The cobbler's kids have no shoes is an age-old story. In the digital agency and consulting world, the shoes are often in the form of marketing.
This hasn’t always been the case for Denamico, but our own marketing definitely took a back seat over the past few years while we were tackling other priorities like investing in our team to make sure we had the skills to best support our clients, and obtaining five HubSpot accreditations, a couple of which were quite rigorous.
But in our annual planning last December, we decided 2024 was going to be different. We were going to level up how we market ourselves.📈
After getting our podcast relaunched earlier this year, and publishing a good handful of episodes, the next step was to get our newsletter going. The goal of the newsletter is to stay in touch with people, share what we’re seeing in business and the power of a well-functioning CRM, and do it in such a way that enables us to go deeper on a thought or thread from one of our podcast episodes. Our team was all in agreement on the “what” and “why”.
The challenge was with the “who.”
As someone who has personally experienced the power of a good letter ✍🏼 (in securing an interview, winning a real estate transaction, mending a fractured relationship…), I volunteered to take on this challenge.
As with numerous “significant” decisions I’ve made in my life - like moving to France before I could speak French, offering to host a school reunion on another continent for 200+ people from 20 different countries, having a 3rd child when we were only 2 parents, or starting a business! - the gravity of my decision only sank in afterward.😳
The problem with this style of situational analysis is that by the time you realize you might be in over your head, it’s too late to renege on your offer.
So with my first deadline in June, and no other option than to start writing, I went with my other option. Procrastinate as long as possible.😅
Fortunately for me, one of my fellow teammates gave me a couple of prompts to get my inspiration juices flowing, and it worked. I finished the first newsletter at midnight the night before it was scheduled to be sent.
What surprised me was what happened next. Because we send our newsletter via HubSpot and we track our metrics to learn what resonates with people, I went a little OCD. Do you know how many people unsubscribed from my first newsletter? Sixty-five. Yep.😢
But on a positive note, our open rate was 30%. For context, most sources say a ‘good’ email open rate is anywhere from 17-28%.
And the “read” rate, vs people who just skimmed or glanced, was 93%. For me though, the best indicator that it resonated with some people was that a few of them even took the time to reply to me.
Now that we had our benchmark analytics, we were able to set a goal for our second newsletter. And naturally, we wanted to beat our already decent numbers.
Inspiration struck ⚡️and we used HubSpot’s email subject line AI tool (talk about saving time! ⏳) to make sure we were optimizing everything as much as possible.
Newsletter #2’s open rate was even better at 41%, and the read rate stayed about the same at 92%. There were some more unsubscribes, but given that we hadn’t been activating our list for quite some time, I realized this is a positive thing that will help us to continuously improve our performance over time.
Having access to these analytics, and using them to guide changes we might want to make has been invaluable.
Without them, we’d be shooting in the dark, probably wasting loads of time, and have no idea whether our subsequent newsletters were performing better or worse.
This concept of ‘benchmarking’ yourself is something that Pete Caputa, CEO of Databox, and a recent guest on RevOps Champions, is passionate about. As Pete explains, we live in a more and more competitive world, so benchmarking enables companies to learn what’s working faster via our competitors. Then it’s just a matter of making sure our product or service is differentiated, and executing on what we’ve seen other companies do to be successful.
As their name implies, the Databox team knows the value of data and has built a free benchmarking product that allows companies to anonymously compare their performance metrics against similar businesses across various tools and industries.
Transparently, although I knew about the tool, I avoided signing up for quite some time because I was afraid of what our results might be.
Then I realized I was being ridiculous because knowledge is power and it’s much better to know where you stand if you want to get better. And we ranked better than I thought we would. The reality is that so many companies are still figuring out how to use tech to their advantage. We’re all a work in progress.
Coincidentally, Pete is hosting a LinkedIn Live session tomorrow (Friday, Aug 9, 2024) specifically about Strategies for Effective CRM and Customer Data Management. Hope to see you there!
Cheers to you - and to both of us continuing to get better,
Kristin
Therese's Takeaways
Biking is my escape, but I’m no professional. In fact, I constantly forget to shift while going up a hill. But every day after work, I get on my bike (weather permitting). It’s my chance to unwind in nature, get some exercise, and occasionally test my reflexes avoiding local wildlife.
For the first time last month, I started recording my rides with my Apple watch. Initially, I didn’t pay attention - it was just recording in the background, silently judging me.
Then after two weeks, I checked the data. I learned that my average ride distance was 12 miles. Nothing earth-shattering, right?
In the weeks that followed, something unexpected happened. That 12-mile benchmark became my motivator. Knowing what a 12-mile ride felt like, I found myself going a bit further, pushing a bit harder each day.
Before I knew it, my distances started increasing - all because I had a number to beat.
This reminded me of Pete Caputa's recent episode on RevOps Champions, where he spoke about the power of using benchmarking data in business. Pete is passionate about making benchmarking data transparent to business leaders, describing that it is his teams’ “ambition to help companies understand how their performance compares to others.”
Why? It allows business leaders to not only consider their current performance, but more importantly, where and how they could improve.
For example, Pete shared that if you benchmark your HubSpot account, you can benchmark your traffic, your website quality, your bounce rate, your time on page, your conversion rate, the number of CTA views you have all the way through to the deals you're creating and closed, and all in comparison to that of your peers.
It gives your company a number to beat.
Imagine if you learned that your company’s average deal size was half that of your peers. Wouldn't that spark a drive to push for more in your business, just as I did with my biking?
Sometimes the simple act of knowing where you are can inspire you to go further.
By the way, my average distance is now 15 miles…and I’m targeting 20. 💪