Happy Subscribers

Episode Summary:

I built my business around a line: here's what people can expect from me, here's what I expect of myself. I drew it early, and on purpose, because I started Duett in a season where I didn't have a lot left to give.

Sam drew a line too. Hers got drawn for her.

Sam Vander Wielen is an attorney-turned-entrepreneur, author of When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy, and host of the On Your Terms® podcast. She built her evergreen funnel in a chemo room in 2018 while caring for her dad. Everyone online told her she had to go live first. She couldn't — so she created a funnel that's still supporting her business (and her audience!) today.

What I didn't expect was how simple she's kept everything since. Two audiences on one list, both bought in, both buying. A welcome that's two emails long. She segments, and then mostly doesn't act on it — and she'll tell you exactly why. Her reason isn't laziness. It's that people change, and she wants room for them to.

None of it is her being behind. It's a person who figured out what she could actually sustain, and then refused to make it more complicated.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• What Sam built when she ran out of time, and the one part she didn't write herself
• What Sam sends a brand-new subscriber
• The email that fills her inbox every morning with replies from subscribers
• Her process for building an email, start to finish (and why she loves writing it so much)
• The two audiences who make up her list — and whether they get different emails
• How Sam keeps a pulse on what her people actually say — then uses that language in her email
• Check out this episode's blog post Connect with Sam Vander Wielen:

• Sam's last free live legal class of the year, Monday, October 19

• When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy (Sam's book)

• Sam's Sidebar (Sam's weekly newsletter)

• On Your Terms® podcast

• Sam's Instagram

  Episode Resources:
• Kit
• Manychat
• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert

Episode Summary:

Friendships are my number one hobby. I'm always on the phone with someone — a friend who called, or a friend I've phoned between errands just to stay in touch. My friend Jenna and I met the first day of college nineteen years ago, and we don't really do phone calls. We go the distance instead. She had a baby two days after I left Nebraska last time I was home, so this fall I'm flying back a whole week before my brother's wedding, just to meet baby girl and get real time with them.

You show up for the people you decide matter.

Shawna and Ella Clark do that with an email list.

The mother-daughter duo behind Healthy Foodie Girl came on the show after we bumped into each other between sessions at Kit's Craft + Commerce in Boise this summer. And they showed up with a number that should get your attention: they lost 60% of their Google traffic to AI Overviews. Not slowly. Not gradually.

Their email list is what's keeping them afloat.

Shawna reads and replies to every single reader email — including one from a man who needed a very specific muffin for his wife's 30th anniversary... the next day. (She made it. Just not that fast. You'll hear how that turned out.)

And if your traffic hasn't dropped yet, Shawna has a warning for you:

"Maybe you haven't lost your traffic, but at some point you're going to. I'm sorry. It's just what's happening. It's like SOS. If you've got it, grab it."

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• What it actually feels like to lose 60% of your Google traffic to AI Overviews (!!)
• Why half of their email signups now come from YouTube — and the guide + landing page setup behind it
• How they use the Kit MCP with Claude to spot what their audience is most interested in — then build the lead magnets to match
• The muffin request from a subscriber that turned into a whole new recipe, blog post, then email
• Not every email needs to feature a recipe — you have all sorts of options to choose from

Check out this episode's blog post Connect with Shawna and Ella:

• Website

• Instagram

• YouTube

• Facebook

• TikTok ​​

• LinkedIn

Episode Resources:

• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert
• Free Duett Resources

Episode Summary:

The one time I've been to Germany, I went to Berlin and Dresden, and then out to western Germany to see family. Their cemeteries over there are gorgeous — so well kept, all flowers and bushes. One afternoon my family wanted to walk through an old church and the little cemetery beside it, and one thing really surprised me — the last names on those headstones were the same ones I grew up with in small-town Nebraska: Busing, Hansmeier, Hermsmeier, Tegtmeier — and then Grummert. It was like a whole German village had picked up and moved to southeast Nebraska together.

