Welcome to Unsolicited Advice, where I dish out some content marketing guidance to one unsuspecting target – whether they wanted it or not.
Dejan Mitkovski
Head of Analytics
Google
Dear Mr. Mitkovski,
There is a metric missing from Google Analytics, and it’s the number that would transform marketing forever.
I love Google Analytics. It’s so insightful. It provides marketers like me with a window into our customers’ greatest informational needs. There’s no denying that your tools have shaped how we create, share, and analyze our web properties’ performance. Kudos to you and your team for keeping brands focused on delivering a useful, high-quality content experience – and reminding us of whom we are creating it for!
But as a content marketer, I need access to just one additional insight: revenue per subscriber. I know you’re making big changes to enhance consumers’ privacy and their online experience, but what about those consumers who want a deeper relationship with the brands they’ve discovered?
As a Googler (is that a thing?), I know you appreciate the power of creating content to build a trusted relationship with an audience. For many of us, that means inviting the content consumer to subscribe for reliable access to our most valuable insights. Then, over time, we can inspire them to buy from and evangelize for our brand. (Not just once, but over and over.)
Sure, Google Analytics allows us to set up subscriptions as a goal and build a funnel to see how effective we are at converting casual browsers into loyal followers. But then what? How do we determine the impact those followers are making on our business’s bottom line?
All I want to know is how valuable a subscriber is. Are they more valuable to us than just a one-time buyer? Do they buy more often? Do they spend more when they buy? Can their subscriber status be used to help us grow our customer base?
I’m sure you have hundreds of feature requests and algorithm updates on your team’s to-do list, but I have a deal for you (and, you kind of owe us for taking our tracking cookies away): Empower marketers to report on their revenue per subscriber, and I’ll help you teach every marketer I can how valuable this one number is. Not only will you make your marketing customers happier, you’ll transform our ability to build more satisfying relationships with the customers we serve.
What do you say? Do we have a deal?
Whether you wanted it or not,
Andrew Davis
Host and author, The Loyalty Loop
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
