November brings us into the heart of Q4 and there is an wealth of email newsletter possibilities for food bloggers and food content creators as people are not only looking for Thanksgiving ideas but they’re also starting to prep for Christmas and other December holidays.
As I’ve mentioned in previous newsletter idea posts, a lot of food content creators up their email send frequency as we get into Q4 – especially if their audience is focused on baking or entertaining. It’s a great way to give your traffic an additional boost through the season where RPMs tend to be at their highest.
This month, don’t forget Black Friday/Cyber Monday!
If you have products – digital or physical – plan your promotions and the emails and social media content to go with them now! Get it done and scheduled to make your life easier.
SEASONAL HOLIDAYS & IMPORTANT DATES:
Grey Cup (Canada): Nov 17 American Thanksgiving: November 28 Black Friday: November 29 Cyber Monday: December 2
AMERICAN THANKSGIVING:
Turkey: all things turkey – how to cook one, how to brine it, smoke it, air fry it, slow cook it, defrost it, stuff it, or cook it in the instant pot. Don’t forget leftovers for the week after Thanksgiving
Side Dishes: turkey’s great, but for many, it’s all about the side dishes. If you’re a niche blogger, dive in here with dairy-free, gluten-free, vegan, vegetarian, keto-friendly etc
Dessert: all things pumpkin and a lot of pie!
Turkey Alternatives: turkey isn’t for everyone. Vegans, vegetarians and small families are looking for other options
Friendsgiving: If you’ve got Chandler Bings in your life, you know what I’m talking about!
Leftovers: anything that helps use up leftovers and avoid food waste
Entertaining & Decor Ideas: y’all… pumpkin centerpieces are so flipping popular this year! Centrepieces, tableware and decor, cocktail presentation, appetizers, DIY tutorials etc
If you’re not American, you can start moving into Christmas and/or Hanukkah content. A lot content this time of year can double for Thanksgiving and the holidays: appetizers, sides, cocktails, baking etc.
SPORTS:
Thanksgiving is a big football holiday. Pull out your game day recipes: snacks, dips, wings, finger foods, chili – all the favourites!
Canadian Grey Cup is also anunderserved niche online – if you have a reasonably sized Canadian audience, this is another one to make note of.
**Don’t forget to add in vegetarian and vegan options as well as some alcohol-free beverages – all of these are continuing to grow in popularity and it’s rare to host a gathering these days that doesn’t include meat and alcohol-free guests!
COOKIES, BARS, CANDY AND FOOD GIFTS
There are things that everyone starts planning for early and they include:
their annual cookie platters
cookie swaps (bars are often included in these)
homemade gifts from the kitchen: candy, jarred baking and beverage mixes, jams, jellies and more
holiday baking: fruit cakes, bars, pies and other seasonal items that can be baked ahead of time
Start dripping out recipe content for these in November. I’d start the first week!
You can also do related email content:
how to host or plan a cookie swap
how to create a cookie platter to gift
how to create your own labels for jams and jellies or boxed candies
how to package food for gifting (or shipping!)
baking pantry checklists
HOLIDAY ENTERTAINING
People start planning early! They are pinning content so make sure to include some easy “pin now” button in your emails for recipes they might like to save for later.
party prep
party ideas
decor
appetizers
cocktails
open houses and buffets
Think of ways you can put a spin on these for your audience:
TAILOR YOUR NOVEMBER NEWSLETTER CONTENT FOR YOUR EMAIL AUDIENCE
As always, these are ideas to help you brainstorm. Adapt them to fit your audience and your niche, which you know better than anyone else.
Remember that your email audience may be different from the audience that finds you through search.
Focus on what your newsletter subscribers respond to. If you have the data available in your newsletter marketing platform, look at which content they responded to this time last year. Then create newsletter content that’s a good fit. If your audience doesn’t care about sports, skip the sports content!
Now’s the time to get started. Plan out your November newsletter calendar and batch write your emails. Schedule them and you’re good to go!
Want more email tips? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Each month I write an exclusive newsletter full of tips, tricks and ideas for food content creators and their email lists!
October is just the start of the busy holiday season. Work ahead with these October email newsletter ideas for food bloggers and food content creators.
