An introduction to growth hacking with data - including what to track, how to track it and what to do with those data to influence your growth hacking strategy. Presented at the Growth Hacking 101 panel hosted by the Tech Student Club at Harvard Business School

1. Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Growth Hacking with Data
It’s Time to Get Obsessed with Analytics

2. Introduction
My Background
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Spoonfed Media / Evently
B2C event listings site, grew to
350,000 visitors/month and
B2B marketing software
surpassed £1mm revenue.
23snaps
Private social network for
families, mobile-first platform,
over 600,000 users in first 18
months
IMVU
3D virtual chat service.
Doubled user base from
12mm to 25mm users.
Other Startup Projects
Personal projects and
advisory work with a range
of content, software and
mobile sites.

3. What is growth
hacking?
Growth hacking leverages
your product as well as
your marketing mix to
gain at least one of these
four advantages.
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Growth
Hacking
Cheaper
User
Acquisition
Faster User
Acquisition
More
Targeted
User
Acquisition
Scalable
User
Acquisition

4. What is growth
hacking?
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Growth hacking is a marketing
arbitrage opportunity.
To recognize the arbitrage
opportunity, you need data.

5. What to Track
High level themes to help you decide what data to collect.
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

6. The Sign of Three
Three levels of business insights
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs)
Actions
(Drivers)
Demographics
(Customers)

7. Key Performance
Indicators
What are your core metrics?
Vanity Metrics
Store
Reviews
App Page
Views
Social
Media
Mentions
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Grow
Retain
Monetize
• Registrations
• Sales
• Downloads
• Referrals
• Churn Rate
• Resales / Upsells
• Usage
• Sales / Resales / Upsells
• Ad Revenue
• Revenue / User
• User Life Time Value (LTV)

8. Actions
Drivers of growth, and critical in
understanding your growth
hacking success
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Information Overload
Historic Data
On Your Platform Online Offline
- Visits
- Interactions with
content
- Newsletter signup
- Engagement
- Last visit
- Referrer
+ many more
- Facebook fan
- Twitter follower
- Viewed an online ad
- Read an online article
- Purchased from a
reseller or marketplace
+ many more
- Connected at an
event/tradeshow
- Phone call
- Viewed an offline ad
- Purchased a physical
product
+ many more

9. Demographics
Those who become your
customers (and those who do not)
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Who doesn’t become your
customer might be as relevant
as who does.

10. How Do You Track It?
Tools for tracking data and tips for communicating your tracking needs
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

11. Tracking Tools
Three levels of customization and
performance
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Pros Cons
Inexpensive Limited Tracking
Industry
Benchmarks
No Support
High Usage, Lots
of Guides
Not Customized
Tied to Ad Neworks
Pros Cons
Deeper Insight Expensive
Supports Push
Marketing
Requires Dev
Time to Set Up
API for Data
Export
Price Scales
Quickly
Cross Platform
Full Time Job
Pros Cons
Endlessly
Customizable
Potentially
Significant
Development
Generally
Cheaper
Reporting Limited
to What You Build
Specific to Your
Business
No Push
Marketing
You Own the Data
“Start Up” Enterprise Custom

12. Decide with
Developers
Integration
Optimization
Maintenance
Exports
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

13. Communicate
Your Tracking
Rationale
Why are you tracking?
Who
• Will
implement
it?
• needs to
access the
data?
What
• Are you
going to
track?
• Format
does the
data need
to be in?
When
• Will people
need to be
able to
access it
(real time?
Daily?
Weekly
reports?)
Where
• Will it be
stored? On
a third
party’s
system or
will you
own a copy
in house?
Why?
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

14. Taking Action
What should we do with these data?
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

15. The Scientific
Method
Create your hypothesis then test,
test, test
Ask a
Question
Propose a
Hypothesis
Test, Test,
Test
Collect and
Analyze
Data
Draw a
Conculsion
Keep
Doing
What
Works!
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

16. Reverse Engineer
Your Funnel
Look for what’s working, and do
more of it Actions
Demographics
(Customers)
Growth
- Visits your site
- Requests a quote
- Reads a blog post
- Follows you on Twitter
- Clicks an ad
- Demos your product
- ‘Like’ on Facebook
- Refers a friend
- Newsletter sign up
- Company size
- Location
- Budget
- Hobbies/Interests
- Education
- Homeowner
- Profession
- Industry
- Age
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz

17. Meaghan Fitzgerald – meaghan@thetopfloorflat.com – @megfitz
Examples
Growth hacking in action.

18. 23snaps and
Instagram
Data analysis showed a new user
acquisition channel, and quick
product updates led to big
growth wins
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
•Noticed the increase
in users
Unexplained Spike
in Registrations
•Analysis of user
source
•Searched for brand
mentions across
platforms
Deep Dive in
Analysis •Noticed the types of
Instagram posts
people were making
•Audience was a
perfect fit
Recognized
Instagram Audience
•In-app feature
•Encouraged
Instagram hashtags
Created Instagram
Sharing Tool •Signed up over 2000
users in 2 days (the
day before had
signed up 200)
Win!

19. Spoonfed and
Evently
Consumer platform and free
listings drove “free” leads for B2B
software
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
B2C Event Listings Guide
(like TimeOut)
Event
organizers
submit
event
listings
Strong
brand and
large
userbase
Marketing automation
software for event organizers
(HubSpot for events)
Leads
Content

20. It’s Not Just
About Numbers
Creativity drives growth hacking
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz
Data can tell you what’s
happened, it can’t tell you what
to do next.

21. Thank You
Q&A
Meaghan Fitzgerald – @megfitz