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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 2x Webby Award Honoree Be A Marketer podcast!
On today's episode, you'll hear from a founder that knows how to slice and dice your contact list. 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. And hello to the 1 and only Kelsey Carter. Hi, Kelsi.
Kelsi Carter:Hi, Dave Charest. How are you?
Dave Charest:I'm doing fantastic. Thanks for asking. Kelsi, this is another in our series of conversations with Constant Contact Community Coaches. And by the way, speaking of the Constant Contact Community, if you're a Constant Contact customer not participating in the Constant Contact online community, what is going on? You can join for free as part of your Constant Contact account, and you can connect with other business owners and coaches like our guests today.
Dave Charest:So, Kelsey, I guess the next question is, who is our guest today?
Kelsi Carter:Today is David Fischer, the founder and CEO of Solutions for Growth, which is a full service marketing agency that's been around for 14 years at the time we recorded this episode. And to top it off, David is also a certified Constant Contact partner and a Constant Contact community coach. David and his team provide small businesses nationwide with the marketing tools they need to tell their world, like, hey. We're awesome, and here's why your life is gonna be better with us in it.
Dave Charest:So I had a really good conversation with David, and we talk about the simplest way to level up your email marketing, why you should treat your most engaged and least engaged customers differently, and we also discuss the critical difference between a list and a segment and how to use them both effectively. But before we get into all of that, David shares what he loves most about running his own business.
David Fischer:The joy that I get when clients contact me and say, hey. You know that email series that you created using Constant Contact? I got a lot of phone calls out of that or basically helping people that need the help because what I see is that most small business owners are pretty good at what they do regardless of their profession, but what some of them recognize is the fact that they are not experts in market. And what we see is what we hear from our clients is that marketing appears easy to do, but it's hard to do well. And that's the difference between marketing that is ho and marketing that really elevates the performance of our clients and gets them ranked better on Google results or improves their open rates or reduces their cost on pay per click or they discover the ability to use direct mail to drive more leads.
David Fischer:And as with anything else in life, how things are done really has a huge impact on the results whether you're baking a cake, whether you're studying for a test, whether you're creating an email campaign. It's all the detail that comes into play. And that's the added value that we deliver to clients is that not only do we know the technical aspect of all of these marketing tools and the vast majority, obviously, are digital, but it's how to use them and how to integrate them. Because you can certainly find a web developer that will create a website for you, but you need to tell the web developer exactly what you want where on the home page, for example. But you're not an expert in marketing and the web developer is not necessarily an expert in marketing, but they they certainly know they're the technical aspect.
David Fischer:And the value we provide our clients is certainly the technical aspect but also the guidance on how these tools should be used. What should go on a home page? What goes at the top? What goes in the middle? What goes at the bottom?
David Fischer:What should it look like? What kind of imagery to use? What kind of call to actions to use? And then how to integrate these tools. And that's the crucial part because, especially in digital marketing, all these tools need to be integrated because they all support each other.
David Fischer:So a very simplistic example is that you might be running a Google Ads program. People find you. They click on the ad. They come to your website. Tool number 2, on the website, you have a form from Constant Contact that allows you to collect a piece of information from these people that is added to your Constant Contact account that triggers an email nurture series that nurtures the person, to make sure that they end up being a customer of yours.
David Fischer:When they come to your website, they might wanna schedule a call with you, so they use another tool to schedule a call with you. And you understand what I'm getting at. And all these tools work together to present yourself to the market in a very professional manner that impresses the potential customer and ultimately delivers results. And the goal is to make sure that all these tools look sharp, look contemporary, and work well to get your phone to ring.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Point well taken in the terms of just, many small business owners find the marketing bit of that right particularly challenging considering a lot of them aren't marketers by trade. So I guess my question to you is, as a small business owner, what do you find most challenging about running your own business? There are
David Fischer:2 main parts that are the challenging part. One is working with your team. I mean, you're dealing with people and everybody has their own way of operating and ways of being motivated, certain skills or capabilities. And it's a question of putting together a team of people that works well together and really make sure that they're happy. And happy means different things to different people.
David Fischer:But the bottom line is that regardless of the company that you are managing, a happy team delivers better results. So we put a lot of effort in developing a culture at, Solutions for Growth that ensures that this team enjoys what they're doing. And this culture translates in how we work with our clients. It is quite unique. And in fact, we have a page on our website, that's labeled why solutions for growth.
