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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
On today's episode, you'll hear from the chef and founder of Milk Bar on how she turned the camera around to create a much needed community during uncertain times. This is the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:My name is Dave, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you, and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer.
Dave Charest:And at Constant Contact, we're here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Grateful that you're here joining us, and us means, that's right, the one and only Kelsey Carter. Hi, Kelsey.
Kelsi Carter:Hi, Dave. How are you?
Dave Charest:I'm doing fantastic. How are you?
Kelsi Carter:I'm doing wonderful, actually. So happy to be here.
Dave Charest:So I've got a question for you. Are you a dessert person?
Kelsi Carter:I am. Yeah? I am a lot. I love dessert.
Dave Charest:I feel like as the years have gone on, I've gotten more into dessert. Like, every once in a while, I definitely wanna have a little something sweet. You know? I was never really, I don't think, growing up a big dessert person, although there were, like, specific things that I did like. Mhmm.
Dave Charest:Is there, like, a particular dessert you remember from your, like, Is there, like, a particular dessert you remember from your, let's say, your childhood? Like, was there something that was your favorite, maybe something somebody in your family made or something like that?
Kelsi Carter:I mean, my grandma would probably slap me if I didn't say her chocolate cake that she makes every year on my birthday. But she's probably not listening, so sorry to cut off. But I love those frosted sugar cookies, the soft frosted sugar cookies. I don't know if you ever had those in class, but that was always, like, what kids would bring if there was a birthday.
Dave Charest:I think I know what you're talking about.
Kelsi Carter:Those cookies were always brought. It has, like, that layer of frosting over it.
Dave Charest:The white icing, or is it frosting?
Kelsi Carter:It's sometimes no. It's frosting on the top.
Dave Charest:Alright. I'm thinking of something different. I I know what you're talking about now. I got you. The sugar cookies with the yeah.
Kelsi Carter:With the frosting. But they're they're soft.
Dave Charest:Is there a particular style of frosting that you like more?
Kelsi Carter:I mean, I don't know if the colors really taste different, but I've always liked the green one. I really don't know. I think it's just food dye, so it probably tastes the same. But Yeah. I love that.
Kelsi Carter:And then also, I'm a big fan of ice cream cake, which is funny because I used to love just regular cake growing up, but I've kind of strayed away from that. I'm not really into cake anymore or, like, muffins or cupcakes.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Kelsi Carter:But I go crazy for ice cream cake, especially with, like, the chocolate crumble on the inside.
Dave Charest:Mhmm. That is the good stuff right there.
Kelsi Carter:And what about you?
Dave Charest:These days, I'm a big fan of I say if I have to pick one thing, it's a creme brulee. I'm a big fan of a creme brulee. That's always, like, our go to. So if that if we're out to dinner with the family and that's on the menu, we're like, let's let's give that creme brulee a day in court. Right?
Dave Charest:But growing up, I remember specifically one of my grandmothers long story there. But one of my grandmothers, she would make these things called, she called them magic bars. And so this was like, I almost wanna say like, maybe a graham crackery type of crust, and it had chocolate and coconut, and I feel like caramel. Okay. Like a whole bunch of things.
Dave Charest:And so, like, they were kinda soft and, like, you would be a tray and you'd cut them and you'd have a big chunky piece of whatever this thing was. And it was always delicious. And so we would always have those at the family gatherings, and it was like, oh, gotta get one of those. Those are really good. It's funny how, when you think about it, the baked items are kind of something that kinda bring you back.
Dave Charest:Back. Right? Like, there's always some type of like, they're involved somehow. It's like whether you're having a party and people are bringing a dessert that they made or you're at an event and there's usually something. Right?
Dave Charest:I mean, even when you think of growing up and going to school. Right? You had those bake sales and things like that, and people would would make things for. And so your listener, you're probably going, what the heck are we talking about dessert for? Well And
Kelsi Carter:they're probably just like, now
Dave Charest:I'm hungry. Yeah. Like, now I'm now I'm gonna go get a snack. And, well, that's actually a probably a good idea. Go get yourself a snack.
Dave Charest:Go get yourself a little cup of tea or coffee, whatever you like to maybe some hot cocoa. That might be good too.
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. And get comfy.
Dave Charest:We've got a really interesting conversation here today. Kelsey, I'm gonna pass it to you. Who are our guests today?
Kelsi Carter:Yeah. So we spoke to Christina Tosi, who is the chef and founder of the Oh So Sweet Milk Bar. Mhmm. And then we have Shannon Salzano, who is the brand director for Milk Bar and the cocreator of Bake Club.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So for those of you who may recognize the name, Christina Tosi, Tozzi, she's obviously famous for Milk Bar, which has multiple locations. I think they have something like 12 locations these days with I think with more to come, more on the way. Mhmm. But she was also a judge on seasons, I believe, 6 through 8 of MasterChef Love MasterChef.
