Lisa Eberly Mastela From Bumpin Blends

Sam: Lisa, welcome to Beyond the Inbox. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

Lisa: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to chatting.

Sam: Can you start by telling us what Bumpin Blends is and what problem it solves?

Lisa: Bumpin Blends is a functional smoothie company designed by dietitians. We make frozen smoothie cubes that you can blend at home, and every blend is formulated to support a specific area of health.

I started it because I was having trouble sleeping and dealing with a lot of stress. I tried everything you can think of. I was making these different blends for myself every night, and they helped.

I’m a registered dietitian, and I have a master’s degree in nutrition and public health. I became frustrated seeing so many health products that weren’t actually healthy. They might have a great label, but then you look at the ingredients and find gums, artificial sweeteners, natural flavors, and a lot of things that don’t really need to be there.

I thought, why can’t we make something that has all of the genuinely healthy ingredients in it and still tastes good?

I was also working at a wellness startup at the time, seeing private clients, pregnant, and running out of time to take care of myself. I knew how important nutrition was and how much it could affect the body, but even as a dietitian, I was struggling to make it happen consistently.

If it was hard for me, I knew it was going to be hard for the average person too. That was really the beginning of it.

Sam: What did the early days of the business look like?

Lisa: It was extremely scrappy.

I was working full-time and building Bumpin Blends on the side. I would wake up at four in the morning and blend smoothie cubes in a small commercial kitchen. My husband would help me, and then I would be home by around nine, go to the office, work the entire day, and start again.

For a long time, I was doing that constantly. It took a lot of commitment, and there were plenty of moments when I wondered what I was doing.

Then COVID happened, which obviously affected supply chains, ingredients, shipping, and every part of the business. At the same time, I was pregnant with my first child.

The business was growing, but everything around us was changing. It was a very intense period.

Sam: How did pregnancy and becoming a mother affect the way you approached the business?

Lisa: During my first pregnancy, I had a lot of energy at certain points. In the first trimester, I was sick and exhausted, but then in the second trimester, I felt almost superhuman. I had so much energy, and I wanted to use it.

I was doing an enormous amount of work and trying to prepare everything before the baby came.

Once I had my daughter, everything changed. You can tell yourself that you’re going to keep working in exactly the same way, but then you have this child with very real needs and very strong opinions.

It forced me to rethink how I was spending my time and what was actually important.

Sam: You also built a team during a period when a lot of people were being pushed out of the workforce. How did that happen?

Lisa: When the pandemic started, restaurants closed, schools closed, and a lot of women—especially mothers—were suddenly out of work or unable to work in the same way.

We started hiring people who needed flexible work. Some had worked in restaurants, and some were mothers who needed hours that could fit around their children.

There is so much overlooked talent in that group.

We were able to build a really incredible team by recognizing that people could do excellent work without necessarily working a traditional schedule. We could say, “Come in after school drop-off,” or, “Work these hours because that’s what works for your family.”

That flexibility became very important to the company.

It also made sense for our brand. We are a wellness company, and many of our customers are busy women and mothers. Having people on the team who understand that life is incredibly valuable.

Sam: What have you learned about maintaining a healthy balance between running the business and being present with your family?

Lisa: I’ve learned that you have to decide what your non-negotiables are.

There are milestones with your child that you don’t get back. Breastfeeding, bedtime, those little moments—they’re fleeting. They go so fast.

I never wanted my daughter’s memories to be that Mommy was always working and couldn’t play.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care deeply about the company. I do. But the company is not curing world hunger. It’s important, and it changes people’s lives, but it doesn’t need every second of my attention.

I try to create very firm boundaries.

There are times when I’m working, and there are times when I’m a mother. Of course, those things overlap, and it’s never perfect, but I try to be intentional about it.

It’s easy as a founder to tell yourself that every email is urgent and every problem needs to be solved immediately. Most of the time, it doesn’t.

Sam: Let’s move into the marketing.

One of the first things visitors notice on the Bumpin Blends website is a video in the bottom corner with you waving at them. Can you tell us more about that and how you use video to engage visitors?

Lisa: It’s a Tolstoy video widget, and I think it’s such an effective tool, especially for a small business.

When you’re a small company, people want to know who is behind the brand. They want to see a real person.

I hate being on camera. It makes me uncomfortable, and I would much rather be behind the scenes. But every marketer I’ve worked with has told me that the numbers improve when customers see and hear me.

