Episode 48: Measuring and Collecting Launch Data

A Comprehensive Guide to Success

If you're launching a product, service, or anything else to the public, you need to measure and collect data for your launches.

Determining what data you will measure and collect before your launch ensures you have the information you need before, during, and after your launch for your desired success. 

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Podcast Transcript:

Kiva Slade: [00:00:01]

Hello, and welcome to Collab With Kiva. I'm your host, Kiva Slade. From the marbled halls of the US Congress to my racing-themed office chair, I've learned that there is no perfect path to the life of your dreams. My journey over the past 20 years has included being a legislative director for a member of Congress, policy director for a nonprofit, stay-at-home mom, homeschooling mom, jewelry business owner, and now the owner of a service-based business. Whether your journey has been a straight line or full of zigs and zags, join me and my guest as we share insights, hope, and lessons learned from our female entrepreneurship journeys. May the collaborative sharing of our stories be the tide that lifts your boat. Let's dive in.

[00:00:55]

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I am your host, Kiva Slade. And I'm excited as we continue our Q4 series, really hoping you finish the year strong, if that's your goal, with information that we've already shared when we had Willemijn Maas on who talked about launching, Becky Brunner, who came on and talked about teams and all the wonderful things about that. Today was actually supposed to be about websites and branding, however, my guest, there were some complications so we weren't able to do that one. So, we're going to feature that episode later this year. So, today's episode is going to be about ... Let's just drumroll it. Da-da-da-dum. Data. Data-data-data. So, I am going to lead this one all by myself. And we're really going to focus on launch metrics and things that you need to think about measuring data you want to collect when you are looking to launch.

[00:02:13]

So, let's dive in. First things first, I think most of you know what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. I need you to make sure that Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4, and Google Tag Manager are installed on each domain site page that you have involved in your launch. And without it, not only is it hard to measure your launch success, but you also miss out on vital information that you could use pre, during, post-launch. And I say your domain, your sites, your pages, because in many instances, people are coming to say your website or maybe it's a landing page that you have set up via lead pages, and that's taking them or some other ...

[00:03:18]

You can fill in the blank with whatever you're using. So, that landing page is going to take them through a series of landing, checkout page, and then they might get to a thank you page that could be associated with that. It could be back on your website. So, you might have a checkout that takes place in PayPal, Stripe ThriveCart. There are so many different options that are out there. With all of those things being considered, if you do not have Google Analytics, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager installed on your websites, all of those that you might be using in this path, this journey, your funnel, then you are at risk of, at the very least, missing information, but also possibly having distorted information where people have been counted more than once, which is not good. You're also just risking dirtying up your data.

[00:04:26]

And so, it's really important that you have those things installed on all of your domain, sites, pages, that are involved in your launch. And honestly, that everybody on the team knows these things. So, cross-domain tracking is in place as well so Google Analytics knows what to count as referral traffic and what not to. So we can dive deeper into that, but we won't right now. But just trust me, you want to have it installed on all your domain sites, pages, things that you are utilizing for your launch.

[00:05:06]

The second thing is what we call UTM links. So, those are those long, pesky URLs that you're like, "Why is this thing so long?" Because it's packed full of information. And that feeds into your Google Analytics to give you more data that you can use again pre, during, post-launch. I would highly recommend a spreadsheet so that you guys have in one location all the UTMs associated with this particular launch. If you have been doing them in a spreadsheet, you might find that you can pull previous links depending on what those links are associated with if you're launching the same program again and you have the same landing page. So, you can reuse some of these UTM links.

[00:06:08]

Some you might want to change where it's like maybe you launch twice a year. So, you could say ... like earlier in the year it was spring 2022, so this one you might want to change the term to fall 2022, just so you and your team can differentiate between those people who came in during the spring and those people who followed those links in the fall. Because you may have done different promotional activities, you might have used a different copywriter, and how you approached it might be different. So, you might want to keep those people separated so you can actually look between the two pieces of data and determine, "Hey, you know what, this kind of happened in the spring. This happened in the fall. What do we see here?"

