There's been a tendency in marketing to want to measure everything, even the most insignificant of metrics in the hopes that more data equates more knowledge and more knowledge helps to make more informed decisions.
There is a problem with this, it's that raw data isn't knowledge and not all data are made equal. Data requires interpretation and interpreting data can be tricky, if not downright deceiving, as breaking down metrics into many discrete parts only give you more information that is more difficult to decipher.
For example, the platforms that support this blog and its corresponding newsletter, natively track all kinds of metrics, from the number of visitors to how many people open emails, etc. I could be all over these data and try and analyze them to death to try and figure how I can game the system to get better results.
There is an entire cottage industry of snake oil peddlers whose business is solely based on "growth hacking" a newfangled and despicable term coming from the tech industry, symptomatic of the common fallacy that unicorn-levels of success like that of Google or Facebook is within reach of anyone, if only they tried hard enough.
But meaningful growth only happens when the work you do leaves your customers better than you found them. In the case of the blog/newsletter, the metrics fail to convey how much my work impacts its readers, it only tells me that they might have read it.
Therefore, the only metric that truly counts is the direct, specific feedback I receive when I speak face to face with my readers, or when they write a direct message telling me how my writing is responding to their needs or resonating with them somehow.
But the key is consistency. The more I write, the better I get. The better I get, the more feedback I receive and the more feedback I receive, the more I can improve.
Open rates, site visits and the number of likes are inherently incapable of conveying this kind of complex, subtle information because the object of their tracking has been broken down too far and thus lost all meaning. The smaller your firm, the less impactful these measurements will be and the more you should seek out specific, direct feedback from your clients, because it's a goldmine of information waiting for you to tap into.
It's also a competitive advantage over the big firms, because they're structurally incapable of seeking or processing this kind of unquantifiable information, as it would represent too much work and too much risk.
And yes, this is an invitation to send me more of your feedback. It is always welcome, good or bad, even if you just want to call me a cheese-eating surrender monkey.