2013

All posts from 2013

Announcing Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013

by Kelly Kubrick on January 29, 2013

Digital Strategy ConferenceAnd it’s official – Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 dates and location have been confirmed!

Join us on June 3-5, 2013 at the University of Ottawa to get an in-depth education into the key elements of building your organization’s digital strategy.

As with the Vancouver conference, prepare to be immersed into the world of digital strategy development. In addition to sessions in Defining Digital Strategy and Establishing Digital Maturity, you will be taught by industry experts in five  different educational modules – think of them as your five key areas of learning:

  1. Organizational and Operational Readiness;
  2. Digging into Content Strategy;
  3. Mobile to Multiscreen;
  4. Social Strategy: Earned Media for Community Development; and
  5. Making Sense of Advertising / Paid Media.

For answers to any questions you might have about the conference format and logistics please read the Ottawa conference Frequently Asked Questions.

For those of you with a great digital strategy story to tell, you might consider submitting a case study proposal – but hurry – the Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa Call for Speakers ends March 15th, 2013.

Most importantly – you should register soon as double early bird pricing ends Friday March 8th, 2013. See you in Ottawa in June!

Updated: Still hesitating? Have a quick look at this video from our inaugural Vancouver event!

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Kelly KubrickAnnouncing Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013

An afternoon immersion in digital analytics

by Kelly Kubrick on January 28, 2013

Key Takeaways from eMetrics Tour Ottawa 2013

Our thanks to the 100+ hardy souls who turned up for an afternoon of digital measurement resolutions on the first day of Ottawa’s killer cold snap this month. It was a great turnout; we had folks from all sectors and across all industries having lots of  great conversations. My thanks to Jim Sterne and my fellow sponsors for sharing their insight and information. In the hope that it might keep your own digital analytics discussions flowing back at your offices, here are my top takeaways:

Analytics definitions from Stephane Hamel of Cardinal Path

  • “How an organization arrives at an optimal and realistic decision informed by data”
  • “Analytics is context plus data plus creativity”
  • “Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic into small parts to gain an understanding of it

I agree with Stephane’s statements – that the digital analytics industry’s number one problem today is the lack of rigorous process. In my own experience, the only way to keep ahead of all tool and technology changes is to have a framework that articulates what to measure, based on your ‘why’ measure objectives, regardless of vendor. Stephane uploaded his presentation “10 years of hard learned analytics wisdom in 20 minutes” on SlideShare.

(Yours Truly) Kelly Kubrick from Online Authority

Hobbit-Bilbo-Baggins-in-Doorway I was pleased that folks seem to hear, based on tweets, some of my key messages:

  • To an analyst, reporting is practising scales is to a musician; it gets / keeps you limber so that you are more able to achieve more creativity in your analysis
  • For non-techies, know that deconstructing prose and poetry in literature gives you an edge when deconstructing blocks of data. You already know how to assess the “whole” based on your ability to isolate the parts
  • Annotate, annotate, annotate: they give you a contextual lens to better understand your data as it changes
  • Ideally, digital analysts have a belief in Second Breakfast in common with Hobbits  (vs hairy feet).

Feel free to peruse my my list of recommended resources for digital analysts, or to download my full presentation Changing Habits: An Unexpected Analytics Journey” (PDF). Let me know if you have any questions about either.

Jim Cain of Napkyn

Jim tackled the question of data and design best practices for Executive Dashboards. His words of advice:

  • “Use dashboards to replace intuition with information”
  • “Create alignment ~ draw the line between the numbers to sales/leads etc for executives by anticipating the question: “I showed you this because…”
  • “Good data + great analysis = appreciative execs (+ better decisions)”
  • “Your dashboard should inform ‘data focus’ choices – don’t include ALL the numbers; pick the ones that tell the story
  • “The best way to look at the numbers is to compare current to historical and predictive (the plan)”

And my personal favourite: “Think of Excel as a design tool, not just a data tool. Start thinking of your reports as non-fiction stories”. As someone known for singing the praises of pivot tables, the analogy brought a smile to my face.

If you didn’t get the chance to see it prior to our gathering, here’s Napkyn’s earlier post on the event: eMetrics Ottawa – Awesome, Important, Free! (and Napkyn is in the house).

