April is the time of year where we really start to see the first fresh, local produce start to make an appearance. Team that up seasonal holidays like Ramadan, Passover and Earth Day and there’s no shortage of April newsletter ideas for food bloggers and food content creators.
April offers up a wealth of content ideas for your email newsletters so now is the time to start writing and scheduling so they’re all ready to go next month.
SEASONAL HOLIDAYS:
In 2024, Easter is early (in March) so that means the major observances for April this year are Ramadan (which continues from March until April 10), Passover (April 22- April 30) and Earth Day (April 22). Each with their own unique food based traditions. That means lots of content ideas!
the food!
entertaining – small groups, large groups, casual, budget friendly, upscale, planning and prepping
kid friendly projects
classic traditions
modern twists on tradition
don’t forget leftovers!
sustainable ingredients
reducing food waste
trying a local diet (100km diet etc)
SEASONAL FOOD:
April can be a wild ride depending on where you live and how angry winter has been! Not all of these foods will be in season everywhere just yet (but they’re coming!)
asparagus
lettuce – a wide variety
spinach
radishes
rhubarb
fiddleheads
ramps
greenhouse produce: tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and strawberries
BRUNCH IS BACK!
Early spring means brunch is back and patios are opening up – maybe even the one in your back yard! Start putting those brunch recipes and entertaining ideas out there. People will be looking for them!
EARLY MOTHER’S DAY:
People plan ahead for Mother’s Day in North America so it’s appropriate to start dripping content out in late April newsletters:
brunch and lunch
afternoon tea
cakes, pastries and desserts
outdoor dining
dinner menus
prep ahead
EARLY VEGGIE GARDENING:
Veggie gardening is food content and more and more people are interested in growing their own food! There is interest in small space gardening, container gardening and full scale backyard growing… and what they can cook with their new bounty!
TAILOR YOUR APRIL 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!
Now’s the time to get started. Plan out your April newsletter calendar and batch write your emails. Schedule them and you’re good to go!
** remember that you cannot use your direct Amazon affiliate product links in your emails but you can link to blog posts that contain Amazon affiliate links and you can link to your Amazon influencer shop. Check the rules of any other affiliate programs you use before including your links.
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!
This list of March food observances makes it easy for food content creators to brainstorm blog and email content ideas.
If you’re stuck for ideas for March content for your food blog’s email newsletters or social media channels, or you’re wanting to brainstorm recipe ideas or come up with fun food videos for your YouTube channel, check out all of these March food holidays. There truly is something for everyone and every type 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. I’ve 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.
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!
This March is all about St. Patrick’s Day, Easter and National Nutrition Month in the food content creation world. Work ahead with these March email newsletter ideas for food bloggers and food content creators.
March is often a challenging month for food content. It’s still winter but people are growing tired of root vegetables and they’re looking for lighter, brighter flavors after months of comfort food. But, this year (2024), Easter and Ramadan are both in March so that creates a huge opportunity for newsletter content creation!
EASTER & RAMADAN
Easter and Ramadan are both prominent holidays taking place in March. Ramadan starts on March 10th and runs until April 9th. Good Friday is March 29th and Easter Sunday is on March 31st) Each have their own unique food based traditions. That means lots of content ideas!
the food!
entertaining – small groups, large groups, casual, budget friendly, upscale, planning and prepping
kid friendly projects
classic traditions
modern twists on tradition
don’t forget leftovers!
SPRING PRODUCE IS COMING!
Early, locally grown spring produce starts to appear towards the end of the month and is very location dependent but, most North Americans will start to see:
asparagus
California strawberries
locally grown tomatoes (where greenhouse agriculture is prominent)
locally grown cucumbers (where greenhouse agriculture is prominent)
locally grown peppers (where greenhouse agriculture is prominent)
root veggies, hardy greens (cabbage, kale), leeks, squash, potatoes, and citrus fruit are all still in season
ST. PATRICK’S DAY
St. Patrick’s is on March 17th. Here are some ideas you can feature:
anything green!
incorporating Guinness into recipes
traditional Irish foods like soda bread, corned beef and cabbage, beef stew, Shepherds Pie, etc
creative novelty treats celebrating the day for kids
NATIONAL NUTRITION MONTH
For health and wellness professionals, March is Nutrition Month in Canada and the US. Your professional body will probably have lots of pertinent info and talking points that you can use in your email communication!
TAILOR YOUR MARCH 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!
Now’s the time to get started. Plan out your March newsletter calendar and batch write your emails. Schedule them and you’re good to go!
** remember that you cannot use your direct Amazon affiliate product links in your emails but you can link to blog posts that contain Amazon affiliate links and you can link to your Amazon influencer shop. Check the rules of any other affiliate programs you use before including your links.
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!
February is all about Valentine’s Day. Work ahead with these February email newsletter ideas for food bloggers and food content creators.
However you feel about Valentine’s day, there’s no escaping it when you’re a food content creator! There’s just not that much going on in February. We’re still well into winter in the northern hemisphere with few options for seasonal produce and the busy food holiday season behind us.
