Hi You,
Not that I expect you to know I was out of the office, but I'm back from a big European trip and that means UpBuild's newsletter is back in action. I hope you didn't miss it too much.
My trip was 50% work and 50% vacation. I had the honor of speaking at SearchLove London (recap here + my tip about improving bounce rate here) and afterward, I got to disconnect for a week and visit a few cities with my wife. It was great to be able to get a bunch of other people jazzed about analytics and then completely unplug for a bit (something I'd love to do more of). Both conferences and vacations are great. 5 out of 5 stars. Would recommend to others.
Now I'm back and ready to geek out on a whole new level. In this edition of our newsletter, we have a great piece on The Hustle and burnout, a recap of our 5th UpBuild Team Day, and some fantastic blog posts from our team about CRO and A/B testing.
Until next time,
Mike Arnesen
Founder/CEO/Geek-at-Large at UpBuild
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Team Day Recap
In mid-October, the whole UpBuild team came together for our fifth Team Day! Ruth penned a great reflection on our best company retreat even. Check it out.
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Some Thoughts on The Hustle
When I look around at most of my entrepreneurial peers, I often feel like I'm lacking in the hustle department. I get worked up watching Gary V. videos just like everybody else, but I know enough about myself to realize that pulling 60-, 70-, or 80-hour weeks will do me so much more harm than good.
I don't hustle for one simple reason: this is a long-term thing for me. I'm in this for sustainability. I want to build the best technical marketing company in the world – not for a single glorious year (or even a few years), but for years to come stretching far into the foreseeable future. But I get it; hustling is the name of the game for some marketers, businesses, and entrepreneurs. If you need to beat the competition to market, get customers before your financial runway is up, or satisfy your investors' expectations, you have to be all about hustling.
My hat's off to you; I just don't have it in me.
Regardless of who you are, I think it's a valuable exercise to ask yourself, "Could I slow down a bit?". Could you trade a bit of that hustle (maybe dialing it back 10%) in exchange for a sizeable reduction in your probability of burnout? If it seems like that could be true for you, maybe it's worth considering.
Shelley Laslett's great post, "Why Entrepreneurs Need to Stop Glorifying the Hustle", really resonated with me (in case that wasn't completely obvious). But unlike my personal stance, the post doesn't necessarily advocate for quitting the hustle altogether; rather, it shares some great tips for dealing with the chronic stress and strain we all go through. It's worth a read if you want to treat yourself to a break today.
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Cranking Up CRO
The leaves are changing, the weather is brisk, and CRO is in the air. As we approach the end of the year, most of us are probably looking at the marketing goals that we had for 2017 and are trying to think of ways to get every last conversion we can from our website. Maybe that's why CRO has been so top-of-mind for us. We've had two great posts on our blog recently that focus on CRO and A/B testing.
Level-Up Your Experiment Targeting with Google Optimize
This excellent post by Senior Marketing Strategist, James McNulty, gives readers the lowdown on GO (Google Optimize) and demonstrates how impressive the platform can be. We've been pleasantly surprised by what it can do and its $0 price tag makes it a nice budget-friendly alternative to paid tools.
Read it here!
CRO Methods Beyond A/B Testing
In this great post by Alex Ramadan, another awesome Senior Marketing Strategist from the team, he explores alternatives to traditional A/B testing. This is important because, as it turns out, not every website is a good candidate for rigorous A/B (much less multivariate) testing.
Read the full post here!
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Until next time. Thanks for reading!
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