Metrics

eMetrics Marketing Summit 2011 – Data Storytelling

This was my first eMetrics Summit, and I must say I was quite impressed all around. I was asked to present and sit on a panel about social media metrics and so I arranged my schedule to specifically attend that Monday session. Fly in late Sunday and back out early Tuesday. I soon discovered that was a mistake as I would miss two more days of great content, speakers and networking opportunities. Lesson learned.

If you are a metrics enthusiast, and who isn’t, this is the place to be. They cover technology, strategy, practice and case studies. Everyone there is focused on one thing; doing metrics better. It’s a never ending topic of debate. How much data is too much? How do you divine insights from the data? What is important vs. noise? How can it be made more actionable? I picked up some nuggets of knowledge and met some very interesting professionals who are solving real world business problems with the data they uncover.

The opening keynote was given by Jim Sterne, Founder of the eMetrics Summit 10 years ago. He reminded us to not be so seduced by the puzzle of the data that we forget to tell the story we find inside that puzzle. He said, “Data=Calculation while Story=Empathy.” Most C level execs and everyday business partners want to hear a story. Granted they prefer non-fiction to fiction, but everyone loves a good story. Tell one. Mr. Sterne kept bringing his message back to how one would use it on the job. Extremely practical. Another presentation I caught in it’s entirety was given by Larry Freed, President and CEO of Foresee Results. He spoke nonstop for 30 minutes about consumers, channels and information. His key takeaways:

Consumers are multi-channel and your metrics need to be multi-channel
Success should be looked at through the eyes of the Consumer
Often metrics are misunderstood, misinterpreted and misleading
Satisfaction drives loyalty, retention and word of mouth, which drive financial success
You cannot manage what you do not measure

I sent emails out to my analytics partners back at the home office during the summit to encourage them to put the next summit on their calendars.

My session was entitled Social Media Metrics Management. Myself, John Lovett of Web Analytics Demystified and Scott Calise of MTV Networks each presented about 10 minutes on varying perspectives of how we approach social media metrics. The moderator Michele Honojosa got the audience engaged with questions. The questions were great and some very tough to answer, making us think hard. As I went back through the Tweets of the session afterwards I found that it was a grateful but tough crowd. Some comments and questions were still rolling in and I was responding to them via Twitter the next day. Whenever I do these things I am always amazed at how we all struggle with the same things, but each one of has solved a different problem better than the rest of us. Some problems never go away while new ones pop-up all the time. The panel compared notes closely, picked-up tips and learned more best practices. My brief talk focused on building stakeholder alignment around social media in the organization.

Despite all those approving words, I still came away empty handed on my quest to find the perfect web analytics tool. That would be a tool that could capture granular data for the geeks, but also had a web site form factor display with the data masquerading as the user. It would be a tool for the analysts, web designers, information architects and business partners looking to solve a problem. It would be fast, near time, have a user-friendly interface and didn’t require world of site tags to enable it. If you come across that, let me know.

There is No Social Media Playbook

As the calendar has turned to 2011, we have been inundated with an endless barrage of Social Media predictions compiled by experts and dabblers alike. Some of what I have read are excellent and well informed perspectives backed by data and research, while others appear to be, well, nil-informed. As Yogi Berra once said, “Prediction is very hard, especially about the future.” No predictions here, just some observations about Social Media based on 3 years of experience working inside a large firm.

There is No Playbook

This medium or channel, or whatever you wish to call it, is way too new to have a reliable playbook. What works for some brands will not work for others. I would go so far as to say that Social Media does not have any common marketing ground. Direct mail and basic advertising principles are largely transferrable across brands and verticals even though retail is very different from financial services which is different from manufacturing. Social lacks such helpful fundamental truths.

Outcomes are Slippery

Save one or two examples (Dell Computer coupon codes on Twitter comes to mind), there is low confidence that a marketer could reliably forecast results from activity in the social sphere. Your CMO wants to know what she/he can book if your Social Media team is given $500,000. The CMO isn’t getting good answers to that challenge.

Mobile Adds Complexity

Social and mobile are matching luggage. They just naturally go together. A very different beast from the early web days of the late 1990’s. Back then the channel was confined to the desktop computer, a narrow pipe and a basic interface. We were able to make progress with a measured development roadmap. But with today’s always on, high speed connections and smart phones, there’s so many more variables to consider. Location, screen size, gestures, cameras, text messages, etc.

You Will Always be Outnumbered

One of the things that raises the possibility that there may never be a Social Media playbook is the injection of the consumer into the mix at every turn. They chime in when you least expect it and on topics that are completely unpredictable. When they called you had a private conversation. Today it takes place in public. Consumers sometimes comment because they just don’t understand, or have unrealistic expectations, or forget (don’t care) that we run a business and need to make a profit, or are just plain angry over something. We need to respect the fact that employees in a firm will always be outnumbered by consumers. People will just keep coming at you.

Fail Fast and Often

We can’t take our own sweet time. Social years will make online years look like we were standing still. Remember 2000 when we joked about “Online Years?” One year online was equal to five years off line. If you thought that ratio spun your head, try “Social Years” where one month might equal five Online Years! Social Media is not about what we’ve been doing all along. It’s about what we’ve never done before. We will need to learn faster than any previous time. It’s not just a new language, it’s an entirely new world and the wheel has yet to be invented.

My best advice. Do lots of things and count on failure. In fact welcome failure so you can rule things out. The list will grow quickly, but so will your knowledge. Make Social Media everybody’s business in your firm and eventually you’ll develop an edge over the competition and who knows. You may be able to walk into the CMO’s office and say. Give me this and I’ll give you that.

I Never Met a Metric I Didn’t Like

Well maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. The whole topic of establishing metrics has been creeping to the top of my brain over the past few weeks. Today it comes out.

In big companies there are many silos. We all acknowledge that and deep inside we want it to change, but mostly we just want the other guy to see it our way. That would be the fastest path to blowing up silos right? Perhaps, but maybe there is another way.

Sometimes people try to tear down the silos (read: convince others) by establishing, tracking and reporting on metrics; their metrics. Selecting metrics should be a pretty straightforward exercise, and oftentimes it is. However, the pool of available metrics grows over time as measuring tools improve and new channels emerge. Millions of words have been written on how to select metrics and most of the approaches are essentially sound. That’s not where the difficulty lies. Departments or lines of businesses choose metrics that support their particular goals, which gets them through the process pretty quickly. Where it gets interesting is when cross-functional teams are collaborating and must establish metrics for the larger project while ensuring their department’s goals are also well served. This is a challenging situation.

Thank goodness we have a wonderful tool to help at these moments; the Key Performance Indicator (KPI). KPI’s are typically set at the senior manager level and are the equivalent of commandments. They signal to the organization that when you are looking for work you should find a way to improve these KPIs.

All KPI’s are metrics, but not all metrics are KPI’s. This is an important distinction and can be used to great benefit for the entire company.

If you find yourself in a situation where your silo is in a room with other silos arguing over what metrics to choose, elevate the conversation by discussing the company KPI’s. Nobody can argue against that. Start with those metrics and move on to ensuring you can track and report on them, then dig into the project. Now this might mean you give up some of what you want to measure, so be prepared. Beyond the official record, each team is free to develop their own “shadow” metrics that may be required to manage their P&L and meet management mandates. That’s fine. This will help keep momentum and energy focused on solving the larger problem at hand. Good luck, and let me know how it’s going.

Illustration: Profile Concrete Equipment