But, there are other things put in your emails and you can write about Valentine’s day in a way that works for you and your audience.
REMINDERS:
Easter is early in 2024 with Good Friday landing on March 29th and Easter Sunday following on March 31st. You could start to slowly drip Easter content out in your newsletters as early as the last week of February if Easter is a popular holiday for your blog.
Ramadan is expected to run from March 10 – April 9th in 2024. You can also start to drip out Ramadan content in late February if this is popular content for your audience.
VALENTINE’S DAY
There are multiple ways you can write about Valentine’s Day when it comes to food.
Make it about the kids – focus on school treats or a special dessert or movie night at home
Create Valentine’s day dinner menus from your recipe catalogue
family dinners
decadent romantic dinners for two
budget friendly romantic dinners
Chocolate – desserts, how to make your own, making them together, taking a class
Wine pairings – for that dinner menu you created above! Or how to set up a tasting at home
Galentine’s day – a great alternate take on Valentine’s day. How to throw a girl’s night party and all the food the goes with it
The anti-valentine – if Valentine’s day is really not you thing, embrace that too. You can talk about that with your readers and what you do instead (if anything) I guarantee you’ll have some agreeing with you!
BUDGET CONSCIOUS CONTENT
Groceries are expensive right now and, according to recent projections, they’re not going to drop in price any time soon. You don’t have to be a budget-friendly content creator to see that.
Incorporate that into your content in whatever way fits your audience: ingredient swaps, minimizing food waste, tutorials, shopping tips, pantry planning. It might be as simple as just acknowledging that you recognize shopping is challenging for a lot of people right now.
PANTRY CHALLENGES
In a similar vein to budget conscious content, pantry challenges can be a great option this time of year when seasonal produce isn’t amazing.
Focus on recipes that use canned foods, frozen foods and pantry staples
challenge readers to “shop their pantry”
talk about the importance or rotating food to avoid waste – February is a great time for a pantry cleanup
using the food in our emergency kits and restocking them (more food rotation)
SEASONAL FOOD
citrus
kale
cabbage
leeks
pineapple
mushrooms
forced rhubarb
root veggies
TAILOR YOUR FEBRUARY 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.!
Now’s the time to get started. Plan out your February newsletter calendar and batch write your emails. Schedule them and you’re good to go!
** remember that you cannot use your direct Amazon affiliate product links in your emails but you can link to blog posts that contain Amazon affiliate links and you can link to your Amazon influencer shop. Check the rules of any other affiliate programs you use before including your links.
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!
This quick tip works equally well for email newsletters and product pages or product marketing launch pages. We’re talking about buttons – with a strong call to action.
I’m always looking for quick, easy ways to improve click throughs in emails or on product pages. Because sometimes, the simplest tweaks can result in the biggest rewards. And it’s always fascinating to me how the smallest change can completely alter a person’s behaviour!
So today, let’s talk about buttons. Particularly buttons with a strong call to action!
WHY YOU NEED TO USE BUTTONS IN YOUR EMAIL MARKETING
Most people who read your emails or scroll your product listings are probably doing so on their phones . ***
Clicking on text links on our phone is always a little more challenging than clicking while on a desktop or laptop – or even a tablet.
Big thumbs, small screens.
This is especially true when the links are short, one or two word text links.
If you’re not already, start using buttons in your emails and on web pages where you have an important call to action you want the reader to take.
They’re big, they’re bold, they stand out and, they’re easy to click when you’re holding a phone.
And unlike 5 or 10 years ago where including a button meant doing some coding, now they’re as simple as drag and drop so there’s no reason not to.
BONUS TIP: USE STRONG CALL TO ACTION LANGUAGE.
When you use a button, it’s important to use strong call to action (CTA) language that makes it clear what clicking the button will do.
Strong CTAs you might want to use include:
BUY IT NOW
GET YOUR EBOOK NOW
READ THE BLOG POST
GET THE RECIPE
SUBSCRIBE NOW
You can also use an arrow icon on the button to make it even clearer that something is going to happen when they click that rectangle.
Not that long ago I started transitioning clients from using the name of the recipe on a button to using a strong CTA.
So this…
Changed to this:
Every single one of them saw an uptick on click throughs by changing the CTA on the buttons. It was amazing what such a small change could do.
If you’re not already, try using buttons in your emails and on your website when you need the reader to take action.
If you are using buttons, make sure you’re using simple, strong language that directs the reader to take action.
Track your results and see the difference!
*** Not all email lists are the same. Don’t assume your readers are mostly mobile users even if that is the industry norm. Always check your data to see what your list is doing and tailor your emails accordingly!
Want more quick tips to help you with your email and digital product marketing? 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!
It’s easy to get stuck trying to figure out what kind of content to put in your email newsletters but if you’re a food blogger or YouTuber, you already have loads of content ready and waiting to be used. Just look into your content archives!
One of the biggest challenges most food bloggers and food content creators have when it comes to consistently emailing their newsletter list is figuring out what to put in their emails.
