Category Archives: Analytics Education

Déjà vu (All over Again)

Analytics Education

The top issue in Training today is:

Accountability

Execs want to know what the “ROI of Training” is.  To find out what the ROI of Training is, one should create:

KPI’s – that’s Key Performance Indicators, in case you didn’t know.

To facilitate the use of KPI’s – to provide something to measure – one should design Training so rather than being Content-based, it is Performance-based.  In other words, the Training should be designed to have a measurable outcome.

Another way to say this is the Training should have a clearly defined Goal which directly addresses the “Gap” between actual performance and desired performance.

Geesh…and I thought Marketing was up the creek…these folks are just getting started.

I’m at Training 2007 (the Conference)

Analytics Education

Yea, I know, kind of weird.  What the heck is a Marketing / Web Analytics guy doing at this event?

The Training Conference and Expo is the largest conference of training professionals in the US.  It’s the first conference I have been to in 10 years that I’m not speaking at.  Probably the first conference I have been to in 20 years where just about everybody knows more about the topic than I do. 

And I have to tell you, that’s incredibly refreshing. 

I’m thinking I have to do this more often!  After all, what exactly is the point of going to conferences on material you already have deep knowledge of?  Unless it is to present, of course…

I’m here on behalf of the Web Analytics Association scouting out vendors to administer the Certification test we are developing for web analysts, and to learn everything I can about best practices in Certification.  One of the challenges is we are looking to certify folks not on “software” related issues like implementation / set-up (the vendors do a fine job here) but on the business side, where the issues are often not as quantifiable as they are in software land.  So we need a vendor that can work with us on a more flexible testing methodology than many are used to.  If you have any suggestions / advice on certification test vendors, let me know.  There are 9 vendors here.

Here are some interesting things I have learned so far:

1.  Virtually none of these Training / HR folks have ever heard of web analytics before.  They have no idea what the heck I am talking about, or that web analytics people even exist from an HR perspective.  The typical response is “we could have used somebody like that when we were setting up our Intranet … what is their typical job title and who do they report to?”

 2.  The primary model used in training course development is called ADDIE.  It stands for:

Analyze
Design
Develop
Implement
Evaluate

which is a formal sequence of tasks where “Evaluate” has an arrow looping back up to the top pointing to Analyze, meaning you repeat the sequence and there is a continuous improvement process.  Hmm, that sounds kind of familiar, where have I seen this before?  Perhaps filed under Best Practices for web site development?

3.  Lots of the communication and behavioral models used in Marketing are used in Training – Training is in many ways a specialized kind of Marketing.  I initially thought I was dead wrong about this but when I put forth the idea, nobody threw me out of the room or called me a Newbie.  So I think there is something worth exploring about this parallel, especially since e-Learning delivered through web interfaces is a big deal to these folks.

More to come as the event unfolds…

The Deconstruction of Marketing

Analytical Culture, Analytics Education, Marketing / Tech Interface

Seems to me these days “Marketing” is being deconstructed into a bunch of pieces.  When I was coming up through the ranks, Marketing included Customer Service plus all the stuff now called CRM, Customer Experience, and all the related ideas.  The person in charge of Marketing was in charge of all these things.  It made so much sense to manage a business this way, because to control your fate as a Marketer, you had to control or at least influence all the customer touchpoints.  So why are these responsibilities being split off into little sub-cultures today?

The answer is they’re not really; that’s just the way it looks to me, because every industry I worked in for 25 years was rich with customer data and we used that data to prove why it made so much sense for Marketing to be in charge of all these aspects of the company interface with the customer.  We proved time and time again that by exerting cross-silo influence where the customer was involved, Marketing could generate much improved profitability.  Every Marketing program worked even harder towards generating profits when Marketing got all the silos aligned.

So I guess it just looks to me (and some other data-driven Marketing folks) like these functions are being split out of Marketing.  The reality is that many companies never had any of these data-driven functions before, and when they start getting access to customer data, they created these areas as new entities.  The question: why not create them under Marketing?  This approach sure would have saved a lot of trouble in CRM, for example. 

And I suspect the answer is the Marketing folks took one look at this new data-driven world with the associated need to have a basic understanding of technology issues, and said, “No thanks, I’ll stick to Advertising and PR”.  And as Marketers let go of / failed to capture control of these key operational touchpoints with the customer, they essentially devolved Marketing from a strategic C-Level force into “MarCom”.

And that’s a real shame.  This splintering of Marketing Management by technological issues is a waste of time at best and a long term problem at worst.  Ultimately, after we go through all this CRM and Chief Experience Officer stuff and whatever else you want to call it (seems like a new name every day), people will realize that all of this belongs in Marketing.  And then we’ll just need some brave Marketing folks who think they can handle it to step up to the plate and really make it work.  If you’re a mid-level MarCom person and want to start preparing for this transition, start making some friends in Finance, Technology, and Customer Service.  Find out what it is that keeps them awake at night, and think about how Marketing could help solve their problems.

And to jump-start your brain towards making Marketing decisions based on customer data rather than using nameless, faceless GRP’s, try taking a look at the business side of web analytics.  You’ll be amazed at how much of it transfers directly to Data-based / CRM / Customer Experience Marketing.  Why?  Because the web analytics community has decided best practices require a cross-functional team approach with a focus on Customer Experience and a requirement to examine the Financial implications of actions taken.  Web analytics teams are a functioning microcosm of what Marketing used to be, and what it should be in the future.