Are your email marketing reports leaving you feeling puzzled? You're getting opens, you're even getting clicks, but are those translating to real results for your business?
On this episode of Be a Marketer, Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, sits down with Lindsay Higgins, owner of L2L Creative Group and a Constant Contact Certified Partner. Lindsay understands the struggle of deciphering marketing reports.
She shares her insights on going beyond vanity metrics like opens and click-through rates, to focus on what truly matters: conversions and achieving overall business goals.
“There’s so many different methods of reviewing if your email actually worked,” says Lindsay. “But I think it goes back to the initial goal of your email and then kind of build from that.”
Tune in to discover Lindsay's advice on testing subject lines, optimizing send times, and using resends effectively. You'll learn how aligning your email content with your goals can unlock success and boost conversion.
Meet Today’s Guest: Lindsay Higgins of L2L Creative Group
👩💼 What she does: Lindsay is the owner of L2L Creative Group, a Constant Contact Certified Partner based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her company helps businesses with their email marketing from setup to ongoing management. Lindsay is also a Constant Contact community coach, offering real-time guidance to other users.
💡 Key quote: “There's never going to be like the perfect subject line. There's never going to be the perfect day or time to send, in my opinion."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
Chapters
Are your email marketing reports leaving you feeling puzzled? You're getting opens, you're even getting clicks, but are those translating to real results for your business?
On this episode of Be a Marketer, Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, sits down with Lindsay Higgins, owner of L2L Creative Group and a Constant Contact Certified Partner. Lindsay understands the struggle of deciphering marketing reports.
She shares her insights on going beyond vanity metrics like opens and click-through rates, to focus on what truly matters: conversions and achieving overall business goals.
“There’s so many different methods of reviewing if your email actually worked,” says Lindsay. “But I think it goes back to the initial goal of your email and then kind of build from that.”
Tune in to discover Lindsay's advice on testing subject lines, optimizing send times, and using resends effectively. You'll learn how aligning your email content with your goals can unlock success and boost conversion.
Meet Today’s Guest: Lindsay Higgins of L2L Creative Group
👩💼 What she does: Lindsay is the owner of L2L Creative Group, a Constant Contact Certified Partner based in Boston, Massachusetts. Her company helps businesses with their email marketing from setup to ongoing management. Lindsay is also a Constant Contact community coach, offering real-time guidance to other users.
💡 Key quote: “There's never going to be like the perfect subject line. There's never going to be the perfect day or time to send, in my opinion."
If you love this show, please leave a review. Go to RateThisPodcast.com/bam and follow the simple instructions.
What is Be a Marketer with Dave Charest?
As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Dave Charest:
On today's episode, you'll hear how to go beyond opens and clicks to get to what really matters in your reporting. This is the be a marketer podcast.
Dave Charest:
My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact. And I help small business owners like you make sense of online marketing. And on this podcast, we'll explore what it really takes to market your business even if marketing's not your thing. No jargon, no hype, just real stories to inspire you and practical advice you can act on. So remember, friend, you can be a marketer.
Dave Charest:
And at Constant Contact, we're here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining us for another episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. This is the 5th in our series of conversations with Constant Contact Community Coaches. But before we get to our topic today and describe who those people are, I've got the one and only Kelsey Carter. Hi, Kelsey.
Kelsi Carter:
Hi, Dave Charest. Happy to be here.
Dave Charest:
Happy to have you here as always. So just a refresher for everyone playing along at home, community coaches. They are distinguished members and leaders in the Constant Contact community who, really, they go above and beyond. Right? They showcase their expertise.
Dave Charest:
They engage with others and offer guidance to the small businesses in our online community. Now we've promised you 6 of these episodes with our coaches. So far, we've talked about setting goals with Tracy Lee Davis of Xingpop Social Media. We've talked email design with Aaron Wesley Means of Activate Business Solutions. We've also talked about growing your list with Melanie Deal of Melanie and Co, creating multichannel campaigns with, again, Aaron Wesley Means.
Dave Charest:
And today, we're gonna be talking about reporting with our guest who Kelsey will share with you in a moment, and then we're gonna be closing it off with a conversation around segmentation. So, Kelsi, you're on. Who's joining us today?
