In this success story, we interviewed Lori Jo Vest, Co-Founder of PopSpeed Digital Marketing, and Kiley Metcalfe, Digital Marketing Specialist, to learn about their continued social media growth while using Loomly. Lori and Kiley shared PopSpeed Digital Marketing's agency journey and how Loomly's Enterprise plan has helped them triple their client base.
Since starting with Loomly in 2020, PopSpeed Digital Marketing has been able to accommodate an increasing number of clients by managing their social media and content while improving existing client-agency relationships. Read on to learn more about how PopSpeed Digital Marketing has continued to expand operations with Loomly.
Can you introduce yourself and provide a quick overview of your business?
Lori: "I am Lori Jo Vest. I’m the Founder and the partner with my husband of PopSpeed Digital Marketing, LLC. We are a digital marketing shop primarily focused on social media.
However, we also offer support services in SEO content, email marketing, and website development and maintenance because we found a lot of our clients need that whole suite of services. But we really live to support busy marketers who may not know the ins and outs of social media.
We have grown in the last six years from myself and my husband to a team of five. We’re all remote, we have a very unique culture in that we do really prioritize our team and their happiness. And I think Kylie can speak to that as well, because the happier my team is, the easier it is to do great work.
We like to form really strong relationships. Some of our clients have been with us for a really long time."
Kylie: "I was PopSpeed’s first hire in late 2020. I started as a part-time contractor, and went full time a few months after that. And then recently we were able to add full time staff, me and another one of our team members, which has been wonderful.
I am a Digital Marketing Specialist with PopSpeed. I focus a lot on social media. There are some other buckets that we do. We do newsletters, we do blog writing, SEO.
I think that what we've built internally really shines in our work output. Like we do good work because we're happy with each other and know we're supported and empowered. And it's really awesome."
How did Loomly help you solve your biggest challenges and pain points when managing social media?
Lori: "I used to use Sprout Social. I found Sprout Social to be very expensive.
And then we were using Buffer. I've used HootSuite. Loomly came to us through a referral. I'd never heard of it."
Kylie: "When I first started, we were using Buffer, but we were kind of growing out of Buffer. It wasn't as user friendly and I had no other experience with any other system and just knew it had to be done better than what we were doing.
So, we switched to Loomly, I think, late 2020, maybe early 2021 and since then, it's really grown alongside us. It's so user friendly in the sense that going from six or seven clients, and now we're far, far beyond that.
[Loomly] allows us to grow without making any major changes. [It’s] the one system that we can't change because we know it well, we love it. It makes all of our lives much, much easier with social content."
And it's not that we don't consider, because we do, is there anything different about this new thing coming, is there anything different about this new thing coming, and we've just not seen anything that we thought could replace Loomly
💡Loomly Tip: Loomly is constantly releasing new features such as LinkedIn PDF scheduling, auto-posting on Threads, and more!
What is your favorite Loomly feature?
Lori: "It gives us some really good analytics reporting, and very, very, very rarely does anything fail. And I've got other scheduling platforms where it just fails and you don't know that it failed. Loomly notifies you right away if something needs to be posted or posted manually.
You've got the app too. So if I'm out somewhere and I see it failed or I need to post manually, it's done. The ability to see calendars in so many different ways, the ability to have the client come in and invite them into the account without having to pay for another seat, and the different categories of scheduling — you can give somebody just the ability to schedule, the ability to schedule and approve. The levels are really nice.
And I think the fact that we met somebody from Loomly and had a call with someone there, and heard more about Loomly. It had us feeling more connected to Loomly and also the ability to say, 'Hey, have you guys thought about adding this?'
We noticed being able to schedule to LinkedIn groups and she's like, 'We're going to talk to the team about it.' So we feel like we have a pipeline in to say, here's some of the things we might want and you're listening."
💡Loomly Tip: Did you know Loomly lets you connect up to 11 different social media platforms, including a custom channel of your choice? Keep all your channels covered, hassle-free!
What has been your favorite experience with Loomly so far?
Lori: "We had a client that wanted to be invited to one of our accounts. And I went to invite her in and I was using the wrong email and I didn't know it and I couldn't get her in.
So I used Loomly’s chat. And within 15 minutes, somebody got back to me and said, 'Hey, I checked and that email doesn't exist.' They didn't make me feel stupid, but they actually went as far as to check to see if it was a real email. And then got back to me so quickly that I could fix it and not tell the client that I'm stupid and don't know her email address, but was able to just quickly resolve it. That is not common with a lot of the online platforms. And we use a ton of them."
Anytime we've had to use it, [Loomly’s chat] has always been really responsive. I love that about Loomly.
💡 Loomly Tip: Loomly provides a ton of resources to support users in achieving their goals. In addition to live chat, Loomly offers a comprehensive help center packed with resources, video tutorials, webinars, and more. Enterprise users also benefit from a dedicated Account Manager available for assistance throughout their subscription.