But in reality, you probably already have more email content than you know what to do with!
REPURPOSE OLD BLOG CONTENT VIA EMAIL
If you’re stuck for something to send to your list, it’s time to… go back in time!
Your email marketing is the perfect platform to resurrect old content.
Your new subscribers? They haven’t read that old content.
Your old subscribers? They haven’t seen it in eons, possibly years and potentially not at all! (did you even email them regularly 3 years ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago?)
While it’s important to update old content on your website regularly for SEO purposes, those rules don’t apply to your emails. If a post is old and doesn’t have the best photos or has a story about your Aunt Betty that the search engines aren’t interested in, it doesn’t matter. You can include it in an email.
Posts that are less popular in search can still get great click throughs in your newsletter (earning you some ad revenue) because it’s a different type of reader.
Think of it this way:
Most of us will never be able to rank on page one for a chocolate chip cookie recipe – the competition is waaaaay too fierce. But that doesn’t mean your recipe isn’t a great recipe!
In fact, your newsletter readers want to know what your chocolate chip recipe is because they trust you and like your content. That’s why they open your emails every week!!!
So share that 6 year old chocolate chip recipe in an email. They want to see it.
HOW CAN YOU REPURPOSE OLDER BLOG CONTENT INTO EMAILS?
Here are some easy ways you can repurpose your old content into emails:
⭐️ THEMED EMAILS: example: a Taco Tuesday theme. Make the email a digest of all your taco recipes. You can make themes as broad (cookies) or as specific (peanut butter cookies) as you like depending on the type of content you create.
⭐️ MENU EMAILS: create a complete menu for a meal. You can theme these as well.
Here are just a few ideas:
mother’s day brunch menu
takeout night at home menu
book club meeting menu
easy kids birthday party
the “soccer practice is at 7pm” menu
Expand this to a meal prep menu for the whole week if that’s your niche.
Expand this to a meal prep menu for the whole week if that’s your niche.
⭐️ SEASONAL EMAILS: Package up seasonal content on your site into individual emails. There are so many opportunities to do this.
For example, Halloween is in October. Package up old Halloween content into a series of October emails:
5 Ghoulish Halloween Treats
5 Fun Halloween Treats to Make with Kids
5 Spooky Halloween party cocktails
⭐️ LEFTOVER EMAILS: what happens after every holiday? We have leftovers. Using Halloween as an example again, send an email out right after Halloween with 5 Recipes That Use up Leftover Halloween Candy or 5 Recipes that Use upPumpkin Carving Leftovers. The recipes themselves don’t have to be Halloween related – they just have to be pumpkin or candy related – search your archives for pumpkin recipes. People always forget about leftovers!
These emails are also a great way to highlight minimizing food waste.
⭐️ TUTORIAL EMAILS: If you specialize in something, package up tutorials on your site into emails. Let’s say you make a lot of pies. Send out an email “Everything you need to know about making pie crust” and simply include 5 links to different pie crust recipes and tutorials on your site (how to make pie crust, how to make a two crust pie, savory pie crusts, how to do a lattice top, etc). You don’t have to write an essay on pie crust – just include the links with a short paragraph tying them all together.
⭐️ GREATEST HITS/POPULAR POSTS: Do recap emails highlighting the most popular recipes or posts on your site. Break it down further and do the most popular soups, desserts, weeknight dinners… you get the idea. Share your personal favourites. Readers like to know.
TIPS TO MAKE REPURPOSING CONTENT INTO NEWSLETTERS EASIER
Here are some simple tips to make repurposing blog or video content into newsletters easier for you or an assistant
✅ PRO TIP:keep a spreadsheet that contains a list of all the emails you send out each year.
Include the date of the email, the topic and the recipe or article names and links that were included. Use a new tab in the sheet for each year. Also make notes of any products or special offers you promote: either your own (recipe ebooks, printables etc) or non-Amazon affiliate links.
This helps ensure you don’t repeat links too frequently. I’ve noticed many of my clients tend to gravitate to the same 20-30 links over and over because they like the recipes or they perform well in search. But by having a record, it’s easy for me to show them we used that link two months ago and it’s too soon to repeat it.
✅ PRO TIP:a spreadsheet is easily searchable making it easy for you, or anyone helping you, to check and see the last time you included a taco recipe.
✅ PRO TIP:Try to wait at least 6 months to repeat a link. I prefer to wait longer but it really depends on your send frequency or the content you want to reuse. Sometimes sooner is better!
✅ PRO TIP:Repurposing content makes it very easy to write and schedule your seasonal emails well in advance. By repurposing your older Halloween or Christmas content you can probably have 10 seasonal emails written and scheduled by late September.
Leave space in your schedule to write an email for new holiday content or leave space in each email where you can add a new recipe that fits with the theme. But seriously… how nice would it be to have all those emails written before the busy holiday season even starts?
These are all really simple ways you can repurpose old content and make it earn its keep, while never running out of emails to send!
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!
