In this episode of The Bread Winner Podcast,I’ll share why creating a list should be one of your top priorities and provide practical advice on how to get started, whether you choose email or text. From my own experience, I’ll highlight the advantages of using a list to keep your customers engaged and ensure your messages are seen.

We’ll cover the basics of when to start building your list (hint: the sooner, the better!), how to maintain direct communication with your customers, and which platforms work best for small businesses like yours. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale up, this episode will help you build stronger relationships with your customers and drive consistent growth for your bakery.

Plus, don’t forget to join the waitlist for The Bread Winner Inner Circle—our new online community designed to help you grow your business sustainably and profitably.

Links to things we talked about: 

Join the Bread Winner Inner Circle Waitlist: www.carolinebower.com/innercirclewaitlist

Project Broadcast for building a text list: https://app.projectbroadcast.com/sign-up?referral=bluebird

Mailchimp for building an email list: mailchimp.com

Caroline Bower Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinebower_sourdough

Download the FREE Guide and Checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery at https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist to begin building YOUR thriving microbakery! 

Episode 16 | building a list

Welcome to The Bread Winner Podcast. This is the show for sourdough micro bakery owners who are building a sustainable, successful, profitable business from their home. If you are already in business or if you're dreaming of starting one, this is the place for you. I'm your host, Caroline Bower. I own a successful in home sourdough bakery, and I am here to share everything I've learned that works and that doesn't, plus everything that I'm researching along the way so we can build thriving businesses together.

Hello. And welcome back to another episode of The Bread Winner Podcast. I am very honored that you're here.

Before we dive in, the waitlist for The Bread Winner Inner Circle is open. This is going to be an online community of sourdough, micro bakery owners who already have started their business and are ready to grow to the next level together. I'll be leading the community through some important pillars over the course of several weeks.

With that said, let's talk about building a list.

If you don't really know what that means, don't worry. We're going to talk all about what it means to build a list and demystify it for you. So in the world of business A list typically refers to a collection of contact information from people who've shown interest in your bakery.

This could be a list of email addresses or list of phone numbers to receive text messages.

Essentially, it's a way to stay in touch with your customers to build relationships and promote your products directly.

So understanding how to leverage and build a list. Is crucial for creating a sustainable successful business.

The majority of my weekly revenue comes from customers who place their order after they receive my weekly texts that notifies them about the menu being open.

I'm a huge believer in growing a text list. But this specific niche, even more than an email list, but we're going to talk about both options. And either way I will not stop shouting the value of building a list. From the rooftops. So let's get into the details.

Let's start by talking about when you should start building your list.

Do you wait until you have a certain number of recurring customers? You wait until you reach a certain amount of consistent revenue. The answer is do it as soon as possible. Do not wait. Here's why starting early is beneficial.

Now to touch on that relationship side too. When I was first starting my bakery. Very early in the first couple of weeks, I started building a text list. I did not have an ordering platform, so I was manually sending texts to remind them when, to order and then to remind them when their order was ready to be picked up. And this personal contact invited a lot of conversation and allowed me to develop more trust and more of a relationship with the customers who were new to my business.

And so I think that really play a key factor in establishing my successful business from the very beginning.

All right. So relationships is the first why, why you should start building your list. And even if you're very early in your business, why you should get started?

The second is consistent growth.

So building your list from the start means that you don't have to scramble to build it or chase down people's phone numbers or email addresses to notify them when you have a big launch or seasonal promotion coming up. You already have their information and you already have a list of people who have indicated that they want to hear from you when you have those things coming up.

Let's talk about why building your list is so valuable.

First is the direct communication aspect.

A lot of people are going to be missing out because the algorithm prioritizes who sees what. And you don't have any say in that, unfortunately. However, if you're sending a text, that text is going to land in people's. Inbox, and the chances of opening it and seeing it are so much higher, I don't know about you, but I open just about every single text that I get. Even if I don't respond. I opened those texts. I'm going to see it. And I'm going to be much more likely to take action and click the link to order than if I just scrolled past a menus open post [00:07:00] on Facebook or Instagram.

So that kind of goes into the next point. You have increased sales opportunities. If you have a list because it's much more easy to inform all of your customers, everyone who is opted in, who has shared their contact information with you. When you have new products, when you have special offers or events or promotions. So this will naturally lead to more sales.

Another thing is it makes it easier to gather customer insights.

Another reason why building a list is so vitally important is that this is the one thing that you own and control. Even if Facebook or Instagram or any other social media just completely disappears you will still have a way to contact your customers. So on those days when social media goes dark and everyone panics, you won't need to panic because you know that you still can contact your people.

That is probably one of the most important reasons to build your own list rather than rely on social media to contact your people.

All right. Now that we've talked about the Why. We're going to talk about the how.

If you're building an email list, you can consider an option like MailChimp. Or if you're using a product like Square, Square has a built in option where you can collect customer contact information within the email list integration in Square.

They're user-friendly, they're generally budget friendly and easy to start with for beginners. MailChimp is just an all in one email service. It also has texting capabilities as does Square. Square MailChimp are both a lot more expensive to text from then the text option I'm going to share in a moment. But right now, we're just focused on email.. If you use an ordering platform like simply bread or hot plate or cast iron or one of the other options, or even if you use something like a Google form or a jot form. You can collect email addresses or phone numbers that way too.

