The Ultimate Guide to Evergreen Email Marketing for Food Bloggers
Build lasting relationships with your audience using an evergreen email marketing strategy! This extensive Evergreen Email Marketing Guide shows food bloggers the best practices when creating audience-nurturing and sales-boosting automated evergreen email funnels.
Take your evergreen email marketing strategy to the next level with my Email Writing Services for Food Bloggers. As your food blog copywriter, I will write or expand on your evergreen email sequence, welcome series, and forever series!
Food bloggers spend countless hours testing, photographing, and publishing their recipes, but as their blogs grow, they also need to make connecting with their audiences a priority. That’s where evergreen email marketing strategies can come in really handy.
Email marketing, in general, allows bloggers to communicate one-on-one with their subscribers, AKA their most loyal audience. By popping into the inboxes on the regular, they’re able to build trust and nurture those important relationships. The only problem? The life of a food blogger is a busy one and finding the time to email their subscribers consistently can be challenging.
Luckily, evergreen email marketing funnels allow bloggers to set up a collection of emails ONCE while still consistently communicating with their subscribers. These funnels work in the background to provide long-term value to your audience and drive consistent traffic to your blog.
In this guide, I’ll break down everything you need to know about evergreen email marketing and how to make it work for your food blog. You’ll walk away knowing how to write and set up an automated evergreen email sequence and how to make it work best for your food blog goals.
What is evergreen email marketing?
Evergreen content stays relevant over time. In an evergreen email marketing strategy or automated evergreen email sequences, you’re delivering your published blog content, products, and resources to your subscribers at all times during the year. These emails remain useful and valuable regardless of when someone subscribes to your list.
For food bloggers, evergreen emails can include any recipe blog post, recipe roundups, cooking tips, meal planning advice, and more.
Why food bloggers need an evergreen email sequence
Evergreen email sequences (sometimes called a “Forever Series”) are a game-changer for food bloggers because:
They save you time: Forget about sitting down to write a newsletter every week. An evergreen series is written and set up in your email marketing tool once, so it runs on autopilot in the background. This frees up your time to help you focus on creating recipes and engaging with your audience elsewhere.
They consistently nurture your audience: These automated sequences are typically set up to send one email to your list per week. This consistent schedule allows you to stay in touch with your audience, provide them with high-value content, and build their trust for months or years.
It drives more traffic to your blog: Linking your recipe posts in your evergreen sequence will help drive more traffic to your blog, even if the posts were published years ago.
You can boost your sales: The trust you build with your subscribers in your evergreen sequence can help turn them into paying customers. Share your products, services, or affiliate links throughout your sequence to promote them continually without any extra effort on your part.
Getting started with evergreen email marketing as a food blogger
Follow these steps to set up your forever series email marketing strategy:
Start with a freebie
Any email list, let alone a great evergreen funnel, starts with a lead magnet or freebie. This free resource offers your audience something valuable in exchange for their email addresses. As a food blogger, you could offer:
A downloadable PDF recipe ebook
A grocery shopping checklist
An online cooking class or workshop
Once you’ve created your freebie, connect it to an opt-in form on your blog, promote it on your social media channels, and start collecting subscribers.
50 Lead Magnet Ideas for Food Bloggers
The booklet of lead magnet ideas in The Ultimate Time Saving Kit for Food Bloggers will help inspire your next great freebie!
Send a welcome sequence
Next, set up an automation rule in your email marketing tool to direct subscribers to your welcome sequence as soon as they’ve opted into your list. Aim for 2-5 welcome emails before you start sharing your evergreen content.
Here’s an example of a basic welcome sequence for food bloggers:
Email 1: Welcome - Introduce yourself, share your story, and deliver the freebie. Let subscribers know what they can expect from your emails.
Email 2: Share Popular Blog Content - Link to some of your most popular recipes or blog posts. Share comments from readers or recipe ratings for social proof and to prove why these posts are favorites.
