How do you know if your marketing is actually working or if you’re just guessing and hoping for the best? In this episode of The Business Animal Podcast, Betsy and I break down three practical ways to tell what’s really happening with your marketing without spiraling into overwhelm.

We talk about why looking at analytics feels scary (and why it doesn’t have to be), how asking your customers a few simple questions can reveal more than any dashboard, and how to evaluate email and social media performance in a way that actually makes sense for small businesses.

This episode is about replacing anxiety with information, guessing with clarity, and making marketing decisions that feel grounded instead of reactive.

Links:

1. Google Analytics (GA4)
2. 👉 https://analytics.google.com
3. Website traffic, user behavior, pages, sources, conversions

Google Search Console

👉 https://search.google.com/search-console

Search queries, impressions, clicks, indexing, SEO health

Links referenced in this episode:

1. analytics.google.com
2. score.org
3. bemorebusiness.com
4. youtube.com/kimberlybeer

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. CSI Saddle Pads
2. Western Horseman
3. Google
4. Google Analytics
5. Google Search Console
6. Facebook
7. Instagram
8. YouTube
9. Ride the Sky Equine Photography
10. Be More Business
11. Score

Hey there, business animals.

I'm Kim Be, and I'm always thinking about what's next.

And I'm Betsy Bird, and I'm thinking about what's working right now.

Well, that actually works really well for both of us for what the episode topic is today, Betsy, and that is how you know if your marketing is actually working versus just taking a random guess.

And to be honest with you, I bet a lot of people out there are randomly guessing and have no idea if their marketing is actually working or not.

Yeah, because it's kind of scary to look at every once in a while or if you don't even know where to find it.

It's.

It's a thing.

But before we dive into that topic, you have some explaining to do about why you sound weird.

Well, for those of you who are not on the behind the Scenes of the Business Animal podcast, just know that this is now the third or fourth time we have attempted to record this.

And my voice is finally sort of cooperating.

I was at a conference and worked in an expo booth at the conference for the first day of the conference, and I lost my voice.

And it has been three weeks now, and it's just now coming back to sort of being normal.

So if you hear it breaking or cracking up, that's what's going on.

Yeah, that's just.

It's been really, really hard.

Like, we got on to record and Betsy could barely squeak.

You all wouldn't have been able to understand a word she says.

But we're going for it today, regardless of.

Of what is going on.

So our big three for this episode are to talk about how to know if your marketing is working.

And the very first thing we're going to discuss is pro.

Probably the thing that is going to give you a pretty big clue and that is looking at your analytics or your numbers.

The second of the big three is to ask your customers, and we're going to have some tips for you around how to do that.

And then finally, to evaluate your email in social media in both numbers and context.

So some ideas for what you can do with the data that you're receiving, especially on social media, media and email.

Betsy, what do you think about that analytics part of things?

What are your thoughts about installing analytics?

Well, my first thought is probably most small business owners run screaming in the opposite direction.

It is a little bit terrifying and it's not the.

The simplest thing to do.

Like, Google didn't make it extra easy for you to figure out, and that does make it a little harder, especially if you're not of the tech savvy mind or you don't know someone who is and you can't ask them to help you with it.

So yeah, that's the first thing that comes to mind is most people run away from it and then because they're running away, they're not actually getting the information it provides, which actually is really good information once you know how to read it and understand it.

Yes.

And you know, analytics are everywhere and most of us do depend on digital marketing.

Like it's the center circle and all other things are driven to it and then it feeds the machine or turns the machine of your marketing.

Google's analytics is what actually looks at how your website is being found and then what people are doing when they get there.

And that's pretty important data if we consider that hub of Google Analytics being what is really driving our marketing as a digital marketing program.

Now that doesn't exclude that there aren't a ton of other ways for you to get good information, analog ways of getting information, like asking people where they found you.

Although I will tell you, and I don't know if you have ever done this, but do you have a habit of when people call or email you, ask them how they found you?

I do, because I actually have a program that, like a loyalty program.

And so I always want to make sure that if they're being referred specifically by like a client of mine that I already have, I want to make sure I credit that client.

