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Email Marketing
5 Steps to a Successful Email Drip Campaign
February 14, 2019 • Anna Kayfitz
Emails sent automatically and on a schedule are an effective way of communicating with your customers and prospects. Sometimes referred to as drip campaigns, automated emails target consumers based on their individual actions. In this post, I’ll discuss the steps to set up a successful drip campaign.
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Analytics & Data
Using Excel to Forecast Sales, Expenses, More
February 10, 2019 • Anna Kayfitz
Forecasting sales is useful for many reasons, such as inventory management, investor relations, and setting expense and marketing budgets. But producing accurate forecasts can be confusing. In this post, I'll explain how to generate forecasts using Microsoft Excel.
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Analytics & Data
18 Basic Metrics to Review at Year-end
January 15, 2019 • Anna Kayfitz
This is the time to conduct your year-end analysis to help plan for 2019. Here are some basic metrics to analyze, to see what worked and what didn't.
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Analytics & Data
To Analyze Data, First Form an Objective
December 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
The most important part of analyzing data is to define an objective. This is often overlooked. Analysts tend to drill down for insights without really knowing what they are looking ...
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Analytics & Data
Using Regression Analysis to Drive Ecommerce Sales
November 13, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Have you ever wondered what drives your sales? Ecommerce businesses typically know the source of their revenue and whether campaigns are working. Using regression analysis, a business can determine subtle causes.
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Analytics & Data
Guidelines for Data Cleaning, to Drive Performance
October 23, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Ecommerce businesses collect lots of data. Examples are newsletter signups, loyalty programs, sales transactions, and even supplier information. Regardless of the type, however, at some point you will need to ...
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B2B
5 Tips for Merging B2B Customer Data into B2C
September 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
How can a merchant add B2B info to an established B2C database? Mapping all of the data and its use is the first step. Beyond that, follow these five tips for a smooth addition.
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Analytics & Data
Case Study: Data Analysis Increases Profit for Manufacturer
August 9, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
My firm is frequently engaged by companies to analyze data. In one example, a manufacturer asked us to analyze sales data for customers, products, and regions to determine where to focus its marketing efforts. In this post, I'll describe that engagement its end result.
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Marketing & Advertising
Getting Started with Marketing Automation (for Ecommerce)
July 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Marketing automation is the process of using software to manage repetitive marketing tasks. Examples include automated emails based on a user’s action and automated social media posts. Offering relevant cross-sells ...
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Analytics & Data
How to Migrate Data in an Ecommerce Replatform
June 20, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
When switching to a new ecommerce platform, merchants often overlook one key component: the data. Most providers claim that the data migration is easy. But that is not always the case. In this article, I'll provide a data-migration checklist.
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Analytics & Data
Tips to Track Content Marketing Performance
June 8, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Content marketing can attract customers, build brand loyalty, and create overall engagement. But how do marketers know if their content — blog articles, videos, social posts — archives those goals?
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Analytics & Data
Drowning in Data? Consider a Business Intelligence Tool
May 21, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Ecommerce businesses use multiple tools and services. Most have their own dashboards, which measure different aspects of the business. So how does a merchant pull all the data together to see the big picture? Many companies use business intelligence tools, which combine data from multiple sources and display it in a meaningful way.
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Analytics & Data
Getting Started with A/B Tests (to Drive Sales)
May 8, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
A/B tests can improve conversions on an ecommerce site. There are many testing platforms — search Google for “A/B tests.” To run a test, identify a key conversion element, such as ...
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Analytics & Data
Spy on Competitors to Improve Products and Promotions
April 6, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Spying on your ecommerce competition can help with product pricing and marketing strategy. The first step is to identify all competitors no matter how large or small. Once you’ve compiled ...
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Analytics & Data
3 Ways Customer Data Drives Ecommerce Conversions
March 27, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Data is important to ecommerce businesses. But many are not sure how to use it — to collect, analyze, and make meaningful changes to their business. The key ecommerce data is easy to obtain, however. It comes from customers. In this post, I'll review how to apply basic customer metrics to improve your ecommerce sales.
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Analytics & Data
How to Track Overall Marketing Performance for All Channels
March 6, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Marketers typically measure the performance of campaigns and channels. For email, the key metrics could be opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and sales. For pay-per-click ads, it could be cost per click and cost per conversion. But how do you measure your marketing performance overall? And how do you compare channels, such as email marketing to PPC ads to social media?
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Analytics & Data
Which Promotions Perform Best for Your Ecommerce Business?
February 11, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
Ecommerce merchants typically run promotions throughout the year. Some are seasonal, such as "Free Shipping on Valentine’s Day Flowers" and "20% Off for Cyber Monday." Others focus on product categories, such as “Free Socks with Purchase of Any Jeans." But how does a merchant know if a promotion was successful? That's the purpose of this article.
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Customer Retention
Comparing A/B and Multivariate Testing
January 24, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
A/B tests are controlled experiments of two attributes, to measure which one was most popular with users. You can apply A/B testing to just about anything that you can measure. Multivariate testing allows you to measure multiple variables simultaneously.
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Conversion
What’s the True Value of a Conversion?
January 17, 2018 • Anna Kayfitz
How you calculate the value of a conversion can have big implications for your marketing budget and your company's bottom line. Many marketers optimize their search campaigns, for example, by looking at the cost per conversion of a given keyword. For display or video campaigns, analyzing performance by the cost of conversion per ad or ad type is common. But what happens if the person that clicked on a Facebook ad then clicked on a search ad a few days later? How much value would your attribute to each source?