Healthy Branding Habits #1

Ok, so I’ve decided to start a new series called healthy branding habits. There are some routines in my business that I pick up on that “I” think other businesses should do. I’ve got some weaknesses. I’m sure I’ve got some bad habits. And I’ve got some really smart habits that no one taught me. I implemented them into my business as a result of awareness and growth.

I’m going to start sharing those habits with you right now and the first one has to do with tracking your numbers. If you’ve been part of the Brand Excitement community for a while now, or if you’re on our newsletter list you know I use Aweber to deliver my mass email notifications. One of Aweber’s weaknesses is in giving me a snapshot of unique results of my campaigns. I manually record the unique open rates of each campaign but started to get discouraged by the numbers.

So… I sat back and thought about this. What are my true numbers? do numbers even matter? In all transparency… My list is about 300 people, I have 8-12 active clients at  any given time and from that I have a low six-figure revenue stream. Not too bad. So do I really need to stress when my “unique” number — that is, the number of people who opened the email vs. the number of times they open it — is less than desired?

I was discouraged… caught in that “number trap” and then I decided to do a little experiment. I downloaded the spreadsheets for the prior month of activity, grouped all of the people from each week into one column in excel, and then removed duplicates from the list. My rationale was, perhaps (or surely) some people open it only once every few weeks. So the actual number of people that I’m toiling to communicate with may actually be higher.

I did that… and I was right. Though my Aweber unique metric is only at about 20% of my list, that number, over the course of a month, is actually 42%! That’s twice what Aweber reveals.

So here’s the healthy habit I’ve incorporated into my number tracking: Each month pull your data and discover the number of people that responded to your campaigns. THEN, look at that list, engage with them on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Linkedin. You’ll be surprised how much more fulfilled you’ll be and how much your business will grow by focusing on the connection instead of the accumulation. So many people are focused on “growing the list” when people that actually do care to connect are in the palm of your hand.

Do you track your numbers? What have you discovered? Do please share with me so that I can develop some more healthy branding habits.