How has Loomly helped you achieve success?
Kylie: "I think my biggest one is the analytics reporting. We do analytics reporting for every client, and dig in pretty often to stay up to date with what's working, what's not. It makes our lives so much easier to be able to just go into Loomly, completely customize the time frame that we want to look at, the type of posts that we want to look at, the ability to tag the posts and then look at that.
We've done that before where we do a series of sponsored posts for a client. And then we need to do a specific analytics report on how well all of the sponsored posts did.
The ability to just look at the last four months, and only look at sponsorship posts, as opposed to going through every single one, and individually tracking and recording. It is such a time saver.
Even just the full reports that you can download month by month to look over and see channel comparisons and type of post comparisons and every single metric under the sun. It's far and away my favorite feature. It makes my life so much easier."
💡 Loomly Tip: Effective campaign management is crucial for social media managers, and Loomly supports this with Labels. Labels enable users to filter analytics reports and include additional criteria such as time range, channels, and more, providing a detailed and intuitive view of their social media performance.
Lori: "One of the things that I noticed right away with Loomly and that I see consistently is the user experience. The UX design is really good. It's user friendly. It's really, really seriously easy to find what you want to find.
Tiny little details are handled in a way that makes it so easy for us as the users."
I found Loomly to be one of the most nicely designed from a UX perspective.
How do you measure success?
Kylie: "I would say our overarching KPI is each client’s ROI. Obviously more specific KPIs vary client by client.
But ultimately our focus is results and ROI.
Loomly is supportive of that. It helps us keep up with those KPIs by being able to review the analytics very specifically, every day and with such ease.
It's one of the very few platforms that we use on a daily basis that we know we don't have to worry about.
Each of our [client] strategies are different and our KPIs are different and being able to spend so much time on a platform that makes your life easier that you don't really have to think twice about, gives us more time and freedom to focus on results, ROI, and achieving that for ourselves and for each of our clients."
Lori: "Engagement isn't enough anymore. People aren't really interested in how many followers, how many likes, how many shares. Our clients want to know how many leads did you bring in? How many volunteers actually clicked through?
They want not only ROI, but they want conversion.
So even getting leads isn't quite enough. They've got to be leads that convert. Social savvy organizations know that social can deliver ROI. They want their providers like us to deliver click-throughs to the landing page, signups to our workshops, donations to our organization, more sales.
It's different than it was two or three years ago. So the way we get that kind of thing is to continually look at what we're posting, look at the backend, see how it's performing. We do a lot of promotion. Our promotion budgets are getting bigger and bigger.
And we're always just looking at that backend and it's just so easy to do. And to see who's actually clicking and then watch what's happening on the other end. So it's very results oriented, where it hadn't been 2 to 3 years ago. So it's really changed.
Yeah, I think building on that is another good example of how Loomly is such an asset in helping us build our strategies and define our KPIs is how in depth the analytics go, because it's not just engagement. It's not just clicks. It's not just video views. It shows us the time that our audience is online and when the best time for us to post is per client. It shows us if our audience that's most engaged is male or female. It shows us the geographic location of the majority of our audience.
So I think that's such a key factor in building strategies and evolving strategies. So I think it really helps us to define those KPIs and really hone in on the best and quickest and most efficient way to achieve that ROI that we're so focused on."
Lori: "It's pulled right in front of you. So you can see it right away. It's like you guys knew what social media people wanted to see."
💡 Loomly Tip: Loomly provides real-time post optimization tips to ensure your content meets the best performance criteria for specific channels. Additionally, Loomly’s Advanced Analytics delivers detailed metrics and data on individual posts and account performance, allowing you to refine your social media strategy for even greater success.
What are some measurable results you've achieved with Loomly?
Kylie: "We've grown with Loomly at a crazy pace. I think Loomly is a big part of the reason we've been able to do that pretty seamlessly.
The feature that comes to mind mostly is how easy it is to create a single post and then customize it to each channel without having to do it over again, or being able to come back to it frequently.
It's a very strong part of why our content is solid — because we're able to take time that otherwise we'd have to put into focusing on the backend of editing or customizing per channel or typing out the same hashtags over and over and over again on Instagram."
We're able to save that time and then repurpose it into amping up our content, which is a big piece of why we've been able to grow at the pace that we have because we make good content and Loomly really helps us be able to focus on that.
Lori: "What we have found as an organization is instead of using a big CRM, if you want good results from your social, a social dedicated platform is so much better.
While a CRM platform may have a social component, it's not anywhere near as capable as a social only tool that is deep. And so I've had this weird experience and always come back to Loomly."