So I always ask, and I do have it actually multiple times throughout the process where they get asked like, how'd you hear about us?

And it's interesting because sometimes they'll say more than one thing, which is helpful to know, like, okay, they're seeing me.

You know, a friend mentioned it and then they saw me on Facebook and then they also saw something else.

You know, like it's, it's good information to know where people are finding you because otherwise how do you know where to invest your time and your money?

Exactly, exactly.

And people do have to see you a multitude of times generally before they will reach out.

And that's one reason why asking people that very analog question of how did you find me?

Or how did you learn about my business or whatever, however you want to phrase that for your own personal branding is so important.

But here's what I've found over decades of asking that question, and especially even when I have asked that question in my clients offices, because I have gone and worked sometimes in my marketing clients offices because it gives me as their marketing professional or fractional marketing cmo.

You know, I didn't, I did this long before that was a title.

But it gives me an idea of where people are learning about them.

But the interesting thing is that sometimes people think they learned about somebody somewhere.

And I know because I place the advertising, we never had an ad there.

So it's interesting sometimes where people sort of connect.

But the fun part of that equation is, is if they think they found you there, maybe you should be advertising there because that tells you that mindset is going to that place.

So let me give you an example because I may have gotten a little off topic there.

Just slightly, slightly, slightly down a rabbit hole.

Years ago I did the marketing for a company called CSI Saddle Pads and I worked in their office for a considerable amount of time.

And so I got to ask that question.

I also placed all the advertising like I bought every single ad and placed it.

And people would say they saw the ad in Western Horseman.

And I know for a fact at that time, I don't do their marketing anymore.

I don't, I'm not involved with helping that company any longer.

They're very successful all on their own.

They don't need me any longer.

But I know for a fact I never placed an ad in Western Horseman.

So isn't that interesting?

Because they would say about that.

And they've connected the two things.

They've connected the two things, right?

And when we're talking especially about animal based businesses, a lot of times we like, we think our circles are big, but they're really not.

They're actually pretty small.

And if you have a Western saddle pad, there's a limited number of places that you would come into advertising for a Western saddle pad.

It gives you a clue as to say, oh well, people are associating this brand with Western horsemen, which is fine, but because at the time in particular, it was marketed a lot to trail riders and to people in the western industries.

Matter of fact, it was almost solely a western pad at the time.

So it made sense for them to think they found it there.

But it also gave me as a marketer information about, okay, this is where people are associating with.

So that means that Western Horseman might be a good market.

So analyzing that data of what people tell you about how they found you is, is important.

The analog part is important along with the digital part.

Do you want to add a few other things before I dive into the Google Analytics part and the really technical.

Where do you actually do this stuff?

Yeah, actually I do want to mention a couple things because earlier you said about how the website is the hub and that, you know, these analytics can tell you a lot about your website.

You know, where the track event is coming from, what they like on your website, what they're staying on, that sort of stuff.

And here's a really great example of that.

It wasn't until I installed Google Analytics on my website before I realized that of all the pages on my website outside of like landing pages and stuff, that the one that people are attracted to the most is actually my About Me page, which is very weird.

That is not normally.

I mean most people are like the About Me page.

It's just a throwaway page.

You know, nobody does anything.

But what I.

When I saw that people were going to that page a lot, I started asking why.

I'm like, how did you find me?

Like, was there a certain page on the website like that you were looking at or something?

And the answers I got from several people was, well, I went to that page and when I started reading about it, I realized we were going to be best friends.

And I thought that's really interesting because they were resonating with what was on that page more so than a typical person.

And so I bring this up because, you know, one, if you're about me page doesn't show your personality.

It doesn't really let them see what working with you is going to be like.

And you know, that sort of stuff.

You might want to rethink that a little bit.

Absolutely.

Two, I think that it tells me all kinds of things about what the people who really go the extra step want to work with me, what they're attracted to and all that stuff enough to make me say, okay, I want to make sure that that vibe, that personality, that other stuff is showing on other pages as well, because that's what they're attracted to.

So just a little food for thought on that.

And then, you know, the other thing about analytics to me that is so important is it's tells me how people find me, where the inquiries come from.

You know, are they coming from all over the United States?

