Talk Data to Me: Crafting Campaigns with Numbers

Anna-Lynn: So I’m so excited that you’re on our podcast today Deb.

Deb: Excited to be here Anna Lynn.

Anna-Lynn: Liar but I appreciate the lie.

Deb: We’re just talking.

Anna-Lynn: Right it’s true no pressure we’re just going to have a conversation and Deb is on our analytics team she does a really great job with that so we’re going to talk a little bit about what she does and um yeah we’re just gonna we’re gonna free dive it baby.

Deb: Sounds good.

Anna-Lynn: No pressure so why don’t we start by telling us a little bit about what you
do here at Seapoint.

Deb: What do I do.

Anna-Lynn: Besides filling our days with sunshine and joy.

Deb: This is why I love working here.

Anna-Lynn: It’s it’s a total love fest, it is.

Deb: It’s so good for the ego. I uh I work like you mentioned on the analytics team so I work primarily for one particular client that um involves a lot of a lot of watching let’s say um so
doing the weekly analytics for them looking at the numbers from the Google ads and emails and the various marketing campaigns that we have going for them and taking that information and seeing what we need to do different from a creative standpoint and um things like that.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah I was going to say like um the usefulness of analytics can’t be overstated because it really does inform like as the creative director here like our team relies heavily on your team so between our teams like creative team really relies heavily on what you do because we need to be able to create content that is going to be useful to our client so what are some of the analytics and metrics that you look at um to help inform my team.

Deb: So one of the things that pops to mind um that we do a lot looking is like with blogs and emails and stuff like that um so looking at open rates click-through rates so like are people connecting with a subject line do they find something that makes them want to open and read this cause people get a lot I get so many emails and so many times it’s like oh I subscribed to this but I’m like nope I don’t have time for this delete delete delete but if something if a subject line catches your eye it’s like oh what’s this about um so that’s a big number that we look at and then once they’re in there did they take any kind of action um is another important thing like is did you deliver you can’t just have a clickbait-style subject line right.

Anna-Lynn: Some do.

Deb: Exactly some do and that frustrates people over time and they’re not going to stay subscribed to your information um and without looking at that you’re like you’re creating content in a bubble you know it’s like you need that feedback you need to the whole point is to get people interested in what you’re putting out there and if they’re showing you by the numbers that they’re not interested or that they are that then informs your next decision.

Anna-Lynn: I know when I was first starting out here I started out as a writer before it was a while before I became creative director but when I started I would sit down on these meetings and I would kind of just zone out during the status on the status call like during the analytics and the metrics because I’m like I don’t really need to hear about that I just need to know I I just need to read my blog at this meeting I need to you know present my part um um I’ll listen in on the writing bits but the rest of it you know it was like a foreign language I- I don’t really need to..

Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: Pay attention to it it’s just noise in my ear but I’ve so come to appreciate it didn’t take me long to realize whoa this is really important for me to know and I think sometimes there’s a disconnect not just because I experienced it personally but I think some um creative teams think that analytics is completely separate from what they do and that can be easy to kind of think like well this team is taking care of the metrics I’m taking care of the content we’re on different sides of the table when really there has to be that I don’t I hate the word Synergy but
there has to be like it’s just such a bougie word that’s overused um…

Deb: But there is a connection like there has to be a connection.

Anna-Lynn: There has to be that both teams are working very closely together I think in order for it to be truly successful have those big gains for their client and the big results yeah because otherwise you’re kind of just off in your own little bubble.

Deb: Right, right and what’s the point of creating content that no one’s reading and you don’t know what’s…

Anna-Lynn: Your teams have to work together there has to be good communication there has to be good um flow of ideas and flow of information.

Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: Back and forth.

Deb: And it’s funny it just made me think we were talking earlier um myself and one of the other members of the analytics team also have done some creative work here or elsewhere um and that kind of helps us in how we look at things and then I don’t know if this like in communicating that with the creative team like hey like we we might notice things like being able to have an understanding at least a basic understanding of of both and even for you like what numbers matter to what based on what I’m doing like there’s some things that aren’t.

Anna-Lynn: Right, there’s some stuff that still is like yeah okay.

Deb: Google can be Google and stuff can change you know like there’s there’s things that are out of your control but there is a lot that the numbers can tell you if you know what to look for yeah um and- and I mean sometimes I’ll go on like tangents of digging like what does this mean and like dig and I might find nothing I’m like well I just wasted an hour but sometimes like I discovered um in February we had a special campaign that they run every February for a specific product and there was a phrase that I found every email that had this phrase in the subject line did got a better open rate than the ones that didn’t.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah. Which is important for my team to know.

Deb: Right and it’s funny because I remember when we worked on this campaign last year we were like how can we say this differently and we kept trying to come up with different ways to say it.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah.

