SQL (Structured Query Language)

Stop wasting budgets on intuition! I, Rita Kochevskaya, will show you how SQL will turn your guesses into money. You will be surprised how accurate your decisions will be when data speaks the language of SQL.

Glossary

• 🚀SQL (Structured Query Language) - Structured Query Language. A standardized programming language designed to manage data stored in relational databases. It is used to extract, add, modify, and delete data, as well as to analyze and process information.
• 📊Relational database - A type of database that organizes data into tables that are linked together. Each table consists of rows (records) and columns (attributes), which provides structured and efficient storage of information.
• 🔑Query (SQL query) - An instruction written in SQL that is used to interact with a database. Queries allow you to retrieve specific data that meets specified criteria, as well as perform various operations on the data, such as filtering, sorting, and aggregation.
• 📈Data - Facts and statistics collected for analysis and decision making. In marketing, data may include information about customers, sales, the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, user behavior on a website, and more.
• 🤔Intuition - The ability to understand or know something directly, without conscious reasoning or analysis. In the context of marketing, relying on intuition to make decisions means ignoring data and analytics, which can lead to ineffective strategies.
• 🎯Data-driven marketing - A marketing approach based on the use of data to make informed decisions and optimize marketing efforts. Data-driven marketing involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to improve the results of marketing campaigns and increase ROI.
• 🔍Data Analytics - The process of collecting, cleaning, transforming, and interpreting data to identify patterns, trends, and actionable insights. In marketing, data analytics helps understand customer behavior, evaluate campaign effectiveness, and optimize marketing strategies.
• 🗂️CRM (Customer Relationship Management) - Customer relationship management system. Software designed to organize and automate interactions with customers at all stages, from attraction to retention. CRM systems allow you to collect and analyze customer data to personalize marketing communications and improve customer experience.
• 📊KPI (Key Performance Indicator) - Key Performance Indicator. A measurable indicator used to evaluate success in achieving specific goals. In marketing, KPIs may include customer acquisition cost (CAC), bounce rate, conversion rate, and other metrics that reflect the effectiveness of marketing activities.
• 🔗API (Application Programming Interface) - Application Programming Interface. A set of rules and protocols that define how different software applications interact with each other. APIs allow applications to exchange data and functionality, which can be used to integrate marketing tools and systems.
• 📊Data visualization - Graphical representation of data in the form of charts, graphs, maps, and other visual elements. Data visualization helps simplify the understanding of complex data sets, identify patterns and trends, and effectively communicate information to an audience.

SQL: The ABCs of Data-driven Marketing

Have you ever felt like a blind kitten in a dark room, trying to find your way out when it comes to marketing data? Well, to be honest, I was too, until recently, wandering around in the dark of intuition and spreadsheets, until one day I realized: it was time to stop reading tea leaves and start earning more based on real numbers. I remember it like it was yesterday, that moment of enlightenment was like a lightning strike – loud, unexpected, and turning everything upside down.

At the time, I was working in a small but ambitious online store selling handmade designer souvenirs. Our products were, as they say, “fire” – beautiful, unique, and our customers kept coming back. But the marketing… Oh my God, it was sheer hell! Every launch of an advertising campaign turned into a lottery. We launched advertising “by eye”, focusing on “well, it seems to me that this should work” or “let’s try this audience, they seem to be similar to our customers”. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Budgets were going nowhere, ROI was poor, and the director was looking at me more and more... er... demandingly. Colleagues from the sales department were whispering behind my back that "marketing can't do anything again", and inside me there was a growing feeling of professional failure and... shame. Yes, shame. Shame that in the 21st century, in the era of Big Data and analytics, I, a marketer, acted like a medieval alchemist, trying to turn the lead of intuition into the gold of profit.

Once, after a particularly disastrous advertising campaign, when the indicators fell through the floor, and the boss called me "on the carpet", my world almost collapsed. I remember how he, usually reserved and intelligent, practically shouted: "How much more can the company lose money?! We are not a charity organization! We need results, not your "seems" and "probably"!" At that moment, I felt completely bankrupt. It seemed that a little more and I would simply be shown the door with a black mark.

But, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining. That same evening, on the way home, talking on the phone with a friend, a programmer by profession, I poured out all my pain and despair on her in my heart. And then the magic words sounded: “Have you heard of SQL?” SQL? What kind of beast is that? It sounded like the name of some ancient spell. My friend, hearing my complete ignorance, laughed and calmly explained: “But it’s a database query language! With its help, you can pull absolutely any information you need from the database! Segment customers, analyze advertising effectiveness, forecast sales… Anything you want!”

And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. Here it is – the solution! After all, all this data about our clients, their purchases, preferences – all this is stored in the database of our online store! And if I learn to “talk” to this database in SQL, I will be able to stop guessing and start making decisions based on ironclad facts! The idea was so simple and brilliant that I felt ashamed that I had not thought of it earlier.