Are they coming from out of the country, which as a, you know, local based photographer Might not be that gritty, you know?

Yeah.

Like you want to know where it's coming from.

And then probably the.

The key thing I think that is so important is the fact that analytics give you the ability to know whether your marketing is working or not versus you just saying, oh, marketing's not working.

I spent $500 on Facebook ads and it is not working.

Do you know or are you guessing?

And that's where analytics comes into play and can actually tell you one way or the other.

So when you are thinking about things, you know, data is going to keep you calm, it's going to give you a direction and a way to go.

Whereas if you're just guessing, you're basically just throwing money away.

So little food for thought there.

Yeah, that hits some entrepreneurs where they live.

Right?

Right now.

Stop leaking the money.

Stop leaking the money.

Okay, so let's talk about Google in specifics.

And I want to tell you there's two things you want to understand about your Google Analytics.

You want to understand how people are finding you.

Like, where are they coming from?

Where is the traffic coming from?

And then the second thing you want to understand is what are people doing when they get to your website?

Like, what are they doing?

Like Betsy said, are they going to your about page?

Are they what we call bouncing?

So are they coming to the site and then they're leaving right away?

That is a huge clue, by the way, that whatever got them there worked.

And when they arrived, they didn't feel it was in alignment with why they clicked the button.

So that is a huge piece of information to say, okay, the bait I put out worked.

But what happened was they got there and then they're like, yeah, this isn't for me, and they left.

So that tells us that there's something awry with wherever that particular link led them.

So Google Analytics lets you figure out those two really valuable pieces of information.

And by the way, Google changes things all the time.

And I would not be surprised if in the three weeks since I did the research and put these two websites up here, if Google hasn't changed the flipping links.

Because they love to change things.

So they love to change the name of things.

They love to change where you find them.

So if these are wrong, please do not come after me.

All right, so two things we want to look at.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

So analytics is about website traffic, user behavior, your pages, the sources, how people are converting, how long they're staying on a page, what pages they're visiting, all of those kind of Things.

It's all of the things that happen for people coming to your website and for people, what they do when they get there.

The second one is Google Search Console.

And this is where you can start to look at how the inquiries are shaped and actually shape the inquiries to fit.

So search queries, impressions, clicks, indexing, and your SEO or search engine optimization help.

So if you are a brand new kind of beginner and you're going, okay, I probably should check on my analytics, trust me on this, it's not as scary as you think it's going to be.

It really isn't.

And it's hugely informative and there are a ton of YouTube videos and Google actually has a lot of support documents to help you as well.

But my choice for you, if you are a beginner, is to do Google Analytics.

It's about who came to your site and what they did when they got there.

And that is a massively good amount of information.

If you want to understand better about why Google sends traffic and how they're sending it to your site, your search console is the place that you want to go next.

But my recommendation is that start with Google Analytics.

Don't overwhelm yourself and start there first.

You can go to analytics and.google.com and as of this recording, that link works and I will put it in the show notes as well and you can go there and get set up for Google Analytics.

It is going to require you to do a little piece of tech because Google can't track things if they don't know.

So you can install some pixels and tracking codes on your site and then those pixels and tracking codes will.

They're not going to give you specific user data.

Like they're not going to say, Betsy visited your website at 2:14am and looked at this page.

But what they will tell you is that there was a user that came to your website and looked at a page for three minutes or clicked on a link and then left within 10 seconds.

So that's valuable information from a website design perspective.

So together, Search Console and Analytics are kind of like the right and left brain of website visibility.

My suggestion is that you set aside 30 minutes and maybe once a month and take a good look at your analytics.

And also remember, email and social media has similar analytics and to get a truly good full picture, you're going to include those.

But we're going to talk about those in a moment.

So I'm going to save that little discussion for that.

Yeah.

Are you ready to move on to the second of the big three, or do you have anything else to add to the analytics part?

No, I think you kind of covered everything.

And really, you don't want to go so in depth they run away screaming.

Before the top people, terrified.

No, no, no, no, no.

You can really go down an analytics rabbit hole if you want to.

Yes.

And.

And it gets really complicated.

Yeah, please don't make it that way.