[00:07:07]

And again, I recommend you keep this in a spreadsheet so it's all in one central location. And spreadsheets are our friend. So, emails, let's be honest, emails are a big part of lunches. In many cases, you have multiple emails that are going out. Again, a spreadsheet is your friend, not for the email content, all right? But for you to have a centralized location where you're tracking every email that is sent during the launch. So, you want to know the date it was sent. What was the title? What was the subject? Who was it sent to? Maybe you're running a webinar, so webinar registrants. Maybe it's to those that registered and attended. Or maybe it's the those that registered but didn't attend. Whatever the situation is, you want to know who received that email.

[00:08:07]

The UTM link that was in the email. So, those UTM links are making their appearance again here. Any additional notes, like are you tagging folks with a certain tag? Are other workflows being triggered, for example, like those that registered for the webinar but didn't attend? Do they get a tag of non-attendee and that triggers a whole different set of emails than those that registered and attended? So, you want to have some notes there. And really, those notes are there for the entire team, not just the person responsible for the emails or the overall launch manager or even the CEO. It's really for the team that exists now. And if I'm honest, any future team members.

[00:09:02]

Because if you guys have this amazing launch and your business grows and more people come in, but someone else takes over this particular responsibility, you want them to know, okay, these are notes, these are things that we did. And annotations and things of that are everyone's friend. Because let's be honest, we do have turnover in our businesses. We aren't going to stay with people forever. People are not going to stay with us forever. And as a result of that, you want to have things in place that just help make it easier for your current team, but also your future team. So, you also want to keep track of how many people were the emails sent to. What were the open rates, click rates, and unsubscribe rates? You want to keep track of all of that.

[00:09:59]

And I really do encourage you to think about permission marketing. Before you just start to blow up folks' inboxes with your launch emails, ask them, "Hey, we're about to launch blah blah blah. We're going to be in your inbox a lot more frequently. If you want to stay on our list but don't want these emails, please click here." I receive emails and I'm sure each of you do as well, where people don't ask that and then you get bombarded with emails and the only option is to totally unsubscribe. And you're like, "Hey dude, I didn't necessarily want to completely end this relationship. I just wanted to take a break for a moment because you're talking too much." So, really make sure you factor that into your launch plans because you don't want to lose people completely when they've been on your list and possibly have been purchasers of yours in the past.

[00:11:17]

So, they may not just want this particular thing, so you don't want to excommunicate them completely. In addition to tracking all of what we've just talked about, you want to look at some sales. Are there sales that you can directly attribute to those emails? Because, hey, there's some hidden gold in those in terms of your messaging. I always also encourage setting up a Zap or some other automation that sends your sales from ClickFunnels, ThriveCart, from whomever you're using to a spreadsheet. You want to have that data for yourself. It's a reference cross-check, but also if anything were to happen, you have the actual data of who purchased, and who didn't.

[00:12:09]

Well, really who purchased and what they purchased. So, with those sales, it would be helpful for you to delineate full payments. If you have a payment plan, did they take the monthly plan? Did they take, I don't know, a quarterly plan? Maybe you have to installments. Whatever it is, you want to also have that information detailed out because that helps you with your financial projections. So, again, remember, spreadsheets are your friend.

Ad Roll: [00:12:44]

Hey there, it's Kiva. I'm popping in with a quick announcement. There are 282 days left on universal analytics. Have you made the switch to Google Analytics 4? For if you love tapping into your HGTV DIY side, visit my website, the516collaborative.com To download my free migration guide. If DIY isn't your thing, book a call, and let's talk. I want you getting access to your data as soon as possible.

Kiva Slade: [00:13:25]

When launching something, even a free offer, you want to know how your funnel performed. And I know some of you are saying "Kiva, it's not a funnel." Yes, it is. We think of the visual of what a funnel is like. Maybe you have one in your kitchen. I have to use one when I can. I have to use one when I'm sometimes filling up my spice jars because of what I'm trying to get into the jar from the other vessel that I'm using. And it's a wide opening at the top and it narrows down.

