One lesson I got from Seth Godin’s Purple Cow is: Take the profits from boring things and invest them into risky things. This can apply to your Shopify store at a number of levels. Take the profits from your best-selling products to create new products. Take the profits from your repeat customer orders and invest …
Category: Articles
The two campaign email marketing strategy
There are a variety of ways to run an email campaign. You could send out a new email to everyone each day/week/month. This can work great for timely information and is the easiest campaign to start and maintain. You can also setup a specific sequence that goes to everyone based on their individual schedule. So …
Preparing for the transition to the winter season
With September arrived, our summer garden starts to transition out. The beans, tomatoes, and squash are still producing but they are near their end. We’ve been planting autumn and winter plants in any bare spots but some summer plants are going to hold out to the very end. So I’ve been planting extra plants into …
Using patterns to find answers in data
I’ve been teaching my daughter multiplication the past two weeks. Instead of memorizing the 12-by-12 chart, I’m teaching her patterns that she can use with any number (2 * a number is just doubling a number, 4 * is just doubling 2 *, etc). Once she learns the patterns she can use them all over …
Adapt your marketing to avoid your worst customers
At some point it’s not worth it to market to some customers for reorders. They might be unresponsive. They might be chronic returners. Or they might just cost too much to reach so even when they do order, you’re not turning a profit. Your limit will depend on how much it costs to reach them. …
Using order volume and total sales to spot growth problems
It’s useful to see how your order volume changes over-time. It’ll give you a different perspective than total sales. Combine the two you can learn a lot about your overall business health. If your order volume has increased and your total sales have increased, you’re growing. If your order volume has increased and your total …
Detecting when processes are getting too stressed
I started saving garden seeds this year. As part of the process I’m doing germination tests on them to make sure they’re viable and likely to grow. The tests involve keeping them wet and checking on them every few days while recording their progress. The details aren’t important here. What is important is my record-keeping …
New period comparison insights added to Repeat Customer Insights
Repeat Customer Insights has received updates to its data analysis and insights engine. Now the Store Analysis and Customer Purchase Latency reports will automatically compare the various metrics to how they performed in the past. You can select any year or quarter available in your account and the app will analyze the performance compared to …
Improve your customers for the long haul
This year the garden has been yielding so-so. Some plants are crazy productive (tomato, kale) while others failed (spinach) or grew slowly (lettuce, potato). It makes sense though. This is the first year for most of it and the second year for the rest, so the soil and ecosystem as a whole is still new. …
Using cumulative cohort reports to find groups of the best repeat buyers
A Repeat Customer Insights customers was asking about how the cumulative orders in the Cohorts Report work: Why doesn’t the sum of month 1 to n on the cohort customers % match the nth month for the cumulative cohort %? The percentages are based on how many unique customers have bought out of the whole …