1.
SQL for Marketers and Growth
Hackers
Everything you need to know about using
SQL for analytics, marketing and growth
hacking

2.
What is SQL?
SQL is simply a language that makes it easy
to pull data from your application‘s database.

3.
What can you do with SQL?
Answer questions!

4.
Life without SQL
Without SQL….
• You annoy technical people on your team
• Hack together rough approximations for
hours

5.
Life with SQL
“Starting in 2013, after the CMO realizes
that he/she does not have the skill sets in
place for data analytics proficiency, 50% of
new marketing hires will have technical
backgrounds.”
- quote from IDC research of CMOs

6.
Why is SQL important to me?
SQL will help you see, understand and
improve your company‘s metrics.

7.
Why is SQL important to me?
SQL will help you see, understand and
improve your company‘s metrics.
It allows you to access data other analytics
tools cannot (Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, Google
Analytics, etc.)

8.
Do you know the answers to some very basic
questions about your business?
Take a Minute

9.
Do you know the answers to some very basic
questions about your business?
– Are you getting more customers or less this
month compared to previous?
Take a Minute

10.
Do you know the answers to some very basic
questions about your business?
– Are you getting more customers or less this
month compared to previous?
– What percentage of customers are active
every week on your platform?
Take a Minute

11.
Do you know the answers to some very basic
questions about your business?
– Are you getting more customers or less this
month compared to previous?
– What percentage of customers are active
every week on your platform?
– How many users leave each week (churn)? Is
this trending up or down?
Take a Minute

12.
Do you know the answers to some very basic
questions about your business?
– Are you getting more customers or less this
month compared to previous?
– What percentage of customers are active
every week on your platform?
– How many users leave each week (churn)? Is
this trending up or down?
– Who are your 100 most active users? Who
are your 100 most valuable customers?
Take a Minute

13.
What can you do with SQL?
• Make data-driven decisions
• Run profitable campaigns using data
• Understand every metric in your business
• Get superpowers

14.
How we improved churn with the
help of SQL

15.
Early Win for You!
Let‘s take a second and have you do 2
things to get the most from this course:
1. Get read-only access to your database

16.
Early Win for You!
Let‘s take a second and have you do 2
things to get the most from this course:
1. Get read-only access to your database
2. Ask someone technical how to run
queries against this database

17.
A WORD OF CAUTION
Only run queries on a read-only or
“slave” database

18.
How SQL Works
A database works a lot like an Excel
spreadsheet. It will contain multiple tables –
all with unique names, like ―Customers‖ –
with each table containing rows and
columns

19.
Why SQL is Better than Excel
• Auto-updating information
• Easier to query
• Can visualize data automatically

20.
Example Query
*See how this query works by checking out the example database I pulled together
at - http://bitly.com/udemysql

21.
Example Query
*See how this query works by checking out the example database I pulled together
at - http://bitly.com/udemysql

22.
SQL Queries
Select — This command tells SQL what data
you want to see. This data needs to be a
part of the table you‘re accessing.

23.
SQL Queries
From — this command tells SQL where to
pull the data from. What‘s the name of the
table you‘re using to capture data? Put that
after the ―from‖ statement.

24.
SQL Queries
Join — This command temporarily joins two
tables we‘d like to search, so that we can pull
data from multiple queries. ―Join‖ tells SQL
which table we‘d like to join, and the ―on‖
modifier tells SQL which columns in those
tables should map to each other.

25.
SQL Queries
Where — This statement tells SQL how to
access the right data. In this case, we‘re
telling it to show us users who have gotten
errors in production AND who have signed
up within a certain time period.

26.
SQL Queries
Group by – This statement tells SQL how to
group your data when it returns the query
result. In this case, data will be grouped by
name in the ‗users‘ table. Think of this as a
massive sort function in Excel.

27.
SQL Queries
Order by – This statement tells SQL how to
order your data. This can be useful when
pulling massive amounts of information from
the database.

28.
SQL Queries
Limit – This tells SQL how much data to
return. In our case, we‘ll only receive the first
15 results that fit the results of this query.

29.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value

30.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows

31.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows
• First() – returns the first value of a column
or row

32.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows
• First() – returns the first value of a column
or row
• Last() – returns the last value

33.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows
• First() – returns the first value of a column
or row
• Last() – returns the last value
• Max() – returns the largest value

34.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows
• First() – returns the first value of a column
or row
• Last() – returns the last value
• Max() – returns the largest value
• Min() – returns the smallest value

35.
SQL Queries
Functions
• Avg() – returns the average value
• Count() – returns the number of rows
• First() – returns the first value of a column
or row
• Last() – returns the last value
• Max() – returns the largest value
• Min() – returns the smallest value
• Sum() – returns the sum

36.
You know SQL!

37.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:

38.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin

39.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin
• Heroku Postgres Dataclips

40.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin
• Heroku Postgres Dataclips

41.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin
• Heroku Postgres Dataclips
• Eclipse SQL Explorer

42.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin
• Heroku Postgres Dataclips
• Eclipse SQL Explorer
• SQuirreL

43.
Where to Write Queries?
Depends on your stack:
• phpMyAdmin
• Heroku Postgres Dataclips
• Eclipse SQL Explorer
• SQuirreL
• Oracle SQL Developer

44.
Finding Table and Column Names
Connect to the database:
• mysql [-u username] [-h hostname] database-name
List all databases (type into MySQL prompt):
• show databases
Choose the database you want:
• use <database-name>
List all tables in the database:
• show tables
Describe a table:
• describe <table-name>

45.
Example: Finding repeat buyers
Test SQL Database -
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/trysql.asp?file
name=trysql_select_all
STOP
How would you construct this query? Try
writing it in on your own now.

46.
Example: Finding repeat buyers

47.
Understand Your User
Demographics
Let‘s say you want to answer the question
―what countries are most of my users from?‖
Write a query that pulls that information from
the test W3schools database.

48.
Answer: Understand Your User
Demographics

49.
Cohort Analysis
See how groups of customers use your
product

50.
Cohort Analysis
Cohort analysis leads to interesting,
actionable data like the below

51.
Closing
That‘s it!
Get the SQL creator spreadsheet,
downloadable queries and additional
resources at
justinmares.com/sql