Jim Sterne of eMetrics and the Digital Analytics Association

  • “Big data” is that which no longer fits in an Excel spreadsheet – love that! Update: per Jim’s comment below, this should actually be credited to Stephane Hamel – and with that, thanks Stephane for coining it and Jim for introducing me to it!
  • Snippet answers from Jim’s question: What Makes a Great Analyst? One who “understands the raw material and the mechanics of extraction”, “the problem to be solved” and who is “mindful of built-in biases that prevent one from looking at one’s data honestly”
  • The low hanging fruit of analysis includes “errors, omissions, complaints, spikes and troughs, ‘that’s funny” moments and anomalies”
  • “Above all, have an opinion”

emetrics-summit-logoAlthough Jim had much more to say, for a great summary of Jim’s presentation, you can’t beat Practicing the Art of Analytics published by June Li and the crew clickinsight in Toronto.

For those of you who might be interested in attending an upcoming eMetrics Summit, but you’d like to know more about it, take a look at distilled learning from eMetrics Toronto 2012.

And, congratulations to the Canadian eMetrics Summit Tour winners!

Allan Wille of Klipfolio

Allan gave us his forecast on trends that are changing the weather for marketers:

  • “1) real-time feeds, 2) data democracy, and 3) using the Cloud”
  • “Real time” of automated self-serve dashboards can make a difference”; break loose from the chains of manually updating Excel spreadsheets!
  • Data democracy is about: “aligning the entire organization behind the data, getting everyone in the organization looking at the data and realizing that data needs to be shared no matter what”
  • Communicate goals, measure then communicate again to get everyone on the bus (idea from book From Good to Great by Jim Collins)
  • “The Cloud has helped to develop the maturity if analytics tools” – amen to that!

Learn more from Klipfolio by taking a look at their pre-event post: Let’s talk metrics! Klipfolio an official sponsor of the eMetrics Tour.

Also, to see how our colleagues at the Montreal stop fared, take a look at eMetrics Tour Montréal – Un résumé des conférences (in French).

And finally – thanks to all of you who tweeted up a storm; it was great to be able to ‘replay’ the event with your documentary effort! In particular, my thanks to @w_grimes, @jorrdanlouis, @nellleo and @LindsayMMcPhee. You captured a great deal of information, and I really appreciated it.

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Kelly KubrickAn afternoon immersion in digital analytics

Digital Maturity: the Channel Strategy Dimension

by Kelly Kubrick on January 20, 2013

Originally published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog; republished with permission from dStrategy Media.

The fifth dimension of digital maturity is your Channel Strategy. It is one of Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity™ assessed in the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™, a business planning tool to help organizations improve their digital processes against an established standard.

Channel Strategy icon from the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model

This dimension relates to your organization’s approach to its channel strategy for its digital initiatives. You’ll notice that “mobile” is not a channel – instead, our model assumes your digital channel interactions regardless of the customers use of desktop web vs mobile environments.

Three channel categories

There are three categories of channels, not all of which may apply to you.

  1. Digital marketing and communications channels including the use of paid (advertising), owned (website, mobile app or blog) and earned (social or public relation) media OR
  2. Digital ‘transaction-enabling’ channels such as a) ecommerce or membership sales, or to accept donations b) Non-financial transactions such as accepting job or grant applications, accepting votes or generating leads OR
  3. Digital distribution channels including direct to consumer, retail, wholesale or affiliate / partners.

How does your organization approach its channels?

Think about your organization and its approach to channel management:

1. Which of the three categories of channels described above are you currently using?
2. How would you characterize your organization’s approach to each?
3. What is the funding model for your digital channels?
4. How do you measure performance measurement of your digital channels?

Next, let’s take a look at your organization’s social business strategy.

Answering these questions is will help your organization determine if it is in the best position to implement your digital initiatives. What do you think? Have you got the right channel strategy in place to ensure your organization’s digital success?

Next: Social Business Strategy

Next, let’s take a look at the sixth dimension, your organization’s social business strategy.

Participate in the dStrategy Digital Maturity Benchmark Survey

For specific questions that measure the human resources dimension of digital maturity, take the dStrategy Digital Maturity Benchmark Survey. We will share our collective results at the next Digital Strategy Conference.

Learn how to measure your organization’s digital maturity

Or, to measure your organization’s digital maturity across all six dimensions, register for our Mapping Digital Maturity Workshop, a practical, hands-on learning session to help your organization create a road map for digital success.

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Kelly KubrickDigital Maturity: the Channel Strategy Dimension

Recommended Resources for Digital Analysts

by Kelly Kubrick on January 16, 2013

First published in July 2007 – most recent update: January 16, 2013

Every few months, the opportunity comes up for me to share my list of recommended digital (web) analytics resources. Given the number of times I’ve emailed that list, I think it may be of use to you as a blog post. Enjoy!