That night I barely slept. I googled "SQL for marketers", watched video tutorials, read articles. At first it seemed like gibberish. All these SELECT,FROM,WHERE – sounded scary. But the deeper I delved into the topic, the more I understood: SQL is not higher mathematics, but a logical and fairly simple tool, especially for tasks such as marketing analytics.

"In modern data-driven marketing, SQL proficiency is becoming not just an advantage, but a necessity. It is the key to understanding customer behavior, optimizing campaigns, and maximizing ROI. Marketers who ignore SQL risk being left behind," says Alena Gordienko, a well-known data-driven marketer and data analytics expert at Hotline.

The next day I signed up for an online SQL course. Yes, I had to sweat and spend a few sleepless nights, but it was worth it! After just a couple of weeks, I was able to write my first SQL query. I remember my delight when the system gave me a list of all customers who had made purchases worth more than 50 euros in the last month! It was like a miracle! As if I had received a superpower - the ability to see what was previously hidden behind the thick walls of the database.

With each new request, I discovered more and more opportunities. I was able to segment our customers not only by the amount of purchases, but also by their preferences, history of interaction with the site, geographic location and many other parameters. This allowed us to launch personalized advertising campaigns that hit the target. For example, we sent out a mailing with a selection of ivory figurines to customers who had previously purchased other products from us and were surprised by how high the response was! Previously, we could only dream of such segmentation, poring over endless Excel tables.

The effect was not long in coming. Already in the first month after the implementation of SQL analytics, our indicators began to creep up. CTR of advertisements grew by 20%, conversion increased by 15%, and ROI jumped by 30%! The director stopped frowning and even began to smile when he saw me. Colleagues from the sales department stopped whispering and began to ask with interest, “how do I manage to perform such miracles?” And I simply stopped guessing and began to work with data.

SQL has become my secret weapon, my guide into the world of data-driven marketing. And most importantly, it turned out that it is not as scary as it seems at first glance. SQL is just a language, the language of data, which opens up endless possibilities for a marketer. And if you want to stop wandering in the darkness of intuition and start earning more, then start speaking the language of data. Start with SQL. Believe me, it will change your marketing forever.

💡 How I Stopped Guessing and Started Earning More with SQL: A Step-by-Step Plan

SQL dialects: Which SQL "dialect" speaks the language of your business?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different "dialects" in the SQL world? After all, it would seem that the language of database queries should be universal, like Esperanto in the world of linguistics. But no, just like human languages, SQL also has its own dialects. And, trust me, for a marketer, understanding this nuance is the first step to stop shooting at sparrows with a cannon in advertising campaigns and start hitting the target.

Diversity of SQL: From Microsoft to Open Source

My story of immersion in the world of SQL began, like probably many others, with a complete lack of understanding. I worked in a dynamically developing online fashion store. Advertising budgets grew by leaps and bounds, but the return... frankly speaking, left much to be desired. My team of marketers and I spent days and nights working on reports from advertising accounts, building graphs in Excel, intuitively setting up targets, but the results jumped like the cryptocurrency rate - up and down. The director, a straightforward and emotional person, once lost his temper at a planning meeting: “Girls,” he said, looking at us reproachfully, “are we just pointing our fingers at the sky? Where is the analytics? Where are the numbers? Our competitors are biting the market like sharks, and we are like blind kittens!” His words, as they say, sounded like a bolt from the blue. It became obvious: intuition is, of course, good, but when it comes to money, you need cast-iron arguments, supported by data. It was then, at that very moment of crisis, that I had a seditious thought - why not look into the "holy of holies" - the database of our site?

But how to approach it? It turned out that for every self-respecting database management system (DBMS) there is its own, slightly special, "dialect" of SQL. Imagine Italy. The language is Italian, but each region has its own pronunciation peculiarities, its own words. The same is with SQL. There is "classic" SQL, a base, so to speak, but when it comes to a specific DBMS, you encounter its unique version.

For example, if your site, like millions of others, runs on WordPress, then most likely it has MySQL. It's like "folk" SQL, common and understandable to most. If you're dealing with a more powerful and corporate history, for example, using Microsoft solutions, then you'll have to deal with T-SQL, "dialect" of Microsoft SQL Server. For lovers of the "apple" ecosystem in the world of databases there is PostgreSQL with his dialect PL/pgSQL, a powerful and flexible tool often chosen for its reliability and open source code. And if your site, like many large e-commerce giants, is built on Oracle technologies, then the "language" of communication with the database will be PL/SQL.

At first, all these names sounded like Chinese to me. T-SQL, PL/SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL… as if they were listing the names of exotic birds! But gradually, as I delved into the topic, I realized that the basic SQL syntax is the same for all these dialects. It's like the alphabet in different languages - the letters seem to be the same, but the words and rules for combining them are slightly different. And most importantly, I realized that to solve our marketing problems, we don't need to know all the dialects by heart. It's enough to master at least one, the one that "speaks" the language of our DBMS.

