Small businesses can now transform big data into meaningful information without having to invest in budget-breaking analytics platforms. In this report, we'll define Business Intelligence and introduce all the metrics necessary for making immediately actionable changes to your small business strategy. From social media insights to email reports to website data- we'll explain it all. Get the report and discover which data figures are important, how to choose the proper platform, and why you can understand customer behavior with BI systems.

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2. © Business.com Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | 888.441.4466
Table Of Contents
• Overview – Page 1
• Defining Business Intelligence– Page 1 & 2
• Email Analytics & Insights for Small Businesses– Page 3
• Social Analytics & Insights for Small Businesses– Page 4 & 5
• Cost-Effective Vendors for Added Insight & Analysis– Page 6
• Conclusion – Page 7

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An Introduction to Big Data & Big Intelligence
If you’ve read any popular business
journals in the past 12 months, you’ve probably
seen the term “Big Data” often, and everywhere.
The term itself describes the collection and
management of large, complex data sets amassed
by both public and private sectors.
The use and perhaps even the misuse of “Big
Data” has spawned a burgeoning “Business
Intelligence” industry, which is dedicated to
helping governments and corporations
comprehend and capitalize on this vast wealth
of business information.
This fast-developing, tech-focused industry uses
this treasure trove of information to produce reports
that enable leaders to detect trends and spot
opportunities that could otherwise be lost in the
information abyss.
While large corporations invest millions into
Business Intelligence systems and talent,
opportunities exist for small businesses to develop
cost-effective “Small Data” reports that can be just
as useful to improving processes and impacting the
bottom line.
Before you start sifting through your latest online
marketing reports looking for clues, it’s beneficial to
gain a basic understanding of the theory and
concept of Business Intelligence.
Then, knowing that you don’t have the budget or
bandwidth of a Fortune 500 company at your
disposal, we’ll introduce you to several cost-effective
ways you can begin applying this concept to the data
captured by your existing sales and marketing
systems. The end result should be an actionable set
of advice that you – the small business owner – can
you use to enhance the efficiency and profitability of
your business.

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Defining Business Intelligence
As defined by Forrester Research, Business
Intelligence is “a set of methodologies, processes,
architectures, and technologies that transform raw
data into meaningful and useful information used to
enable more effective strategic, tactical, and
operational insights and decision-making.”
While the term Business Intelligence (BI) has been
around for decades, the practice has recently
accelerated very rapidly, closely following the
explosion of technological and software innovation
seen in recent years. In practice, BI broadly
describes the different ways large and small
businesses use raw data to draw conclusions
about how their business is operating, where it’s
going, and how it can improve.
These processes include many related activities, but
most often include data mining, online analytical
processing, data querying and reporting, predictive
modeling, and optimization.
Many factors affect the success rate of a BI project,
but common elements shared by large and small
businesses exist; the level of allegiance to and
availability of these core components can make or
break a BI solution:
• Commitment by the leaders or owners of the
business to implementation and on-going
analysis of data is a must
• There must be an importance placed on the
insight derived from BI
• Consistent data sets are require for analysis
If these criteria are met, and all parties involved are
aligned, then the preceding sections should provide
some strategic guidance you can use to measure
your activities and draw some business intelligence
from your “Small Data” reports.

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Email Analytics & Insights for Small Businesses
When starting down the road of BI,
it’s critical to define some foundational metrics
upon on which the “Small Data” insights and
analysis will be built upon. One of the keys to
gaining an accurate understanding from reporting
is to understand which metrics and key
performance indicators (KPI’s) should be evaluated
between channels, and the data sets generated by
each.
In this section we’ll discuss how you can use data
derived from common small business functions to
gain greater insight into your business.
Making Sense of Email Marketing Reports
According to The Small and Midsize Business
Email Marketing Survey from 2013, 56% of
businesses said they planned to increase their use
of email marketing in 2013.
Below is a list of common email marketing metrics
that nearly every organization tracks and measures,
regardless of size:
Overall Traffic Volume – Is your web traffic
increasing or decreasing over time? Did a specific
email or promotion cause the increase?
Referring Domains/URLs – Where is your traffic
coming from? Consider investing online
marketing/advertising dollars there.
Number of Visits – How well are you reaching
visitors with your current marketing activities?
New Visitors / Returning Visitors (ratio) – Are you
gaining new visitors, or mostly attracting repeat
visits? Which is most important to you?
Time on Site - Is your website content engaging to
visitors? Does it need to be?
Entry Pages – Which pages attract the most visits?
Why?
Exit Pages – Which pages do visitors leave most?
Why?
Geographic Data – Where in the world are your
visitors located?
Search Keywords – Evaluate the most popular
keywords and incorporate them into online and even
offline campaigns.
56%
44%
Source: iContact