Dave Charest:Which is, I think, where we were introduced to Christina. More recently, she's host of Bake Squad that is on Netflix, which I have yet to watch, but I'm definitely interested in checking that out. And she and Shannon are the co creators of Bake Club, which we'll find out some more about as we get into the conversation here today. But what's really cool is this was just something that came out of the pandemic as you'll hear. And one of those things where you've got 2 people that really complement each other really well in terms of what they do and how they really bring that to life and form community around this idea of well, in in this case, you'll find out it got beyond just kind of doing what they were doing and became something else.
Dave Charest:And we'll learn more about that, but really kinda cool, fun conversation. And it all started really because they were looking for a way to show up for people. Maybe we'll go to Christina on how Bake Club got started.
Christina Tosi:Bake Club really is the grandchild of both of us. Essentially, it's pandemic. It's March 2020. We are running Milk Bar as a bakery business and as a care package business, which is our vernacular for ecom, DTC. We have all these aspirations for growth and all of a sudden they're they slammed to a halt because the way that we operate as humans and the world changed and so the way that we operate as a business has to change.
Christina Tosi:And what we found very quickly was I always thought that Milk Bar was a business that we baked. We love to bake. We love dessert. We're dessert obsessed, etcetera, etcetera. It's so much deeper than that.
Christina Tosi:It is really about and we felt it really emotionally during those early days of the pandemic. We're a business that shows up for people. We're a business that is emotive and emotional. And for us, those of us in the milk bar of it, we exist to show up for people. And when we lost the momentum and the ability to show up for people in the ways that we knew and understood, there was a very, very intense sense of confusion and loss and lack of direction.
Christina Tosi:And so we were spending sort of all day every day throwing ideas up to say, how do we show up for people? How do we show up for people? We had just launched our milk bar in the aisles of grocery stores. So we were just bringing we're about to bring cookies to the aisles of the grocery store, which is at least interesting because people were Instacarting or doing other like, everyone was still grocery shopping in a completely different way, but we were at least showing up for people there. Our DTC business took off, but the place that we were able to show up for people the most was always in bakery.
Christina Tosi:We could see people and make their day and find little Easter eggs in their the isms of their routines. And Shannon and I were just racking our brains, racking our brains. And we decided one day because for me in any emotion of a day or a week, happy, scared, confused, frustrated, I bake. And I bake early in the morning and I bake late at night. And what I found myself doing while we were on all these conference calls and board calls and, and, and, was I just take them from my kitchen.
Christina Tosi:I was just baking whatever random ho what have you. Baking has always been my therapy. And we just had an idea one day. What if we turn the camera around on ourselves? We were trying so hard to find other ways to show up for people in all these different potential business scenes and reasons and with more forced content and more strategic would have been approved by a board way.
Christina Tosi:And instead, one day we just woke up and we were just like, let's just turn the camera around and let's see if people wanna, like, just show up and bake together because that's what I'm doing every single day. And that really is, I think, the stickiness of the entrepreneurial spirit. The answers are always right in front of you. They're always hiding right in front of you. It's whether or not you slow down or perk up enough to realize that you have the answer.
Christina Tosi:And you just tap into it and uncover it. And so we just made a little video. And of all the stuff we had put out content wise over weeks weeks, just a video that was like, hey, y'all. You start a club tomorrow. There'll be a baking club.
Christina Tosi:What time works for you? And it's something that shouldn't have made a difference at all and somehow made all the difference. And before we knew it, we were off with this big club. And I'll let Shannon tell you about what it actually is because my role in it was just what are we gonna make? And then show up every day and make it and just be a human in the world.
Christina Tosi:And Shannon really saw the rest of it.
Shannon Salzano:Yeah. It's interesting when you have something that's connecting to really examine it and say, what is this? Because I think we could have just been like, this is an Instagram series, like, Instagram video period and called it a day. But a couple days in with thousands and thousands of people showing up and the conversation that was happening organically, we're like, this is a community. What we have here is a community, which it actually like, rewinding the tape is kind of what Milk Bar also has.
Shannon Salzano:Like, at the end of the day, that's really the business that we're in and why it's been successful. And so when we realized that school was forming naturally, we were like, how do we nurture that? What does it mean to have an online community of people who are interested in baking, whether they're interested in actually baking or just like the spirit of it, the energy of it? And we knew that we had to give that some form, give it a little bit of reason to be. And so we started by developing a special series of recipes and then also building our newsletter.
Shannon Salzano:And that's where we really grow the community and measure the community. I think there's such a marketing ism of the only thing you really own is your newsletter list. It's like that's the thing that you can count on and take with you whatever happens in life. And we've really remembered that day in and day out of pushing people into the community. It's really signing up for our newsletter so we can send you something directly from us to you.