Kylie: "Loomly will notify you if there is an error, whether a channel did happen to get disconnected, or a post does need to be published manually, or I mean anything of that nature — we don't miss things like that.
We don't have to worry about missing things like that, because we know the platform is on top of it and it's going to tell us if we need to jump on something. So it's pretty stress free because we have some other systems where we have to [ask ourselves] okay, how do we make sure things don't get missed?
And Loomly is not one of them."
💡 Loomly Tip: Loomly sends notification alerts for events such as when a post fails to publish or passes its publication date. Users can customize their notification preferences to receive alerts via email, the mobile app, Slack, or Microsoft Teams integration.
What are your Loomly hidden gems?
Lori: "We have some clients that we do an outline and we get approval on all the content, we [schedule] all the content at once, and it plays out over the month through Loomly on its own.
And then we have other clients — one in particular (we love her) who actually likes to go through every post with us, every single post, every week. And then she isn't quite comfortable to immediately approve it. She likes to consider it and come back to it. So our copywriter will make the changes in the meeting and then she'll tag her.
I was able to invite a real hands-on client into the tool, know that she was only going to see what she was supposed to see, and also that it wouldn't take her a long time to learn to use it.
It's not like we have to keep having meetings, we can just pass it back and forth. And it's easy and seamless and that's really important."
💡 Loomly Tip: Loomly’s ability to make comments private is invaluable for client collaboration. You’re able to brainstorm and work with your team internally before tagging your client for review. They will only receive notifications of updates they’re tagged in so they can provide feedback accordingly without having seen any of the conversation between you and your team.
Kylie: "I think another example that comes to mind for me [is] the post ideas feature. I love that feature. It's not that I forget about it, it's just that I don't use it a lot. And I think that's the definition of a hidden gem for me. And then I remember it and I'm like, “Oh yeah!” If my brain is mush at the end of the day and I need an idea, Loomly's got me."
💡 Loomly Tip: Post Ideas is your go-to hub for content inspiration, offering a daily ideas from fun events to special celebrations and more — ensuring you never face writer’s block.
What do you enjoy most about having a customer success manager?
Lori: "I've always said, because this is how we run our company, that it's the people behind the brand that make the brand. And so while Loomly is a hands-free, easy tool to use, when things happen or when you have an idea, you'd like some feature added, it's frustrating that it won't do this, we've got somebody that we can say, 'Can you help us? Or is this something you might add to the tech list?'
And the fact that we could actually have a meeting and talk to them and they were not rushed. It just really feels more personal.
It feels like we're getting to know Loomly and getting to know the team behind Loomly which creates a stronger connection to begin with. And it feels more secure that we're going to be able to get what we need and if we have problems, they will be resolved."
Kylie: "One other thing that comes to mind for me is in that initial conversation that we had, we were able to ask questions: 'Is it possible that Loomly incorporates this? No. Okay, cool. Good to know or oh, yeah, we're working on that.'
To be able to have dialogue where our input or feedback or questions are really heard and so well responded to, I think it makes us feel more connected.
To feel like we have a say and a voice in the system that we've used for such a long time is very cool. But in that conversation, I learned a lot about what's possible and what's not. So to know that a little bit better, I think is good knowledge for anybody in social to have."
How has your business grown with Loomly?
Kylie: "For us, business seems to come in waves where it all happens so fast and at once. To feel very secure in the fact that — okay, we're bringing on four new social media clients right now, but we don't have to learn a new platform because we can grow with Loomly — has been very reassuring because I think as anybody in any industry knows, growth at the same time as learning is very difficult."
To have to learn new clients and new platforms [at the same time] is overwhelming. To not have to do that and to be able to grow alongside the platform has been really fun.
Lori: "[Loomly has] been on top of the new things coming out too, like when TikTok came out.
It feels like [Loomly] keeps up with the technology and the different channels and things, so we're not trying to figure out how to do it on our own without support.
There's no big lag time setting anything up and there's no real difficulty with the new technology that when Reels came out, when TikTok came out, it's all there."
💡 Loomly Tip: Loomly has recently announced a new integration with Threads! Users can now schedule Threads posts directly within Loomly and start amplifying their impact on a new social media channel.
So to know that when we bring on a new client, particularly one in social media, that they're set up and if we need to get them up and running really fast - that is just not a problem and has made growth more seamless.
Lori: "Bulletproof. [Loomly is] bulletproof. We just don't even think about it. It's just there. We don't even have to think about scheduling. It just happens."
Wrap up
If you’d like to learn more about PopSpeed Digital Marketing or are interested in working with the team, please check out their website. Alternatively, you can connect with PopSpeed Digital Marketing on their social media channels:
Want to learn how you too can grow your clients 3x using a social media tool like PopSpeed Digital Marketing? Explore the Enterprise plan they're on or start your 15-day free trial today to see why!
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