But it doesn't integrate with the text platform that I use. So I do still try to get customers to opt into my text list. Because it's, I can personalize what I'm sending them versus the simply bread. App does not have an option to send a message to all my customers. Other than their preset messages that go out when orders are open or orders are ready to be picked up.

If you decide to go with an email list rather than text, you can consider one of these options or do some of your own research and see if there's another one that fits your purposes better. There are tons of email providers out there. It's just a matter of finding the one that fits your needs and fits your budget. If you don't want to do the research, I would recommend just going with MailChimp or if you use Square using the built-in integration there.

What I found is that a lot of them are very pricey and they're priced on a tiered model or priced like per send. So it can add up pretty quickly, especially if you start building a pretty robust list.

The platform that I finally settled on is called Project Broadcast. If you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you've heard me talk about this so many times. I'm not affiliated with Project Broadcast. I just am a very big fan of the product that they offer. It has worked really well for me. tHe one issue that I had several months ago, they resolved very quickly.

So Project Broadcast is about half the cost of any other texting service that I found, including something like Square.

And what it does is gives you a local number. So an area code that your customers will recognize that is separate from your personal number. So all of the communication that goes to the Project Broadcast number goes into that app. So it's not going into your messages app. This is a little bit different from something like the simply bread app where you can send a message, but it's going to, and from your personal number,

So I really liked that local number and the the app that keeps all of my business correspondence organized. I can search someone's name, I can search a keyword.

So once you've chosen your platform. How do you get people on that list?

So you'll want to set up some sort of sign up form or sign up system.

This can look like adding a sign up form to your website. A little opt in where people just putting their phone number and their name or their email address and their name, and it goes straight onto their list. Now you might incentivize this by offering a little bit of a discount or a free cookie or something with their first order.

Once they give you your number, I don't do that personally. I just offer the text and they can choose to opt in if they want to.

You can also share and invite people online to join your list. This could look like a monthly or weekly reminder that something like, Hey, if you're not already getting my texts or my emails, here's how to join and give them the link or give them the key word to [00:15:00] text. To invite them to join that way.

You could also, If you're at a local market or an event, you could go A little bit old school and just have a piece of paper on a clipboard. And invite people to write down their email address or their phone number. There's a little bit more room for error here. Not everyone's handwriting is easy to decipher. You'll have to manually enter it, but that is an option. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Everyone knows how to write down their name and their number.

So once they're on your list, what do you do with that list? How do you take it from being a list of contact information to being an incredibly valuable resource that drives sales to your business.

This is where the magic of the list comes in.

So the first thing to do is to welcome them. Whether you have an email list or a text list, send them something right away to thank them for joining.

I have mine set up to text them right away. When they join with a little question, I like to start a conversation and engage them and let them know that I am here. And I am excited that they're now on my list, and I am available for interaction. So when they text, I say something like. You're on the list now! You'll get weekly texts when my menus or open on Sundays. In the meantime, what is a flavor or a goodie that you would love to see on the menu? They don't always respond, but every so often they do. And I always respond back and thank them for their feedback.

And that helps me to shape my decisions for the future products, too. If I know what people are looking for and if the same thing it's asked for multiple times, chances are, I'm going to consider adding it to my menu.

So once you've sent that welcome texts, the next thing to do is to send consistent communication. You can decide what this looks like for you. For me, it's a weekly text, every single Sunday at three 30, I schedule a text to go out and this says usually a little bit of a personal something. I keep it pretty short. But a little update, a little greeting, and if there's something important that they need to know about the menu, or if I maybe won't be offering bread in a future week, I let them know in this text.

Which is a little important side note. When you start building your list, expect it to be a process expected to take some time. You're not going to have a hundred contacts overnight. But commit to it and stick with it consistently. Anything. All aspects of your business will grow with consistency. If you try it once, don't think it works. And don't get another shot. You will never get a chance to experience whether or not it would work. So I've encouraged you to be consistent in many other episodes. This is another reminder. To give everything the time that it needs. And make sure that you stick with it to reap the rewards.

You can regularly check in and see how your list is growing. How your texts are performing. If you feel like you need an infusion of new customers, you might promote your email list with some sort of giveaway or an incentive and blast that out in your social medias and in local social media groups. Just share that as much as you possibly can.

Lean into what works well and scale back on what doesn't.

MailChimp does start out with a free tier, which might give you exactly what you need to get started. For a text again, I recommend Project Broadcast. Honestly, I would say you can do your research, but you likely won't find another option that's that has as much capabilities and is as affordable as Project Broadcast. If you want to just skip past the research, go there. That's my recommendation. Like I said, I'm not affiliated, I do have a referral code. So if you want to try it and use the code BLUEBIRD, you'll get half off of your first month.

And that is it for today's episode.

Building your list is one of the most impactful things that you can do to grow your sourdough micro bakery. And it's a direct line to interested customers and a powerful tool for driving your business forward.

If you enjoyed or learned something in this episode, make sure to share it with your fellow sourdough micro bakery owners, take a screenshot and tag me and Instagram.

I'm Caroline Bower underscore sourdough. I say it every week, but I really do love seeing those posts. When you share the episode, it makes my day to see you enjoying the show and it allows other people to find the show and learn and grow as well. If you aren't already following the show, make sure you subscribe or follow. And I would love if you would give a rating and review as well, this is going to help other people find the show. And , we can all grow our businesses together.