Shannon Salzano:No algorithm, no anything like that. And that's really been how we've been connecting with people for the last 4 years. You know, Bay Club's going on over 4 years now, thousands and thousands of recipes. You know, at the beginning, we had 100 of thousands of people tuning in every day, and now we just have this really loyal group that opens the newsletter every day that we see when we show up in real life. And they're just so happy to be here and happy to be engaged in the content we're putting out.
Dave Charest:So how did this evolve into I mean, you just finished a a book tour. It became a book. Right? Like, I guess, talk to me a little bit about how that came to be. And, I mean, were you surprised by any of this being what it has become?
Shannon Salzano:I think it's always an interesting moment when the thing that you're just interested in doing, other people are interested in being a part of. Christina, like she said, was really just trying to say, I'm baking every day, and we're just gonna show you what I'm doing. And the fact that people are like, oh, I like that. Like, that's such a sweet moment and it is surprising because you forget about the normal routine of life being something that people connect to. But then at the end of the day, it is really what people connect to because it's so true.
Shannon Salzano:The thing about Milk's Bar and the thing about Bake Love is they're so true to who Christina is, and I think the the authenticity is what people have really been excited about. Our content is very, like, natural. It's not overly produced. Christina will, like, drop her phone in a thing of butter. And those are the moments that feel sticky and that people really find their way into.
Shannon Salzano:So it has been surprising in that regard where you're just, like, it's just us doing kind of our everyday life of what excites us and what we're interested in, we have kind of an expression of, like, if we're not obsessed with it, you can't expect anyone else to be obsessed with it. So why would we do anything that's not just what we're truly the most interested in doing? So I think it is surprising that that is what connects with people because it seems so obvious in so many ways. And I think the way that it's growing is really just listening to what people ask us for. We didn't know what we were getting into the 1st day we posted a video.
Shannon Salzano:And then ever since then, it's just been having a conversation with people and listening to them say, I want a recipe that teaches me how to do this, or I wanna understand this differently, or I wanna be able to save this recipe, or I wanna be able to, like, forward something. I wanna be able to talk to people in the community. It's really just step by step and saying yes to the things that people have asked us for. And one of those really was a book. They were like, we have a lot of people in the community.
Shannon Salzano:We're this way where they're like, I'm not really trying to, like, always be on my screen. We don't love to, like, bake off of our phone, that kind of thing. And so our philosophy has always been to keep these recipes as accessible as possible and let as many people have them as desired, and creating a book is really just another way to do that. So when people were like, I want these recipes at my fingertips all of the time, we're like, let's make a book then. Easy peasy.
Shannon Salzano:It's not so easy.
Christina Tosi:Like it's hard? Yeah.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Well, Christina, I'm curious from you when you think about and you mentioned, you know, baking as therapy. And oftentimes, particularly in business, the timing has a lot to do with how successful something can be. I mean, do you think Bay Club, if you started that today or before the pandemic, do you think it may have had the impact that it did end up having?
Christina Tosi:It's such a good question, Dave. I think that it would have looked different. I think that in those moments when we started bait club, people were in search of community. They were in search of connection. They were in search of direction, quite frankly.
Christina Tosi:We used to make every single day at 2 PM Eastern Standard Time, which just happens to be a detail, but it gave people a sense of security that every day at this time, I can depend on this thing happening in a time where nothing else in my life is certain. And then not only that, it was the spirit of what was happening at that time where it was like we kind of all needed an escape and we kind of all needed to believe in something that was bigger than us and better than us. We needed to feel like there was potential and possibility that there was some surprise in a good way. I mean, we still won't tell you what we're baking. We just tell you what random ingredients you need, and it is a cannonball in approach.
Christina Tosi:I think to your question, if we started it before the pandemic or now, the spirit of show up at come as you are, show up, cannonball in, take a risk, take a risk on yourself, crack open your imagination in your pantry, make something, and then pass it on because no dessert recipe serves just 1 or makes just 1. There's a reason a batch of cookies makes 12 or 18, I believe. Those principles would still be true, but I think it would manifest very differently. And who knows? Like, I play that game a little bit in my head.
Christina Tosi:Who knows? I mean, trying to even have a crystal ball into, like, what are we gonna be baking like during the holiday season of 2025? What will life be like this coming holiday season? No clue. And I like the no clue of it.
Christina Tosi:I actually think that's what keeps the entrepreneurial spirit alive and well and sticky and it forces you to be present and in the moment and keep your finger on the pulse and be really flexible of minds. That is part of the ride and that is part of success as an entrepreneur and certainly success in BakeClub. So I think we would still be baking. We've been baking that both simple and unfussy things that actually are magnificent, creative, clever creations and baked goods. Or we'd be showing up with joy for people that aren't even showing up to bake.
Christina Tosi:They're just showing up for the spirit because they like to watch dessert come to life. But what it would look like would be different, and I love that. I don't know what it would be. I just know what it has been, and I don't know what it's going to become. And those are the unknowns that you gotta get real comfortable in that unknown as an entrepreneur to thrive.
