About AnalyticsEdge

No matter what you do to market your business, you need to differentiate yourself. Not just from your competitors, but from spammers.   Your customers are bombarded with messaging every single day. You need to be the message they expect, the one they look forward to, the one they would miss if it didn’t show up. If you aren’t, then you are one click away from a “bad day unsubscribe” -- that day when people feel overwhelmed and decide to unsubscribe from all those mailing lists they signed up for but have gotten nothing out of.   Before you click Send on your next campaign email, consider: does this message look like spam? Will it be welcomed into their InBox? Will it make them look forward to the next one? ... View more

This week I saw yet another article advising small business owners to outsource various aspects of their business. What disappointed me about the article was the list of criteria that we should use:   is it something I love doing? is this a task that only I can do? by not outsourcing, am I sacrificing quality? by not outsourcing, is it taking time away from tasks only I can do? What bothers me about this list is what is missing: there is no mention of money. For small business owners, time and money are very dear resources. We do things we hate because we don't have the money. We spend too much time figuring stuff out because we don't have the money. Our business suffers because our time is divided but we don't have the money to buy our way out. Our most critical questions about investing in any product or service is:   if I spend money on this, will I make more money than I spend? is this the best way to spend that money? We need to figure out the opportunity cost of the expenditure: if you choose to spend your money this way, will you make more profit than if you made no investment? If you have multiple possibilities, is this the one with the best outcome? That can be a tough analysis if you have to do it all yourself:     how much time will we really free up? can we actually use that time to make more money? wIll the extra income exceed the investment? But we don't have time for detailed analysis, so we "wing it" and make a gut decision -- usually negative because we never believe what salespeople tell us, and because we hate spending money more than we hate doing work. Even worse, we hate wasting money on things that don't provide real value.   On the Flip Side   Now turn the tables -- you are the vendor, not the purchaser. When you pitch to your prospects, do you help them with their analysis, or do you leave it to their gut? If you only talk about freeing up time or doing things they don't like to do, you might interest them a bit, but if you show how their investment will help them make more money, you will sway things in your favour.    Sure, but where are we going to find the time to do their analysis? You don't. Put your marketing hat on and tell a story. It could be about another of your customer's sucesses, or it could be a dream scenario of their implementation. Figure out how you can help them make more money, and tell that story.   Just remember to include the money. A great story might leave them feeling good about what you can do for them, but you need to make sure they feel it will be financially good for them. When the discussion gets to price, you don't want them mentally switching to cost-benefit analysis mode. They need to believe it will cost them more to do nothing.   Don't let them pass up a good opportunity to do business with you.   ... View more

I graduated from an engineering program where the concepts of effectiveness and efficiency were held in high regard. Truly elegant solutions can produce phenomenal results with very few resources or effort. By contrast, overly large and complex designs that rely on brute force to get the job done may perform a little better, but the investment required can make the solution undesirable.   I learned this important business concept in a team project for a mechanical engineering class. The objective was to build a structure out of balsa wood, string and glue that could support a weight hanging from a little square plate. The score was to be calculated by dividing the largest weight you could hang from the string (the return) divided by the weight of your structure (the investment). Although there were plenty of designs that could handle much heavier weights than ours could, we far outscored everyone because our design was minimalistic - it weighted very, very little.   In Constant Contact's recent   2014 Holiday Survey, they discovered that 40% of small businesses said they didn't have the time to use data to inform business decisions. We all know time is a limited resource for us, and that how we spend that time will determine our success or failure. There are so many opportunities we let pass by because we just don't have the time.   My recommendation: always be looking for elegant solutions; those little gems that don't require much (time or money) yet can deliver huge value to your business. The one word to be especially attuned to:   automation. While we'd all like to do more; our success will come from investing less time in the things we actually do.   I can draw an analogy to computer programming: there are programmers, good programmers, and great programmers. Programmers can write code (that works), good programmers can write code faster, great programmers create utilities to automate their tedious tasks and let the computers do the work for them.   To get more things done, look for ways to automate the things you do. Reduce the effort.  ... View more

Millions of people use Microsoft Excel every day, and have for many, many years. We all take it for granted, and rely on it heavily. Microsoft continues to evolve the product, but it already has so many features that most people are intimidated by the thought of a new release.   When someone sends us a workbook, we cringe or blandly accept it. We know it will be filled with numbers we'll have to struggle through, maybe a few charts to tease the eye. Boring. Tedious. Far from sexy! In a way, that is a good thing...people don't have high expectations from spreadsheets any more. It is easy to impress. One rule: do not produce what some people refer to as "data puking" -- sending out reams and reams of numbers with no context or guidance or recommendations. It doesn't take much to highlight a finding, and observation; just bold the number and add a comment or a sidebar. Use a touch of color...but not the standard ones that people see in every spreadsheet. Highlight one thing.   Such little effort can have an astounding result: people see things that are different. They notice the effort. Don't just surprise them...be remarkable. Try to answer the urgent question in their mind when they open your workbook. Pick one, tell them the answer, or at least what you recommend or how you interpret it.   Just like a good email subject line, hook them and pull them into your report where they can find their own path.   ... View more

