Klardata

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of marketing at an organic and wildcrafted skincare company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Klardata?

My company didn’t have an analytics team, so we hired Klardata to help us with reporting and analytics. We were looking to create a database and extrapolate reports from that database that linked our Shopify data. We wanted to find long-term value for customers coming in through Facebook ads.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Justin (Owner, Klardata) used AWS for our database. He pulled different reports on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. We didn’t have a BI tool, so Justin pulled these reports on Google Sheets.

The reports tracked the performance of our e-commerce website and paid advertisements. Justin looked at how different cohorts were doing over time, and what their long-term value was. He did reverse projections and engineering to determine how many new customers we would need year-over-year to attain our revenue goals, just based on the average lifetime value. He analyzed new versus existing customers and tracked Zephyr connections on a skin quiz that we use as a lead generation apparatus.

Justin also monitored our marketing dashboard, which acts as our business compass, and updated it on a weekly basis, so that we could see how things were performing and where our ROI was. Finally, he regulated a reporting directory that I set up, which he notated when he was updating reports.

What is the team composition?

Justin was our only point of contact.

How did you come to work with Klardata?

We found Klardata through Upwork.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$100,000 over two years. Justin worked 20–30 hours each week.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership with Klardata spanned 2017–June 2019. We ended the engagement because we wanted to go in a different direction, either by hiring someone internally or hiring a team with multiple resources.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Justin gave us a clear picture of our business. The reverse projections that he did were really helpful, as they enabled us to see how many new people we needed to bring in the pipeline through various advertising channels. By making sure the Zephyr connections for the skin quiz were happening, Justin effectively captured emails into our email database.  

How did Klardata perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the things I liked most about Justin was how responsive he was. He proved capable of handling a lot of ad hoc requests. We used Trello and communicated via Slack and email. We had weekly calls and check-ins. Justin was very easy to work with.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Justin felt like a part of our team. He was very integrated; he reported directly to me, but he worked cross-functionally with other team members. His responsiveness and productivity in troubleshooting issues when they arose really made him stand out.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think that not having a BI tool in place while running so many queries with data from Google Sheets hindered Justin. Data cleanliness was a bit back and forth. However, Justin was always prepared to jump in and help troubleshoot. If he presented numbers that I thought seemed off, I’d ask him to go back in to make sure they were correct, and he was very open to doing so.

Any advice for potential customers?

For large data, I’d recommend investing in a BI tool upfront. If you’re using Google Sheets, cross-check the data. We established a good cadence by being clear about responsibilities and setting up weekly calls and a project management tool. Also, having a reporting directory in place helped organize everything.