Recommended Digital Analytics Resources

1. Follow #measure on Twitter – one of several hashtags your fellow digital analysts use – see example results here.

2. Subscribe to Web Analytics Forum email listserv. You can monitor it online or receive a daily-digest email that includes all postings. Lurk on it for a while and you’ll see the kinds of questions getting asked – sometimes vendor specific, sometimes not. I’ve had superb responses any time I’ve posted questions there. As a point of interest, when I first joined the list, there were approximately 2,000 members. Today, it’s over 7,000. FYI – as a members-only list, you must apply to join, but the administrators are pretty speedy at turning around requests, so don’t let that hold you back.

3. Nowadays, there is a plethora of fabulous digital analytics and web analytics blogs, but one of the most comprehensive remains Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik. The easiest way I’ve found to read blogs is to through an RSS reader  (I use Google Reader), which allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds of multiple blogs.

4. Over the years, more and more web analytics books have been published, and I try to get through as many as I can. For my personal list including book descriptions, see Critical tidbits from a Web (now Digital) Analytics bookshelf.

5. If you’d prefer to listen versus read, you should subscribe to the Beyond Web Analytics podcast by Rudi Shumpert and Adam Greco. Each podcast is roughly 30 minutes and they do great interviews with fellow analysts, provide analytics event roundups and much more. One of the things I like best about it is that at the beginning of each episode, Rudy and Adam ask each interviewee how he or she got started on the path of becoming an analyst – I’m always intrigued to hear about the various paths people take.

6. Google Analytics’ Conversion University which offers hours of free online training. Although the material was developed specifically to help people prepare for Google Analytics Individual Certification (IQ) test, and so is, of course, Google Analytics-centric, the material is useful regardless. If you like to set your own learning pace, there are loads of great modules in there.

7. If you’re just starting out and are looking for some hands on experience at analytics, you should check out The Analysis Exchange. It’s a great concept – essentially, it pairs not for profits in need of web analytics consulting with eager web analysts, supervised by veteran web analysts. And the best part? It’s free consulting for the non-profits!

8. I strongly recommend you join our industry association, the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) formerly known as the Web Analytics Association. They provide great research and other useful benefits – events, webinars, articles, discounts to industry events, etc.  I’ve been a proud member since 2006. Most importantly, though, you should consider volunteering on one of several committees – I’ve participated working groups for the Education committee and met some great folks as a result.

9. Today, there are many online web analytics and or digital analytics courses you might consider: The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Award of Achievement in Digital Analytics, Université Laval”s “Analytiques Web”  (in French) course, McMaster University’s Web Analytics Program,  Algonquin College’s certificate in Digital Analytics, and the University of San Francisco (USF)’s  Advanced Web Analytics program.

Full disclosure: I serve on the advisory board of the McMaster program, am an instructor in the USF program and have served on UBC Course Enhancement working groups coordinated by (as they were then) the Web Analytics Association.

10. If your budget allows, you should consider attending one of several global eMetrics Summits. In 2008, I was very pleased to see eMetrics come to Canada. Now entering its fifth year, take a look at the upcoming eMetrics Toronto conference (March 2013).

What about you? Do you have any favourite web analytics / digital analytics resources you would add to my list?

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Kelly KubrickRecommended Resources for Digital Analysts

Digital Maturity: the Content Strategy Dimension

by Kelly Kubrick on January 10, 2013

Originally published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog; republished with permission from dStrategy Media.

The fourth dimension of digital maturity is your Content Strategy. It is one of Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity™ assessed in the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model™, a business planning tool to help organizations improve their digital processes against an established standard.

Content Strategy icon from the dStrategy Digital Maturity Model

With thanks to the combined efforts of Rahel Anne Bailie, Noz Urbina, Halvorson, Kristina and Melissa Rach to provide our industry with working definitions:

Content strategy is “a comprehensive process that builds a framework to create, manage, deliver, share and archive or renew content in reliable ways”

Content strategy encompasses multiple processes

• The inventory and format(s) of the content it produces
• The location and storage of its content
• The organization’s content development and publishing process
• The performance measurement of the content it produces
• The content evaluation and archiving process

Content assets include more than we think

• Information about your organization, the people/employees, and contact information, mission.
• Product and service information
• Sales collateral
• Marketing and or advocacy collateral
• Advertising collateral
• Customer service information
• Employee education and training material
• Product support
• Policies and legal information
• User generated content such as reviews, testimonials, customer service tickets
• Your web, mobile app, blog, social or email content

How does your organization approach content strategy?

Now, think about your organization’s approach to content:

  1. Is there a comprehensive inventory of content?
  2. Which format(s) is that content available in?
  3. Where is content located and stored?
  4. What is your content development and content publishing process?
  5. Who is responsible for producing content?
  6. How is content evaluated?
  7. What is your content archiving process?
  8. Are you producing all the content you need?
  9. What is your policy towards the use of third party sources of content such as user generated content?
  10. Is there clarity internally about the difference between responsive versus adaptive content?