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Social Analytics & Insights for Small Businesses
Fact: Social Media is here to stay.
While the popularity of social media networks can
and probably will change over time, the power and
reach of social media for small businesses is
undeniable, and should be included as part of an
integrated marketing campaign.
It’s our intent to show you metrics you can use to
see how well people are engaging with and
responding to your posts, on both Facebook and
Twitter. Since bot networks are unique and
independent of each other, we’ll break out the data
associated with each, to provide you with metrics
you can use to measure your businesses social
media success.
Facebook
From a marketing standpoint, Facebook is all about
reach and shared content, which is why it’s critical
to focus your attention on post metrics, or how well
your posts are received/performing on the social
network.
Considering the size and reach of your small
business on Facebook, we’ve come up with the
following Facebook metrics which you can use to
see how well your content reaches and resonates
with your Fan base:
Fan Reach- This number tells you how many
people actually saw your post. Odds are your posts
will not reach 100% of your audience, let alone
10% of them – you need to understand this right off
the bat.
What’s important here is to realize that you can
monitor Fan Reach by Organic vs Paid, where
Organic Reach shows you the number of unique
people who saw your post in the News Feed
(includes viral reach), and Paid Reach tells you the
number of unique people who saw your post through
an ad.
Engagement Rate- This percentage is derived from
dividing how many people clicked, liked, shared, and
commented on your Facebook post, by the number
of people who saw the post.
If your posts lack engagement, Facebook will
gradually reduce the number of times a Fan will see
your post in their News Feed – this is not a good
thing. Keep an eye on this metric and tweak your
content strategy if you see it decreasing over time.
Click-Through Rates
If one of your main goals with your Facebook posts is
to drive users to your web site, then you’ll want to
pay close attention to Link Clicks. If your post is
receiving Likes but not clicks, you may be driving
engagement but not hitting your overall goals.
Again, content and perhaps copywriting tweaks may
be needed.
When Your Fans Are Online
Facebook shows you when your fans are most active
on the network, doing the things that people do –
updating statuses, browsing photos, etc. This is a
fantastic benefit, as it allows you to focus your Posts
to the days/times when your Fans are most present
and likely to engage with your content.

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Social Analytics & Insights for Small Businesses
Twitter
As a small business on Twitter, quality trumps
quantity. To elaborate, it’s better to have 1,000
interested, active Followers than 10,000 people
who pay little to no attention to any of your Tweets.
Your goal on Twitter should be to build a
following of people who are interested in
your business and engaged in your Tweets,
simply because doing so will increase the
chances that they’ll become paying
customers, if they aren’t already.
This said, pay less attention to the size of your
following, and more attention to quality interactions
and measurable conversions.
Interactions on Twitter
Interactions can be tracked by monitoring how
many times your content is Retweeted, mentioned,
and replied to; you can also track the amount of
direct messages received and the number of lists
you are in - all great indicators that your business
and content is well-received by your following.
Tools like SocialBro, Hootsuite, and Buffer are
affordable options that allow small businesses and
marketers to track and analyze which interactions
garner the highest engagement rates.
Conversions on Twitter
Conversions can be directly monitored by tracking
the number of link clicks performed via your Tweets.
Using a URL shorteners such as Bit.ly and Ow.ly
help to conform to Twitter’s 140 character limit and
track link clicks from specific Tweets. You can then
use a web analytics tool like Google Analytics to
determine how much of your site traffic is coming
from Twitter, and even integrate with it to realize the
full sales funnel.
.

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Cost-Effective Vendors for Added Insight & Analysis
If you’re looking to take your
Business Intelligence capabilities a step
further, these online vendors offer cost-effective
tools to help you extract even more insight from
your digital marketing initiatives.
MailChimp
More than 5 million people use MailChimp to
create, send, and track email newsletters. Create
signup forms that match your brand's look and feel,
and send your subscribers product updates, event
invitations, announcements, or editorial content.
Use reports to improve your campaigns and learn
more about your subscribers. Free for lists of up to
2,000 subscribers.
KISSmetrics is a great compliment to Google
Analytics, as it helps provide more insight into your
customers, allowing you to analyze website visitor
behaviors change over time, identify patterns and
see the most typical and recent referrers, among
other stats.
Alexa helps small and medium sized businesses
succeed on the web. Their tools help benchmark
your site's performance against your competitors, as
well as provide tools to generate more traffic and
optimize your site.
Quantcast Measure provides free, accurate and
dependable audience insights for over 100 million
web and mobile destinations. With detailed
demographic, geographic and lifestyle information, it
gives you the best understanding of your online,
mobile web and mobile app audiences.
Crazy Egg overlays heat maps on your web site, so
you can see where users click and how they interact
with your site. Use it if you’re considering a redesign
or if you’re looking for ideas on how to improve
elements of your web site.
As shown in this report, small business owners can
create actionable reports that drive strategic decision
without having to invest in expensive software or new
talent. By understanding the data that’s currently
available, monitoring it regularly, drawing
conclusions from it, and acting upon it, small
businesses can thrive in the exciting new era of Big
Data and Business Intelligence.

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