Why I couldn’t care less about marketing metrics & analytics

Published: Thu, 04/01/21

One of the most liberating things I have ever learned in this business was almost 13 years ago when Ken McCarthy hired me to write the bullets to sell the CD’s to his System Seminar training that year.

One of the trainings was from the great Sean D’Souza's talk.

And, I will never forget his answer to a question from someone asking for data and analytics to prove his methods really worked, etc.

Sean’s answer?

“We don’t use analytics or any of that and I don’t have any data — I started out as a cartoonist and I moved to marketing and this has allowed us to take 3 vacations per year, buy houses, travel, do all the things we really wanted to do. We earn more money than we need.”

I remember thinking:

“Yep. That’s what I want...”

I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t be obsessed with or go blind studying your righteous metrics and analytics, and CTR’s, and life time value of your customers, and stick rates, and all that jazz.

Probably you should, especially with cold traffic type metrics.

But I don't buy cold traffic.

And I also care FAR more about time than money.

And without busting my brain pouring over all the typical IM goo-roo razzle dazzle — that gives would-be clients and goo-roo fanboys the warm fuzzies — my sales go up each year, and have steadily gone up every year since taking this attitude, and focusing on what I can control vs what I can't.

I couldn’t even tell you what my open rates are.

Or what my opt in percentages are.

Or what each click is worth.

I never even so much as think about them.

What I do is look at my sales each month & year.

Did they trend up?

Then I’m good.

On the other hand, did sales go down?

If so, I look at lot of NON-metric things first:

Like my offer, traffic/lead sources, the time of the year, current events, the kinds of emails I’ve been writing (are my emails appealing to the marketing proles or the more serious business people?), and a bunch of other non-metric data you can't measure with Google or flakebook data. And even looking at those things is usually a waste of my (precious) time. It always works itself out in the next month or two, and I’m back on top.

Anyway, here's the point:

If you want complicated and technical I can’t really add anything to your life.

There are other, far more geeky and tech-savvy people you should be learning from.

If you want dirt simple then I’m your boy.

Or not.

It’s entirely up to you, your preferences, and your reactions to me.

But if this topic interests you, then you might enjoy my 10-Minute Workday program sold by AWAI. It’s not cheap and it’s not a methodology I fully practice these days (I am more likely to work 10 HOUR days with all these new software ventures and book launches, not 10 minute days). But I do follow the structure of what's in the program to this day because it's always worked for me. And I had the proverbial one email workday for many years until greater ambitions sprung forth from the sheer boredom of living such a lifestyle.

And if you hop on the waiting list for it you will get this via PDF:

“The One Minute Business Plan”

Nary a marketer I’ve ever met talks about business plans, much less has one.

But I believe this short, easy to read report can get a business on the right track.

Here’s the link:

https://www.EmailPlayers.com/awai

Ben Settle