Obviously It’s Not So Obvious

I’ve been sending out my ‘Straight Talk with Stephanie’ for eight weeks now. That’s two full months and when I was talking with a friend today I was explaining to her how I couldn’t believe only a fraction, and I mean less than one percent, of people who were opening the email were clicking through to watch my videos.

“What videos?” That was essentially the response I received from my friend. What the bloody heck?

She had received all eight emails, opened and clicked through to read my article on each one. However, she had never scrolled past the article to see there were an additional five segments of success information I was providing to my readers in the email.

How could she not know the email had more information?

How many other people were also missing out on my “kick-butt”, if I do say so myself, videos?

Even worse, how many weren’t seeing the promotions and freebies? I mean, this is a business ya’ll – I’m not a GirlBoss for nothing.

We processed through the email for a couple more minutes and then I had to jump off for a coaching call. When I finished with my client, I came back to the conversation. Now, here I am, wondering to myself: How could something so obvious to me obviously not be so obvious to everyone else?

How to conquer the not so obvious:

1. Analyze. It all began with me analyzing the data I had in my Mailchimp account with my weekly emails. I noticed a trend and wanted to dive deeper. While it was obvious to me that there were multiple segments in my emails, the analytics showed differently. Data doesn’t lie folks. The clicks showed nearly 99% going to the article with 1% going to the video. Which also meant the three other sections weren’t being clicked on at all! Momma mia! Analytics are available in simple and complex terms when it comes to business. You can determine the obvious nature by your success ratio. Look at all areas of your business: sales calls – how many are you making vs. how many are calling you back/how many meetings are you able to secure; social media – number of posts vs. engagement (likes/comments/shares, etc.); and customer happiness – how many clients you have vs. how many testimonials or referrals are you proactively receiving. All of these are metrics which you can analyze, and you may think what you are doing is obvious, but does the data align with your theory?

2. Ask. Take a step out of your business and ask a trusted “outsider” what they see. Gaining outside perspective on what you believe to be obvious about your business will move you leaps and bounds forward instead of over to the wall to beat your head against it. If you want to truly know what your customers and clients are experiencing, just ask them! Go directly to the source. The clarity they will provide you with is invaluable. But it doesn’t stop there…

3. Adjust. Once you are aware of what’s obviously not been so obvious, you have to adjust. Well, you don’t have to, if you like being stagnant and not growing cause you know, that’s cool for some people and all, NOT! You’ll notice in this issue I added a table of contents. One small shift and now it’s overly obvious what is included. I’ve also made it very easy for people to click directly to their favorite part of the email. Win-Win! I have peace of mind my readers now have a quick snapshot of what is included and they now have the choice to skip ahead if they wish.

Here’s the not so obvious, obvious point in all of this: just because you know something doesn’t mean your customers do and just because you believe something to be obvious, there is probably always a way to make it more so and easier on your customers.

There is more to come on this next week. Until then, I wish you the best at uncovering what’s been obviously not so obvious in your business and adjusting it to create more sales, a better customer experience or overall business awareness.

Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on Google+