When I appear in ads or talk about the products, engagement goes up.

People connect with the founder story, and they like seeing that I’m a real person who uses the products, created them, and understands the problems we’re trying to solve.

The website video makes the experience feel more personal. It’s almost like I’m standing there saying, “Hi, I’m right here. I can help you.”

That’s especially important with our products because customers sometimes need guidance. They might be wondering what flavor to choose, which blend supports a particular goal, or how the product works.

The video is a small thing, but it gives them a little bit of that hand-holding they would get in a store.

Sam: You also have a quiz on the site. Product quizzes are becoming more common in ecommerce, but yours is particularly central to the buying experience.

Why did you build it, and how are you using it?

Lisa: The quiz was important to me from the very beginning.

When we first launched the website, I wanted customers to be able to answer a few questions and get a recommendation based on their needs.

Our products are functional, so they aren’t only separated by flavor. They’re formulated to help with different things.

Someone might want support with stress or anxiety. Someone else might be focused on sleep, energy, digestion, skin, immunity, or sex drive. There are all sorts of different health goals.

The quiz gives people a way to say, “This is what I’m struggling with,” and then we recommend the blends that make the most sense for them.

The first version was completely custom-built. I spent more on that quiz than I had originally invested in the business. It was a huge expense at the time.

It was complicated because it had to calculate the answers, make recommendations, and connect properly with the shopping experience.

There are much better quiz platforms now, so a company doesn’t necessarily have to build the entire thing from scratch the way we did.

Sam: What makes the quiz so valuable from a marketing perspective?

Lisa: First, it gives customers a genuinely useful experience.

They aren’t landing on a site with a wall of products and being told to figure it out alone. They select the areas where they want support, and we guide them.

Second, it gives us valuable zero-party data.

We learn what the customer is interested in because they directly tell us. Then we can use that information to recommend relevant products and communicate with them in a way that makes sense.

The quiz is also one of our biggest email-collection tools.

To see the full results, customers enter their email address. The quiz brings in more emails than all of our other onsite email-collection efforts combined.

It is the primary way we grow the list.

Sam: What happens after someone completes the quiz and gives you their email address?

Lisa: We don’t immediately hit them with a hard sell.

They receive their results and the recommended blends, but then we introduce them to the brand and welcome them into the Bumpin Blends family.

We can personalize the messaging based on what they told us in the quiz.

If they said sleep is their biggest concern, the emails can focus on sleep support. If they selected digestion or energy, the content and recommendations can reflect that.

That makes the emails much more relevant than a generic welcome series.

We know why the person came to us, so we should use that information responsibly and make their experience better.

Sam: I also noticed that you ask for a phone number onsite. Why did you add text messaging to the customer journey?

Lisa: Text messaging is very personal, and when it’s done properly, it can feel much more natural than a traditional marketing message.

People don’t always see an email. Their inbox is crowded, and even if they like the brand, the email might get buried.

A text message is more immediate.

We started very simply. In the early days, it was essentially just me using a Google Voice number and communicating with customers.

Now we use tools that make it easier to manage, but we try to keep the same natural, conversational feeling.

We don’t want every message to sound like, “Buy this right now.”

Sometimes we ask a question. We might ask what flavor customers want to see in the spring, whether they would prefer orange, mango, or something else.

Customers reply, and it becomes an actual conversation.

Sam: Were you surprised by how willing people were to respond?

Lisa: Very surprised.

You send a message and assume people might ignore it, but they respond. They tell us what they like, what they don’t like, what they want, and what they’re struggling with.

It’s incredibly useful research.

It’s also fun. Sometimes the replies are hilarious, and sometimes customers share very personal stories.

We used to answer every message ourselves. As the company has grown, that has become harder, but we still want it to feel human.

I recognize customer names sometimes because I’ve interacted with them so many times. They aren’t just an anonymous email address or an order number.

That closeness to the customer is one of the best parts of being a smaller brand.

Sam: Beyond the quiz and text messaging, what automations are most important to the business?

Lisa: The welcome flow is huge.

The quiz flow is important because it can be tailored to the customer’s health goals.

We also have post-purchase automations, replenishment messaging, loyalty messaging, and different flows based on buying behavior.

A customer who has spent less than a hundred dollars and made one purchase should not necessarily receive the same messaging as someone who has spent several hundred dollars and has ordered consistently for six months.