October is when things really start to get busy for food bloggers and content creators and you will have no shortage of content ideas.
A lot of food content creators up their send email send frequency as we get into Q4 – especially if their audience is focused on baking or entertaining. This isn’t necessary – especially if you’re already emailing multiple times a week – but it is a great way to give your traffic an additional boost through the season where RPMs tend to be at their highest.
But, you’ll definitely want to plan for this. As we’ve talked about before, repurpose your older content in your emails – the more of it you have, the less work you’ll have to do! Work as far ahead as you’re able to – it will be less work in December!
SEASONAL HOLIDAYS
Canadian Thanksgiving: October 14th (2024) Halloween: October 31st Diwali: Oct 29 – Nov 3 (2024) with the main festivities happening on Nov 1.
Canadian Thanksgiving is a huge food holiday so even if you’re an American content creator, it’s worth making mention of it – perhaps you could put together a mini guide of links to your most popular Thanksgiving content and pop it in one of your emails.
Halloween – more down below (it deserves it’s own section!)
Diwali runs from October 29th – November 3 (2024) with the main festivities happening on November 1st. Mid October is a great time to start trickling out content if this is a good fit for you.
If you have digital products (ebooks, shopping lists, menu planners etc,) around preparing for any of the remaining holidays in the year – Halloween, Thanksgiving, Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, or New Years now is the time to be actively promoting them to your list every week for the remainder of the year.
HALLOWEEN
Halloween content is becoming almost as big as Christmas and people are looking for a lot of fun ideas and activities – and they’re planning in advance! Halloween planning seems to happen earlier and earlier every year. I think you can safely start promoting your Halloween content in early October – earlier if your audience is looking for it!
This is a great time to flex your creative muscles with spooky content:
Pumpkin: It’s all things pumpkin from now until… well… the end of the year really! Don’t just focus on sweets. Remember savory applications, beverages and using up all the remains of the pumpkin to avoid waste and jack’o’lantern ideas
Party foods: the spookier, creepier and more fun, the better: Halloween charcuterie boards, anything with eyeballs in it (pasta, punch, brownies), ghoulish cocktails – let your imagination go to town, and fun baked goods that look like monsters and scary creatures!
Halloween with kids: this is a great time to get kids in the kitchen and people are looking for tutorials and easy, fun recipes kids will want to help with.
School treats: cupcakes, bars, cookies, alternatives to sweets, nut-free – if you can make them spooky that’s even better
Entertaining menus: horror movie night, pre-trick or treating fuel, trick or treating after parties, fireworks block parties, adults only costume parties, party goody bags, budget friendly ideas
Cakes: more and more Halloween cakes are showing up as showstoppers for a party
Leftover candy recipes… so much candy… đ¤Ł
SPORTS
It’s tailgate season! Sports are in overdrive in the fall: hockey, college football, NFL, CFL, World Series baseball… that all adds up to a lot of game day weekends!
Pull out your game day recipes: snacks, dips, wings, finger foods, chili – all the favourites!
Canadians, don’t forget Grey Cup is in November – I know from my own food blogging days that a lot of people search specifically for Grey Cup recipe ideas and it’s an under-served niche.
**Don’t forget to add in vegetarian and vegan options as well as some alcohol-free beverages – all of these are continuing to grow in popularity and it’s rare to host a gathering these days that doesn’t include meat and alochol-free guests!
PIE SEASON
Some may not agree but I think pie season is the best season!
Apple, pear, pumpkin, pecan, sweet potato, mince… and don’t forget the savoury ones! There’s also tarts, galettes, lattice tops… can you tell I love pie?
With pie comes pastry so pull out your pastry tutorials and videos and includes those in your emails too.
COMFORT FOOD
It’s full on comfort food season and comfort food email content always does well, regardless of your food niche.
casseroles
soups
hearty pasta dishes
roast dinners
breads, buns and biscuits
potato dishes
anything with melted, bubbly cheese
Think of ways you can put a spin on these for your audience:
budget-friendly
diet specific: gluten-free, dairy-free, keto, etc
meal planning and prepping, batch cooking
meat-free
easy, weeknight friendly, under 30 minutes, etc.
