Megan Conley says, “When I joined my agency, I had dealt with analytics before, as anyone in marketing and communications has, but I’d never been exposed to such an advanced level. Growing up, my father used to tell me stories of his pilot training in the Air Force where his trainer would wake him up in the middle of the night and ask him to recite checklists. It wouldn’t be beyond my boss to call me up at 3 a.m. to ask me the percentage of organic traffic compared to three months ago — and why it’s up or down. When I learned of the level of analytics knowlegde that I’d need... [...]

Diego Lo Giudice says, “Modern application delivery leaders realize that their primary goal is to deliver value to the business and its customers faster. Most of the modern successful change frameworks, like Agile (in its various instantiations), Lean, and Lean Startup, which inspire developers and development shops, put metrics and measurement at the center of improvement and feedback loops. The objective of controlling and governing projects to meet vaguely estimated efforts but precisely defined budgets as well as unrealistic deadlines is longer on the agenda of leading BT organizations. The... [...]

Ömer Artun and Dominique Levin says, “Propensity models, also called likelihood to buy or response models, are what most people think about with predictive analytics. These models help predict the likelihood of a certain type of customer behavior, like whether a customer that is browsing your website is likely to buy something. This helps marketers optimize anything from email send frequency, to sales staff time, to money, including discounts. For example: Online pet pharmacy PetCareRx has served pet owners for more than 15 years. It sells many products that customers have to reorder at... [...]

Bill Sebald says, “A process can easily become a habit. A habit may not change without awareness or intervention. Before it becomes a habit, a process should be adjusted to change along with new goals, constant learning, experimentation, and so on. Considering your time in analytics, are you engaging in a process, or in an outdated habit? That’s a real question that digital marketing practitioners should ask themselves. Inherently, marketers tend to be buried with work, reusing templates to speed up results. But many agencies lean on those templates a little too much, in my opinion. Templates... [...]

Pratik Dholakiya says, “Actionable metrics are like oxygen for your decision-making. The decisions you make obviously have a direct impact on your business. Google Analytics has been the staple stats feeder for a gazillion marketers and business owners over the years. But does it actually give you all the data you need? In fact, do you even realize the different types and sources of data that are available to you and whether you have uses and applications for all of them? Let’s take a closer look. Real-Time Web Analytics Google Analytics already provides you with real-time analytics built... [...]

Rachel Sprung says, “When it comes time to assess your marketing efforts, it’s not uncommon for you to run into a ton of questions. How are your contacts trending month over month? Was the time you spent creating social media graphics for that campaign worth it? And what about your email marketing efforts? How are those stacking up against your paid initiatives? So many questions, so little time … And while it’s easy to get lost in a mess of reports and numbers when you go looking for answers, it doesn’t have to be that way. To save you some time, we’ve put... [...]

Lori Goldberg says, “In digital advertising, we have an uncommon ability to collect user data that’s superior to other forms of advertising data; particularly compared to what’s available in TV or print. However, merely collecting the data can be overwhelming unless a marketing anthropologist can cut through the clutter and give meaning to what the data says about your business. Here are some tips on how to give meaning to your website traffic or advertising response data. Separate perception from reality Often, a business’ perception of its customer is very different than the customer’s... [...]

Benjamin Filip says, “At MarketingExperiments, we use patented heuristics to evaluate websites, emails and other digital mediums. Often people think that a heuristic evaluation is a purely qualitative approach to a problem. This can be true, but when you combine quantitative analytics with the qualitative knowledge you increase the power to make meaningful change. This post will show relevant metrics for three of these elements that any marketer — from beginner to advanced — can use to discover opportunities for improvement. Step #1. Look at the qualitative elements of your website Often... [...]

Rachel Sprung says, “I’ve been interested in data and analytics for a long, long time. As a ten-year-old, I remember creating Excel spreadsheets with my dad for his annual Fantasy Football pool. By the time I was 16, I was building Pivot Tables with my cell phone bill to figure out who I texted the most. (I promise I had other hobbies.) Since then, I’ve learned how much more there is to data analysis besides Pivot Tables and Excel. There’s a whole world of analytics out there — and I’ve barely scratched the surface.There’s always more to learn, so I’ve... [...]

Gianluca Fiorelli says, “Roger Dooley, neuromarketing expert, reminds us in his book Brainfluence that in 80% of cases we make a decision before being rationally aware of it. Although Dooley explains this effect in terms of how our brain works, in my opinion, distinctly separating neuroscience and the theory of archetypes would be incorrect. On the contrary, I believe that these two aspects of the study of the human mind are complementary”. Understand and Harness the Power of Archetypes in Marketing MOZ Blog  [...]