Those customers have different relationships with the company.

We also have subscriptions and a loyalty program, so we can communicate based on whether somebody is earning points, has points available, or might benefit from subscribing.

Sam: How do you use those automations to encourage a customer to move into a subscription?

Lisa: We try to look for behavior that shows the customer already likes the product.

If someone is repeatedly buying one of our smaller boxes every couple of weeks, it’s very clear that they are using the product consistently.

At that point, it can make sense to say, “You’re already ordering this frequently. Would you like to upgrade to a larger monthly box?”

That can save the customer money, and it also saves us money on shipping.

The message is more useful because it’s based on what the customer is already doing. We aren’t trying to force a subscription on someone who has only just discovered us.

We’re showing a repeat buyer that there may be an easier and more economical way to get the products they already want.

Sam: You’ve told me before that experimentation is extremely important to your marketing.

What are some of the experiments you’ve run, and how do you decide what to test?

Lisa: We try to run at least one meaningful marketing experiment every quarter.

It might work, and it might fail. The point is that we want to keep learning.

When I started the business, Instagram ads were incredible. You could target women in a certain age range, put a relatively simple ad in front of them, and build a large business.

It felt like almost anybody could run ads and grow.

That isn’t the reality anymore. Advertising has changed, privacy has changed, targeting has changed, and costs have changed.

For a while, we relied very heavily on ads because they worked. Then, when the performance changed, we had to rethink everything.

Now I’m grateful that we were forced to become more diversified.

We look at partnerships, events, email, text, organic content, affiliates, influencers, PR, and other channels.

Every quarter, we set aside some money and say, “What is something new that we have never tried before?”

Maybe it is a partnership with another small brand. Maybe it is a direct-mail insert. Maybe it is an inbox insert. Maybe it is a new platform or a strange campaign idea.

We put a controlled budget behind it and see what happens.

Sam: Why do you think continuous experimentation is so important?

Lisa: Because you cannot rely too heavily on one marketing channel.

Something can work beautifully for years, and then an algorithm changes, a platform changes, the cost increases, or the channel disappears.

If that is your only source of customers, you have a serious problem.

Experimenting helps us identify other things that could work before we desperately need them.

It also keeps the team creative. We are constantly asking, “What else could we do? What haven’t we tried? What are customers responding to now?”

We do not keep every experiment. A lot of them fail, and that is okay.

The goal is to find the few that work and then build on them.

Sam: Influencer marketing is one area where a lot of brands continue to experiment.

What have you learned from working with influencers?

Lisa: Follower count does not necessarily translate into sales.

We have worked with an influencer with around a million followers who barely generated any sales. We have also worked with much smaller creators who performed extremely well.

The size of the audience is not the most important thing. The relationship with the audience and the fit with the product matter much more.

A person can have a huge audience, but if the followers are not engaged or do not trust that person’s recommendations, it does not help the brand.

A smaller creator might have a deeply engaged community that listens closely and takes action.

We have learned to look beyond the vanity metrics.

We want to understand who the audience is, whether the creator genuinely uses the product, whether the recommendation makes sense, and whether their content aligns with the brand.

Sam: Bringing everything together, how do you make the founder story, the quiz, email, SMS, social media, loyalty, and all of the other channels feel like one consistent customer experience?

Lisa: We try to keep the customer at the center of every decision.

It is easy to look at email, social media, text, the website, and loyalty as separate departments or separate tactics.

The customer does not experience them that way.

They might see me telling the founder story on Instagram, go to the website, take the quiz, enter their email address, receive a personalized recommendation, get a text message, make a purchase, and then join the loyalty program.

To them, that is one relationship with Bumpin Blends.

The story and the messaging need to make sense at every stage.

We also keep learning from the customer. We survey people, read their messages, look at what they buy, and pay attention to the questions they ask.

Even now, there are things we realize customers do not know about us or parts of the founder story they have never heard.

We continue working on how to make all of that clearer and more organized.

There is always something to improve.

Sam: This has been a fascinating conversation.

Where can our listeners go to learn more about Bumpin Blends?

Lisa: You can find us at bumpinblends.com, and on Instagram at @bumpinblends.

Sam: Perfect. Thanks again for taking the time to join us, Lisa, and best of luck with Bumpin Blends in the future.

Lisa: Thank you so much for having me. This was fun.