If the first day is more informational and inspirational, the second day is more instructional and practical. We descended from 3000 miles high C-level view to the ground level, web analyst view. The agenda is fully packed with many great sessions and if you are not sure what exactly you want to hear, you will be in a big trouble.
The day started with one of the best keynotes from NYTimes. Mr. James Robinson, Director of the Web Analytics presented “Web Analytics as a Value Driver Across Media”. It is simply great for two reasons 1) it gives us many real case study how they use web analytics data, to drive not only marketing but sales and operational activities 2) the “journey” message just resonates with each one of us. And it gives us great hope that if I am not there yet, I can get there eventually, if I can get the people, process and technology right.
Another great presentation is from Joel Megibow, VP of Customer Experience and Online Marketing from Hotels.com. If NYTimes gives us hope and let us see the light at the other end of the tunnel, Joel helps us find a way to get there. Every company in the planet keeps talking about customer experience, customer centric and other buzz words all day long, but Hotels.com is the one of the few, if not the only one I have seen so far really gets the idea. Joel the VP (not Joel the plumber) leads a team in the company with cross functional experts. They meet twice a week, essentially look at every customer comments, prioritize them, use the “Tivo for the web”–Tealeaf to reply the sessions, identify the real causes and go ahead to fix them, one at a time, no matter what it takes. The executive commitment, organizational structure, technical expertise Joel is able to pull together really make all the difference. He shared a story that he even personally called an angry lady, apologized to her and had the programmers to manually fix the issue for several days before they were able to patch the application. At the end of his presentation, Jim Sterne said, “Joel, you just won me as a customer of hotels.com”. Yes, and me too.
Joel Megibow, VP of Customer Experience and Online Marketing, Hotels.com
Bryan Eisenberg’s “Always be Testing” is the most practical of all. “Testing and Targeting” is not a new theme at all and there are more and more companies are starting to experiment with buttons, colors etc. With Google Website Optimizer, you can even do A/B testing or MVT for free. Bryan not only offer the concepts of “Persuasion Architecture”, but also a free book “Always be Testing”. The book is written with Google Website Optimizer in mind, but you can apply the concept and ideas regardless what testing tool you use. Of course, to add a personal fan fare, Bryan is so nice to sign the book. So here we go, I have the first book in my life signed by somebody I admired!
Bryan Eisenberg, FutureNow
Multivariate Testing Panel-eMetrics Summit 2008
(From Left to Right: Tim Ash, SiteTuners.com, Bryan Eisenberg, FutureNow Inc., Steve Daigneault, Amnesty International, Aaron graham, McAfee. Modorator: John Diorio from Google, not in the photo)
Jim Novo taught two very powerful concepts: relevance and confidence. He talked about how to use his famous past/last activity matrix to predict the future behaviors and use control groups to improve the confidence of the campaign. The concepts are so simple, yet powerful and surelly have great application.
Like any other conference, there are sessions making people fall sleep too. In eMetrics Summit’s case, presentations from vendors are normally boring, full of bragging and in some cases, maybe even attacking their competitions. Not fun, not insightful and not useful. Occassionally you’ll come across a presentation such as the one from HomeDepot. After listening to their presentation, I think their marketing department is better to be renamed as “ReportDepot” because there are so many reports they use and the presenter actually talked about each of them!
Last but not the least, today is the Wedesday, so there is Web Analytics Wedesday, right after the last presentation. I haven’t been to any of the Web Analytics Wedesday in past, but it’s full of fun, and you get free drinks and foods too. When Eric Peterson stood on a chair, he requested Jim Sterne to come close and they received a long wave of applause from everybody, just to thank them to create, promote and nurture this wonderful community, with their knowledge, skills and sacrific. They are our heros.