Kelsi Carter:
I thought you'd never ask. So today, we have Lindsey Higgins. She's the owner of L2L Creative Group, which is based in Boston, Massachusetts. So Lindsey helps businesses set up their email marketing in Constant Contact from start to finish, and she also offers ongoing account management.
Dave Charest:
A little bit of trivia for you, Kelsey. Lindsay was a former marketing communications consultant at Constant Contact. So she spent her days on the phones with Constant Contact customers advising them on their marketing efforts. She, of course, went off on her own. She started an agency and became a Constant Contact certified partner.
Dave Charest:
And big round of applause here. In 2024, she celebrated her 10th year in business. Yay. Congratulations, Lindsay. So we connected, as I mentioned, to talk about reporting today.
Dave Charest:
But first, let's go to Lindsay as she shares her experience as a Constant Contact certified partner.
Lindsay Higgins:
Being a certified partner has been amazing because my agency is basically backed by Constant Contact and endorsed and we can really shine through and prove our expertise. Like, we know this product in and out. We can help you from beginning to end. And I've had some amazing opportunities being a certified partner with Constant Contact. I've spoken at Microsoft.
Lindsay Higgins:
I've spoken at the Boston Business Journal. I've done workshops online and all over the country. So for national events, and so I'm very fortunate for that. But, yeah, it's been quite the journey.
Dave Charest:
What has the experience been like as a Constant Contact community coach?
Lindsay Higgins:
I love being a coach because it's real time. Like, you're answering questions with the constant contact customer base if they get stuck on something and you kinda see what people are struggling with. We have a lot of management clients and a lot of them handed off to us to take care of. So it's interesting to see what people are like, may have an issue with or, like, don't understand so we can properly address those issues with them and address any concerns or just help them live. So it's been a great feature.
Lindsay Higgins:
I recommend it to all customers that use Constant Contact to leverage that, Constant Contact community.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. Well, we appreciate you being in there to help out and sharing your expertise with folks in there. Lindsay, so we're here to talk about really kind of reporting and and, you know, like, what happens after you send that email? And people are wondering, okay. Is this working?
Dave Charest:
You know, what do I need to do? What is this gonna do for us? All of that kind of stuff. And so I guess my question to you is, I mean, once people send that email, what are they looking at? Well, how do they know it's working?
Lindsay Higgins:
Right. A great question. So, yeah, it's like once you send out an email, it's yeah. How do you know if it's doing what you want it to do? So I think it goes back to why did you send the email?
Lindsay Higgins:
What was the email about? So let's say you are promoting an event. Right? And let's say the event has an RSVP button inside. So, essentially, your goal for that email was you want to collect RSVPs and increase attendance to your event and get registrations.
Lindsay Higgins:
So once your email goes out, okay, well, how many registrations did you get from that email? I think that that's a really important component to look at, like, the click rate in that sense. And then let's say on the back end, if you're using Constant Contact for registrations, you'll be able to see exactly how many people did register to that event that you're holding. So you can kinda analyze. For example, let's say your click rate is really strong, but you didn't have lot of registrations for your event.
Lindsay Higgins:
So that would mean to me, look from an outsider looking in that, okay, maybe there was an issue with the registration form or maybe there was some confusion about how to register, something along those lines. But it should have a good indication for a high click rate if you're looking to drive action and have somebody click a button to do something. Let's say that you're hoping to increase phone calls, then is your phone ringing? Is your company line ringing? Is your cell phone ringing?
Lindsay Higgins:
Just measuring on live in real time in the day to day and in the back end is really important. For example, what does your open rate look like? So if your open rate is pretty low, let's say it's 10%, I'm just throwing that number out there, then maybe there was an issue with your subject line. You know, it wasn't did you have a subject line? What did it say?
Lindsay Higgins:
Insert subject line here. You know? So I I have seen that happen. There's so many different methods of reviewing if your email actually worked, but I think it goes back to, okay, what was the initial goal of your email and then kind of build from that to be able to review all the metrics surrounding it.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. So I love that you started there because I think this is often one of the things, and I think social media is kind of a big proponent here in terms of this mentality. Right? But it all becomes about, like, the click and the and, like, the engagement piece. And not that those things aren't important or, like, leading indicators in many ways, but oftentimes, it clouds us to forget about the things that are actually important, which is to your point, why is the reason that you were sending this email?