There was a time people would rally around a published metric and hold it up at monthly reviews as if it was a merit badge, but these days analytics are everywhere, and they are renewed or replaced daily. Those numbers, trends, buying patterns, and customer segment analyses are quickly replaced by something new. The old analytics are quickly forgotten….disposed of to make way for the next hot metric or key performance indicator.   Good analytics support business decisions. They provide some direction as to which option is better than the rest. They increase our confidence and reduce risk. But once you make a decision to change something, their usefulness is limited. A short period of validation and they are no longer of interest. The next decision will require different numbers, a different analysis.   Business analysts and I.T. shops hate this scenario – they work hard on an urgent analysis and “the user” looks at it for a couple of months, then ignores it. They continue to run the reports, update the dashboards, but no one cares. That was last so month’s decision. It’s ancient history.   People still dream of the simple, magic little red/green indicator that shows the business is running fine today or indicates trouble ahead. They talk about a dashboard that reflects the health of the business at a glance. Great dreams, but it would be very short-lived. The business will change, the environment will change, the business ecosystem will change, and the analytics will need to change, too.   So, when you find yourself searching for the right analytics to measure your business, remember that they are disposable, and you are really looking for the right metric for right now.    ... View more

Way back in 1994, Lotus Development Corporation, maker of the spreadsheet powerhouse Lotus 1-2-3 and the Lotus Notes groupware platform, featured a inspirational opening video for their keynote titled "You are a visionary". The message: You are the sum total of your experiences, so get all the input you can, and you can achieve anything...when you work together with others. [You can watch the video here, courtesy of the Lotus Museum]   I was reminded of this when I watched a more recent video of Gail Goodman, CEO of Constant Contact, talk about the long slow ramp of death that many of us small businesses suffer through. It was wonderful hearing her openly share some of the growth myths we all submit to. She was a visionary, and she talked a lot about how working together with other groups outside her organization enabled her to succeed.     There is a large partner ecosystem around Constant Contact now, and many of us are small businesses helping other small businesses to succeed. We each have our own experiences, our own specialties, and in forums like this one, we share. We share so others can work their way up that long slow ramp to achieve their own personal success.   So be a visionary, explore the community that has grown around Constant Contact, and see how working together can help us all to succeed beyond our own capabilities.   ... View more

“How would you sort contacts by list once they have been exported to Excel?”  This question was asked in the Constant Contact  community forums  a while back because the new reports don’t work the way the old ones did. Here’s a quick solution...     Export your contacts and open the file in Excel. You will notice that the “Email Lists” column contains all of the email lists for each contact, as in this example, some contacts may be in the “Newsletter” list while others are in the “Product Updates” list. Some may be in both lists, and so both will appear in the cell. This makes it hard to sort or filter to see who is in a specific list.   To work around this problem, start by adding titles for new columns for each of your lists (with the spelling and case to match exactly). Then add a formula referencing the “Email Lists” column (column H in this example) and the new column itself (column M in this example):   =IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(M$1,$H2)),”X”,””)   The position of the dollar signs is important – this will allow you to take the next step: copy the formula across the rest of the new “list” columns and down all the rows. Presto! The letter “X” appears wherever the list name at the top of the column appears in the “Email Lists” column. Best of all, you can sort the new columns to group contacts by the list.   Explanation: The SEARCH function tests to see if the column title is contained in that row’s “Email Lists” cell. It returns a number if it is, an error if not, so the ISNUMBER function is used to get a TRUE or FALSE value for the IF statement. If it is TRUE, the letter “X” is displayed, and if not, then an empty string “” is displayed making the cell appear blank.   I hope you find this little tip useful.  Feel free to send me your reporting challenge. If you are doing a lot of reporting in Excel and are tired of the manual  effort needed to keep them updated, I have a simple solution listed in the Marketplace.   ... View more