David Fischer:And it all it does is talks about the team and how the team is managed and how we motivate each other, how we support each other so that when clients work with us, they get the service level and expertise that they're expecting. The second challenging part, and as a marketing agency, we have the same challenges at every other company, is growing the business, meaning how do you get more customers. And there are different channels that we use. We invest heavily in SEO. We invest heavily in pay per click, but we also invest heavily with our clients.
David Fischer:And the referral or word-of-mouth marketing is an important part of our growth. So part of our conversations with our clients in different ways is to share with them that if they are pleased with, the results that we're delivering to them, will they share that with their friends and family and colleagues? And surprisingly, that simple question reminds people that, well, let me talk about solutions for growth because, you know, my friend Mary told me she's having overtime with growing business. So, Mary, why don't you call David Fisher and see if he can help you? And there's obviously nothing nicer than word-of-mouth marketing.
David Fischer:And what I describe can apply to any company. So, yes, there's sophisticated marketing, SEO, and email marketing, and so on, but there's nothing like WN, word-of-mouth marketing.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So, well, I'm curious. What can you tell me a little bit about I mean, you've obviously been a certified Constant Contact partner for a long time. More recently, you've become a Constant Contact community coach. What can you tell me about that role?
David Fischer:Love it. It's really a lot of fun because as a community coach, I'm able to help people who are coming to on the community pages of Constant Contact with a variety of questions. Sometimes it's a very specific little technical thing. Sometimes it's more of a strategic aspect that they're having a challenge with. And what we do is or I should say what I do is I answer those questions.
David Fischer:It's clear that in the message that I'm not a Constant Contact employee, but rather a community coach. And it's nice to help out. It's a way of giving back. For us, it's great because we get some exposure in the marketplace as one of the country's largest solution providers. But it's nice to help out and that's part of the relationship, I would say, special relationship we have with Constant Contact That goes back 14 years since we started working together.
David Fischer:So half of Constant Contact's lifetime. Constant Contact's starting 30 next year, I think. So nice to be have been part of it for half of Constant Contact's life. Being a certified solution provider helps as well because it's a way for us to stand apart from other agencies to demonstrate that we kinda know what we're doing. And, again, that goes back to the difference between marketing that's ho and marketing that's well executed.
David Fischer:So the same way some people might prefer to do their taxes themselves but always have a little bit of doubt whether it's being done right or not wrong or how much time they're spending on their taxes, maybe using a tax adviser will make sure that the taxes are done right, that you get the biggest refund that you can, and that you're not spending 12 hours of your Saturday trying to figure out what number do I put in row 22.
Dave Charest:So, 1, I wanna say appreciate the partnership with you. It's always been great to work with you, so thank you for participating along with that and helping out folks in the community. We'd love to see you there as well. I do wanna shift this a little bit here to talk about marketing. And, you know, David, oftentimes, people are wondering, right, how do I get better results, particularly from their email marketing efforts?
Dave Charest:And Mhmm. To me, I'm always like, look. I think the simplest way to start really leveling up your email marketing is to really think about using segmentation because it allows you to send more relevant and timely messages, which, again, in theory, right, means you're gonna see some better results. And so my question to you is maybe what is segmentation? Can you explain that for us?
David Fischer:Sure. Segmentation is making sure that you're not sending the exact same email to everybody on your list because all those people are not all the same. Right? Some people are new customers. Some people are customers for a long time, some people buy only a type of product from you or service.
David Fischer:So by segmenting, it allows you to communicate differently with different people based on who they are, what their behavior has been, what their needs are, and the more targeted, the more specific the message is to them, the higher chances are for that they will respond and take action on whatever you want them to do.
Dave Charest:So can you walk me through maybe some of the ways that people can start to think about segmenting then? Like, what are some of the ways that they would even do that?
David Fischer:Sure. There are different ways of slicing and dicing your email list, and it's really driven by the business you're in and what your goals are. So some very simple examples could be customers versus prospects, men versus women, Austin versus San Francisco, people that have bought a pink widget as opposed to the blue widget. So the people who have recently purchased something or people who have not purchased from you in the past, people who you met at a trade show, people who you met through some other channel, and think about strategically how you want to communicate to these people and what specific message would resonate with them more than with others. So the bottom line is the more targeted and more specific the message is to those people, the more it will resonate with them and the better results you're going to get.
