How to Run a Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics

Traffic and page views are nice.But they’re limited. In a few ways.Site wide traffic looks nice on a blog post or meeting with your HiPPOs. But it’s not actionable. And it doesn’t tell you what’s going on beneath the surface.For example, you have no idea if those users are returning. If they’re subscribin’ or buyin’. Or how they compare to peeps from a year ago.In order to find out that detailed info that ultimately moves the needle, you need to dig a little deeper. And you need to be able to view these basic metrics through a more detailed lens that includes segment information.Google Analytics cohort analysis tool can help. Here’s what it is, why it’s important, and how you can run your first cohort analysis report today.

Source: How to Run a Cohort Analysis in Google Analytics

How a Viral Loop on LinkedIn Got Me 76k Email Subscribers in 1 Month

I want to share an elegant trick where a “viral loop” on LinkedIn got me over 76,000 email subscribers in just one month. I know the audience of Ahrefs blog mostly comes here for SEO insights, advice, and studies. And there’s no doubt that good SEO will create a steady, passive stream of visitors to your website.But it can take quite a while to get good results.A recent study here at Ahrefs has shown that almost 95% of newly published pages don’t get to the Top10 within a year. That’s why when you’re bootstrapping your startup you need to start working on your website’s SEO as soon as possible.Hence you need a kind of marketing move that can start bringing you customers right away. That’s what we call a “growth hack.”A huge, quality list of email subscribers is probably the most promising thing to “hack.”I am going to show you a simple trick that got me 76k+ email subscribers in less than a month.

Source: How a Viral Loop on LinkedIn Got Me 76k Email Subscribers in 1 Month

21 Email Marketing Statistics That Will Make You Rethink Email Marketing

It’s no secret that email is still the most effective marketing channel when it comes to ROI… but not all emails are created equal.Top performing marketing departments are seeing 2.5 times the ROI of the average.So what’s the difference between mediocre and mind-blowing results?The short answer is that the top marketers stay ahead of the curve by looking at subscriber studies.So don’t give up on email before you’ve had a long, hard look at the following email marketing statistics.#1. According to a recent a VB Insight study, email has an average ROI of $38 for each $1 spent.#2. Another study from DMA shows that 77% of ROI comes from segmented, targeted and triggered campaigns.#3. People who buy products marketed through email, spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers.

Source: 21 Email Marketing Statistics That Will Make You Rethink Email Marketing

People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.

If your new product or service isn’t gaining traction, ask yourself “What’s my California Roll?”I’ll admit, the bento box is an unlikely place to learn an important business lesson. But consider the California Roll —Understanding the impact of this icon of Japanese dining can make all the difference between the success or failure of your product.If you’ve ever felt the frustration of customers not biting, then you can sympathize with Japanese restaurant owners in America during the 1970s. Sushi consumption was all but non-existent.By all accounts, Americans were scared of the stuff. Eating raw fish was an aberration and to most, tofu and seaweed were punch lines, not food.Then came the California Roll. While the origin of the famous maki is still contested, its impact is undeniable. The California Roll was made in the USA by combining familiar ingredients in a new way. Rice, avocado, cucumber, sesame seeds, and crab meat — the only ingredient unfamiliar to the average American palate was the barely visible sliver of nori seaweed holding it all together.

Source: People Don’t Want Something Truly New, They Want the Familiar Done Differently.

Behind the Scenes of a 6-Figure Online Business

In this episode of Noah Kagan Presents, we go behind-the-scenes with copywriting extraordinaire, and one of my best friends, Neville Medhora. This is part one of our conversation.A few years ago, Neville helped kickstart AppSumo’s growth with some incredible sales emails and sales posts. Today, Neville runs Kopywriting Kourse (an idea he built from the ground-up) — which is a 6-figure business.Listen as Neville shares some incredible insights from journey, including how he built digital info products for people who want to write better into a 6-figure business.