It's really not that scary.

Scary.

And even the basic information can help.

You, like, I mean, just.

Just a little bit.

And if it helps you at all, if you don't have Google Analytics installed on your site, it takes it a while to build up and compile the data.

So it's not even scary in the beginning because there's nothing there.

That's true if you got a few days before it gets.

Wow.

Scary.

Probably a few months, actually for most small businesses.

So.

Yeah.

All right, so we mentioned you should ask your customers where they heard about your business.

But if you want to know if your marketing's really working, asking your customers.

Is a big part of that, for sure.

One of the main things I think, and it's so simple, is literally just when you have an inquiry call, ask them, how did you hear about us?

I mean, you know, it's a great information getter.

You know, the same thing with, you know, a.

A DM from Instagram.

Hey, have you ever heard about me before?

You saw something on Instagram, you know, or was it Instagram?

You never know.

Asking that and getting that information is great.

What you're looking for is you're looking for patterns like repetition throughout a longer period of time over a larger portion of clients.

You know, just because Kim says she heard about me on Facebook does not mean that I need to go and drop my entire marketing budget on Facebook.

But if Kim and 150 other people out of 200 people I surveyed said they met me or heard about me on Facebook, then maybe I do need to be a little more serious about spending money on Facebook.

You know, most business owners tend to kind of be hit and miss about doing this where they, you know, they ask for a few days and then they stop and then they ask for a few days.

So I would highly recommend if you have any kind of, you know, script that you follow on your inquiry calls or a survey that you ask people either before or at the end of their.

Their working with you, putting a simple question on there that just asks them so that you're consistent about getting that information back.

That data helps you double down on what's working and lets you stop wasting time on stuff and money on stuff that isn't.

Absolutely.

And if you want to go deeper, if you really want to understand a little bit more about how your customers are interacting with your brand and with your marketing, I recommend buying a few of them coffee one at a time.

And I recommend that you buy customers coffee that you really like.

Like people that you really would like to have more people like that in your business.

Don't buy the person who's a pain in the ass the coffee and interview them.

Buy the person you absolutely adore the cup of coffee and then ask them a few questions.

And I have some examples here.

I consider this a customer interview.

And to be honest, it is like it pays dividends way beyond you understanding they found you and what how your marketing and branding is working with them.

And many times you'll end up with testimonials and you'll also end up with some referrals and you'll end up with a customer who feels like they're more part of your business, which is super helpful.

So here's a few questions.

Ask them this one.

If you're explaining my company to someone else, what would you say?

Because branding and I've heard this quote and I can't remember the little girl who said it on, on this podcast ages and ages ago.

There's a whole episode that Kara and I did way back in the beginning, beginning.

But she's like, branding is the conversation people have about you when you're not in the room.

So understanding how your marketing is hitting people is really key and crucial.

And if you have a mismatch and who's showing up at your door and who you want to show up at your door, a lot of times this question will help you understand how that's happening.

Because if they're not able to match what you think your marketing and branding is doing with their answer, that means there's something in the system that's not working correctly.

Here's another question.

If you were to tell someone how to find my company, how would you do it?

Because that tells you where are they thinking or associating your company with being found.

So if they say, find Betsy on Instagram, because if I were sending somebody to a photographer, I would recommend their Instagram account.

If they were active on Instagram because it's a place that showcases their work, well, that tells you right there that now they associate you.

So again, just like Betsy said, don't put all your eggs in all of that baskets.

Look for Patterns in these, these answers.

But if a lot of people are saying, I would send them to Instagram to look at your portfolio, that tells you, hey, you need to be paying attention to your portfolio on Instagram, because that's an important place.

I think people, a lot of times send people to my YouTube channel.

So that tells me I need to be really considerate of how I use my YouTube channel.

And do check.

Even if you're there, some people might, might you might not even be where they tell you where they, they think they would find you.

And then the final question that I would recommend is, where do you remember seeing my company first?

And where did you see it most recently?

And again, are you even there?

Because these are again, associations that people make.

And sometimes the association is what happened with CSI saddle pads.

It's not the association that actually happened, but the connection that that customer made is super important.

