and so 2005 is here....

I'm conscious that I haven't been too prolific in my posting (perhaps if I thought they worked, that would displace my new years resolution of eating at least one piece of fruit a day).

I have actually accomplished something though since my last post - I've compiled the campaign reports for all of our agency's past campaigns. They're all in one spot, so now I can see how everything performed etc etc.

(Mechanics of it: In Excel: rows and rows of data in a few worksheets in a file, called on by a query sitting in a different worksheet, all with that most fantastical invention of a PivotTable)

(And if you haven't discovered PivotTables yet in Excel, do so - they let you cut up data however you want, and I think most importantly, dynamically switch it all around to compare different things)

So know, while it still has some tidying to do, I can, for example, see what day of week gets best response, and how campaigns I've done compare to an overall agency average, or campaigns in the same category etc.

What I can't get out of it (yet...) is much of an insight into reach metrics and performance. Give me time though.

It all took a lot of fluffing around (Excel can be a biatch sometimes, esp when features don't work like they say), but now it's done, I can just look back at the time as a way of the good ol' skunkworks theory (I think it was Chris Locke in the Cluetrain that said something about the first intranets being done in the skunkworks, with the long hours associated).

Anyway, here's to a 2005 that ... well... gets you one step closer to what you want.
Increments - perhaps its all about increments.