Build a Data Feedback Loop to Accelerate Growth
Lean, growth-oriented teams choose what to measure and use that data to grow better, faster than their peers and competitors.
Lean teams don’t measure everything, and they don’t wait until they’re bigger to start. They decide what matters most right now and measure that.
Growth rarely moves in a straight line. It happens through experiments, plateaus, and jumps. Data provides the feedback loop and without it, you’re guessing.
And yet, many teams avoid the data they already have. They don’t ignore data because they don’t value it. They ignore it because it’s overwhelming.
They have too much data, and that information is spread across different systems. The definitions are often unclear, and measurements may not tie together. Plus when numbers are small, it is hard to know what’s meaningful.
How can you leverage data to accelerate your progress? And how can you integrate this into your operations without feeling like you are just adding one more thing to your “to-do”?
Going from overwhelm to focus
Instead of tracking everything (or the wrong things), you intentionally narrow the field. You choose a very targeted subset of your data.
Which data? The data that measures your current top priority(-ies).
Priority —> Drivers —> Data
What’s your priority?
What are the drivers?
What data do you need to measure progress?
1 | Start with one priority.
“Grow referral business.”
“Improve checkout rates.”
“Build an engaged email list.”
“Increase net subscription enrollment.”
“Increase on-time payments.”
2 | Next, identify the drivers: the actions that will, or could, create movement and momentum in that priority.
If your goal is “improving checkout rates” on your online shop, drivers might include:
“Increasing traffic to product pages”
“Improving ‘add to cart’ conversions”
“Sending cart reminder emails”
“Testing time-bound promotions”
3 | Narrow the list to 1-3 drivers, and for each one, choose at least one clear way to measure progress.
Start with drivers you are already focused on or plan to start working on in the near-term.
For example: “Increase traffic to key parts of our website as measured by “weekly product page views.”
Now your data conversation has focus.
Example: How We Are Doing This
One of our priorities is “building an engaged, relevant audience” not simply increasing raw subscriber counts.
Once we clarified that, we asked ourselves which actions would actually attract that audience. Knowing we couldn’t do everything at once, we then narrowed our focus to just a few of those drivers:
Grow our email list
Increase meaningful engagement with posts
Expand awareness on LinkedIn and Substack
For each of those drivers, we chose simple measurements we could review each week:
Monthly net email subscriber growth
Engagement per post (comments, restacks, shares)
Follower and subscriber trends across platforms
We didn’t decide to track everything Substack or LinkedIn offered. We chose a handful of signals tied directly to what we are trying to create. Reviewing those consistently helps us decide where to invest our time - and where not to.
Use data to go further, faster
Using data to fuel your progress requires focus. And that is what you’ve done here. So far you’ve identified a few metrics that measure the drivers for a top priority. Integrating data into your regular operations is simple in comparison, but it does require some set up and consistency.
What gets measured gets done. BUT those measurements need to be kept visible. To implement a data feedback loop:
Assign an owner for each metric to pull and review it.
Schedule regular review time on a weekly or monthly basis.
Discuss what changed and why, allowing time to problem solve, brainstorm, and hypothesize.
Test and experiment - try something new.
Review next time. What worked, what didn’t? Why or why not?
Make this a habit and you will not only see accelerated progress against your priority, you will also begin to expand this method to other priorities and data.
Want help applying these concepts? We Dig Data is bringing our workshops to a group format. These workshops help individuals and lean teams use data better to accelerate their impact. Learn more here or send us a note.
What if your numbers are still very small?
When you are starting out or have a specialized mission, data volume is often low making trends are harder to read.
Two approaches to try:
Aggregate the data over longer time periods (example: monthly instead of weekly)
Group similar activities together (emails categories, not individual campaigns)
They may not be statistically perfect, but you are looking for hypotheses and signals you can test.
Even when numbers are small, record them consistently. Add notes on activities that might have impacted that metric. Over time, you will see patterns emerge.
Summary
You don’t need perfect data. You need aligned data. When your metrics connect directly to a clear priority, the noise fades and the next step becomes obvious. Start small. Choose what matters now. Measure the drivers that move it. Review consistently. Over time, the habit of focused measurement won’t just help you grow faster, it will help you grow on purpose.
Tell us how you are measuring your key priorities or the roadblocks you run into!