How Pinch Of Yum Uses Grocers List To Drive 10X+ List Growth And Increase Site Traffic From Instagram
Your email list has been stuck at the same number for months. Maybe years.
You post beautiful recipes on Instagram, get thousands of likes, and watch your follower count climb. But when you check your email analytics, it's the same disappointing story: 1,200 subscribers this month, 1,500 the next, then back down to 900.
Meanwhile, you're spending hours every week creating content, shooting videos, and engaging with your community. The work is real, but the email growth isn't matching the effort.
Sound familiar?
Lindsay Ostrom from Pinch of Yum was in exactly the same spot. Despite having a massive Instagram following and publishing recipes for over a decade, her email list had hit a wall. She was adding around 2,000 subscribers per month.
Then something shifted. Not through creating more content or working longer hours, but by strategically connecting the dots between her Instagram audience and her email list. In just four months, Lindsay went from adding 2,000 monthly subscribers to adding 20,000-30,000, per month.
The secret wasn't revolutionary. She didn't launch a course, write a cookbook, or pivot her entire strategy. Instead, she took the recipes she'd already created and the audience she'd already built, and bridged them together using a tool designed specifically for food creators.
Here's exactly how she did it. And how you can replicate her results without starting from scratch.
Oh! And check out this episode of Food Blogger Pro to hear more about Lindsay’s overall strategy and major wins.
Why Lindsay's Second Shot at DM Automation Actually Worked
Lindsay's journey with DM automation started with disappointment. Her first attempt using ManyChat seemed promising initially…her phone lit up with DMs as followers engaged with recipe triggers. But within days, her direct messages became unusable, cluttered with automation responses like "salmon recipe" and troubleshooting requests from confused followers.
This created a serious problem. Lindsay relies on DMs to collect user-generated content like photos and reviews. But the flood of messages she was getting made it impossible to find authentic communication. She abandoned the tool entirely, deciding the engagement boost wasn't worth losing genuine user interaction.
A year later, Lindsay was ready to try again with Grocers List. And this time around it’s been so different. Grocers List has been so much more useful because she’s been able to harness its power while still maintaining the parts of Instagram that are most valuable. Direct communication with her audience.
Here’s exactly how she’s using Grocers List to get incredible results for her business.
The Two-Pronged Approach For Serious Results
Lindsay's success comes from running two complementary strategies together. One that works passively in the background, and another that requires more effort but delivers higher-value results.
Passive Strategy: Comment for Recipe and Save to Email automations on regular recipe posts. Followers comment a trigger word, get an automated DM with the recipe link, and can choose to have it emailed directly to them. This runs continuously without additional work from Lindsay.
Active Strategy: Monthly campaigns featuring curated recipe collections that require email signup to access. These repurpose existing content into valuable resources like "10 Most Viral Easy Recipes" or "22 Healthy Freezer Meals." Collections that take time to create but deliver significantly higher conversion rates.
The passive approach casts a wide net, capturing emails from followers who engage with daily content. The active approach targets followers ready to commit more (their email address) in exchange for premium value (curated collections). Together, they create multiple touchpoints for conversion without overwhelming Lindsay's content calendar.
Why does this work better than a single approach? The passive strategy maintains constant growth while the active strategy creates massive spikes. The combination delivers both consistency and explosive growth periods.
Lindsay’s Passive Strategy With Grocers List
Like so many recipe creators, Lindsay was hesitant to adopt automations. She considered social as a separate community from website traffic, and was nervous to merge the two until they decided to try and grow their email list from Instagram.
And it has paid off. This Air Fryer Salmon post drove almost 700 email signups. Here’s exactly what that looks like:
Comment the recipe keyword, get a DM, tap to get the link or get it delivered straight to your inbox.
Collectively, in just her first 3 months using the platform, this exact strategy has driven 171K website visits to pinchofyum.com. And Save to Email has added 3.8K subscribers to the list. Interestingly 5% of these new subscribers have used the save to email feature more than once out of convenience. You don’t need a crazy complex strategy to get results.
Lindsay’s Active Strategy With Grocers List
But Lindsay doesn’t stop at featuring a single recipe anymore. Now, she repurposes existing recipes into larger resources she knows her audience will love, something she believes every recipe creator should be doing.
These require a little more work, so to access this kind of content her audience has to enter their email address. But Lindsay warns, "don't feel intimidated by it. It's true that it's more involved, but it doesn't have to be a significant time investment. Putting together a list of your best content can be done in just an hour or two, but the value might be 10x on what a regular individual recipe might be."
Here’s a great example of a this reel that features her “Most Viral Easy Recipes:”
You’ll see how this flow is slightly different. The only option is to go to a landing page to get these recipes:
Of the 30K clicks on this collection of recipes, 20,500 became subscribers. That's a 68% conversion rate. And that’s just from a single post.
Before using Grocers List, Pinch of Yum hovered around 2,000 new subscribers each month, but now they’re seeing 20,000-30,000 new subscribers in any given month. Massive growth.
Take a peek at the massive jump from March to April:
So while these types of posts require a significant amount of time to put together, they’re proven over and over again that they’re well worth it.
Lindsay’s Results Speak For Themselves
Before implementing Grocers List, Pinch of Yum was adding around 2,000 new email subscribers per month. After just 4 months of using their two-pronged approach, they're consistently seeing 20,000-30,000 new subscribers monthly. That's a 1,700% increase.
But the growth isn't just about volume. Lindsay notes that 5% of new subscribers have used the save-to-email feature multiple times "out of convenience," indicating genuine value rather than one-time curiosity. The passive strategy alone has driven 171K website visits, while individual active campaigns like the "Most Viral Easy Recipes" collection converted 68% of clicks into subscribers.
What makes this approach especially sustainable for busy recipe creators is that it leverages existing content. Lindsay isn't creating new recipes constantly. She's strategically repackaging and organizing content she's already produced over years of blogging.
Key Takeaways for Recipe Creators:
Start simple: Start with passive automation on your regular recipe posts before attempting larger campaigns
Leverage your archive: Your most popular existing recipes are goldmines for curated collections
Plan monthly: One active campaign per month prevents overwhelm while maintaining momentum
Focus on genuine value: High conversion rates come from delivering what your audience actually wants, not just growing numbers
For recipe creators hesitant about automation, Lindsay's experience shows that the right tool used strategically can change a stagnant email list into a thriving community, without sacrificing the authentic connections that make food blogging special.
Ready to try Grocers List? Give it a shot here.