Christina Tosi:But those are the things that keep me so curious and guessing and laughing. And anyone that pretends that they know any better, get out of here.
Dave Charest:Obviously, you both are filling different roles and kind of making this happen. Right? So, Shannon, I'm curious from you, What have you found to be most challenging about making this work? And then think about your answer too, Christina.
Shannon Salzano:I think the most challenging thing is just really staying focused on the task at hand. We could do a gazillion things with Bay Club, and we've had offers to do a lot of different things, and people have asked us. You know, the community has asked for a lot of things. I think really just being intentional with the immediate steps in front of you and really trying to do those to a degree that you feel you're accomplishing well, that's really been, I think, the thing that we get caught up in the most. That's just, okay.
Shannon Salzano:Yes. We could do that. We could do this. We could be this. We could evolve this way.
Shannon Salzano:But what really should we be crushing and really just tackling in the moment? I think that sometimes feels like the biggest challenge, which is a good challenge to have. It's so nice to have so much excitement about the different possibilities of what a project can be, what a community can be, what a business can be, but really making sure you're living in the, like, what do I see as the next step of this? How do I really do that to the best of our ability? How do we really deliver something that connects with people and measure that and monitor that and make sure that's solid before you take the next step?
Dave Charest:Christina, how about you?
Christina Tosi:My biggest challenge is trust falling into this very piece that Shannon is saying because the spirit and the stickiness of bake club is very much show up as you are. And when I want to read ahead, right, that's where we get lost or there is so much content out there now compared to what was out there for it wasn't even a thing, but my thing is, like, how do you keep your blinders on? And how do you trust false so that the magic, the very magic of it remains exists, that the one of oneness of it exists and that you're not chasing what you see other people doing. This is true in any business. Right?
Christina Tosi:You've got to know your business and know your industry and be really well read and well versed. And then how the heck do you keep your blinders on so that you were the one of one that stands out in a crowd? Because I'm neither one of us are in the business, Milk Bar Bait Club or otherwise, of being 20% better than everything else out there. Of course, that's like a solid business plan for many businesses, but, like, for what? To what extent?
Christina Tosi:To what ends? And that's not what we're about. That's not what showing up and meaning it is about. So I think it's keeping those blinders on. And I think that's true.
Christina Tosi:Listen, the bigger you grow, the more you know. And the more you have this, like, I have something to lose now. We're at the beginning. We have nothing to lose. We were just showing up.
Christina Tosi:And it's that how do you hold how do you put the blinders on and hold on to that mentality of, like, the bigger we grow, the smaller we act? Because it really is about community at its core. We want people to open that email with joyful, reckless abandon every Sunday night when it comes to their inbox. And how do we keep that as pure and as sticky and as human as possible even though we now have access to all the analytics and we know all the things, how do we, you know, how do we mine that information and how do we keep the blinders on as well?
Dave Charest:Got it. So, Shannon, you touched on this a bit. Right? Obviously, the idea of so Bay Club, the videos, all of that takes place on social media. Right?
Dave Charest:You're on Instagram. You're doing these things. So you might even say, well, why a newsletter in the first place? And so I guess that's the first question. Why that?
Dave Charest:And then what brought you to Constant Contact?
Shannon Salzano:Such good questions. I think the thing about starting a community is that you wanted to really feel multidimensional. When we were in the early days posting on Instagram, we just felt like we had more to say and that the format of social media doesn't always give you the platform that you want. Like, we're a little, penpally. We, like, love to, like, forward a good email.
Shannon Salzano:We love to, like, send people send links to, like, a New York Times article, like, sharing in all of the different touch points of media of life. It doesn't all just become possible on social media. So we just felt like we had more conversations to have, and we needed a place to do it. I think that's part of it. And then it is also just making sure we're constantly funneling people in the right way.
Shannon Salzano:Really just trying to have a safe landing pad to say, like, at the end of the day, if you're gonna know us for one thing, you should know us for this. We felt really the newsletter the possibility of a newsletter gave us more of that than just a social media presence. You know? And maybe we just are of a certain age and of a certain sentimentality that feels, like, true to having something pop into your inbox. It brings you a little joy.
Shannon Salzano:That's the way we've always thought about Milk Bar Newsletters as well is that it should it's an honor to be in someone's inbox. You have to treat it as such. Yeah. And because of that, it's also, like, such a great opportunity. You can really just slay so much easier in that platform.
Shannon Salzano:We've really been doing that for over the years, just really trying to keep the newsletter feeling something that is an expression of community and expression of ourselves. And then the reason we ended up at Constant Contact, you know, I won't lie. Like, we looked around at other platforms. It wasn't the first one we looked at. It was maybe the 3rd, and we just kind of process of elimination, just found things in other platforms we didn't like.