So I've got a real soft spot for what Carissa Erzen is building. She runs Humbly Homemade, a blog for authentic German baking — cookies, cakes, breads, pastries — and it's such a delightful, specific niche: it lets people revisit the flavors of their childhood, or the years they lived there. Or people like me, who never lived there but want to make something that actually tastes like the Germany our families came from.

Carissa is also my client. We rebuilt her email foundation together last fall — and it's the kind of turnaround I love to point to. When she first came to me, her list had just crossed a thousand subscribers, but her open and click rates kept sliding. She was doing all the "right" things and still felt like she was sending into the void, wondering who was even on the other side.

So we gave her the pieces she was missing: a welcome sequence (she didn't have one), a lead magnet that actually solves a problem, a cold-subscriber cleanup that keeps her list healthy on autopilot, and segmentation simple enough to keep up with. Now her newsletter click rate has gone from about 1% to 3–4%, her open rates are the highest they've ever been, readers reply from as far away as France, and she's sending four emails a week without people unsubscribing. Best of all? She finally knows who's on her list.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why Carissa says a welcome sequence isn't optional anymore — and what hers now does for every new subscriber
• How the Duett team taught her to create and market a more magnetic lead magnet
• How cleaning her list (and cutting it in half!) made her deliverability and engagement stronger
• The simple segmentation that lets her send more emails, not fewer, without losing subscribers
• How knowing her audience has become a content flywheel — replies, requests, and recipes people actually want
• The weight that lifted when she realized email is hers — a channel no algorithm can throttle, driving her own blog traffic on her terms.

Check out this episode's blog post Connect with Carissa Erzen:

• Carissa's Instagram
• Carissa's Youtube
• Carissa's Website Episode Resources:
• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert

Episode Summary:

What if the goal of your email marketing wasn't more subscribers, but the right ones — the ones who stay engaged? Your lead magnet is what attracts them, and your welcome sequence can be the filter that keeps them active (and gently clears out the ones who aren't a fit).

I got to talk all of this through with Sara Ecklin of Clean Plate Mama. We first met through Kayla Burton's Food Blog Group Coaching, where I spoke about email marketing. Not long after, Sara emailed me: she'd reworked her welcome sequence and was seeing a 65% open rate and an 18% click rate, and she wanted to know if she could share it with my audience. My answer? YES.

As Sara walked me through the five emails she's updated and created, I saw that not only did she make some really smart changes on her own, but I was able to give her some free coaching on a few more details to consider and embellish to make it even more strategic and more caring for her subscribers.

One of the things that impressed me most about Sara was all of the mindset shifts she's gone through to really use email marketing as a proactive part of her business. Before, she was worried about bothering people (I get it. I'm also from the Midwest, and that's just something we struggle with).

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why real growth is about attracting the right subscribers, not just more of them
• How Sara's lead magnet solves one real, specific problem for her readers
• What's in Sara's five-email welcome sequence, and the story arc she uses to carry readers through it
• How Sara wrote a whole email about herself without it being cringy
• The segmentation she set up so she can start sending subscribers more of what they actually want
• The mindset shifts that had her sending her list more emails and deleting cold subscribers (over 1,000) — and how it's only made her more confident

Check out this episode's blog post Episode Resources:

• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert
• Clean Plate Mama Instagram
• Clean Plate Mama Facebook
• Clean Plate Mama Pinterest
• Clean Plate Mama's Free Clean Eating Guide
• Kayla Burton's Food Blog Group Coaching

Episode Summary:

I've sent a weekly email since October 2019 — which is no small feat when you're starting a business, living through a pandemic, and riding all the emotional ups and downs of running something online (plus the economy, and everything else). But it was something I always said I'd hold to, because I knew as soon as I got out of that rhythm, it'd be really hard to get back into it.

And some of those early emails? Not all that strong. Fairly weak, honestly — a few paragraphs, maybe some links to resources that weren't even mine. Whenever I just needed something to fill the gap, I'd pull three of my own blog posts, find the thread between them, and hit send — sending my list back to revisit content they might find helpful at a whole new point in their email marketing journey.