I would also add to this because, you know, depending upon the type of person you are, you may not be an extrovert.

This might make you uncomfortable to do this.

I would urge you to do it in person if you could.

However, if you are the type of person who is extremely uncomfortable doing this in person, this type of thing can also be done online and you could always mail them a gift card or something as a thank you for helping you out.

So don't just think, oh, Kim said we have to go in person and absolutely not.

I don't do in person.

There are options to do this in a way that's a little more introverted way or something if you need to.

But it is really excellent information if you have the opportunity to get it.

Absolutely, absolutely.

I do recommend the in person though, because if you're an introvert, you actually get better responses because you'll sit there and not interject.

One of the things I've learned about interviews, which is super hard for me as an extrovert, is to allow there to be a pause.

Because we all, even introverts, want to fill the silence.

That is especially when there's a question that's been asked and if you will just pause for a moment, people will give you the extra information.

And usually the extra information is a truth bomb.

So that.

Well, and even just adding an extra little, like once they get done answering your question, saying something as simple as, is there anything else?

Yeah.

And then just waiting.

And a lot of times you get even more information because they want to fill that pause.

Yes, yes.

And it's usually the information that doesn't come off the top of Their head, which means that it is usually a lot more meaningful because it's more embodied.

That's a, that is a interesting little tactic to use if you do these customer interviews.

All right, let's move on to number three, which is to evaluate your email and social media in both numbers and context.

So those numbers can be kind of scary.

Betsy, I know people look at their email marketing numbers and I remember when I very first started into email marketing and I had clients sending out emails and they would call me and they'd be like, only 10% of my list opened my emails.

What am I doing wrong?

And I'm like, no, you're actually a little above average.

So the average open rate for a marketing email is around 8%.

So for those of you who look at your list, if your list is really good and tight and you're sending out super relevant information, you'll see 20, 30%, even 40% open rates.

But marketing emails in on the average for most Companies rank around 8% in an open rate.

So that should tell you that, yeah, those numbers can be kind of scary or off putting, but reality is you're probably doing better than you think you are.

So I think a lot of people, like, maybe they don't do as much of the email marketing right now and they're more on the social side of things.

Yeah.

And when social media kind of first came on the scene, the big thing was to have all the followers.

You know, the more followers you had, more successful you are.

But that has really changed in recent years where it doesn't have to do with the more followers, it has to do with how engaged they are, which is basically what you're saying about email marketing.

Are they opening your content?

Are they reading your content?

Are they interacting with that content that you're putting out there?

So you can have a very small following.

I mean, you can have 250, 500 followers, you know, but if 100 of 250 are opening it, reading, looking at it, you have a much more engaged list than most people when you're looking at percentages.

So keep that in mind.

In addition to, is that like looking at it from the social media side or the email side?

Just because they read it doesn't mean they're going to book you.

So if you have a bunch of followers who are overseas somewhere, they're not going to necessarily book you.

If you run a local boarding barn for your own dog walker, you know, like that is not going to be helpful to you.

I mean, it's great that they want to interact with your information or they're getting something out of it.

But you know, when it comes to putting money in your bottom line there and actually elevating your business and your income, that's not helping you.

But if you have people who are local who are interacting with it, obviously more helpful.

So just something to keep in mind there.

And I also like to throw out there that I think social media should always be treated as the handshake.

It's where people get to know you.

It is not where you should be conducting all of your business.

You know, it's never a good idea to build your business in a playground that is owned by someone else.

You know, social is the handshake.

It gets them to your email list, it gets them to your website.

That's what you want to do with that.

You do not want to build your entire business.

And I know there are Instagram influencers out there that have built huge businesses on Instagram, but I always think about it as a fact, as what happens if Mark Zuckerberg decides tomorrow he's tired of this and he decides to can it throw it away.

Man has more money than God.

So he doesn't decide any moment that he just doesn't want to mess with this any longer.

There's nothing that says he can't suddenly say, you know what you want to pay to play?

Sure, you pay me thousand dollars a year, you pay me $2,000 a year and you can play on my playground, you know.

So always a good idea to keep in mind that social media should be something that is the handshake to your relationship.