Definition: Responsive Content vs. Adaptive Content

Responsive content “responds to the environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. Content designed for desktop is automatically resized to the screen size of the device in use” – essentially changing in how the content is displayed, visually.

Adaptive content is “format-free, device-independent, scalable, and filterable content that is transformable for display in different environments and on different devices in an automated or dynamic fashion.”

Source: Rockley, Ann and Charles Cooper, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, Second Edition, Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper, New Riders, 2012)

With adaptive content, structure is applied to content so that it can be displayed accordingly to business rules that vary by use case.

Answering these questions is will help your organization determine if it is in the best position to implement your digital initiatives. What do you think? Have you got the right content strategy in place to ensure your organization’s digital success?

Next: Channel Strategy

Next, let’s take a look at the fifth dimension, your organization’s channel strategy.

Participate in the dStrategy Digital Maturity Benchmark Survey

For specific questions that measure the human resources dimension of digital maturity, take the dStrategy Digital Maturity Benchmark Survey. We will share our collective results at the next Digital Strategy Conference.

Learn how to measure your organization’s digital maturity

Or, to measure your organization’s digital maturity across all six dimensions, register for our upcoming Mapping Digital Maturity Workshop, a practical, hands-on learning session to help your organization create a road map for digital success.

read more
Kelly KubrickDigital Maturity: the Content Strategy Dimension

Your Digital Measurement Resolution for 2013

by Kelly Kubrick on January 9, 2013

May I offer you a New Year’s resolution that doesn’t involve depriving yourself? A resolution that actually gives you good things – and at no cost?

Thanks to everyone who came out! Check out Online Authority’s takeaways from an afternoon immersion in analytics.

No need to deprive yourself

Register now to catch Jim Sterne of eMetrics, Digital Analytics Association and authorial fame roll up his sleeves and answer the question “What Makes a Great Analyst?”

If you’ve got digital measurement on the horizon for 2013 – or are deep in it now – you need to be there. Contemplating measurement frameworks? Or how to structure an analytics team? Need ideas for job titles? Or digital analyst job descriptions? Then block off the afternoon…

Jim Sterne

Jim Sterne

Jim will be in Ottawa for a pre-eMetrics Tour on January 17th, 2013 at Empire Grill in the Byward Market from 1:15pm to 5:00pm. This is your chance to hear Jim help Ottawa’s #measure community contemplate what it takes to be a true artist in the field of digital analytics.

As someone who has had the pleasure of hearing Jim speak multiple times over several years, I can tell you he delivers. Not only does he deliver engaging, intriguing and thought-provoking material, he also believes firmly in the potential of the digital measurement community.

The only requirement? Limited seating: Register ASAP

Speaking of building our community, this event is a great way to do just that in a painless way. Not only do you get to hear Jim’s take on the state of our industry, but you also get to catch:

  • Stephane Hamel of Cardinal Path and creator of WASP (THANK YOU!!!) and of the Online Analytics Maturity Model (when’s the last time you assessed your organization’s analytics maturity? Never? Get on that, would you?)
  • Jim Cain of Napkyn Inc. forger of  new analytics business models (with one of my favourite lines ever: “Where your web analyst works.”) And who will help you use analytics to pick winners and losers. And we’re not talking Charlie Sheen…
  • Allan Wille of Klipfolio Inc. who’s going to give us the scoop on trends-analytical and how things are looking up for marketers (and who you should ask about things dashboard-y); and
  • Myself, Kelly Kubrick: I’ll be talking about applied analytics while making references to Hobbits. Habits! I mean habits!

And in between all this great content, you will meet your fellow Ottawa #measure community. Folks like you from private and public sectors, from across industries and all from Ottawa. Digital analysts, web analysts, search analysts, recovering analysts, future analysts…Come out and meet the crew!

In fact, if you really feel like broadening your Canadian analytical horizons, you can also catch our sister eMetrics Tour in Montreal on January 16th, 2013.

For additional scoop on the tour, check out Let’s talk metrics! Klipfolio an official sponsor of the eMetrics Tour and eMetrics Ottawa – Awesome, Important, Free! (and Napkyn is in the house).

Finally – assuming you are negotiating budget to attend eMetrics Toronto 2013 at this very moment, this is your chance to marshal arguments and perfect your pitch. And, if you are not familiar with the eMetrics Summits, here’s my learning from eMetrics Toronto 2012.

The moment is here…go ahead – you know you want to…register now…Hope you can make it!

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Kelly KubrickYour Digital Measurement Resolution for 2013

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