Archive for the ‘Analytical Culture’ Category

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Analyze, Not Justify

Friday, June 19th, 2009

Does this issue affect the Web Analytics Maturity Model?

A conference call with a Potential Client last week jogged my memory on a couple of events that happened during the flurry of Web Analytics conferences this Spring.  Here’s a portion of the call…

PC: “We’ve tried proving the profitability of our Marketing efforts and can’t seem to get the numbers working correctly.  So Jim, what we’d like you to do is take all this data we have, and justify the Marketing decisions we’ve made by proving out the ROI.”

Jim: “I’m sorry, did you say justify?  To me, justify means “find a way to prove it works”.  Is that what you are asking me to do?  Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to analyze the results, and then optimize your Marketing based on these results?”

PC: “Jim, around here we’re pretty clear our Marketing works, and Management knows this.  But Finance is asking for some backup, some numbers to justify the spend, not to analyze it.  We don’t need analysis, we need your ‘expert credibility’ to help us out with this.”

Jim: “I see,” thinking this is not a job I’m going to enjoy.  It’s the old ‘buy an outside expert’ routine, which I detest.

PC: “Jim, the team is united behind this mission, are you on board?”

Jim: “Well, perhaps I could be on board, as long as what you want is an analysis, which may also justify the decisions you have made.  But it might not, so I just want to be clear on what…”

PC: “You  know what Jim?  I don’t feel we’re going to have a fit here, I’m getting you’re not a team player.  Thanks for your time”.  CLICK

Sigh.  I’m actually grateful they hung up, I really dislike explaining to people why I won’t work with them.

(more…)

Posted in Analytical Culture, Web Analytics | 13 Comments »

eMetrics “ShootOuts” We’d Like to See

Friday, May 22nd, 2009

I was in Vancouver for a presentation to CAUCE [kay-yoose, thanks Raquel] and was able to grab a quick dinner with fellow WAA BaseCamp stakeholders Andrea Hadley, Raquel Collins, and Braden Hoeppner.  We’re rolling out a new 2-day format for BaseCamp and got to talking about web analytics education in general. 

We started talking audience segmentation and content at the eMetrics Summit, and specifically the “shootout” format from the old days.  You know, 10 vendors on the stage at the same time taking questions from the audience.  Those sessions were both educational and hilarious at the same time, as the vendors side-swiped each other on topics like accuracy, how visitors are counted, cookie structures, and so forth.

But that was back when the technology was in flux, and now that issue has settled down a lot.  Braden brought up the concept of returning the “shootout format”, but more on the business side.  You know, get some practitioners, vendors, and consultants up on stage and have them thrash out stuff like:

1.  Attribution – does it really make sense to even bother with attribution at the impression / click level when there is often not a strong correlation to profit?  I mean, just because someone sees or clicks on an ad does not mean the ad had a positive effect; in fact, it may have had a negative effect.  Why not go straight to action or profit attribution, instead of using creative accounting?

(more…)

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Posted in Analytical Culture, Analytics Education, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »

Got Discount Proneness?

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Discount Proneness is what happens when you “teach” customers to expect discounts.  Over time, they won’t buy unless you send them a discount.  They wait for it, expect it.  Unraveling this behavior is a very painful process you do not want to experience.

The latest shiny object where Coupon Proneness comes into play is the “shopping cart recapture” program.  Mark my words, if it is not happening already, these programs are teaching customers to “Add to Cart” and then abandon it, waiting for an e-mail with a discount to “recapture” this sale – a sale that for many receiving the e-mail, would have taken place anyway. 

The best way to measure this effect is to use a Control Group.

When I hear people talking about programs like this (for example, in the Yahoo analytics group) what I hear is “the faster you send the e-mail, the higher the response rate you get”.

That, my friends, is pretty much a guarantee that a majority of the people receiving that e-mail would have bought anyway.  Hold out a random sample of the population and prove it to yourself.  There is a best, most profitable time to send such an e-mail, and that time will be revealed to you using a controlled test.  The correct timing is almost certainly not within 24 or even 48 hours.

That is, if you care about Profits over Sales, and trust me, somebody at your company does.  They just have not told you yet!

When you give away margin you do not have to give away on a sale, that is a cost.  Unless you are including that cost in your campaign analysis, you are not reflecting the true financial nature of the campaigns you are doing.  If you are an analyst, that’s a problem.

If you are using cart recapture campaigns, please do a controlled test sooner rather than later.  Because once your customers have Discount Proneness, it will be very painful to fix.