Dave Charest:
What is the thing that you want people to do? What is the goal? Because that's ultimately what you wanna get to. Then it becomes like, okay. If you work your way back, these things like opens, these things like clicks, these things lead to that thing.
Dave Charest:
But at the end of the day, if people open and click, and they don't do that thing that you want them to do, well, do you count that as a success? Right? Probably not because you you're not actually putting money in the bank, so to speak. Well, so let's talk about a couple of things here, just kind of going through the lens of this, right, where you've got opens and clicks. So obviously, that's something that you can see in the back end.
Dave Charest:
Right? You can see that in the constant contact dashboard. I think when we're looking at opens and clicks right now, and I'm gonna say this kind of across all industries, we're probably at a 33% is, like, the average open rate. And then for a click rate, we're at, like, a 2%. So I think these are good in terms of making sure, like, you know, giving you a sense of, like, how things are doing.
Dave Charest:
I think it's obviously more important to make sure that you're focusing on your own numbers and really looking to improve those. And I would actually say to folks too, listening, if you haven't done this already, it's probably a good idea to go into your Constant Contact account and add your industry. Because if you do that, then what's gonna happen is you'll start to see numbers reflective of your industry in your reporting, so you can start to get a gauge again, like how you're doing compared to others in your specific industry. And I think that's really important again, but really focus on those specific numbers of your own and improving those, I think is more important than anything else. So, you know, you mentioned a few things.
Dave Charest:
You start to look at all of these things, and they start to help you kind of dissect a bit or diagnose where something might be going wrong. And so, of course, the first stage in all of this is getting somebody to having your goal, you send the email out, but the first thing that people need to do is see it and open it. Right? So what should people think about just in terms of, like, getting more opens?
Lindsay Higgins:
Yeah. So let's say you send out an email and you have you know, your open rate is good. It's above industry average, but you want better. Right? So in that situation, I would say make a copy of the email that you sent out, revise the subject line, do something totally different, and then resend that same email to the people that did not open it before.
Lindsay Higgins:
You can kinda see you can kinda gauge, like, okay, which subject line works better? You can do the split testing as well. There is the a and b testing within the platform. So that kinda gives you a good idea of what subject line performs better. And I think there's never a right or wrong answer.
Lindsay Higgins:
There's always gonna be principles to apply to get the best result, but there's never gonna be, like, the perfect subject line. There's never going to be the perfect day or time to send, in my opinion. I mean, I know there's studies and all of that, but if you're seeing that 2 o'clock on Monday is working for you, then go for that. Try a different time the next time and just see, you know, trial and error. It's all about maybe you sent it on a Friday at 4 PM right before a holiday weekend, maybe that affected in what your result was.
Lindsay Higgins:
So it's all about just seeing, okay, what did this garner as a result and then what are you doing another test, what did that, and then kinda comparing the 2. And then you start to kinda feel it out and see what works and what doesn't for your business.
Dave Charest:
Yeah. I think that's, like, just a great mentality across the board to think about just testing. I think that's the big thing with marketing. Like, we're gonna give you ideas or places to start and things to try, but every business, every audience is a little bit different and you wanna kinda lean into trying those things, adopting that mindset to figure out what works best for you. You mentioned AB testing, of course, with subject lines, which is a great way to start to figure out.
Dave Charest:
And basically what that means is that you can say, all right, I'm gonna use, I'm gonna send a certain amount of emails to one group of people with this subject line. I'm gonna send a smaller another amount with this subject line, and then whichever one ends up being the one that most people open, that's the one you're gonna send to the rest of your list. Right? Which I think is really cool. The other thing you mentioned is really that idea of, like, sending to people who didn't open was something different too.
Dave Charest:
And I just wanna mention for folks too that a simple way to do this in your workflow with Constant Contact too is use the resend to non openers feature. And so what you can do is actually go in there. And as you're scheduling that first send, you can then say, okay, now I'm gonna in a few days' time, I'm gonna reschedule this for people that didn't open it. And then you can actually update the subject line in there. And then you're just doing that at one time.