SEASONAL PRODUCE
Almost all the typical North American summer produce is finished by October and we’re heading into the season of root vegetables, squash, hardy greens and alliums (onions, garlic, leeks etc)
apples, crab apples, quince
pears
cranberries
pomegranates
carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets
winter squash, pumpkins
potatoes and sweet potatoes
Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower
leeks, onions, fresh garlic
kale, Swiss chard, cabbage
TAILOR YOUR OCTOBER NEWSLETTER CONTENT FOR YOUR EMAIL AUDIENCE
How you proceed with your emails for October will depend on your audience. You know them better than anyone else. Remember that your email audience may be different from the audience that finds you through search.
Focus on what your newsletter subscribers respond to. If you have the data available in your newsletter marketing platform, look at which content they responded to last fall. Then create newsletter content that’s a good fit. If your audience doesn’t care about sports, skip the sports content!
Now’s the time to get started. Plan out your October newsletter calendar and batch write your emails. Schedule them and you’re good to go!
Want More Tips?
Want more email tips? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Each month I write an exclusive newsletter full of tips, tricks and ideas for food content creators and their email lists!
A detailed list of August food observances makes it easy for food content creators to brainstorm blog and email content ideas.
If youâre a food content creator and you’re looking for ideas for August content for your email newsletters or social media channels check out all of these August food holidays. There’s lots of ideas here and you can use them to brainstorm recipe ideas or come up with fun food videos for your YouTube channel. They also give you a great opportunity to share content from your archives.
There is quite literally a day for almost any type of food so you should be able to find suitable topics for your food blog’s niche!
Many of these observances are based on dates in the United States but are often celebrated in the food community at large. Iâve tried to note where a month, week or day is tied to a specific country other than the USA. And where a day is observed globally, that has been noted as well.
Some food observance dates do shift from year to year but these dates should be current for 2024
Want more email tips? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Each month I write an exclusive newsletter full of tips, tricks and ideas for food content creators and their email lists!
A lot of the food bloggers and food content creators I work with ask me if they need a lead magnet to help grow their email list. So let’s talk about it – are lead magnets worth it, or not?
Let’s start with the basics. Before you decide if you want a lead magnet or not, let’s answer the most important question first…
WHAT IS A LEAD MAGNET?
If you’re not 100% sure what a lead magnet is, let’s start there with a quick introduction.A lead magnet is an incentive that you give away to readers or visitors to your website in exchange for having them sign up to your email list. Quid pro quo!
A lead magnet doesn’t have to be complex, in depth or fancy. An ideal magnet should be low effort for you to create and high value for the person signing up for your list.
Do not confuse what you consider to be high value with what your reader considers high value. This is a common mistake content creators make.
You’re the expert. When we’re the expert or when something comes easily or seems obvious to us, it’s easy for us to forget that’s not the case for others.
Sometimes, high value may be as simple as saving somebody time (anything that saves me time is extremely high value to me).
I’m not going to get into a comprehensive list of lead magnet ideas here – I’ll save that for the next post But if you’re considering creating a lead magnet or two, think about what you can quickly and easily provide that makes life easier for your readers?
DO I NEED A LEAD MAGNET FOR MY FOOD BLOG?
No, you do not need a lead magnet.
I get asked this all the time and no, you really don’t. You can still build a good, healthy list without a lead magnet.
But… (I always have a “but”, right? đ¤Ł), you will have to work harder to get subscribers and it will be a slower process.
Signing up for a newsletter is generally not the reason people land on your site and it’s not going to be top of mind. With or without a lead magnet, you’ll need to make it top of mind for them. And with no incentive, you’ll need to work harder to do that.
Make sure people have lots of visual queues to sign up on your website with popups, inline forms on individual blogs posts, text links and sidebar boxes.
You’ll need to ask people to signup via your social media channels – and make it easy for them to do so. Create an easy landing page URL where the only thing people can do is sign up for your list. (This is mine – and for what it’s worth, I don’t currently have a lead magnet!)
The upside of this? People who do sign up for your list will be there because they really want to hear from you –Â and that, my friends, is the basis for a healthy list!