[00:14:09]

So, when I'm saying funnel, you say funnel because you're going to always wind up with more people coming to your sales page. That's the nature of the beast. Sometimes they're nosy, sometimes they're tire kickers, sometimes they're interested. Whatever led them there, they're checking it out. That number will decrease as you see how many people go from that sales page to the checkout page. Again, that's just the nature of how things happen. You go into the store; you go into the dressing room with ten items. If you're me, you come out with one that's serious maybe, the rest are like, nope, put it back on the shelf on the rack. Because things looked better on the hanger or didn't fit or whatever the situation was.

[00:15:06]

So, you're going to start much broader and that's going to narrow down as you go. So, you have your checkout page views. You want to know how many, just like you wanted to know how many came to your sales page. And then from the checkout page, how many actually go forward and go to the register and have actually paid their money and are now walking out the store with the bags because they made a purchase? So, that confirmation page, you want to know how many there as well. So, you can calculate or have someone on your team calculate your conversion rates between each stage and of the overall funnel. You also want to think about how many people bailed. Like, "You know, I started walking around the store and this one thing that I'm holding, I'm like, I don't know, do I really like it? Do I not?" And then you just put it back. Yeah, I've abandoned my cart.

[00:16:08]

And you want to know how many people have done that as well. Because that information can lead you to dive a little deeper to figure out if are there some tweaks that you need to make. Does your checkout page truly tell them what they need to know? Do they trust you to deliver whatever it is that you've said? So, there are definitely things there that you can look at. And This information is completely helpful also for determining your traffic sources when you're thinking about promotional activities that you engage in during a launch. I had a client who spent a lot of time on Instagram and through our work together and looking at her analytics, we really determined, though, that her most engaged purchasing people were from her email list, but Instagram sent way more people to her sales page, so it was a definite driver of traffic but not of sales, and that happens quite often.

[00:17:17]

So, you want to look at that information to determine where you should invest your energy and money, and time in terms of those promotional activities. And you want to keep track of your promotional activities to see if there's a correlation. And notice I did not say causation. There could be a correlation between those days that you went live on Instagram or you went live on LinkedIn or you had two shorts on YouTube, whatever the situation is, you might see that maybe that caused a bump in traffic. Which one caused the bigger bump? Which one? It could have been the time of day that your promotion was run.

[00:18:09]

Does that time of day correlate with the time of day that your people, your audience is most active and engaged? So, you would need additional data in order to really determine if there was causation, but that's for a whole nother day. So, whether launching a promotion or promoting a lead magnet, running visibility ads, or engaging in, I don't know, 30 days of consistent LinkedIn posting, I want you to also think about your audience growth. Because in all of these instances, you are looking to grow your audience. How do you know how much you've grown it by if you don't keep track of it? So, what was your audience like before you decided to engage in 30 days of consistent LinkedIn posting? What does your audience look like after?

[00:19:01]

Now, I'm not talking engagement, because hey, folks can see your post, not like it, and not comment, but that does not mean they didn't read it. But for those that do read it and then say, "I like what you've been posting, I want to follow," that is going to indicate audience growth. So, I want you to remember, data is only as helpful as you make it because you have to use it. If you don't use it, it's not like you'll lose it, because it's still there, but it can't help you just sitting inside of Google Analytics, sitting inside of a spreadsheet, sitting inside of a beautifully designed dashboard. It does not serve you if you don't use it to actually make a change or understand better what needs to be changed in your business and your launch, in whatever it is that you're tracking.

[00:20:05]

So, I want to encourage you to use the data. So. If you need help with that, you can definitely reach out to me. So if your goal is to launch in Q4, I hope this information in this series has helped you and will help you finish the year strong. If you don't plan to launch, don't worry, this information will be here for you when you need it. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I look forward to our next episode. Bye.

[00:20:44]

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Collab With Kiva. Each of us has a different path. And I hope that this episode gave you some takeaway that has left you inspired and motivated to keep pressing forward on your unique path. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on any future episodes. And of course, your reviews on Apple are greatly appreciated. If you're a small business owner ready to start making data-driven decisions in your business, and you know that without the data, you're really just guessing, make sure to visit my website, the516collaborative.com, and let's schedule a time to talk to make sure that you can harness the power of data in your business. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.

Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.