Shannon Salzano:It we weren't finding something that felt easy to use. Like, we didn't have a ton of time to sit there and hard code anything or to get really, like, into any sort of musty layout. We needed something that felt really, like, easy to customize and easy to, like, pull around and build. And then we also just felt like so many of them were quite stuffy and quite bland. And like I said, it's an honor to be in someone's inbox, and so we had to show up like ourselves with some color and some pizzazz.
Shannon Salzano:And Constant Contact just gave us all of those features that we're just really able to, like, very quickly make a platform, make a whole profile, and build out a custom template that we could iterate on every week and grow every week and feature, add features, and take away features as we decided to. It felt very, like, flexible and very easy to use, but also very unique. And that's something a combination of things we did not see on other platforms. And it's been 4 years we've been on the, Constant Contact, and we're still finding features to help us grow and evolve when we have a curiosity about whether we wanna try, like, something that goes back and forth or we wanna have a new media type in our newsletter. There's always extensions of Constant Contact that are there for us just, like, waiting to help us grow.
Dave Charest:Christina, how involved are you in the email aspect of that?
Christina Tosi:The format of the spirit of, like, what does our newsletter look like and feel like when we show up? And when you receive it, how does it feel the most like us? And in a way that is almost how do you get a digital letter from a friend but have it feel as human as possible? Those pieces and that part of the content are probably our greatest collaboration. Shannon's the English major, so we share a lot of, like, language, but she helps keep the train on the tracks Yeah.
Christina Tosi:From, proper sentence structure and punctuation and so on. And she's far more tech minded in the, you know, the managing of the community digitally. But those pieces of like, we have our own hilarious ways of working where within our email. I look at them every week and I'll be like this or that or this or that or oh my gosh. I loved that one.
Christina Tosi:We have our funny ways of working of where the recipes and the content go for me or what we think is coming down the pike or there's an ICU bait club, which is the UGC shout out. But, you know, as close to it's digital, but the most analog and a digital age thing where it's in your inbox, sacred, as opposed to the noisiness that happens on social media. There's a what we're obsessed with this week where we'll trade whatever it is, an article, a meme, a blah blah blah, back and forth all week or we have, like, you know, a running tally of the things that are bringing us joy. And then the last one before the birthday shout out is the butter status update. And Shannon is like the greatest both creator and editor for me.
Christina Tosi:So we have places where we share all of the content and Shannon helps really filter out the, like, this is what I think the community needs this week or this is what I need this week and I'm gonna trust that if I need it this week, that this is what the community needs. But largely, it's all Shannon and her brilliant brain and creativity and imagination.
Dave Charest:For clarification, butter status, what is what is that entail?
Christina Tosi:Oh, butter is my dog. Her name is butter. Thank you. There's I'm so far in the, like, blinders on. Butter is the name of my dog.
Christina Tosi:She was born just before the or we got her. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Puppy just before the pandemic. So she came up in bake club like so many of us, my children, butter, so many other people's families, kids to your point.
Christina Tosi:And she was a mainstay every time we bake, Butters around. She's a giant dog now. So she's usually, like, snoring on the couch and is so unimpressed with whatever it is we're making. But that in and of itself has become a piece of it. But I'm a big dog person, but in between dogs through my life, my favorite thing to do is like go to the dog park and watch other people's dogs.
Christina Tosi:So it's a little bit like it's the same sort of thing of like it's true for us. And so we hope it's true for other people, but you get like, a hilarious dog photo of what this creature is up to.
Dave Charest:Which people love. I've done this on webinars and we'd show like, I have a I have a presentation. I show pictures of my cats on, like, a human portrait or whatever, and people go crazy. It's amazing.
Christina Tosi:Keep it human. You know?
Dave Charest:So, Shannon, did you have any experience with email marketing coming into this? Like, were you like, were you running the the things and creating the stuff? Did you have that coming in, or did you learn that on the go?
Shannon Salzano:I think I'm not. I've been managing Milkbar Email in some capacity for a number of years, which is the business of email marketing. It's such a science, but we always try to approach it creatively. Good email, I think, is communicating something to you emotionally and then suggesting a behavior to you, a call to action, which I think what a great expression call to action in general is. It's like such a, like, beautiful way to express that.
Shannon Salzano:So I have had some experience on both, like, programming email, email copy is something I've spent a long time working on, And the different ways it can show up and the different ways a business can use email has been something I've spent some good time on.
Dave Charest:What has that experience been for you using Constant Contact?
Shannon Salzano:Yeah. I think I've been on a bunch of different platforms over the years, and different ones have different advantages and disadvantages. And I think that one of the best things about constant contact is, like, it's really yours for the taking. I think there's so many ways to use it to reach whatever your goal is, business goals. We forget kind of that we're running a business because our business is community, which is something to take very seriously.