That consistency-first, value-first approach is exactly what my friend Chenell Basilio teaches — and she'd know. Chenell runs Growth in Reverse, where she reverse-engineers how the best newsletters online actually grow and make money (her own list is 50,000+ strong). I asked her what really makes newsletters effective — for both the reader and the creator — and I was surprised: it wasn't about list-growth hacks or the latest trends or tactics for what goes in the email. She said it comes down to one thing:

insanely valuable content.

"The people who have the most insanely valuable content win hands down every time. It's not the growth tactics — it's the content." — Chenell Basilio

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• The subject-line sweet spot between descriptive and intriguing — and why "Did you hear?" worked
• How to start a newsletter without burning out
• What actually belongs in a hearty weekly email — and the surprising "fun links" section that excites readers and reveals your most engaged subscribers
• How to engage your readers right from your welcome sequence
• What's working in list growth right now (surprisingly, quizzes are back on top — plus a few others)
• Why "people follow you for your taste" is the one thing AI can't replicate — and Chenell's soapbox on staying huma

Check out this episode's blog post Episode Resources:

• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert
• Growth in Reverse — join Chenell's email list
• Chenell Basilio on LinkedIn
• Toni Okamoto — Plant Based on a Budget (her Happy Subscribers episode)

Episode Summary:

Nobody asked me for a travel recap. I'm giving you one anyway. 😉

I spent three weeks in July in Italy, France, and Spain — my first real vacation since 2019 — and this morning I sat down with a notebook, a pen, and my black coffee to write out what the trip actually taught me. Not the highlight reel. The stuff underneath it.

Like what it feels like to check in with your team six times in three weeks and find there's nothing for you to do. Like letting yourself rest before you're full-blown sick, instead of after. Like the fact that the prettiest photo never shows you the sweat it took to stand there — which, it turns out, is exactly how our client work goes too.

And because I know you're at least a little curious: I saved my favorite parts of every city for the end. The 7am Vespa ride, the 22-year-old cat named Nona, the tapas I'd honestly fly back to Spain for. Stick around for that part.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• What six years of building a team actually buys you (an empty Asana, and a sale my team member closed without me)
• Why I let myself rest before I was full-blown sick, instead of after (like before)
• How a three-page doc for my cat Tillie's house-sitters is the exact thing I mean by a welcome sequence
• The question I stopped asking people halfway through the trip, because it got weird
• Why the sweaty, train-delayed parts of travel are just like the parts of client work you never have to see
• My favorite thing in every city, start to finish — Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Nice, and Barcelona
• Check out this episode's blog post Episode Resources:
• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert

Episode Summary:

Last summer, Adam Sobel came on Happy Subscribers with one of the most advanced email setups I'd ever seen from a food blogger. Then we had an impromptu catch-up call a few weeks ago — and I hit record, because what he's built since? It's a whole other level.

Adam is a vegan food blogger who has made email the actual engine of his business — not a tool to send people back to his blog, but the brain informing everything his subscribers experience, from the emails they open to the pages they see when they visit his site. He walked me through the personalized offer engine he built, his vision for a Netflix-style subscriber experience, and why he thinks creators who stick with a static, one-size-fits-all approach are going to get left behind.

And don't worry — he also shares what any blogger can start doing today, no developer required.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why Adam treats his email list as his primary revenue engine — not a traffic driver to his blog, but the main event

• How Kit's price increase led him to seriously consider Klaviyo — and what he built instead when he decided to stay

• The personalized offer engine he created with developer Brad Hussey: a Kit snippet that shows each subscriber a different product recommendation based on what they've purchased, browsed, and avoided

• How he uses RightMessage to track browse behavior and make every email and sales page feel tailored to that specific reader

• His vision for what's next: email subscribers getting a Netflix-style "for you" homepage and a completely different blog post experience than someone landing from Google

• What any blogger can do today with tags and simple liquid code to start sending more thoughtful, personalized emails

• Why deep personalization is, at its core, an act of care — and why readers feel it even when they can't see it

Check out this episode's blog post Episode Resources:

• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert
• Adam Sobel's Website
• Adam's first Happy Subscribers episode
• RightMessage
• Brad Hussey

Episode Summary:

"To be known is to be loved." Erin Fajen knows me very, very well now — because she has listened to 89 Happy Subscribers episodes and taken notes on every single one. From her lips to your ears, you're getting Erin's rundown of the major themes of this podcast so you can really understand who I am, who the Duett brand is, what I care about, and how all of this actually applies to you and your email marketing.

