The Analytics Power Hour

It sometimes seems like there must be a Moore's Law of marketing technology (or "martech," as the cool kids call it, and our site is on a .io domain, so we're definitely the cool kids) whereby the number of platforms available doubles every 6 to 8 weeks. And, every couple of months, it seems, a whole new category emerges. From CMS to DAM to CRM to TMS to DMP to DSP to CDP, it's an alphabet soup of TLAs that no one can make sense of PDQ! On this episode, Michael, Moe, and Tim sat down with the man who coined the name for one of those categories back in 2013: David Raab, the founder of the CDP Institute! It was a lively chat about the messy world of vendor overload and how to frame, assess, and successfully manage martech stacks. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

The promise of digital—and the steady shift of consumers' interactions with brands to that medium over the course of the past two decades—is that we can now see so much more of what our customers and prospects DO. But, how much does that tell us about who they really are, why they do what they do, and how they feel as they do it? What are they thinking and feeling as they cross between channels, task shift to and from interacting with your brand, and try to move their lives forward in whatever way that matters to them? Customer journey mapping tries to answer those questions: establishing different archetypes and mapping journeys through a combination of qualitative research and quantitative analysis. Would you like to journey further into the topic? Then give this episode a listen as we explore the subject with Dr. Monica Weiler from Stratos Innovation Group! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Sometimes, the best way to get alignment, generate new ideas, hash out different perspectives, or just effectively collaborate is to shift a gathering of peers from being a "meeting run by the organizer" to a "workshop run by a facilitator." Both meetings and workshops should have clear objectives, but workshops, when planned and run well, shift the mindset of the participants even before they arrive in the meeting room (which may make sense to have as a room at an off-site location). On this episode, we chat with master facilitator Jody Weir from THE ICONIC about her experiences, tips, and techniques for running an effective workshop. If you haven't committed to run one by the end of the show, then Michael failed in his role as podcast facilitator. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

These are interesting times in which we work, are they not? For many analysts, "remote work" is what they call "every weekday" or, for those who don't have things fully figured out, "every day that ends in 'Y.'" For other analysts, the current pandemic has forced them into being an unplanned — and not necessarily desired — full-time remote worker. Juggling kids, silencing pets, finding a horizontal work surface, and grappling with which pair of sweatpants to don are all the sorts of challenges (opportunities?!) that remote working can bring. On this show, we explore our experiences and thoughts and tips on the topic. Except for Tim, who thinks remote work is like in-office work: "Leave me alone, and just do your job!" For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Did you know that there were monks in the 1400s doing text-based sentiment analysis? Can you name the 2016 movie that starred Amy Adams as a linguist? Have you ever laid awake at night wondering if stopword removal is ever problematic? Is the best therapist you ever had named ELIZA? The common theme across all of these questions is the broad and deep topic of natural language processing (NLP), a topic we've been wanting to form and exchange words regarding for quite some time. Dr. Joe Sutherland, the Head of Data Science at Search Discovery, joined the discussion and converted many of his thoughts on the subject into semantic constructs that, ultimately, were digitized into audio files for your auditory consumption. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

For our special International Women's Day episode, we committed a type one error and peeked at our results, so we are releasing this winner three days early. As good analysts, we set out to optimise the podcast by swapping out Tim and Michael for two guests (it's rare for Tim to be in the control group, but he's an outlier either way). Unfortunately, it turns out we confused testing with personalisation, so we invited along a family member, Michele Kiss, as well as CRO expert Valerie Kroll, to talk about the evolution of the space from conversion rate optimisation (CRO) to experimentation. In Val's words, good experimentation programs are all about optimising to de-risk product feature roll-outs and marketing tactics, all the while learning about our users and prospects. Stay tuned for the three tips from our guests on how to set up the best version of an experimentation framework, as well as the stats on the show's gender breakdown since our start in 2015! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Have you heard the one about the four analysts who run a podcast who walked into a resort in Hungary? Well, now you can! Or, at least get a taste of that experience. Michael, Moe, Tim, and Josh headed to Superweek last month and, among other things, did a 12-hour audio livestream to try to give interested listeners a taste of the experience. On this episode, we're bringing you just over an hour (occasionally, we "power" right past the "hour" mark) of that livestream, centered around (but not limited to!) Michael's presentation on "the last mile of analytics," which is about the importance of self-awareness, communication, and interpersonal skills when it comes to putting analytics into action. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

"QA and patience and reviews by a peer. Data viz testing, hold no chart too dear. Don't be an asshole; automate 'til it stings. These are a few of our favorite things!" With apologies to Julie Andrews, on this episode, Moe, Tim, and Michael shared some of the tactical tips and techniques that they have found themselves putting to use on a regular basis in their analytics work. The resulting show: multiple tips, minimal disagreements, and moderate laughter. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Once upon a time, website behavioral data was extracted from the log files of web servers. That data was messy to work with and missing some information that analysts really wanted. This was the OG "server-side" data collection. Then, the JavaScript page tag arrived on the scene, and the data became richer and cleaner and easier to implement. That data was collected by tags firing in the user's browser (which was called "client-side" data collection). But then ad blockers and browser quirks and cross-device behavior turned out to introduce pockets of unreliability into THAT data. And now here we are. What was old is now somewhat new again, and there is a lot to be unpacked with the ins and outs and tradeoffs of client-side vs. server-side data collection. On this episode, Mike Robins from Poplin Data joined the gang to explore the topic from various angles. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Who would have thought that we'd get to 2020 and still be debating whether recurring reports should include "insights?" As it turns out, Tim did an ad hoc analysis back in 2015 where he predicted exactly that! Unfortunately, the evidence is buried in the outbox of his email account at a previous employer. So, instead, we've opted to just tackle the topic head-on: what is a report, anyway? What are the different types of reports? What should they include? What should they leave out? And where does "analysis" fall in all of this? We have so many opinions on the subject that we didn't even bring on a guest for this episode! So, pop in your earbuds, pull out your notebook, and start taking notes, as we'll expect a *report* on what you think of the show once you're done giving it a listen! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.