Deb: And they didn’t get opened as much as any time we have used it’s like well it’s it’s like and that’s…

Anna-Lynn: Don’t break what well don’t fix what’s not broken.

Deb: Sometimes you don’t know until you try it because to some other like for to a different demographic we just ran into this also recently different demographic different product same phrase did worse because they were more skeptical of it so it’s like knowing looking for those little things who are you talking to what’s their age like those are all pieces of a puzzle and it really takes time which is hard if you’re like a solo entrepreneur trying to do stuff on yourself you know like being able to but it really matters cuz you’re going to waste time otherwise.

Anna-Lynn: Do you know um do you have favorite tools to do these analytics like there must be there are I think there’s some pretty common ones out there that most people use but are there advantages to the tools that you like in particular or?

Deb: Yeah so um I love a good spreadsheet I’m sorry I- I don’t love I…
Anna-Lynn: The bane of my existence.

Deb: I have a love hate relationship with them but it’s because like I can understand it and they’re like we use HubSpot for our email marketing so using the tools that are within there is great um we use Salesforce for one client so no like and that is a little more involved like I- I can find some stuff but that one’s a little bit more challenging for like it’s more to get the information that I then put in a spreadsheet basically I have you know my 20 tabs is all different spreadsheets with the information compiled in different ways.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah.

Deb: Um so I’m old school like that I guess.

Anna-Lynn: Hey if it works.

Deb: You know and we’ve experiment we’re experimenting with some different programs like hot jar where you can kind of see where people are clicking and what their patterns are when they’re on a page like that’s all very interesting information and might indicate something new you’re you know it’s just all data points it’s all data points to see what what jumps out at you like what are the habits of the people that are consuming what you’re putting out yeah but I’m you know good old spreadsheet I know how I know how they work I know how to get them to do what I needed to do.

Anna-Lynn: And to me spreadsheets feel like math which breaks my brain like.

Deb: But it does the math for you.

Anna-Lynn: I know I- I look at them and it seriously is like I’m trying to read a for language it just it’s overwhelming to me whenever I look at them I’m getting better like since I’ve been here I’m like I am not going to let this beat me I’m going to learn um and I’m gonna I’m going to get to where I’m like spreadsheet cool let’s do it.

Deb: But it’s got to be laid out colorcoded like it has… I can’t I can’t handle a badly formatted spreadsheet that will make me crazy.

Anna-Lynn: I just need to commit to learning how use them I’ve done I- I’ve worked around it for decades I’m like I’m going to do it one of these days one of the things I love about um how closely our teams work together is like it it’s so important I think for the consideration of the client in general and what you provide not only what you provide for content but we were talking today I was thinking in particular today we were on a call with a client and some of the metrics that you presented indicated kind of a shift in maybe how we use the budget that the client has given us to work with.

Deb: Yeah.
Anna-Lynn: So it’s so vital there too that our teams communicate because should we now shift how or make a recommendation to the client that we shift the budget more toward a different type of content should we be doing fewer emails and more Ad work um or should we be doing more PPC ads and fewer Google like fewer display ads so it’s I love that I’m not good at getting the information but I’m fascinated by the details that you dig up and that really spark our team into looking at ooh how can we do this differently ooh that’s a challenge okay how are we going to address that and so it’s just a neat, neat relationship between the two.

Deb: It’s Synergy.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah.

Deb: No, different word new word. Cut that.

Anna-Lynn: I’m gonna bust out my thesaurus and we’re going to call it something else.

Deb: Right I like that.

Anna-Lynn: No, it is a good word for it.

Deb: But yeah it’s very it’s very true and I was thinking that when I was putting that report together. That I’ve been working on for a while and it’s like looking things it’s like wait a minute is this right like whenever I see something different and it we’ve been seeing this trend like the report you were speaking of as a quarterly report and we’ve been I’ve been noticing this trend over the last several months with numbers going a certain direction in a certain area and I’m like am I doing this wrong like sometimes when things start to shift.

Anna-Lynn: Is this for real?

Deb: It’s like what is like let’s watch this and that’s sometimes too you don’t want to too quickly react…

Anna-Lynn: Mhm.

Deb: To numbers like okay let’s just let this play out for a little bit but we’re going to keep watching it and as we discovered um with that like the end result like the main thing that we’re trying to produce our deals for this client was up even though some of these numbers were like what is happening over here like this isn’t looking like it used to look um but because there’s so many different things that are happening it’s like and like you said another area is picking up where one is but they’re all important but maybe we do need to reallocate like okay maybe we just change a little bit how we’re doing this and it’s- it’s all a big experiment it really is. It’s just a big experiment.

Anna-Lynn: That’s what I love about advertising and marketing it’s like it’s a very calculated..
Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: Experiment.

Deb: Right and no one move is going to do you in and no one moves going to probably make a
huge but it’s just watching those trends and this little hey what if I do this again what’s going to happen there it is it’s just it’s kind of an interesting little puzzle.

