Agile Marketing – Finally, Data Driven Marketing That Makes Sense

Presented By

John Cass, Director of Digital Marketing, McDougall InteractiveChristina Inge, VP of Marketing, EdTrips

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What Is Agile Marketing?

Applies Agile, a principal originally from engineering, to marketing to reach these goals:

Faster results from marketing efforts

Knowing—and proving—what works

Spend less on marketing that doesn’t work

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How Does It Work?

Data

LaunchCampaig

n

See Early

Results

Iterate/Improve/Discard

Close & Evaluate

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Agile vs. Traditional Marketing

“Agile Marketing is: focus on the customer, validated learning, short, adaptive iterations and cross-functional collaboration” – Jim Ewel, AgileMarketing.net

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Agile Pillars in Practice

Focus On the Customer: Don’t talk about how hard you worked, talk about how you solve customer problems

Validated Learning: Test what you do, learn from each campaign

Adaptive Iterations: Tweak weekly/monthly to generate more results. No Crock Pots!

Cross-Functional Collaboration: Inside and outside marketing

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Agile vs Traditional Campaign

Set Annual Plan

• Long planning process• Set in stone for

year/quarter

Build

Major Campaign

s

• Expensive• Can take months• Intensive reviews

Launch Campaign

s

• Don’t know if it’s working until later

• Cannot change

Evaluate

• Done late if at all• Doesn’t always feed

back into next year’s strategy

Set Strategy

Create/Source

Resources

Run Campaigns

Test & Iterate

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Small, Big & Agencies

Start-Ups: Lots of small teams working in parallel

Large Companies: EMC great example, to improve process within the marketing organization

Agencies: Disincentive to work this way, but improves the communications process

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Agile Development Manifesto

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

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A Few Principles

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for the shorter timescale.

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Getting Started: Sprint Process

Chiefmartec.com Scott Brinkler

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Sprint Insights

Sprint periods vary by each team from 1 week to 6 weeks

Planning review improves effectiveness

Reduce tasks to boost credibility

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Scrum

What makes up a scrum? Daily 15-minutes Stand-up to enforce

bounds What’s the purpose of a

scrum? Usually, only team

members, ScrumMaster, product owner, can talk

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Scrum: 3 Questions To Answer

What did you do yesterday?

What will you do today?

• Commitments with peers• Address minor issues early• Keeps project on track

What impediments exist?

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The Importance of Data

Data is everything in an Agile marketing

Measure success of last iteration

Not Yes or No--data shows what worked, why, and how

Feed data into the next iteration

Test hypothesis—data is nothing without structure

Look at specific metrics and look at everything: target audience, creative, execution, strategy

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Sprint Review & Retrospective

• The team presents what was accomplished during the sprint

• A demo or review of metrics• Whole team participates• Invite the world

Sprint Review

• After every sprint, take a look at what is and is not working

• Typically 30–45 minutes• Internal meeting to the team, scrum master

and sometimes product owner

Sprint Retrospective

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What If I’m One Person?

Benefits All

In a company

Have A Company Scrum

Take Stock Every Day

SoloIterate

and Evaluate

Agile is more

on your end

With contractors

Respect their

internal processe

s

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HubSpot

Picked up from the development team after they improved their processes

More visibility with management & company

Helped to build the new team Added Science Fairs to 9 teams Growth has created some

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EdTrips

One-person marketing team, but rest of team very committed to evangelizing a product that helps teachers (“social organization”)

Weekly iterations, daily projects

Focused on metrics, make decisions quickly on what is driving results

Test and measure daily

Doubling user base every other week—look at what campaigns drove the most

Once something works, keep perfecting it—always seeking strategic and technical improvements

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Questions? @johncass

339 368 1955

http://pr.typepad.com

@christinainge

http://MarketingForGrowth.wordpress.com