Me: “How’d that email perform?”
Client: “Uh… the open rate was good?”
Me: “Cool. How much money did it make?”
Client: “Let me check…”
[Three business days pass]
Client: “We’ll include it in next quarter’s report.”
This exact conversation happened so many times I started hearing it in my sleep. And then I had what scientists call “a breakthrough” and what my friend calls “finally removing your head from your own ass.”
I was asking the wrong people.
Clients don’t know. ESPs definitely don’t know. And those shiny analytics dashboards? They know click rates and open rates (aka “curiosity metrics”), but nothing about bank balances.
I was running a revenue machine with zero visibility into what produced revenue.
It’s like flying a plane where the dashboard shows you the outside temperature, the color of the sky, and how many birds you passed – but not if you’re heading toward the ground.
Eventually, you crash. I just didn’t want to be on board when it happened.
This Question Broke My Brain
Let me rewind.
Three years ago, life was stupid simple.
I had one client. One ESP. I wrote copy in Google Docs, client said “looks good”, we hit send and everybody was happy. Paradise.
Then I got cocky and took on a second client.
Different platform. Okay, fine. I’m adaptable, I’m a professional.
Client three shows up with Mailchimp. Sure, whatever.
Client four: ActiveCampaign.
By client five, I was spending more time managing logins than writing copy.
But different platforms weren’t even the real problem.
The real problem: I couldn’t answer the only question that matters in business:
“What did I wrote that made us money – and can I do it again next week?”
Instead, I got:
- Open rates (meaningless)
- Click rates (still meaningless)
- “We’ll get back to you” (they won’t)
- Radio silence (aggressively meaningless)
Even when an ESP had e-com integrations, the data lived in separate little kingdoms. You’d see a revenue number like $2,132 and think “nice.”
Then you tried to figure out why it happened and you had to click through seven screens, two tabs, and at least one settings panel that looked like it was built in 2009.
The copy lived over here. Stats lived over there. Revenue lived in a third place guarded by a troll who demanded a blood oath and admin access.
The link between ‘what we said’ and ‘what we made’ was broken.
(And yes, this is exactly why most people never see that mythical $42:1 email ROI. They literally cannot see the connection between what they send and what they made. They don’t track it. They can’t track it.)
I Tried to Fix This (Multiple Times)
Brilliant Idea #1: Work Directly in Their Platforms
The Plan: I’ll be a professional and manage everything inside each ESP.
Reality: I learned five different languages just to find one stupid number.
Some had Shopify integrations. Some had custom webhooks that broke every Tuesday.
I spent my mornings cross-referencing timestamps between Stripe and Mailchimp like I was investigating a crime scene. Revenue tracking became a daily game of “Do I trust this number… or is it lying to me?”
(it was often lying)
Brilliant Idea #2: Just Ask For Data Weekly
So simple. I’ll request performance data every week. Communication is key!
Remember that kid in group projects who always said “I’ll send it tonight” and never did? That became my entire business model, except now I was the annoying kid asking for homework.
Response times ranged from “three business days” to “when hell freezes over.” By the time I got data, the campaign belonged in a museum and completely irrelevant for making decisions.
Not scalable. Not helpful. Definitely not fun.
Brilliant Idea #3: The Master Spreadsheet
Fine. FINE. I’ll track everything myself.
New one master spreadsheet. Date sent, subject line, offer, open rate, click rate, revenue (when I could pry it from someone’s cold, dead hands).
This actually worked.
For exactly 12 days.
Then I missed a Tuesday. Then a decimal point ended up in the wrong place and suddenly our ROI looked like Elon Musk’s net worth. Maintaining it was more work than the insights were worth.
Then I realized the spreadsheet wasn’t helping me work – it become a second, unpaid job that I began to actively hate.
Brilliant Idea #4: Google Folders
Maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe it’s just an organization problem. I’ll create a beautiful filing system (where everything alphabetized, dated, perfect, pristine and labeled) and everything will be fine.
Then a client’s VA got involved.
They uploaded three versions of the same doc. They renamed my carefully labeled files to things like “COPY_FINAL_FINAL_v2_USE_THIS_ONE.docx.” And suddenly the “approved” email going out to 15,000 people was a rough draft from three weeks ago that I’d literally written in my underwear at 2 AM and would like to legally disown.
I had the copy, but I had zero control over the context.
Then a Friend Said Something So Obvious
We’re having coffee. I’m complaining.
He lets me rant for ten minutes, then goes: “Why don’t you just build a database?”
