Winning With Data: Say No To Insights, Yes To Out-of-sights!

If there is one thing the universe agrees on, it is that you should just provide data… You should provide INSIGHTS!!! In the 807,150 (!) words I’ve written on this blog thus far, at least 400,000 have been dedicated to helping you find insights. In posts about advanced segmentation, in posts about how to build strategic dashboards that don’t suck,...

Mar 2022

Robust Experimentation and Testing | Reasons for Failure!

Since you're reading a blog on advanced analytics, I'm going to assume that you have been exposed to the magical and amazing awesomeness of experimentation and testing. It truly is the bee's knees. You are likely aware that there are entire sub-cultures (and their attendant Substacks) dedicated to the most granular ideas around experimentation (usually...

Feb 2022

The Most Important Business KPIs. (Spoiler: Not Conversion Rate!)

I was reading a paper by a respected industry body that started by flagging head fake KPIs. I love that moniker, head fake. Likes. Sentiment/Comments. Shares. Yada, yada, yada. This is great. We can all use head fake metrics to calling out useless activity metrics. [I would add other head fake KPIs to the list: Impressions. Reach. CPM. Cost Per View....

Jan 2022

Increase Analytics Influence: Leverage Predictive Metrics!

Almost all metrics you currently use have one common thread: They are almost all backward-looking. If you want to deepen the influence of data in your organization – and your personal influence – 30% of your analytics efforts should be centered around the use of forward-looking metrics. Predictive metrics! But first, let's take a small step back....

Aug 2021

Marketing Analytics: Attribution Is Not Incrementality

One of the business side effects of the pandemic is that it has put a very sharp light on Marketing budgets. This is a very good thing under all circumstances, but particularly beneficial in times when most companies are not doing so well financially. There is a sharper focus on Revenue/Profit. From there, it is a hop, skip, and a jump to, hey, am...

Jul 2021

The Power of Exponential Growth | Data Viz to Simplify Complexity

There has been a lot of heartbreak around the world with the CV-19 pandemic. This chart, from NPR, illustrates some cause for optimism. It shows the 7-day average new cases per day across the world. It is crucial to acknowledge what’s hidden in the aggregated trend above: The impact on individual countries is variable. A large percentage of humans...

Jun 2021

Analytics On The Bleeding Edge: Transforming Data's Influence

Analytics teams are named for the silos and limitations within which they trap themselves. Paid Media. Owned Media. SEO. BI. Customer Service. Data Warehousing. Email. And, a thousand other silos (depending on your company size). One outcome of this reality is that while every team works hard to do their very best work, it is rare that they earn strategic...

Mar 2021

How To: Be A Good Employee, Be A Great Boss | #winningcareers

Like many of you, I am both an employee and a people leader. At different points of the day, sometimes from one minute to the next, I have to switch gears so that I can be fully present as both a good employee and a good people leader. This constant quest for excellence, from one email to the next, from one meeting to the next as context changes is…...

Feb 2021

Simple Tricks To Up-level Your Analytics Reports.

Like you, I consume a whole lot of reports every day – company data, public data. Many are acceptable, some are very good and all the rest leave me extremely frustrated with both the ink and the think. People make so many obvious mistakes. Sometimes repeatedly. Just yesterday I was quietly seething because none of visuals included in the report contained...

Jan 2021

Smart Data Visualizations: Quality Assessment Algorithm

The gap between a bad and good data visualization is small. The gap between a good and great data visualization is a vast chasm! The challenge is that we, and our HiPPOs, bring opinions and feelings and our perceptions of what will go viral to the conversation. This is entirely counter productive to distinguishing between bad, good, and great. What...

Oct 2020