How I Got Free Vacuum Bags for Life
And why 99% of companies ignore customer survey results
I love working with data and creating tools for my fellow writers. I want to offer insights that help you grow your newsletter based on facts and data.
With this in mind, I created a Substack Growth & Analytics Survey to identify the key challenges and pain points of Substack creators and solopreneurs.
I asked my readers, subscribers, customers, and collaborators to take this two-minute survey. I didn’t expect many responses, as I dislike filling out endless surveys, especially when I don’t see the results.
Every day, companies send satisfaction surveys to my inbox. Only when I am pissed off with poor customer service or products that don’t work I might send some feedback.
Sometimes, I have to send the message directly to the senior leaders.
Free vacuum bags for life
When we moved to the USA, one of the first things we needed was a vacuum cleaner.
Our rental apartment had carpets everywhere, unlike in Europe, where we had parquet floors and rugs.
We had a Circuit City store just a few miles away, so we ventured there on a freezing Sunday afternoon to buy a vacuum cleaner. We found a model that met our needs, but when I asked the salesperson about vacuum bags, he told us that the vacuum cleaner came with a bag and I could return later to purchase a replacement.
Eventually, the bag became full, so I went to buy a replacement. The salesperson looked up from the computer and couldn’t find a replacement bag. I wasn’t too happy about this, and when I asked how I could buy one, he told me to bring the vacuum cleaner back and that he could replace it with a new one since we were still within the 90-day return window.
I was still acclimated to doing business in the USA, so I drove home, took the vacuum cleaner with the dirt-filled bag, and brought it to the store. Sure enough, the customer service person accepted the return with no questions asked, and I marched out with a brand-new vacuum cleaner and an empty bag.
I got busy with my new job and tried to figure things out. Eventually, the second vacuum cleaner bag became full, so I visited the store to ask for replacement bags.
“Surely, they must have figured this out by now,” I thought.
Nope, I got the same salesperson and the same advice. I asked him why they could not call to order the bags. He explained that they had a centralized logistics team, and stores could not contact that team. It was all automated, and computers dealt with inventory.
I didn’t have time to argue, so I returned home, brought my second vacuum cleaner with the dirt-filled bag to the store, and got my third new one with an empty bag.
At this point, I still had some European mindset left and thought this was just silly. I wrote a letter and sent five copies to the company's CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, and CRO to ensure all senior leaders received the same message.
In my letter, I pointed out how lousy business it was to keep replacing a $200 vacuum cleaner for free every time the customer needed a $2 set of bags. I mentioned that stores could not order these due to the centralized purchasing team, which cannot be bothered with getting direct feedback from the store managers.
I suggested that the purchasing team open a channel for the store managers to provide feedback instead of relying solely on computerized inventory systems. I tried to be very polite but expressed dissatisfaction with their customer service.
Several weeks passed, and then a giant box of vacuum bags arrived on my doorstep. I received a letter signed by the CEO apologizing for the lousy customer service experience and ensuring they had fixed the problem.
I still have many of those vacuum bags after 25+ years, so I am set for life.
Why do 99% of companies ignore customer survey data?
Why do companies send customer satisfaction surveys and ignore the valuable results?
For busy executives, these surveys typically provide data for a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) such as Net Promoter Score. Executives have regular review meetings, during which they present and discuss the latest NPS numbers and perhaps a trendline on a high level before moving on to the next topic on their packed agenda.
Any other complaints are handled by lower-level customer support people, who are not empowered to propose system-wide process changes.
In my mind, this is just silly.
Customer Surveys provide valuable information that would help companies and solopreneurs determine the next steps in their business.
Customer pain points are a gold mine for entrepreneurs.
Solve them, and you have a customer for life.
Customer Survey Results
Ok, enough talk. Could you give me the results, Finn?
I have received 33 responses to my survey so far.
I asked about the Substack Primary category you configure in your newsletter settings. The results show incredible diversity. This sample includes 14 of the top 30 Substack categories. Health & Wellness, Technology, and Business have the most newsletters.
The chart below shows the category breakdown by subscriber count.
The next question was about the current size of the participants’ subscriber base. Almost equal numbers of newsletters have less than 100 subscribers, 100 - 1K subscribers, and 1K-10K subscribers.