Oh.
Oh.
Right.
Databases exist.
See, I’d been solving the wrong problem this entire time.
I kept trying to organize documents. Files. Logins. Access points.
What I actually needed to organize was information.
Not “where’s the file” but “what did this email say, when did it send, what did it make, and how do I do it again?”
All my failed solutions kept the data locked in different rooms. Copy in the kitchen. Stats in the garage. Revenue in the basement behind a door that only opened during a full moon.
Email platforms are built to send emails. They’re phenomenal at that. They can also track who clicked what, which is neat. But they’re not built to help you run a business.
They can tell you Campaign A got more opens than Campaign B. They cannot help you spot a pattern across 50 emails you sent over six months because that’s not their job and they don’t care about your problems. They care about delivering your emails and collecting your subscription fee. (respectfully)
What I needed: One system. Under my control. Where everything about an email lived in one place.
Copy. Performance. Revenue. My notes about why I wrote it the way I wrote it. Context. Aftermath. Post-mortem. All of it.
The Embarrassingly Simple Thing That Fixed Everything
I started with Notion because I already had it and it has databases and I was too tired to learn another tool.
I made a database with five fields: Title, Client, Date, Status, and Offer.
That’s it. No fancy automation, just enough structure to stop losing my mind.
Two weeks in, patterns started screaming at me. Not whispering, not gently hinting – screaming.
I could see exactly which subject lines were click magnets. Which copy was printing money and which offers were dying.
And not for one client. For all my clients. In one view. In thirty seconds.
This dumb-simple system solved four problems at once:
1) One source of truth
When a client asks “What did we send in March?” I don’t dig through folders or like a raccoon in a dumpster. I filter by date and 30 seconds later, we’re both looking at the copy and the results. Fantastic.
2) No dependency on anyone
I don’t need a VA to send me a report. I don’t need an assistant to remember where they saved something. I don’t need a platform integration that works on Tuesdays but takes weekends off. I log what matters when it matters.If there’s an integration available, great, I’ll hook it up. If not, I’ll manually input it while drinking coffee and it takes ~45 seconds.
3) Accidental Insights everywhere
When stats live next to the copy, you notice patterns without trying. Like: “Emails under 300 words convert way better for Product A.” Or “Questions in subjects beat statements by 15%.” Or “I should stop trying to be clever and write even simpler.”This data was always there. But it was across seven platforms like a scavenger hunt designed by someone who hates me personally. Now it’s unavoidable.
4) It scales
The system doesn’t care if I have 10 emails or 10000. It’s a database. Databases love growth.(while spreadsheets love making you cry)
Then Something Weird Happened
I started showing this to clients during strategy calls.
Not as a pitch, just… it was on my screen.
And clients would go quiet. Lean in. And ask: “Wait. How are you tracking all this? We can’t even find last month’s emails.”
So I shared the template.
They’d adapt it. Plug in their teams. Start tracking their own campaigns.
One client told me: “This is the first time I actually understand what our email marketing is doing. We’ve been flying blind for two years.”
Turns out this wasn’t just my problem.
A lot of entrepreneurs run email like a slot machine – pull the lever, hope for the best, never quite know why sometimes they win.
You Can Have This
I didn’t set out to “build a product.”
I solved my own problem, then realized everyone else had the same problem. And we were all too embarrassed to admit it.
I call it “Broadcast HQ” because that’s what it is – headquarters for your emails.
It’s not just a database template. It’s the entire workflow I use, from the first terrible draft to the final revenue numbers, baked into views so you don’t have to invent a system while also trying to ship emails.
And I’m not charging for it because the hard part isn’t building the database. The hard part is using it actually consistently, which I can’t do for you.
(Unless you want me to. I still help a few clients set this whole thing up, wire the tracking, and make it idiot-proof so they can just focus on the results. If that’s you, we should talk. If not, the template is all yours.)
Look, this isn’t for everyone, and I’m not going to pretend it is.
If you’ve got a full marketing department with three analysts pulling reports in real-time, you don’t need this.
If you send one email a month and genuinely do not care about results, definitely skip this.
This is just how I solved my problem. Your problem might look different. Maybe you’ve got this figured out already. (If so, I’m jealous and also impressed.)
But if your current system makes you want to throw your laptop out a window every time someone asks “Hey, what did that email make us?”
This’ll help.
P.S. The revenue tracking sounds complicated but it’s just a three-step automation in Make or Zapier. I included a tutorial so you don’t have to reverse-engineer it like I did. You’re welcome.