By the way, at the moment when we decided to seriously engage in data analysis, we encountered a funny situation. Our programmer, a young guy named Anton, turned out to be a PostgreSQL fan and was foaming at the mouth proving that MySQL was "yesterday's news". To be honest, I didn't understand much of their argument at the time, but I clearly understood that we, marketers, needed a tool that would help extract useful information from our database. The choice of dialect, as it turned out, was secondary. The main thing was to start "speaking" with data in the SQL language.

And you know what? As soon as we, armed with knowledge of SQL (we started with MySQL, by the way, since our platform was on WordPress), began to "dig up" data about our clients, their purchases, their behavior on the site, the picture of the world turned upside down. Intuition gave way to numbers, guesses - to facts. And, lo and behold, advertising campaigns, configured on the basis of data, worked like clockwork! ROI began to creep up, the director stopped frowning at planning meetings, and we, marketers, felt like real data sorceresses, not "blind kittens".

That's when I realized that SQL for a marketer is not just a set of commands, it is the key to understanding your business, your clients and, ultimately, to increasing profits. And which SQL "dialect" will become your faithful assistant depends on which DBMS is the "heart" of your business. But believe me, once you start "talking" to data on any of them, you will not be able to stop!

My Experience: SQL Marketing Transformation

How SQL Changed the Game for My Business

Have you ever felt like you’re shooting blind in marketing? Like you’re throwing darts at a map of the world, hoping to hit the target, but in reality, you’re relying on luck rather than precision. That’s how I felt until I discovered the power of SQL.

Let me tell you a story. Imagine a small online store, let's call it "Handmade Treasures." They sold charming handmade jewelry - rings, earrings, necklaces, each item with a soul and a story. But despite the wonderful selection and beautiful photos, sales, frankly speaking, were limping. The owner, a young and energetic girl named Anna, came to me for advice in despair. "Rita," she said, "we do everything we read in blogs for marketers! Targeted advertising, email newsletters, we even tried to cooperate with bloggers! But it seems like the money is just slipping through our fingers, and there are almost no results."

The situation was painfully familiar. Many businesses, especially at the start, fall into this trap of intuitive marketing. Intuition is, of course, great, but you know, "trust, but verify", especially when it comes to budgets. And so, looking at their disparate data - tables with orders, downloads from advertising accounts, lists of email addresses scattered across different services, a thought was born in my head: "What if...?"

The idea was simple, but, as it turned out, revolutionary for Handmade Treasures: what if we collect all this data together and try to talk to it in the language of SQL? After all, SQL, in my deep conviction, is the key to understanding data, it is a kind of "translator" from the language of numbers to the language of understandable marketing insights.

I remember that Anna looked at me with a slight bewilderment, but this is for programmers! We are about creative and social networks, and not about the database! ”She objected.

But I didn’t give up, “I said,“ Imagine that SQL is a magic magnifier. It will help us see what is hidden behind the surface of the numbers. To see who your real buyers, what they really like, make them return again and again. Is it not priceless? ”

Fortunately, Anna was open to the new one and we decided to try it first, we gently collected all their data in the relational database.

And here, with the help of SQL, we were able to extract from these valuable grains of information.

“My God!” Anna exclaimed, seeing the first results. “I would never have thought that our data could be such speakers! We always tried to attract new customers, but it turns out that our gold was already under our nose!”

And this was only the beginning, we were able to deeply analyze the paths of customers on the site, to understand at what stages they most often “fall off”, which goods are of greatest interest, and which we see, which advertising channels really lead to sales and which simply “drain” the budget.

And here, as they say, it is thin, it turned out that the targeted advertising, which they made a large bet, worked extremely inefficiently.

But the email marketing, which Anna considered it outdated and ineffective,, with proper segmentation and personalization, shot like a gun!

After a few months of work and SQL, the “handmade treasures” were transformed by more than 30%, the costs of advertising were reduced, and most importantly, the marketing has ceased to be a game of guessing and turned into an accurate science based on facts and numbers, Anna shone with happiness. I am lining the situation, ”she said.

This story convincingly proved one thing to me: SQL is not a “terrible beast” for programmers, but a powerful tool available to every marketer who wants to stop guessing and starting to earn more, this is the key to understanding the audience, to optimize marketing campaigns and, ultimately, to increase the profit of your business. You are a small online store-SQL power is available to everyone.

How we achieved success with "handmade treasures": step -by -step instructions

Frequently asked questions on the topic SQL (Structured Query Language)

Thank you for becoming more experienced!

Now data - Your compass, and SQL - Your right tool.marketing Boldly analyze, draw conclusions and increase profit 🚀

Rita Kochevskaya, independent expert Elbuz.

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