It's where you bring them in, but then you get them to something that you own and that is your email list or your website.

Absolutely.

And while we're talking about analytics and metrics, make sure you occasionally go look at the metrics on your social media account.

In Facebook land, I believe they're still called insights, aren't they?

I believe so, yeah.

I'm going to tell you they're a lot less informative or insightful than they used to be.

Like the amount of things that meta shares about what it's tracking, I think it tracks it still, but it doesn't share it with you as a business owner.

It's less than it used to be.

I remember back in the beginning, man, you could get a lot of good analytics on your client base off of Facebook, but now it's much less.

But same goes for all of these networks.

There's ways to look at how your marketing is Landing with the people, how they're interacting with it.

When you're doing that on social media, I think you have to take those metrics with a little bit of a grain of salt because you are at the mercy of whatever the algorithm is doing in that moment.

And as upset as our social media is in the current political climate in this country, that algorithm does get affected for businesses because of that and also all of the AI and bots right now.

I mean, there's a, there's a lot of grains of salt that you need to take into consideration when you look at those numbers and judging against what works and what doesn't.

Like Betsy said, that's somebody else's playground.

However, when you move over into email, that's your playground.

And the numbers here are a lot more solid and they're a lot more clear on what the advice should be.

So email, just like Betsy said with social media, should be about engagement and it should be, you should be marketing to a list that really wants to hear from you.

The same thing kind of applied to email marketing with the more people that were on your list, you were considered, the more successful you are.

And in reality, my clients today are more interested in calling people off of their list that don't fit.

I have one client who's been kind of on a mission and every time she gets an unsubscribe, she celebrates it.

She's like, that is one person that's taking the energy from the rest of my list that is now no longer here.

So I, I don't know if that attitude is easily adoptable by small business owners.

But if you can move in the direction of not seeing unsubscrib describes as a bad thing, that seeing as people self selecting away, as long as you're not driving them, like if you have a whole hoard of them at one time, like we need to take a look at that.

There's three metrics that I specifically want to talk about in association with email marketing that I think give you some clear advice on what you should do next.

So if you look at your emails and you feel like your open rate is low, and again, remember the average is around 8 to 10%.

So let's keep that in mind.

This is not where you're going to get a 98% open rate unless you're sending something out to a very small group of people who are expecting it.

So we want to make sure that we're realistic about it.

But if you feel that number is low, the chances are it comes in association to the from line of your email or the subject line of your email.

So the from line, believe it or not, is the very first thing people look at.

They will look at the from line and then they'll determine as to whether they want to read the subject line or not.

So if you do not show up in the from line as something friendly to them or recognizable, because email is much more personal than social media, then they will unsubscribe or delete or move on.

So you're from line.

Needs to be clear.

My suggestion is it be your name or if you're doing it from kind of a mascot, like one of your animals.

That works as well.

But make it clearly not something like info at bemorebusiness.

Com.

You know, it's needs to be.

I can give you some good examples there.

Yeah, if it'll help.

So like with my business with Ride the Sky Equine Photography, a lot of my standardized emails actually used to come before he passed away from Nitro, my dog.

And so I had the emails that were specifically coming from me were coming from Betsy Bird, but the ones that came from Nitro came from Nitro at Ride the Sky.

Yeah.

So like they knew where it was coming from.

So it still at least gave them the business name too.

Well, and it gave them a clear definition between what was a communication email and what was something they might want to interact with on a different level.

And Nitro softened the.

The feel.

Right.

He invited.

Nitro had quite the sense of humor.

Yeah.

And.

And so people probably open that email.

I know back to csi.

I mentioned CSI a bunch of times, but Donna sent emails from her dog in csi, so her dogs, Huckleberry and Ringo were very important.

I'm.

I'm.

I know Ringo passed away recently, so I'm sure there's a new one that's pro considering sending emails from the company.

Well, Derby's in training over here right now, so we have the same thing going on.

But yeah, yeah, it's.

It's just a way to soften that it.

It's recognizable is the key here.

Like recognizable and warm and engaging.

If your front line doesn't seem to be the problem, then the subject line is the next thing, and then that's not giving the vibe that somebody wants to interact with.