THE #1 REASON PEOPLE TELL ME THEY DON’T HAVE A LEAD MAGNET
The biggest reason I hear for not having a lead magnet (and I hear it again and again) is that “people just sign up to get the freebie and then they unsubscribe”.
This doesn’t cut the mustard with me.
If you don’t want to have a lead magnet, don’t have one. That’s totally fine.
But if you have a lead magnet and you wind up with a net increase in subscribers every month, the lead magnet is doing its job. Why would you ditch it?
If you have a net decrease in subscribers then sure, get rid of it. And then you probably need to dive deeper into why you’re losing more subscribers than you’re gaining every month. Because, it’s probably not the lead magnet!
PEOPLE WHO UNSUBSCRIBE AFTER GETTING THE LEAD MAGNET
Yes, some people are going to sign up for your list, grab the freebie and run. That’s life. Just like they land on your website from google, get the recipe they wanted and wave buh-bye. How many of us drop into Walmart to buy the loss leader in that week’s circular and then get the heck out of there? Â
We all do stuff like this from time to time when it comes to the businesses we interact with.
If your lead magnet is low effort for you, then it’s really not a big deal if somebody unsubscribes after they get your lead magnet.
Let them go.
They were never going to engage with your emails anyway and they wind up costing you money instead of making you money.
But, the people who do this are almost always the minority. It just feels like they’re the majority because they’re actively letting you know that you’re not for them and that always sucks. (think about how we obsess over the one negative or ignorant comment on a recipe but disregard the dozens of positive comments??)
THE OTHER REASONS PEOPLE UNSUBSCRIBE SHORTLY AFTER GETTING YOUR FREEBIE
It’s more likely that people unsubscribe from your email list after getting your lead magnet for one of these reasons:
they read it and realized your tone or style is not for them
the lead magnet didn’t deliver what it promised
they were inundated with multiple emails from you in a very short period of time
your send frequency is too high for their tolerance
your list onboarding is clunky
The first? Well that stinks but, we can’t be for everyone. We shouldn’t even try. Having a unique voice and a strong point of view will help you stand out and build a strong following. But it will also turn some people off. And that’s ok!
It wouldn’t hurt, though, to have a few friends or food content creator peers review your lead magnet and your initial emails to see if maybe the tone is coming across awkwardly or your humour or words are falling flat.
The other reasons? Those are all things that are fixable! But it’ll mean you need to sit down and have an honest talk with yourself about what you’re doing.
âď¸ Are you delivering what you promised in the lead magnet? âď¸ How many emails did they get from you in the first week? 1? 3? 7? TEN??? âď¸ Were you up front about how often they can expect to hear from you in the welcome email you sent them? âď¸ Did they have to jump through hoops for the lead magnet to drop in their inbox? (and yes, you should be using double opt-in)
THE LAST WORD ON LEAD MAGNETS FOR FOOD CONTENT CREATORS
No, you don’t need one.
But having one will help you grow your list faster – especially if it’s something your ideal subscriber values.
If you have a lead magnet and you’re getting a net increase in subscribers every month, it’s doing it’s job. I would keep it
Don’t worry about unsubscribes so much as long as you’re growing, your open rate is steady and people are engaging with your email content.
I’ll be back soon to talk about the kinds of lead magnets you can offer that will be easy for you to make and highly valued by your audience!
Want More Tips?
Want more email tips? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Each month I write an exclusive newsletter full of tips, tricks and ideas for food content creators and their email lists!
A detailed list of May food observances makes it easy for food content creators to brainstorm blog and email content ideas.
If youâre looking for ideas for May content for your food blogâs email newsletters or social media channels, or youâre wanting to brainstorm recipe ideas or come up with fun food videos for your YouTube channel, check out all of these May food holidays. You’re sure to find something that gets your mouth watering – there’s suitable topics for every kind of food blogger and food content creator.
Many of these observances are based on dates in the United States but are often celebrated in the food community at large. Iâve tried to note where a month, week or day is tied to a specific country other than the USA. And where a day is observed globally, that has been noted as well.
Some food observance dates do shift from year to year but these dates should be current for 2024
Want more email tips? Subscribe to my monthly newsletter! Each month I write an exclusive newsletter full of tips, tricks and ideas for food content creators and their email lists!
