My husband sells farm equipment for a living.

I asked him over the weekend why a rural brand 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 want to use email to grow their business.
Here’s what he said:

“𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯’𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘪𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵. 𝘚𝘰 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰 𝘐 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨?”

It’s honestly a great question and one I hear a lot when talking to prospective clients.

Especially brick-and-mortar businesses.

Here’s the truth:

When someone walks through your door, there’s no digital breadcrumb trail showing exactly how the person found you.

Here’s how I handle this with my clients:

We build an email list.

Now you might be saying, “Ok great. I still don’t see how that helps me track my ROI.”

Here’s 3 ways we can narrow down where potential customers are coming from and know where to focus our efforts:

1. 𝐖𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬.

For a set period, you can send campaigns to only a part of your customer base and measure the difference in foot traffic or sales. This helps isolate the impact of email marketing.

2. 𝐖𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐲𝐬.

Ask things like, “how did you hear about us?” or “what would make you visit our store?”.

These provide you with invaluable data, but if you don’t have an email list, you don’t have a (scalable) way to contact people to ask them.

3. 𝐖𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐔𝐓𝐌𝐬.

This allows you to track which landing page, website, or even social media platform the person on your list came from.

But you have to be able to PUT them somewhere. Otherwise you’re just putting those eyeballs into a leaky bucket.

The reality is, the perfect customer attribution channel doesn’t exist, no matter what the marketing gurus want you to believe.

Instead, what I focus on with my clients is creating a system where we can measure trends and relative performance.

Then, do less of what’s not working and double-down on what is.

Just keep following the data and eventually you’ll have so much business you won’t care where it’s coming from.

Until next time,
Charlie

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