And my best suggestion there, because writing subject lines and headlines is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

I consider myself a pretty good writer and they always throw me for a loop.

And AI can help.

There's formulas to writing subject lines and headlines that are super beneficial.

And if you find some that work, here's another thing too.

If you find one that works for you, don't stop using it.

Like, not the same headline, but this, like the gimmick, like the numbers formula.

Yeah, numbers.

Numbers really work.

Four subject lines.

And here's a key interesting part of human psychology.

Odd numbers work better than even.

So.

Yeah, very true.

Well, and okay, question for you because I'm curious as to what you have read about this, but I am an emoji person.

Like, by nature, I like emojis.

I'm a cheerful person and I like to.

Or sarcastic at least.

You know, put a lot of little emojis into various communications and stuff.

And then for a while there, that was a big thing for AI to do where they were putting it into the subject lines.

And so I was thinking, okay, maybe I shouldn't be putting any emojis in my subject lines because I don't want it flagged as AI, you know, because there's a lot of that.

So what is the current thinking that, you know, if you know anything current about that?

I'm not, I'm not gonna.

I don't know what the general consensus in the world is.

I do know this.

As a professional writer, I use the EM dash long before AI got its hands on it.

And I will continue to use the EM dash because I love it.

And that was a big red flag for AI writing.

Oh, it has an EM dash in it.

It must be AI.

No friends professionally good writers have been using the EM dash for many, many, many decades.

It is a good tool to use in your writing.

And AI picked up on that.

And it's not wrong for using it.

And I, I like the EM dash too.

I love my EM dashes and I'm not going to stop it because somebody thinks an EM dash might have been written by an AI.

No, I use EM dashes before.

I'm going to continue to use them.

And I'm the same thing with emojis.

I think emojis can be overdone.

But I also think that they help us compartmentalize information.

They communicate emotion without us having to really connect to it.

That's why they exist.

And I think they add flavor and they also.

In the hodgepodge of stuff that's on your.

Your subject lines, in your email service provider, your email browser.

Got name.

The.

The thing where you look at your email, the window, they help people identify with that and they add interest.

And I personally will open an email with an emoji I really don't even care if AI put it there.

If it's interesting and cute and conveys the emotion, I'm happy to interact with it.

And so, yeah, there's my two cents.

Well, it kind of concerned me when I first started reading about it because it made me wonder if it wasn't dragging like automatically to spam filters because there were emojis where it's not even making it to the inbox where the person can see it.

And I was like, okay, so here's.

Here'S a hard, cold reality that nobody is going to like to hear.

The fact that you send it through a professional email marketing tool that puts an unsubscribe button on it already does that.

Your emojis are not a problem.

The email service provider has already tagged you as a marketing email because you had an unsubscribe button.

So what you are telling me is that I can go back to my happy, happy, joy joy Land of emojis.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right, let me give you my two other email metrics.

You need to.

Look, I think we just went down.

A rabbit hole again.

We did, we did.

And we were doing so well.

I was, I was like, oh, my God, we're going to keep this to around 35 minutes.

But no, we're not.

It's going to go longer.

So two more things and then we'll close up.

So low clicks.

Ideally, what we want people to do with our emails is to click on them because they're actually the way we make conversions.

And if you're not getting enough clicks, you either have too many calls to action, which can happen any more than one and you start to cut your response rate down by 50% for everyone you include.

So the more calls to action, the harder it is for people to make a decision.

And they just won't click on anything or they're ineffective or unclear.

So that's a really important metric if you're not getting clicks, because opens and clicks are ideally the two metrics we should be looking at.

The other two metrics that come into play are unsubscribes and spam reports.

We don't want spam reports, which means we need to keep our list as opted in.

People do forget they've opted into things if you don't send emails out regularly.

So you will get more spam reports if you, if you do not send to your list on a regular basis.

So make sure you do that because people forget, oh, I don't remember where I met Betsy who is this Betsy Bird person that is emailing me?

I'm getting rid of that email.

So marketed as spam.

So spam reports are bad.

We do not want to get a lot of those.

So emailing your list regularly is a way to stop that from happening.