Anna-Lynn: Now I- watching you work because your desk is right next to mine um and I’ll and just hearing your process how like you were mentioning before how you would latch on to a particular detail and then like just go down the rabbit hole on that do you feel like you have like an innate skill set that enables you to be really good at this because I feel like you you have to have a certain kind of personality or just perspective or energy or something cause analytics are
definitely not my thing you know we’re very different people we are on opposite sides of the table yep but um so I feel like you you must have some very particular skills to help you be really good at this.

Deb: The ability to hyperfocus when you get that thing and just be like okay I need this answer got to dive down the rabbit hole for a minute.

Anna-Lynn: But also knowing where to look I think is important that’s what sticks me up sometimes like I- I know I want to find a certain thing but I’m like I don’t know where to start.

Deb: I’ve always kind of had a mind for numbers like they make sense to me um so that definitely is helpful if you’re trying to look at numbers and see what they mean you have to be able to understand that.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah, which is why I fail at it.

Deb: But you are amazing at so many things.

Anna-Lynn: Thanks for making me feel better.

Deb: You’re a little word wizard. So that definitely helps and I feel like too like I I’m very fascinated at human behavior and psychology and which is kind of what marketing is you’re speaking like okay this number is doing this what what make- them what’s making them react that way right like what did we say who are we talking to and that piece of things um I find very interesting.

Anna-Lynn:: Yeah because these numbers are basically behaviors.

Deb: Yes it’s a measurement of human behavior.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah.
Deb: What information do you look for from those numbers to inform what you do.

Anna-Lynn: I love seeing the like how well a Blog does, how well an email does like you were talking about the subject lines and preview texts and stuff like that and seeing where they clicked in and there- there would be sometimes that’s actually what made me start sit up to sit up and listen to the metrics part of these status calls when I was just starting out as a writer was I want to see how well my article performs against last week’s when this person wrote or…

Deb: Ohh a little competition there.

Anna-Lynn: You know a little bit I wanted to see you know how did we do um if theirs was better and it and it wasn’t like..

Deb: No but like what worked.

Anna-Lynn: Right I want to know why did theirs perform better and then I would do my own analysis I do a little analytics too um I would look at okay so what did they include was it the style was it because every writer here has a different style.

Deb: Right.

Anna-Lynn: Um and so I would be like is it their style did they connect more with the audience because of the tone how they wrote um was their wording more was it more was there more warmth I mean that that ties into the tone I’m just repeating myself but um the words they use like is it a certain the words you use can either uh draw your audience in or kind of alienate them if you sound like you’re too yep you know you’re using $10 words so I- I loved looking at those analytics and being like wow okay why is this one so much better than that one and using it to inform how I would write so should I keep going the way I am like have I really nailed that tone or do I need to sharpen it up a little bit and change and even just the perspective like you were saying how there were some phrases that really seemed to resonate with the audience um that we were targeting and so do we need to expound on that right or should we stay in this lane for a little while to really capitalize on that that interest or so that part is fascinating to me too because I- I I’m a big fan of human behavior too but just on the opposite end of it but I love seeing the numbers now like now I’m so invested in them you I mean I should be because it’s really you know my job encompasses seeing everything as a whole.

Deb: Right.

Anna-Lynn: That we do here. Um but um before I was in this role like that is that was what really started my fascination with what you do and seeing that connection and being like oh this is great.

Deb: Yeah because so much of it is like so directly related to like the like you said like the style the tone things like that um one of the things I’ve noticed a lot in like the emails we have multiple places where people can click in an email and it’s not always the big learn more call to action button that gets the most clicks a lot of times it’s the little piece within the text that’s highlighted with the link but it like speaks directly to a pain point or it speaks directly to a person in a certain way and it’s been interesting to kind of see which- what tone what what statements are making people click.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah I love it.

Deb: And where in the article is it like is it at the beginning they just clicked right away to move on or did they read through and like…

Anna-Lynn: How much information does someone need before they’re going to click.

Deb: Yeah like that stuff can be very I mean you can you can look at the same piece of content so many different ways from a numbers perspective and like pick it apart so intensely if you want to um but just those little things noticing those trends yeah um and what what is speaking to people and for different products too like what works in one product might not work for another or in dealing with the insurance world which is the account we’re speaking of you know how you talk to someone about life insurance is different than how you talk to them about health insurance or disability insurance like exactly different phrases connect to people when they’re looking for that thing.

Anna-Lynn: And I think the analytics helps the creative team understand their audience better – actually no that’s not quite what I want to say I feel like the analytics really shows whether or not the creative team understands their audience because I think sometimes that can get lost when an agency or a client is so focused on the ROI and they just want fast returns on from a campaign they sometimes don’t focus on on the audience they focus on what’s the marketing that’s going to get us the fastest return. Yeah, money’s important but seeing the analytics really clues you in on whether or not you’re getting what your audience needs.