Shannon Salzano:And I think the ability to use all of the different analytics, all of the different features of Constant Contact to help grow our community slash our business has been something that has really kept us, like, able to keep the community growing. I don't know that if we were on a different platform, we would be looking the same way that we are today and that we would be as excited about it and as able to commit the little pockets of time that we have to the community in such an easy way. It's kept it so manageable for us, and I think that really has been such a key in keeping Bay Club growing.
Dave Charest:I love the dynamic here of creatively, what's the voice? How do we show up in this? And then there's kind of, like, the execution element of that as well. Maybe if you can just even just walk us through, like, what are some of the specific things? Like, how are you using Constant Contact and what are you doing with it?
Dave Charest:What does that look like? Folks listening to this will be Constant Contact customers in trying to figure out too, like, okay, like, great. But how do I do it? Right? So what does that actually look like?
Dave Charest:And I guess, is there a goal? Is there something how are you measuring the success of what you're doing? So, like, how do you actually start to build a plan to help you achieve that?
Shannon Salzano:Totally. I think for us, what being on constant contact has been for our business, which is community, is having a landing page where folks can sign up for our newsletter and never forgetting to push people towards that. That's the thing that we when we lose sight of it and we come back to it, we're like, yes. This is it. This is the way to be successful here is to build a beautiful little landing page to constantly be inviting people into your community slash into your business through that landing page, reminding them to join in, which we've done a bunch of different ways.
Shannon Salzano:We've, like, released specific recipes, you know. When we were about to go on our book tour, we were, like, please sign up for our newsletter so that you get first access. Like, you're in this group by joining here. That's a really nice direction to point people in and it just is such a service to that. You know, there's so much noise out there to Christina's point that it's easy to lose lose information or to feel, like, behind on something.
Shannon Salzano:So constantly being reminding people to join the community, the newsletter has helped us really stay true to, like, delivering to our community. That's step 1, I think, is having that beautiful access point.
Dave Charest:Can I ask a question to follow-up there? Because I I think this is one of the things we're often saying is, like, make sure that it's part of your process. Right? Like, asking. Like, if you wanna build your list, you have to ask people.
Dave Charest:But I also think there's a tendency to feel like, well, I'm asking too much. What have you found just in terms of, like, where does that have to come in and how often and all of that?
Shannon Salzano:Yeah. I think to us, it's an invitation. Maybe if you think of you're asking, you're already losing the game. You just need to be committing to contributing something that people wanna have. So reminding them of the value of what they're getting.
Shannon Salzano:You know, in business, in Milk Bar, it can be something as simple as, like, you get first access to something. Like, we're gonna tell you about something that's coming out that you don't wanna miss. These things are true. If you're in the right place and you're building community in the right way, you're connecting to people who want what you're giving them, and this is just a reminder to them of the way that they should get it. So we constantly view it as an invitation, and we remind them every time we talk about Bay Club, what they're getting when they sign up for this.
Shannon Salzano:They're getting a little bit of joy delivered straight to their inbox every week, and that's a service that and I think you're just framing things in a much better way. So I think making sure that that's true to you as well as you're building out your newsletter, as you're building out your marketing plan. Like, is this actually a value add to folks? Like, is there something that's worthwhile in this thing that they're opening? And to the other degree of, like, how do you measure success?
Shannon Salzano:It's you can see it. Right? You can see it in your open rates. You can see it in the click through rates. You can see it my my favorite one is unsubscribe rate.
Shannon Salzano:If I see a blip in unsubscribe, I'm, like, we weren't delivering what people wanted from us in that moment. What was that? And then you can dig in a little deeper to be like, oh, okay. I see it. That maybe was a little off message or a little bit not the joy that someone was expecting from us, and then you can course correct pretty quickly.
Christina Tosi:And by the way, like, that engagement piece, I think, is so interesting. The sort of the point, Dave, of people feel like they're asking so much already. I think if you have a truly engaged community and that takes time and trust and tweaking to Shannon's point to build, whether it's single digits or 20% or 50% or more of your community. They love agency, and they're more committed when they feel even though you may see, oh, it's a digital relationship, like it's at arm's length. They're kind of my customer, evangelists of what it is that you're delivering on, they wanna have a voice and they love being asked.
Christina Tosi:For us, it might be as simple as like, what's the next recipe? What's the next flavor story? What's this? What's that? Of course, you can engage with them in other ways on social media and otherwise.
Christina Tosi:But through the email relationship, again, like, we've really tried to reframe it as, like, it's the closest thing to getting, like, snail mail or leaving a post it note on someone's desk to be like, what am I missing? What are you excited about? What do you want more of? Or Shannon will mind some of the other touch points on social media and then bring it back to email to really interact with the community and then to have different cohorts of loyalty or level of interaction. And what we found on the road interacting with these people in real time on book tour recently was how much they take being a part of this community and the email relationship seriously.
Dave Charest:So I
Christina Tosi:think it's like any relationship that you have with another human. Right? Where it's like, what is that relationship? What are the boundaries of it? If you want it to be fuller and deeper or include more people, how are you gonna do that on a human level?