But if you're getting unsubscribes, there's one of three reasons why that that happens.

One is that the email is irrelevant to that person and that's the important one.

Other things that can happen are over communication or it's just not a right fit, which goes back to see irrelevant.

So you it's really hard to over communicate things that are relevant to your audience.

So relevance is the main thing you need to look at here.

And if you're getting a lot of unsubscribes, either you've changed so that the people who are irrelevant to your business are leaving, which is a good thing, or what you're sending out is irrelevant to your audience, which is a bad thing.

So we need to look at that and judge which of those it is and then modify or continue accordingly.

So if people that are irrelevant to your business are leaving, that's a good sign.

If you're losing people who are relevant to your business, then we need to look at what the content of your communications are and determine how to better do that.

And honestly, that's shifting your mindset from email marketing being a newsletter to more of a I'm going to meet you where you are in the customer journey process, which is something we can cover on a completely different episode.

But just to give you a hint, that's a big place where you can start to look about how to shift that.

Okay, let me ask you one quick question before we finish up here is when you're saying communicating regularly for someone who is.

I've never had an email list, I don't know where to start.

What would you consider to be regular?

I mean, because some people might say, okay, I'll send them once a quarter, you know, I'll send for you, I can do that for a year.

Like it is that regularly or do you think it needs to be at least once a month or at least once a week?

Or where do you really put.

Especially for those beginner newbie, never done it before people, where do you tell them to start?

Yep.

So let me, let me answer that question clearly.

First of all, depends on where the person is in your business sales cycle.

If they're brand new, they need more communication.

If there's somebody who's been around A while they need less, that automatically tells us we need to have a segmented list.

So for a very beginner, what I recommend is that you set up a series of emails that educate people about your company and how to work with you and that you send those to new subscribers and then you communicate on a regular cadence.

Once a week, once a month, once a quarter.

All of those are fine.

Do it at the capacity that you can do it.

But the most important equation of that is that nurture sequence of three to five emails that educate people right when they sign up for the list and create the relationship in the email.

Because what you're doing is now you've taught them what your from line is.

Now you've taught them in your case to expect subject lines with emojis.

Now they've taught, you've taught them what the value of the emails that you're going to get and that is going to set them up so no matter what cadence you send on it, you will continue to be able to land in their inbox and get engagement from them.

So again, pick the cadence that's going to work for you.

Three to five in the beginning, relatively quickly and close together like a few days apart and then go with the cadence of continued communication as fits you.

Once a week, once a month, once a quarter.

I feel like I'm sure we can totally talk about email lists because I've been doing email lists for a long time too.

But when you said that in our talk, I thought, you know what, there's somebody listening to this who is probably like, I've never had an email list and I don't even know where to begin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do I do to start?

And I teach a lot of beginning email classes for score.

Check out a score.

Just go to score.org they have a lot of classes about email marketing and you may find me because they've moved into a more national, regional sort of situation.

So I teach some classes around relationship marketing which are all about email marketing.

And if you check out my website, I did post Be More business.

Com, I did post the classes I'm teaching.

And a lot of them are cheap, 10 bucks a piece and some of them are even free.

And I don't go lesser on those classes.

I teach the same thing as if you hired me.

You just have to listen to it on a webinar versus if you and I sat here and talked to each other across the table.

Yeah.

And Score really is a great program as far as like getting free and low cost business classes.

My father in law was a mentor and everything with them for years and he did entrepreneurial type stuff as well.

And it's a great program, so definitely worth checking out.

It is, it is.

They did lose a lot of their funding and so they are charging for classes these days.

So it is more of the low cost zone than it is the free zone.

But your money goes to support entrepreneurship and I think that's always worth every dollar.

And I know for my classes I try to pack way more than 10 bucks information in there.

I do too.

I find that if you give a fully packed class, people are more likely to come back to you for more, you know, down the way because they realize what great value you give them for their money.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you all for hanging out with us today.

You can find us@thebusinessanimal.com all the places that you would listen to podcasts.

And if you want to watch our smiley faces as we do this podcast, you can check that out on my YouTube channel at YouTube.com forward/kimberlybeer and look for the Business Animal podcast.