Dave Charest:
So you don't have to do that again to test that out. I think that's cool as well, and a good time saver there for folks as well. So when we start thinking about, okay, now we've got people to open the email, a lot of times, you know, your success with email is gonna be based on getting people to to do something. You wanna get some type of action. And sometimes that can be, as we mentioned, things that are maybe outside of the dashboard, or maybe it's even just replying to you or something like that.
Dave Charest:
But it's also really looking at sometimes we wanna get people clicking. We gotta get people to our website. We wanna get people to the form. We wanna get people to what it is that we want them to do. And so what about when we start thinking about what are some ways we can start thinking about or tips for people to get better click throughs once people actually get inside that email?
Lindsay Higgins:
So that's a great question, and funny you asked because I was just reviewing some reporting for a women's club that I manage, and I highlight events coming up in the area that we're doing. And I actually noticed that in the email that I sent out, I do have a mix of buttons and underlined links to take action, to register, RSVP, whatever it may be. And I actually noticed there was a lot of clicks on the actual underlined words versus the button, which I thought was really interesting. So it's like, okay. I'll take that into account for next time.
Lindsay Higgins:
Like, hey. Maybe just do I underline more things and see if that's garnering a better result.
Dave Charest:
I like that idea of giving people let's say, I'm a big fan of look. I want somebody to take an action, so I'm gonna have an email focused on someone taking whatever that one action it is. But within that email, I can give them multiple opportunities to take the same action versus introducing new actions. Right? And so your tip here about, like, thinking about using your underlying text, using a button as well.
Dave Charest:
It gives people kind of the option in the as they're reading the email of knowing, like, oh, like, this is where I'm ready to take that action, or this is where I'm gonna do that. And so it gives people multiple opportunities to take the same action within an email, which is I think is something cool to to check through and and test out. I think the other thing to mention so, again, we mentioned this briefly, like, going beyond, and we kinda started there, is going beyond the opens and clicks and looking to the conversion rates. Like like, what are the things that you wanted people to do? And I just wanted to mention here that, again, sometimes those metrics are outside your dashboard.
Dave Charest:
And so, Lindsay, you know, you mentioned that I gave you if you wanted somebody to call you, but like how many people called. So, like, what do you recommend people do to, like, start to track those things that might not really exist inside the constant contact dashboard, for example, but the things that they have to take into account to actually see how successful they were?
Lindsay Higgins:
Yeah. So let's say just the phone call example. Let's say in that email, you're promoting a specific product or service and you start to notice, okay, that month after you sent out that email, you're getting inquiries from your website forms, you're getting emails, you're getting phone calls regarding that specific service. I mean, if you never promoted it before, then you kinda can attribute, okay, well, how do people know about this? Right?
Lindsay Higgins:
It could be people on your email list spreading the word and telling their friends, family, or other people in the industry about this product or service that you're featuring or that you featured in this email. So I think that you can kind of attribute not directly in pinpointing it, but you can kind of indirectly correlate the cause and effect of that specific campaign and the result that it garnered.
Dave Charest:
So I wanna just recap for some folks listening to us here today. A couple of things before I do that, though. Check out that reporting dashboard within your Constant Contact account. There's really interesting things that you can do with it. Or just even just look at trends over emails that you've sent over time.
Dave Charest:
Also, just comparing one email to another, just to see what the differences are, and the types of results you got from those. But to kind of recap what we've been saying here, Lindsay, and what you've been sharing with us. Right? I think even how you started and how our listeners should start, what's the goal? What is it that you want people to do?
Dave Charest:
Start there. Understand the reason why you're sending that email. Then you'll know how you'll wanna measure success, again, beyond those opens and clicks. And then you can start to take a look at what worked, maybe what didn't work, and then come up with ideas for things that you may adjust in the future. Lindsay, I want to thank you so much for spending some time with us here today and sharing your expertise with us.
Lindsay Higgins:
Thank you so much for having me, Dave.
Dave Charest:
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Be A Marketer podcast. Please take a moment to leave us a review. Just go to ratethispodcast.com/bam. Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. That's rate this podcast.com/ bam.
Dave Charest:
Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.