Christina Tosi:And it's not gonna be because they take the lead. It's gonna be because you take the lead. If you set the intention, think about how you're going to build that relationship and take the lead. So if the theory of being on constant contact and being an email marketer feels more than you can wrap your brain around, just think about it on the most human level of, like, I wanna have greater friendships with these people. And what does that look like through the lens of the business or the service that you're providing?
Christina Tosi:And how do you do that? And then figure out how to unlock it
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Shannon Salzano:Online. Well,
Dave Charest:I love that idea of having a, a different feel to it too. Right? Like, I think it's very easy for people to feel like, okay. I have to be everywhere. I have to be doing everything.
Christina Tosi:Mhmm.
Dave Charest:And then it's very easy to then get into this, like, cut and paste mentality of, like, okay. I'm just gonna boom, boom, boom, and all these things. But to your point, thinking of each of these channels as one leaning into the strengths of each of them, but then really thinking about them as their own unique thing and providing their own unique value in the way that you're able to do that with them, it's such an important thing to consider. Yeah. And it helps you even, I think, directionally, and you start getting, like, strategic.
Dave Charest:It it's that guiding light of, like, okay, well, the purpose of this is for this, and so how do we how do we do that? Absolutely. I'm curious then, Shannon, what would you say would be your favorite Constant Contact feature that you've run into so far?
Shannon Salzano:Wow. Interesting. I think just getting into segmentation has been really fun for us. That's a little bit of, like, listening to what your audience wants from you. We have some folks that we can see through the analytics that open the newsletter, like, 5 times.
Shannon Salzano:Like, why are you opening this so many times? Like, they clearly want more than just that little bit, and to be able to deliver a tailored message to a tailored group of people has been such a fun experience. It's such an interesting way to, like, nurture something. You know? Like, we have a real beautiful core of community members and being able to deliver something that feels above and beyond for them.
Shannon Salzano:We're, like, in the business of hospitality in so many ways. And just saying, like, we see you, we know that you're here, and then you want more of us, and we're gonna give that to you, that we can do that through segmentation and through, like, building out specific lists has been really, really exciting. And then as Christina told you the story of of Bay Club, we came up in the pandemic, so our in person relationship was so different. We were really living in people's screens and in their inboxes. And when we decided to go out on the road, even just realizing looking at our demographics through the newsletter and seeing where people are, being able to target directly and be, like, do you know that we're coming to your city, Chicago?
Shannon Salzano:And being able to get really specific and granular, as we've said, like, being in an inbox is an honor. It's not that helpful if you live in San Francisco to be, like, I'm coming to Chicago. That's just, like, almost like rubbing their face in it that you're not going to work. You know? So being able to, like, not say things to certain people or to say more things to certain people has really helped us just maintain that level of privilege of being in the inbox, really maintain that we're being deliberate with how we show up for you, and there's so many features on Constant Contact that help us toe that line.
Dave Charest:This is a question for both of you, but, Christine, I'll start with you. What's the biggest thing you've learned through this process of Bake Club? Whether that's professionally, marketing, personally, you tell me where you wanna go, but what's been the biggest learning for you through this process?
Christina Tosi:I've always known the power of a baked good. I really do believe that small good things daily, they stack up over time and they make a really big impact. The thing that I found, I have like goosebumps saying it on the road and meeting our community in person is that goodness is alive and well. We can't always see it and we can't always witness it and we can't it's really hard to feel sometimes, but it is alive and well. These people show up for each other.
Christina Tosi:Like, it is so much bigger than Shannon and I. It is so much bigger than this email that comes into their inbox or this recipe or this video instruction or a stack of basic ingredients. It's so much bigger than that. It is that goodness and community and togetherness and people that want to do good and show up for each other. And you, if you haven't joined, it is alive and well in a way that restores all faith on a cloudy day, a rainy day, a scary day.
Christina Tosi:And humanity and something as big as humanity are fest too mighty to wrap your head around in the goodness of a day and the power and the importance of a day.
Dave Charest:Shannon, anything on your side?
Shannon Salzano:Yeah. I think something that I've learned through this process and through the community is the power of listening. I think so much of what we do as brands, as marketers, is talk. It feels sometimes like you're just putting stuff out there and you forget that someone's receiving it. And there's so many different ways to listen whether you're fully having a conversation with someone who is part of your community or you're just digging into analytics and just examining.
Shannon Salzano:All the answers are there. And if you're really good at listening, you're really good. You're gonna be good at growing because you're gonna be able to adapt. And I think we lose sight of the power of listening very, very much in in so many different parts of business. So it can be hard.
Shannon Salzano:Right? Like, you wanna say, like, I'm just wanna talk about what I wanna talk about, or I've got my own agenda of this. I'm trying to sell this or market this or do this thing for my business or even in a personal capacity. But when you sit back and learn to listen, it's so powerful.