It's really thrilling to have someone repeat back to you the things that are important to you. For Erin to do that is such a blessing — especially because she explains it so clearly, from her takeaways on the podcast to all the ways she's implemented what she's learned through our work together at Duett. She really made her email marketing her own adventure.

In this episode, Erin — client, friend, leadership advisor, and the most studious person I've ever worked with — shares the four big content themes she found across every episode, how she built her email strategy from a total blank slate, and why her pop culture DiSC emails are getting replies left and right. (She also asked me for her master's degree in email marketing. I said yes.)

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• The four content themes Erin found across 90 episodes of Happy Subscribers — and why they matter for YOUR email strategy too
• Why your welcome sequence is like an Airbnb orientation (and what happens when you skip it)
• What "thoughtful segmenting" really looks like when you know almost every subscriber by name
• How Erin went from logging into Kit and immediately logging back out to having a 20-email nurture series (!!)
• Why selling through email is really about encouragement — not pushing (episode 50 called it)
• The pop culture DiSC emails that actually get replies (Bridgerton character breakdowns, anyone?)

Check out this episode's blog post Episode Resources:

• On The Up KC (Erin's website)
• Dorie Clark's Recognized Expert (how Erin found Duett)
• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert

Episode Summary:

Carla has been on Substack since 2021 — long before it became the platform everyone is suddenly asking about. She's been to Substack HQ. She teaches "Build Your Substack in a Day." And she is one of the most clear-eyed, non-hypey voices I've found on what Substack actually is right now (and not what it was before they got major funding in 2025).

I met Chef Carla at Tastemaker in Los Angeles earlier this year, and I am so glad we got to have this conversation on the show. She's a content strategist, food creative, and podcast host who has partnered with iconic brands like Bobby Brown, Bumble Bee Tuna, and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And today, she's breaking down exactly what Substack has become — and what you actually need to do to get started without it becoming a whole new arm of your business.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why Substack is no longer a newsletter platform — it's a media app — and what that actually means for how you should show up there
• The difference between a Substack follower and a subscriber (yes, they're different)
• The only thing you need to actually get started — and why it's less than you think
• How food bloggers are using Substack to tell the full story their blog and email list can't hold — without duplicating their content
• The case for Flodesk if you're a design-forward creator (plus: a fresh-off-the-press Canva integration 👀)

Check out this episode's blog post Connect with Chef Carla Contreras:

• Chef Carla's gift page
• Nourishing Creativity Podcast
• Chef Carla's Substack

Episode Resources:

• Free Duett Resources
• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert

Episode Summary:

In my early twenties, my boss pulled me aside to tell me I wasn't a good listener. Explicitly. I cried about it for three days — not because the feedback stung, but because they were right.

It was that I needed to allow space to know the other person and to hear their story. In short: I needed to ask follow-up questions (instead of making it about me).

The fix was simpler than I expected. And it turned out to be the foundation of how I work now — with clients, on this podcast, and in the email strategies we build at Duett.

In this solocast, I'm making the case for why "asking first" might be the most underrated skill in your business. It doesn't just show up in a few places — it informs how you'll create content, what products you build, and how your emails actually connect with the people in your audience.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• My "bad listener" origin story

• The compliment that I hear the most now that makes me want to tear up (in a good way!)

• How audience research at Duett works — from surveys with 2,800+ replies to the specific questions that surface real pain points in your audience's own words

• Why asking questions in your emails helps your deliverability and inbox placement, not just your relationships

• Real questions to help you brainstorm what you might ask your audience next

Read the blog post for this episode

Episode Resources:

• Join the Duett newsletter
• Check out Duett Services
• Book a FREE Discovery Call
• Instagram @alleagrummert
• Free Duett Resources