The Butter Book had world-class content and a loyal audience. What it didn't have was the marketing infrastructure to grow. I came in as the sole marketing lead and built it from the ground up.
Backstory
The Brand
The Butter Book is an online baking community co-founded by Sébastien Canonne M.O.F. and Jacquy Pfeiffer, two of the most respected pastry chefs in the country and the founders of The French Pastry School in Chicago.
The platform offers premium video lessons designed to bring professional pastry technique into the home kitchen, built around a paid membership model and an engaged community of serious baking enthusiasts.
The content was exceptional.
The audience was there.
The marketing wasn't keeping up with either of them.
The Problem
When I came on, the brand had real assets: a strong email list, a loyal member base, and two names that carried genuine weight in the food world. What it lacked was the infrastructure to convert any of that into growth.
The website wasn't built to drive signups. Social was underperforming. Email had no consistent design, no recurring workflow, and no system behind it. There was no coordinated omni-channel strategy connecting the channels that did exist.
I came in as the sole marketing lead with a mandate to build all of it.
Building the Infrastructure
The website was the most urgent problem. Without a marketing site that could clearly communicate the value of the membership and give visitors a clear path to a free trial, every other channel was working against friction that didn't need to exist.
I collaborated with leadership to redesign and implement a new site: cleaner, easier to navigate, and built from the ground up around one goal, getting people to sign up.
Social Media Management
For social, I hired and managed a social media coordinator to lead day-to-day content, while I worked with the in-house videography team to reformat premium course content for platform-native distribution. We also produced live-stream events to give the community direct access to the chefs, which was a natural extension of what the brand already stood for.
Email Marketing
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On email, I redesigned the full template system and built out recurring workflows, including a weekly Recipe of the Week series alongside targeted campaign and promotional sends. The templates gave the brand a consistent visual voice in the inbox for the first time and made the workflow repeatable for whatever came after me.
Holiday Campaign
Everything built across the year came together in the holiday push. The campaign ran across social, email, paid advertising, and influencer and brand partnerships working in tandem, and it was the clearest test of whether the infrastructure I built actually held under pressure.
It did.
The holiday campaign drove nearly $100K in revenue and over 1,100 new trial signups within a single month.
LIGHTS
The Results
The holiday campaign was the headline, but the broader numbers told the same story. The new website doubled free trial and paid membership signups and drove a 3x increase in overall traffic year over year. Social following more than doubled across channels. Email open rates doubled following the redesign, with the subscriber list growing steadily alongside it.
What the numbers reflect is what happens when strong content finally has the marketing infrastructure to match. The product was always good enough. It just needed the systems to carry it.
Role and Credits
Role: Marketing Manager, freelance
Scope:
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Web design and implementation
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Social media strategy and management,
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Graphic design
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Email marketing design and workflow
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PR
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Influencer relations
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Brand partnerships
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Omni-channel campaign creative direction