(more…)

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Posted in Analytical Culture, Customer Experience, DataBase Marketing, Measuring Engagement, Web Analytics | 8 Comments »

Marketing Science (Journal)

Friday, April 24th, 2009

As I said in the Heavy Lifting post, I think the Web Analytics community is becoming increasingly insular and should be paying more attention to what is going on outside the echo chamber in Marketing Measurement.  I also think the next major leaps forward in #wa are likely to come from examining best practices in other areas of Marketing Measurement and figuring out how they apply to the web.

For example, did you even know there is a peer-reviewed journal called Marketing Science, which calls itself “the premier journal focusing on empirical and theoretical quantitative research in marketing”?

Whoa, say what?

This journal is published by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, and articles are the work of premiere researchers in visitor and customer behavior from the best known institutions around the world.  In case you didn’t know, “peer-reviewed” means a bunch of these researchers (not including the authors, of course) have to agree that what you say in your article is logical based on the data, and that any testing you carried out adhered to the most stringent protocols – sampling, stats, test construction, all of it.

And, most mind-blowing of all, they show you the actual math right in the article – the data, variables, formulas, graphs – that lead to the conclusions they formulate in the studies.  You know, like this:

(more…)

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Posted in Analytical Culture, Analytics Education, Marketing Research | 8 Comments »

Marketing Jump Ball

Thursday, April 9th, 2009

Marketing Accountability.

Brand is what you do, not what you say. 

Marketing Alignment.

Here are 3 free webinars you might want to take advantage of.  You might not agree with these opinions, but hey, it’s a good idea to get out of the echo chamber once and awhile, don’t you think?  Try these online sessions for a little brain stretching:

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Moving Marketing From “The Money Spenders” to The Money MAKERS
April 15, 2009  noon ET    Jonathan Salem Baskin, Jim Sterne, Jim Novo

With 10% of marketing executives being perceived as strategic and influential by the C-suite there’s clearly a crisis of confidence.  I’ve mentioned Jonathan’s blog and book before and here’s a chance to hear a bit of the inside story.  You’ll learn how to exceed expectations of both C-suite executives and customers, neutralize political feuds by organizing cross-departmentally, and how to stop thinking like a reporter and start acting like an advisor

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Everything They’ve Told You About Marketing Is Wrong
April 21, 2009   1pm ET  Ron Shevlin

Are you sick and tired of reading the same old blah, blah, blah, from the so- called marketing experts who just tell you stuff you already know? Then you need to attend this session as the grumpy old man cuts through the morass of bad advice and introduces you to the must-dos in the new world of marketing.  I know Ron personally (as in offline) and even if you disagree, you will be entertained.

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What Online Marketers Can Teach Offline Colleagues (and vice versa)
May 19, 2009  noon ET     Kevin Hillstrom, Akin Arikan, and Jim Novo

A WAA event, open to both members and non-members.  Web analysts are not the first to grapple with multiple channels.  Traditional marketers have always had to illuminate customer behavior across stores, call center, direct mail, etc.  So, rather than reinventing the wheel in each camp, what proven methods can you teach each other?  Three different but aligned approaches on solving the multichannel puzzle, should be something for everyone here.

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Take your brain out for some exercise, will ya?

 

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Posted in Analytical Culture, Brand Management, Marketing / Tech Interface, Marketing thru Operations, Web Analytics | 2 Comments »

Sales or Profits?

Wednesday, February 18th, 2009

Seems the previous post (Best Seller Gone Bad) really hit home for people; perhaps we should drill into  this a bit.  So:

1.  Is the impact of your work evaluated against Sales or Profits?  (example)

2.  Do you think this evaluation approach is correct for your job and company?  Why? 

3.  Would you change this evaluation method if you could?

4.  What is holding you back from trying to make this change?

Personally, I always choose Profits if I can; the leverage is so much higher than Sales.  It’s much easier to generate $5 in Profits than $5 in Sales for any given $1 in budget, because there is generally so much waste in the Marketing system.

Update: OK, how about answering this question – when your work performance is evaluated, what percentage of this measurement is based on qualitative factors?  quantitative factors?

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Posted in Analytical Culture | 6 Comments »

From Audience to the Individual

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Prompted by Avinash’s post on Recency (if this topic interests you, there is much more here), I have to return to an idea that keeps running through my head:

Why do so many Marketing people fail to understand the basic underlying dynamics of Interactive / Online Marketing?  Relative to the Comments on Avinash’s post, why would Marketers not be interested in the Recency metric?  If the Marketers are not aware of it, why would Analysts not push it to them, show them the power of it?

The more I think about this issue, as I have been for several years now, the more confident I become the answer is quite simple: Nobody ever taught most Marketers how to communicate properly to Individuals.  Their training, their experiences, their peers, their conferences, all of it is about Marketing to Audiences.  The nameless, faceless hordes represented by GRP’s.