Dave Charest:For the business owners listening here today, what advice would you offer them to who may wonder maybe reach the same level of success that you have? What advice do you have for them?
Christina Tosi:I would say it's a marathon, not a sprint, which is perhaps an acknowledgment that some folks have. What do I mean by that? I mean I mean literally. Right? The, like, it's one step at a time.
Christina Tosi:It's one day forward at a time. These things stack up. But I also say it in a way of every time we open a new bakery, for example this is true at the beginning at, like, the nascent stage of a business and then at these different relative growth stages. We're about to open a bakery in Chicago. This is a great example.
Christina Tosi:We're so excited to open this bakery. We have so many ideas. We have the floor plan. We have the design. We have the training.
Christina Tosi:Everyone's been onboarded. We've got all of our ducks in a row. We're so excited. We know exactly what our vision of it is. And you wanna know my favorite part of it?
Christina Tosi:The day that we will open our doors and we will learn how much of what we planned for is exactly what people are looking for and need. And then to Shannon's point, how much we will learn by literally listening or visually listening. Right? Or
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Christina Tosi:Watching people's behaviorals or looking at what people are buying or aren't buying and what times of the day they're coming in and in. We will learn so much about how much of our theory of how we were most excited to show up rings true And we will most importantly learn what people tell us we are to them and what they want and need us to be for them. And for me, that is like that's when the spark actually ignites. And that's when the real work of building the business begins. The rest is just the start.
Christina Tosi:The just start starts somewhere. It's the moment where you start to be a part of someone's life that isn't just this is what I want it to be. So go go go. But it's the, like, where did my intention and your need and desire and invitation in? How do those two things interact?
Christina Tosi:And as we've heard in, like, the story of Bait Club, what is true on opening day for people is gonna be different than a month in or 6 months in because the world is marvelous and ever changing. And that speed, the velocity at which the change and need happens is faster and harder to comprehend than ever before. And that's, I think, the most exciting part of being an entrepreneur. So it is a lifelong journey to be an entrepreneur and to build a business. Start with great intention and and have your whole heart on display when you go to open your proverbial doors or literal doors and then be really excited about the fact that it is a journey.
Christina Tosi:Maybe it's even like it's not a marathon, it's not a sprint, it's more of a marathon, but it's actually an adventurous journey and it's one that you're gonna be on for however long you choose to put yourself on it.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number 1, think beyond multichannel. Think multidimensional. Now it's one thing to use multiple marketing channels like social media, email, and SMS to reach potential customers. It's another to go beyond just a copy and paste and add another dimension to the content you create for each channel.
Dave Charest:Now I love that Shannon shared why they even added an email newsletter to Bake Club's marketing mix. The email newsletter offers a format that social media doesn't. Now aside from owning the contact details, Bake Club uses its email newsletter to be, as Shannon describes it, penpally. They're able to have more of the conversations they want to have in the email newsletter format. The newsletter is the next step in that relationship between Bake Club and its community.
Dave Charest:Now this is true whether someone is visiting the Bake Club website or engaging on social media. I also love the mentality that it is an honor to be in someone's inbox. Both Shannon and Christina treat it as such. They make sure that the content feels like Bake Club, like it's a digital letter from a friend. So here's my question to you, dear listener.
Dave Charest:What would happen if you approached each marketing channel as a way to add a new dimension to how you connect with the people important to your business. Number 2, get into segmentation. Now you've likely heard me say this before and, well, I'll say it again. Segmentation is the easiest way to improve your overall marketing results. When it comes to email, as Shannon can attest, segmentation allows you to be more deliberate in how you show up for people.
Dave Charest:Now she mentioned the San Fran versus Chicago stops for the book tour as an example. By creating a simple geographic segmentation, it allows you to take those relationships with people even further. And so here's another question. How can you deliver tailored messages that feel above and beyond for the people receiving them? And number 3, make a big impact over time.
Dave Charest:Christina reminds us that small good things daily stack up over time, and that's how you make a really big impact. As the saying goes, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Christina calls it an adventurous journey. And when you listen to your community and say yes to the things people are asking for, that's when things take on a new life. That's how Bake Club grew beyond just Instagram and email.
Dave Charest:So what small steps can you take today to build toward a bigger future? Maybe it's a small good thing like today's action item. Build a landing page and tell people about it. Both Christina and Shannon remind us about the importance of asking people to join your list. Now, if the idea of asking unnerves you, think about it as an invitation.
Dave Charest:Bay Club invites people to get first access to join the community. Remember, if you approach email marketing as a way to contribute something that people want to have, you're just reminding people how to get it and inviting them to subscribe. So as Shannon mentioned, communicate emotionally, then suggest a behavior. Then you'll be on your way toward building a more engaged marketing list. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to rate this podcast.com/ba m. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's ratethispodcast.com/bam. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.