Does 'Double your Results' Grab You?

This is Maria Colacurcio, VP of Marketing at Smartsheet. A few weeks ago I presented at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago. My presentation was in tandem with Bob Bergquist, CEO of Widemile, another local firm who does multivariate testing to optimize landing pages and paid search campaigns.

Did you know that only 60% of marketers are doing any testing on their web sites? With all of the technology available today, this statistic surprised me, especially since our multivariate testing campaign had such incredible results. After the Widemile project, I spent not one dollar more on paid search and got two times the subscriptions to Smartsheet.

But we see the same issue with project tracking. In this area, 80%+ are still using spreadsheets to track where things stand. Why? When there is so much technology available to improve productivity – why would people still use spreadsheets to get things done?

The answer (I think) is pretty simple. For starters, spreadsheets are ubiquitous. I know with 90% certainty that if I send you my spreadsheets, you’ll know how to read and update them. I will neither receive a phone call asking how to ‘login’ to a new-fangled collaboration tool; nor will I receive hate mail because the project management system I’ve encouraged is a royal pain.

People default to spreadsheets because they are simple. They are easy. And people don’t have to ‘adopt them’.

If I told you that Haymaker (our next major release) will further empower you to be in control of projects, without requiring ‘adoption’ from others, would it be an interesting proposition? What if I told you projects would take half the time? Or that they would be 67% more efficient? Would that work?

The goal of Haymaker is to empower the project hero without requiring participants to ‘adopt’. If a solution provides the results and makes a hero’s life easier, doesn’t the decision to use suddenly becomes obvious.