are that week, any housekeeping like a closure coming up, and a link to my ordering page.

  • Every message ends with opt-out language, and both the welcome text and the weekly text tell them they can reply to that number with questions.

That is it. It is not fancy, and it has carried my business for three years.


The part that matters more than the setup is where the keyword lives. Mine is on the front of my cash box with a QR code, on my product labels, in my Facebook header, on my Instagram profile, and on my website. Jake made a point I had not considered: put that QR code on a placard on your market table. Some people want to know more about your bread and are too shy to interrupt you mid-sale, and they will absolutely scan a code instead.


Use scarcity, and use the inverse of it

The fastest way I ever grew my text list was selling out. Every time I ran out at a market, I told people so, and I gave them something to do about it. Text this word and I will message you on Sunday so you can order ahead and not miss out next time.


Jake flipped that around for me. Some days the problem is the opposite, which is product you need to move before it goes stale. You can run a savers club: a separate list of customers who want to know when there is extra, at a small discount, on the day you have it. They still buy fresh bread at full price most weeks. They just also take the surplus off your hands.


Both directions depend on a list you own. If selling out is a regular thing for you, How to Use Scarcity to Sell Out with Confidence in Your Microbakery | Episode 101 goes deeper on it.


You are not annoying people, and here is the test

This is the question I hear most, so I put it straight to Jake. His answer was the clearest framing I have heard.


Text your customers as often as you have been given permission to text them. That is the whole rule. If someone joins a list where you promised one message a month, one message a month is right and four is too many. If they joined a weekly ordering list, a weekly text is exactly what they signed up for.


So say the number out loud in your welcome message. "Thanks for joining. I will text you once a week on Sunday when the menu opens." Now the expectation is set, they agreed to it, and you can send that text every week without the knot in your stomach.


Two things follow from that. Your customers raised their hand, so showing up in their inbox is what they asked for. And once you have promised weekly, skipping a week is what costs you trust. Jake told me that when people miss a message they were expecting, they write in and ask where it went.


Give value that does not end in "buy this"

The idea that lit me up most was using text to teach, not only to sell.


Create a second keyword that has nothing to do with ordering. Someone scans a code on your pizza dough and joins a pizza club that sends one recipe a month, with your dough as the ingredient. Someone scans a code by your lattes and lands on a page about how you make your syrups. You can run a taste testers club and text that group when a new recipe comes out of the oven, then ask them what they think.


It costs pennies to send a message that makes someone feel like an insider! Jake's line on this was that the person who drives the most value wins, and that relationship leads to sales rather than the other way around.


If you want more on that direct relationship, 5 Ways to Grow Your Microbakery Without Social Media | Episode 89 pairs well with this one.


If you already have a list and steady orders

Most bakers with a working list are only using the bottom of the funnel. The weekly menu text goes out, orders come in, and nothing happens after the sale. That is the gap worth closing this quarter.

  • Ask for reviews on a schedule. Export your customer list from your point of sale each month, pull the people who bought in the last 30 days, and send one message thanking them and asking for a Google review. If you take pre-orders through a platform like Hotplate or Simply Bread, that side already has a review request built in, so put your attention on your walk-up and market customers.

  • Run an anniversary message. If you know the date someone first ordered from you, text them a thank you on that date each year. It costs almost nothing and it gets more replies than anything you will send all month.

  • Pick campaign types on purpose. A drip campaign schedules a series of messages from the day someone joins, which makes it right for educating a new lead. A calendar campaign sends everyone the same message on the same day, which is right for a monthly club. A recurring campaign repeats on a set frequency, which is what your weekly menu text is. A countdown campaign works backward from a date, which is what you want before a vendor event.

Then do one of those at a time. Jake was blunt about this and he is right: standing up four systems at once gets you four mediocre systems. Build one, let it run, then build the next.


If your list is small and the orders are not coming, the answer is usually not a better weekly text. Nobody is joining the list. Put your keyword on your labels, your captions, your table, and your storefront window, and keep growing the top of the funnel. How to Keep Customers Coming Back to Your Microbakery | Episode 61 covers the retention half of that.


Moving off your personal number

If your personal number is already on every label and business card, this is easier than you are making it. People change phone numbers all the time. Text your customers, tell them your business is growing and you now have a dedicated business number, and ask them to save it. Most texting platforms let you attach a contact card so saving it is one tap.


Final thoughts

I would not be where I am in my business without a text list. Not because texting is clever, but because it kept me in real conversation with my customers every week, through a home bakery and into a storefront.


If you take one thing from this, let it be Jake's last word: do not let perfection ruin progress. Set up the number. Pick your keyword. Send one text. You can build the pizza club later!


Cheering you on,


Caroline


Keep going

If you are working on how you reach your customers, start with these three.


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