Source: Behind the Scenes of a 6-Figure Online Business

What we learned about “Long Tail” by analyzing 1.4 Billion keywords

I’m sure you’ve heard it many times that short keywords tend to get tons of searches per month, while the long ones are never popular. But I don’t recall any substantial research that didn’t qualify their findings with vague words like “tend” or “rarely.”So I pinged our data scientist on Slack and asked:- Do you think we could run a few queries on our ENTIRE keywords database (*that is 1.4 billion keywords for the United States), and not just a sample of a few million like we usually do?And he said, “Yes!”So today I’m happy to share a bunch of cool insights that we’ve got from studying 1.4 billion keywords.

Source: What we learned about “Long Tail” by analyzing 1.4 Billion keywords

The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics – Moz

One of the marketing world’s greatest frustrations has long been the lack of data from Google and other search engines about the behavior of users on their platforms. Occasionally, Google will divulge a nugget of bland, hard-to-interpret information about how they process more than X billion queries, or how many videos were uploaded to YouTube, or how many people have found travel information on Google in the last year. But these numbers aren’t specific enough, well-sourced enough, nor do they provide enough detail to be truly useful for all the applications we have.Marketers need to know things like: How many searches happen each month across various platforms? Is Google losing market share to Amazon? Are people really starting more searches on YouTube than Bing? Is Google Images more or less popular than Google News? What percent of queries are phrased as questions? How many words are in the average query? Is it more or less on mobile?These kinds of specifics help us know where to put our efforts, how to sell our managers, teams, and clients on SEO investments, and, when we have this data over time, we can truly understand how this industry that shapes our livelihoods is changing. Until now, this data has been somewhere between hard and impossible to estimate. But, thanks to clickstream data providers like Jumpshot (which helps power Moz’s Keyword Explorer and many of our keyword-based metrics in Pro), we can get around Google’s secrecy and see the data for ourselves!

Source: The State of Searcher Behavior Revealed Through 23 Remarkable Statistics – Moz

7 BIGGEST marketing strategies for 2017

There are so many stupid, generic business lists online:“10 tips to grow your business!”“3 secrets to SEO Google doesn’t want you to know!”“17 steps to making passive income!”The worst part is, these clickbait articles are written by people who have never built a business before. I’m sick of seeing all this bad, unhelpful advice on the web.Today, I’m going to give you actual, proven strategies to market your business in 2017. No B.S. No clickbait. No tricks.In deep detail, I’m going to show you 7 tactics I’m actually using to grow my businesses this year — including Sumo Group, which I recently grew to 8 figures. I’m sharing these strategies so you can give them a try for yourself.(And if you prefer a 7-minute video overview, just click below.)

Source: 7 BIGGEST marketing strategies for 2017

Why Clickbait Works (And Why You Should Do More of It)

Fake news is squarely in the spotlight.It rode to prominence on the back of an absurd 2016 election (wait… that was a dream, right?!).Since then, a slew of companies including Google and Facebook have publicly declared it Enemy #1. Any whiff of fake news, especially any salacious titles, and you can expect extra scrutiny.But here’s the thing.Clickbait gets a bad rap. When done correctly, it’s one of the best ways to get people to take notice and give you their most precious asset: attention.Here’s why, despite your hesitancy or bold proclamations from companies, you should be using more of it.

Source: Why Clickbait Works (And Why You Should Do More of It)

5 Online Marketing Tactics I Learned From My Previous Startup

As a co-founder of an eCommerce startup in a highly competitive industry, I quickly realized that we had to move beyond the basics of marketing optimization and test some advanced techniques to improve our ROI.After much trial and error, we found few tactics that were really effective. Although our startup did not survive, the learnings I took away from our extensive experimentation and optimization were priceless. In this post, I will cover some of the techniques that worked really well for us.Before I share these tactics, I would like to point out that it is crucial to achieve a high level of alignment between your marketing, engineering and product teams. Your engineering team should understand marketing and your marketing team should understand the technology. In today’s world, technology plays a significant role in marketing optimization and it is important for your teams to have that common perspective.

Source: 5 Online Marketing Tactics I Learned From My Previous Startup