The chart below shows the distribution.
Analytics & growth challenges
The following section asked participants about their goals, current actions to grow their newsletters, and most significant challenges.
The top three goals writers have are the following
Grow subscribers
Convert free to paid subscribers
Increase engagement
These goals are consistent despite the number of subscribers they already have.
The fourth goal is selling products or services.
When asked about their current methods, writers are trying to grow their newsletters in multiple ways:
Substack Notes is by far the most popular (87.5%)
Other social media sites (50%)
Cross-promotions (37.5%)
Guest posts/interviews (28.1%)
I was pretty surprised to see Referral programs rated so low. Most of my subscribers came through recommendations from other newsletters.
Writers have top three challenges in growing their newsletters:
Audience growth (how to get more subscribers)
Monetization (how to convert free to paid subscribers)
Engagement (how to get feedback and engagement from readers)
I expected to see more content creation or scheduling challenges, especially after seeing my Substack Notes Scheduler product take off so rapidly. However, this only concerns small newsletters with fewer than 100 subscribers.
When asked about how often writers check their Substack analytics, over 80% said daily or weekly. Only 18.2% said rarely.
I love working with data, so I am on the daily side of the house. I know some writers see analytics as a distraction, and this survey confirms that.
The following chart provides a breakdown by subscriber count.
Key insights
“If you could instantly get one key insight about your newsletter, what would it be?”
This question generated a lot of responses. Here is a short sample:
“How many people saw the link to it but did not read it”
“Who is clicking what! There’s no way of knowing who is interested in different things as no insight into clicks other than that they happened.”“Segment based on source of traffic”
“How people found my newsletter”
“What posts converts the audience into subscriber”
“What makes audience subscribe and engage.”
“Well, there are so many but one thing would be when would be the best time to post. When is the best engagement time?”
“Which articles are performing better over all metrics”
“Who has unsubscribed. When I lose a paid subscriber, I have to manually comb through my list to figure out who they are. Am I missing something?”
“What content converted free to paid”
“Where to get paid subs”
”When did people stop reading it and closed it”
When asked about the most frustrating part of Substack’s built-in analytics capabilities, the top three issues were
Too basic
Lack of subscriber journey insights
Hard to track growth patterns
Writers would like to see audience segmentation, better filtering, and Notes engagement features.
the
When asked to assign the most valuable insights, I got various responses.
The top three most valuable insights would be
Audience insights (63.6%)
Best-performing topics (60.6%)
Engagement trends (45.5%)
Conversion rates, SEO insights, and subscriber churn were listed as well.
Interest in tools, consulting, and 1:1 newsletter audits
As I build tools for writers to get their Substack engagement metrics from posts and notes, I wanted to ask how valuable they would see automated tools for growth insights and benchmarks.
75% of respondents rated the value very high (5) or high (4). Only 6% felt that such tools were of no value to them.
The next question surprised me the most.
Substack offers the whole platform free to writers (with a 10% fee on subscriber revenue), including all analytics capabilities.
I did not expect writers to be willing to pay monthly for data-backed insights and growth recommendations.
However, almost 88% of the participants said they would be willing to pay. In comparison,
45% would pay less than $10 per month,
33% between $10 and $20, and
9% from $20 to $50 monthly.
There appears to be a market for data-backed consulting or 1:1 newsletter audits, and I have seen a few Substack writers offering this kind of service to other writers.
A combination of tools and services might be an opportunity to address the pain points that the Substack newsletter authors have expressed above.
Final thoughts
Listening to customers and providing excellent, responsive support is required for growth and success.
Sending me a lifelong supply of vacuum bags didn’t help Circuit City. They went out of business and closed all stores on March 8, 2009.
Thank you for participating in my Substack Growth & Analytics survey.
One question is still lingering in my mind - Did I ask the right questions?
Well, I just did the survey.
It’s clear that Substack creators are seeking more than just basic analytics. They want actionable, data-driven insights to fuel their growth.
- thank you for putting this together.
Have a good week :)
Thanks for posting those survey results so fast. I paid attention to your survey because it seemed so immediately focused on useful product design.
Always wondered why Circuit City bit the dust, and you explained it pretty well :-D