Dave Charest:Can you give me an example maybe of, like, a specific case where maybe, you know, based on who it is that you're sending to, the content would be different in there, right, from what you would send to them.
David Fischer:Sure. So Constant Contact has dynamic blocks that can be used in an email. So if you're an ecommerce company and you're using Shopify or WooCommerce or BigCommerce and so on, you can integrate your Constant Contact account with one of these online tools. And based on your prior history, the email will auto populate with a specific product that the system thinks is better for you. So if last time this is a silly example.
David Fischer:Last time you bought coffee mugs, maybe the next email is gonna include spoons or a saucer, something like that because there's a higher likelihood you're going to buy them. That's the beauty of dynamic blocks. Another way to use the technology within Constant Contact is the fact that Constant Contact is able to identify in your system who's most engaged and who's least engaged in your account. So in your email list, you have people who open your email and click on it regularly and people on the other end of the spectrum that never open an email or never click on it. And perhaps for the people who are least engaged, you may want to send an email with a very special offer, something along the lines of, we haven't heard from you in a while.
David Fischer:When you come to our restaurant, mention this email and get a free dessert. So it's a high value offer to this customer, in this case, a guest if it's a restaurant, to really take action and invite them back. This is a perfect example of segmentation where the message is different from one person to the other. The flip side of it is for the most engaged people, you might wanna offer something special because they're really a special part of your email list and you may have a special event for them at your restaurant. Because you're a special guest on this evening, we have a special dinner and is reserved only for people like you.
David Fischer:You want people to feel special and come over and, you know, you'll be our guest, something like that.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
David Fischer:And this can apply to any line of business. You'll always have your best customers, your least best customers, and that's one way to segment and create messaging that is effective for these people.
Dave Charest:Yeah. So I just wanna kinda go through some things here. Right? Because, like, I think, you know, when you start thinking about how you use the segmentation, there's, of course, what you can do from a manual perspective. You can create those lists that make sense that you know right off the top of your head, like, hey.
Dave Charest:These are the types of things that I wanna do. I think it's also you can automate how you build some of those lists based on specific criteria and data that you have within Constant Contact as well. And then I also you know, the what you're talking here about, like, the most engaged and somewhat engaged, there's a whole section we call segments, right, where it's actually automatically populates and updates those lists for you. So if something changes or somebody new comes in, you kind of have the opportunity to do that. David, is there anything else that I guess, if anything else you'd like to add about just segmentation in general for people?
David Fischer:Yes. And that is the concept of tags, and that ties into what you were mentioning earlier. So one of the features in the Constant Contact system is the ability to tag someone with something specific. Let's say, for a simple example, men versus women. Right?
David Fischer:So you can then create an email that, for example, targets just women and create a segment that is driven by a tag. So you can tell the system, please select everybody who is tagged as the woman, make it a segment, label it women, for example, and send this email only to that segment. So this is a smart way to make sure that this email only goes to women. Again, you can split your list in a million different ways based on your strategy and how you wanna communicate to people, but the beauty of tags and segmenting is that a segment is updated live all the time. And one of the questions I frequently get is what's the difference between a segment and a list?
David Fischer:And a list is something that is fixed. Think of it as a permanent bucket where you have email address that are sitting there and they won't that bucket or that list will not change. A segment is a dynamic I'm not gonna use the word bucket, but it's a dynamic group of people that changes all the time based on the criteria of that segment. The criteria could be a tag. It could be people who have opened a specific email in the past, people who clicked on a specific link in the past.
David Fischer:And as time goes by, the number of people in that segment changes because it's dynamic and it changes all the time. And when you send an email, you can select to send it only to a list, only to a segment, to both of them. You can create subsegments. So tell me, you know, let's create a segment of all the women who live in the state of Colorado. Right?
David Fischer:So that could be a special segment. So that's the flexibility that a tool like this has that allows you to become a be as specific as possible in your messaging to your database.
Dave Charest:David, I wanna recap some of the stuff here. So in segmentation, you can really start to improve your results by thinking through how you can better communicate through segmentation to specific audiences within your list. You can use data to segment those people and use things like tags and fields and the other information that you have within your Constant Contact account. And then there's a difference between lists, which are kind of fixed segments, and segments themselves where you can actually update information automatically and get the right information to the right people. David, I wanna thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us here today about segments.
David Fischer:It was a pleasure to chat with you, 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.