Study: SMBs diving farther into data

According to Constant Contact most SMBs (83%) are utilizing email marketing reports while nearly two-thirds are using website analytics (64%). About half are using social media or sales trend analysis to help them connect. Looking at the holiday season 66% say they're using analytics to determine which products/services to market while about half say they're using metrics to determine when and where they place ads.

"The fact that so many small businesses use reporting and analytics is promising, as the better they know their customers the better they can target their marketing and vie with bigger competitors," said Christopher M. Litster, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Constant Contact. "Big Data insights can also be quite helpful but because small businesses lack the necessary volume to generate those insights, the responsibility lies with big companies serving them to make that kind of data available and easy to use. At Constant Contact we look in aggregate at data we compile from the 60 billion emails we send in a year on behalf of our 600,000-plus customers and share actionable insights on their online marketing campaigns. We can tell them things like the best time of day to send an email campaign and the optimal number of images and text lines to include in an email. These types of insights can help our small business customers market like their much bigger competitors."

Other interesting takeaways from the report include:

• 44% of SMBs use current customer data
• 43% use sales receipt data
• 49% say they don't really know where to start with data use
• 45% say 2014 holiday revenues will out-pace 2013

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: Constant Contact, data, data analysis, smb trends