They simply don’t know how to do it any other way. 

And as a result, neither does whoever they report to. 

Which means any Marketing Accountability or Productivity Metrics, if they exist, are about Audiences, not Individuals.

So, all the Marketers care about are Audiences, these one-off blips on the screen, as opposed to Individuals, who carry longer-term, Potential Value to the Company that can be measured with Recency.

That’s why they allow the blasting of e-mails, they buy untargeted impressions.  They repeat what they know from offline, online.

Sad, really.  A one-way thought process in a two-way world.

What can we do about it? 

I’m going to talk about these concepts with a few Marketers during the AMA’s Digital Marketing Lab at M.planet next week.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Update: I should probably skip Marketing, go straight to the CFO.

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Posted in Analytical Culture, DataBase Marketing, Measuring Engagement, Web Analytics | 4 Comments »

Webcast on Web Intelligence 11/19

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Speaking of Web Intelligence, if you are interested in experiencing what the world of web analytics looks like when it meets Business Intelligence, the WAA and our Certificate partner for Web Intelligence, UC Irvine, are doing a Free webcast on this topic. 

Jim Humphrys has the research on salaries and demand in the sector, Shaina Boone of Critical Mass is the practitioner who has both taken the Certificate classes and is applying this knowledge in the real world, and Bernie Jeltema is a UCI Instructor for the Certificate classes.

Here’s the official description:

UCI Webinar: Certificate in Web Intelligence
Wednesday 19-Nov-08 2:30 PM to 3:30 PM EDT

Web Intelligence is a combination of web analytics and business intelligence. As companies expand their reach into the global marketplace, the need to analyze how customers use their web sites to learn about products and make buying decisions is becoming increasingly critical for survival and success.  Wondering how to position yourself for these career opportunities and how specific coursework can be valuable?  This planning session will provide pre-registration educational and career advancement advisement. Also learn more about the web intelligence certificate program, courses being offered in upcoming quarters, and career planning resources available through the UC Irvine Extension and the University of British Columbia, Continuing Studies

  • Jim Humphrys, WL Gore, co-chair, WAA Research Committee
  • Shaina Boone, Critical Mass
  • Bernie Jeltema, Instructor in Business Intelligence, consultant in field

    • To register visit: http://unex.uci.edu/certificates/it/web_intel/

    On this page, you can either sign up to “Stay Informed” about the program (green bar) or Register for the webcast in the box below this bar, which is called Web Intelligence Education Planning Session.

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    Posted in Analytical Culture, Analytics Education, DataBase Marketing, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »

    Broken Online Model Endcap

    Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

    I’m going to leave the Requirements / Model issue to simmer for a while; thanks for all your help exploring it.  I get the feeling people might want to connect with more practical ideas right now and not take on the windmills of the Tech / Marketing Interface.

    So I’ll wrap up with a few relevant links to what others have recently said about this model / requirements problem.

    Facebook COO

    Yesterday, Ad Age tells us that Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said this:

    “Google and its competitors have made answering demands for information very profitable by selling ads attached to search requests, or demand fulfillment, Ms. Sandberg a former Google executive herself, noted.  “What no one’s figured out how to do is demand generation,” she said.  “We need to find a new model and new metrics,” she added.

    It’s the Serendipity problem, right?  You can’t Search for what you don’t know about already?

      (more…)

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    Posted in Analytical Culture, Marketing / Tech Interface, Web Analytics | 9 Comments »

    Wrong Model, Dumb Money

    Tuesday, September 16th, 2008

    I am not a technophobic Marketeer, an old “resistant to change” type.  In fact, I’m just the opposite, and that’s why I can’t understand why Online continues to Repeat Past Marketing Failures.

    I was one of those kids that built crystal radio sets and messed around with ham radio.  My favorite place to hang out was Radio Shack, back when they were an electronic parts house.  I built all kinds of circuit board stuff with a soldering iron, mostly bugs and telco hacks.  I was a geek when they were called nerds. 

    In 1977 I learned the BASIC language and was writing simple programs for the mainframe at college.  In 1978, I was part of a small group of students who worked on the Synclavier, the first large scale truly digital music synthesizer.  I started working with PC’s in 1987, and had a home computer by 1991.  I was one of those people who dialed up to the CompuServe Forums at 300 baud, primarily talking about computers and music, figuring out how to rewrite .bat and .ini files to get the computer / keyboard interfaces working properly. 

    And at the same time, making lots of  ”online friends” ;).

    (more…)

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    Posted in Analytical Culture, Marketing / Tech Interface, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »

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