Deb: What they want.

Anna-Lynn: What they feel, what they want and if you’re going to just throw something at them that’s totally tone deaf and hope that it’s going to make you money right you’re probably going to be disappointed.

Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: Because um I think part of that on the creative side of things like I love being able to have that information in numbers like seeing how close did we get on this how far off are we how can we do better.

Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: How can we speak to them better how do we get them to understand that we get it.

Deb: Right.

Anna-Lynn: And we can’t do that unless we know what our metrics are unless we know what our
analytics are.

Deb: Yeah when you’re looking at the numbers on a regular basis it kind of gives you the freedom too to to try something but not worry like that one bad piece or whatever one piece that doesn’t…

Anna-Lynn: One experiment.

Deb: One experiment isn’t going to wreck things you know it could give you valuable information one way or the other.

Anna-Lynn: Almost always does. 100%.

Deb: And it actually sometimes you get more valuable information when things don’t work because then you know for a fact okay this is not how I speak to that group about this thing that did not work well yeah okay now we know and we can you know so you have to be willing to test it but as long as you’re watching that and you’re not producing that same like piece that’s not connecting.

Anna-Lynn: Right.

Deb: Time and time again because you’re not looking.

Anna-Lynn: Right, right you’re not spending the time.

Deb: Right, right.

Anna-Lynn: Doing as much of a deep dive as maybe you should.

Deb: Right.

Anna-Lynn: You’re kind of skipping that over just to pump stuff out and try to get something in front of your audience then yeah you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Deb: Exactly and then if the trends are moving in a certain direction for what well you got to listen to that too if you do need to make changes so it’s it’s a ever evolving process.

Anna-Lynn: Well I’m glad that we have you as part of our process here because it’s just great…

Deb: Aww i’m glad to be here.

Anna-Lynn: It’s great working with you.

Deb: Yes.

Anna-Lynn: And I feel like we’ve got a pretty good team here and our clients seem to think so too because they’re pretty happy with us.

Deb: I agree like I look forward to like our monthly team calls that we have in different departments cause everybody here works so well together and that’s so important.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah.

Deb: That everyone like you have to have respect between the different departments.

Anna-Lynn: And the work that each other is doing and understanding how your work oh wow…

Deb: Influences

Anna-Lynn: Exactly. Understanding…

Deb: How one department influences another department.

Anna-Lynn: Right, exactly. How your department influences everybody else’s yeah and you can work a project together it’s just it’s great it’s always great even when it’s stressful it’s like we just get through it and we’re always laughing.

Deb: yeah and at the end it’s like man.

Anna-Lynn: Look at what we did.

Deb: Look at what we did. I’ve never been so happy to put together a 31 slide presentation in my life.

Anna-Lynn: Right. No kidding. We have had projects where we have worked for three months
straight and not moved from our computers.

Deb: Eight-hour Zoom sessions.

Anna-Lynn: Yeah, just to hammer out these slide decks and presentations it’s all numbers and words and results.

Deb: And yeah and that’s actually a great example too of the two worlds needing to work together on that particular project cause it was like your department created everything and then we had to look at what did how did everything do what does all this mean and then presenting it.

Anna-Lynn: Merging both of those together.

Deb: And like okay here’s the numbers we’re going to feature now we need the words so like it’s just yeah it’s it’s a cool pairing of like right brain left brain.

Anna-Lynn; Exactly.

Deb: Kind of married together.

Anna-Lynn: And then you just get this whole perfect thing that just and when you get solid results from yeah that’s really fun and you get to present something to a client and you’re like look at what we did look at what happened.

Deb: Yeah.

Anna-Lynn: You know for you this year or this month or this quarter um it’s just it’s the coolest feeling and it’s like this is why we do what we do.

Deb: Yeah it’s fun.

Anna-Lynn: Well thank you for coming and talking with us today.

Deb: It’s always a fun…

Anna-Lynn: Will you do it again?

Deb: Uh yeah.

Anna-Lynn: See it wasn’t so bad.

Deb: It’s not bad, it’s not bad.

Anna-Lynn: It’s not bad.

Deb: I always love talking to you.

Anna-Lynn: Thanks for putting up with me as the interviewer because Kristy is thousand million times better at doing this so.

Deb: She’s pretty good we’re pretty good we’ve got a lot…
Anna-Lynn: I’m the b side.

Deb: Yeah but we’ve got a history of talking.

Anna-Lynn: It’s true.

Deb: For…

Anna-Lynn: It’s true.

Deb: Well before here.

Anna-Lynn: Probably maxing out her space on her camera we easily could.

Deb: Yes.

Anna-Lynn: But you were great. So…

Deb: Thank you so much.

Anna-Lynn: Till next time.