Everyone knows that image is everything in marketing, but we often overlook the back-end of the process: reporting to management or the client on the results of our hard work. People seem to think it’s OK for the report to look raw, crude or technical because it isn’t visible to the general audience. Don’t make that mistake!   "If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers."  Edward Tufte   Most people place a disproportionate amount of value on the look of things. They want to be engaged. Entertained. Impressed. If you present the results of your efforts as a boring spreadsheet of numbers, they will feel let down, even if the numbers are outstanding.  Edward Tufte was arguing that inspired design can actually cause the meaningful “right” numbers to stand out.   Your report needs to tell the reader what to look at, what to think. If you leave it up to them, they will take a least-effort path and possibly even discount the entire report as uninteresting --  and your value drops with the interest level.   So what can you do? Simple things. Decide what you want them to notice and make it stand out. Avoid raw lists of numbers – use highlighting; conditional formatting in Excel is a great feature! But don't overdo it; too much and your message is diluted. Think of the one or two things you want them to remember, and stop there.     Even better, use a chart, but not the default Excel chart. Spruce it up a little – it doesn’t take much.  A minute of your time could be all you need for  a lasting impression, a contract renewal, a budget approval, a good performance review.    Don’t let your personal brand slip at a crucial moment: when you are being measured for what you are worth. Invest the moment. Leave them impressed. ... View more

You’ve probably seen a few articles about the benefits of list segmentation and some guidance on how to do it. In fact, Constant Contact alone has 100 articles on the topic, with plenty of valuable insight and guidance. With that much information, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.  Lots of stories about what others have done, but what is right for you? How much do you need to read before you find the article that ‘talks to you’ and fits your unique situation? Do you have the time and patience? Will it be worth it? Information overload; too much information, not enough time to absorb even a fraction of it.   Start With A Simple Decision   There are plenty of studies that show that making emails more relevant for the reader increases engagement, and that leads to all kinds of good stuff like lower unsubscribe rates, increased open and click rates, and even higher sales. You need to go hide in a closet somewhere*, take a strategic moment, and think about your readers. If you think segmentation could improve the effectiveness of your efforts, then make the decision to start – a simple yes or no; go or no-go. It might make a difference for me. You aren't making a huge commitment, just opening the door for a little experimentation. The fact that you even read this far means the answer is yes...   * Extraverts can hold an off-site strategic brainstorming session with friends at the local pub.   Pick from the low hanging branches   Now for the not-as-hard-as-I-thought part: picking segments to use. If something is not immediately obvious to you based on your own knowledge of your readers, use this list of popular segmenting practices to tease out an idea or two: By geography (would local, regional, remote readers respond differently) By demographics (would age, gender or income matter) By purchase/download history (if they have done business with you before) By open/click rates (can you offer more of the same topic) By industry/job role (would people with specific backgrounds react differently to your offering)   Don’t spend a lot of time here; don’t get stuck in analysis-paralysis. Pick the easy-to-reach fruit on the low hanging branches. Accept that you will not get it perfect the first time, and that is OK. While you do want to get something from the investment of your time and effort, unless you spark a million-dollar idea, your initial improvements will be modest at best.   Try an experiment   Again, do something easy. Create lists for your segments and experiment with them. Some common testing techniques include: Vary the subject line Vary the content or messaging Create unique offers (links) Vary the timing (particularly useful for geographic segments) Vary the design template (more mobile friendly?)   Play with it. You don’t have to send different emails to each group – you could just see if one segment responds differently than another. You could include multiple links, each of which should appeal to a different segment, and see if they ‘take the bait’. Think about what might work, try something, measure the results, and decide whether it worked or not. Think about what might work better. Repeat. Plan, do, check, act. Invest more effort where you see the potential for better results.   Building structure for the future   As you consider segments that hold promise, think about how you will maintain the list over time. Keep your time commitment to a minimum or the system will likely fail if the results aren't outstanding.   You could add a field to the sign-up form, letting readers self-select their topics of interest, identify demographics or provide other information. Since the subscribers do all the work for you, this is the ideal. Just make sure they can update their selections easily when their interests change; it is better to keep them on your list that to lose them because you are sending them material they no longer feel is relevant to them.   Alternatively, you can use a link that appeals to a specific segment in each of your emails and use click data to categorize them. Just be careful that you don’t over-commit people to a specific list based on what might have been a click-in-error or curiosity; don’t exclude them from other topic links that they may also be interested in. You may find you have a small group of people that read everything, some for personal interest and some professional or family-related.   Also think about point-in-time segments; they downloaded an ebook in the past month, or registered for a course last week. People might want a chance to upgrade or to learn more about their purchase for a sort while, or you might want to notify them annually of a refresher course or updated offering. These lists need to be date stamped and may even expire after a period of time.   Summary   If you were thinking that segmentation is a big scary topic, and the volume of information about it has you afraid to dive in, then it’s time to take that first little step. Make that simple yes-no decision. And if you decide to give it a try: Start small, with something easy to implement Learn from your results and keep testing to improve them Keep an eye to the future; don’t build something you can’t maintain   ... View more