Email 3: Provide Value - Offer additional tips, a roundup of recipes, or a behind-the-scenes look at your blogging process. Keep this email focused on helping your audience.
Email 4: Introduce Products or Services - If you offer any paid products or services or have affiliate links, introduce them gently. Make sure the product solves a problem for your readers.
Email 5: Call to Action - Encourage subscribers to take the next step, whether it’s following you on social media, reading more blog posts, or making a purchase.
Looking for a welcome series template specifically for food bloggers? You can find my customizable template in The Ultimate Time Saving Kit for Food Bloggers.
Write your evergreen email sequence
Now for the fun part! After subscribers have gone through your welcome series, they can be sent over to your evergreen series or forever series. These emails are what will turn this new audience into life-long fans!
The emails in your evergreen sequence are written to be short, to the point, and relative to your ideal audience. You can include as many emails as you want in the sequence but you should ideally send one email per week. Whether you choose to write enough emails to last a few months or a few years, the goal of it is to keep your subscribers engaged and nurtured.
Follow these steps when writing your evergreen emails:
State a common problem or ask a common question that’s relative to your audience.
Relate to the problem/questions (“trust me, I’ve been there!”).
Make it clear that the solution is your content/recipe. Follow with a few benefits, sentences, or bullet points to really encourage the reader to click on your linked blog post.
Link your content with an image and button. There should be at least one recipe linked, if not more.
Evergreen email example
Click here to see 4 email examples from a food blogger’s evergreen email sequence. When I wrote this sequence for my client, they wanted to relate to their audience through problem solving while also linking to their blog content.
Automate your evergreen email sequence
Most email marketing platforms, like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or Flodesk, allow you to automate your email sequence, so you don’t have to do any work after writing and formatting the sequence. Many food bloggers like to set it up so the platform is sending 1 email per week to subscribers. Depending on how many emails are in your sequence, this schedule can last for months or even years!
This automated scheduling system ensures that your subscribers are (1) nurtured, (2) engaged, and (3) building trust in you. Plus, it’s always there running in the background, so you don’t have to worry about writing a newsletter each and every week.
Monitor and update it occasionally
Make a note in your calendar to revisit your sequence every quarter to ensure all links are working and that the content is still relevant. This would be a good time to add a few more emails to the sequence as well.
Also, keep track of your analytics to help you monitor what changes to make in the future. Pay attention to open and click-through rates to ensure that your emails are converting well and contributing to your web traffic. If results are not higher than a monthly average of 20%, consider updating the subject lines, the order of the emails, and/or audience segmentation.
Need help writing or updating your evergreen food blog content? My Evergreen Email Sequence writing package is perfect for you!
Best practices for evergreen email marketing
The goal of a food bloggers’ forever series is to gain trust and turn subscribers into life-long fans. To make sure your evergreen emails are effective, follow these best practices:
Focus on sharing value: Each email in your sequence should focus on solving a problem for your audience or answering a question they’ve been asking.
Keep them personable: Write your emails as if you’re writing to a friend. Keep the tone conversational and helpful, personalize the emails with your subscribers’ names, and include pictures of yourself sometimes to remind subscribers that you’re a real human.
Make the calls to action clear: Link to your blog post using a hyperlink, photo, and button to clearly show readers where to go next. It’s helpful to have links to your blog and social media profiles at the bottom of your emails, too.
Watch the analytics: Monitor your open and click rates to see how your sequence is performing. If certain emails aren’t performing as well, experiment with different subject lines, calls to action, or content.
Evergreen email marketing is a powerful tool for food bloggers. By creating valuable, automated email sequences, you can build stronger relationships with your readers, increase traffic to your blog, and promote your products or services over time—all while freeing up more time to focus on what you love: creating delicious food and sharing it with the world!
If you need more guidance or help writing your first evergreen email sequence, you’ll also want to check out my Email Marketing Services!