setting yourself up for success: building an analytics schema and data dictionary
TRANSCRIPT
Setting Yourself Up for Analytical Success
RYAN KOONCE
@Kissmetrics
#KissWebinar
@thuelmadsen
Thue is the Kissmetrics Webinar Wizard and Marketing Ops Manager. Before joining forces with Kissmetrics, he was a Lyft driver in SF, which is also
how he ended up as a Kissmetrics marketer. Whenever Thue is not trying to automate everything around him, you can find him hiking in the Sierras.
THUE MADSEN Marketing Operations Manager, Kissmetrics
@ThueLMadsen
Before founding SaaS Management, Ryan created a number of data-driven testing methods that helped
him build multi-million user companies.
RYAN KOONCE CEO, SaaS Management Group
@RyanKoonce
www.SaaSMgmt.com
http://www.saasmgmt.com
#KissWebinar
@RyanKoonce
1 Section One - Introduction
Step 1: Identify your expert
Step 2: List Key Business Questions
Step 3: List Key Metrics and Definitions
Step 4: Decide How to Collect Data
Step 5: Choose your Tools
Step 6: Create your Analytics Schema
Step 7: Manage your Integration
Step 8: Audit Your Data
Step 9: Build your Baseline Reports
2 Section Two - 9 Steps for Success
3 Section Three - Q & A
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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A LITTLE SEMANTICS
• Analytics is the process of testing a hypothesis based on the data available
• Reporting is the ability to extract information from your analytics system
• Business Intelligence is a fancy way to say analytics
• Data Visualization is drawing pretty pictures of analytics
• Big Data + Data Science + Predictive is magic • Data science generally doesn’t have ideas. It just tells you stuff (beer
+diapers).
9 Steps for Success BE THE HERO OF YOUR ORGANIZATION
STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR EXPERT
• You are a VP and doing your own analytics & reporting
• You are a marketing manager who has been tasked with “figuring it out”
• You are an engineer who has been asked to “check the database”
UH-OH Scenarios
STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR EXPERT
Dedicate Someone to Analytics and Reporting!
Key Business Questions come before Key Metrics
We’re going to focus on Marketing (Customer Acquisition) and Product (Engagement)
STEP 2: MAKE A LIST OF KEY BUSINESS QUESTIONS
Customer Acquisition
• What were our site visits per channel?
• How much money did we spend per visit by channel?
• For users that converted to paid subscribers, what activities were they most likely to preform in their trial period?
Key Business Questions come before Key Metrics
STEP 2: MAKE A LIST OF KEY BUSINESS QUESTIONS
Engagement / Retention
• What is our revenue per site visit by engagement campaign (retargeting, email)?
• How many photos did users download in their free trial by cohort?
• How many photos did active subscribers download compared to members who canceled?
Key Business Questions come before Key Metrics
STEP 2: MAKE A LIST OF KEY BUSINESS QUESTIONS
Avoid non-actionable questions
• What is my bounce rate?
• How many total registered users do I have?
KEY QUESTIONS INFORM KEY METRICS
Which digital marketing channel is the most profitable?
• Profit = Revenue Generated by User - Cost of Acquisition for User • Marketing Channel = Campaign, Source, Term, Medium (think UTM
Parameters)
What kind of user engagement results in more free trial conversions?
• Free Trial User Engagement = How many times did a user do event 1 AND event 2 during their trial period that converted to paid subscribers?
A few examples:
STEP 3: LIST YOUR KEY METRICS AND DEFINITIONS
• Site Visits - Anytime someone visits the site within a 30 minute window.
• Revenue - Total revenue collected from customers • Revenue Subtotal - Gross Revenue less discounts and tax
• Products Sold - The total number of products sold • Landing Page View - A Site Visit to a specific landing page
• Login - Any time someone signs into the site
It’s time to look past the Javascript Snippet.
STEP 4: DECIDE HOW YOU WILL COLLECT YOUR DATA
Identify and Track • Measure not only what happened, but who did it. • Segment, Kissmetrics, AttributionApp.com • SQL or Data Modeling experience generally not required
Data Warehouse • Store your data in Amazon Redshift, PosgresSQL, etc. • Looker, Mode, Periscope (Segment.com or TreasureData as translation
layers) • Query data directly - SQL or Data Modeling generally required.
How you decide to collect your data will help inform what tools to use.
IDENTIFY AND TRACK EXAMPLES
analytics.identify('1e810c197e', { name: 'Bill Lumbergh', email: '[email protected]' });
*Source: https://segment.com/docs/libraries/analytics.js/
analytics.track('Signed Up', { plan: 'Startup', source: 'Analytics Academy' });
Identify Track
Properties / Traits / Attributes
User Id Event
There isn’t one tool that rules all across devices
You will need data from everywhere
STEP 5: CHOOSE YOUR TOOLS
•A/B Testing - Optimizely, VWO, Taplytics •Attribution - AttributionApp, Branch •Analytics - Kissmetrics, Keen, Woopra •CRM - Salesforce •Email - Customer.io, Sendgrid, Mailchimp
•Referrals - Curebit, Extole
What tools you choose will factor in how you structure your data.
STEP 6: CREATE YOUR ANALYTICS SCHEMA
Should you fire events client side or server side?
REQUEST A DEMO
Start optimizing your marketing today with a free personal demo of Kissmetrics
STEP 7: MANAGE YOUR EVENT INTEGRATION
Why Your Engineers (Secretly?) Hate You*
• They are really busy and don’t have time for “marketing”
• You asked for one too many tags
• You tell them to pull you a report of “stuff” from the database
* If this slide is not relevant to you, then simply Slack them a link to the analytics schema and head to the beach/mountain etc. for some fun.
STEP 7: MANAGE YOUR EVENT INTEGRATION
Make Your Engineers Love You
• Wow them with your analytics schema
• Explain how the pieces fit together
• Triage the events so they can more easily fit them into their schedule
• Bribe them with beer or scotch
STEP 7: MANAGE YOUR EVENT INTEGRATION
** Statements like this are why your engineers (secretly?) hate you.
An experienced engineer can usually implement an analytics schema in about one day.**
STEP 8: AUDIT YOUR DATA
•Audit in a Staging environment before going to production - Identify and Track data is forever
•Confirm the events are collected from all relevant places, on all devices.
•Confirm that identify is being called in the appropriate places.
•Confirm anything you can by comparing it directly to the data in your database.
STEP 9: GENERATE YOUR BASELINE REPORTS
•Using your relevant tools, generate the reports that answer your initial business questions.
•Call a meeting. Make Presentation. Get Raise.
•Your initial reports will create even more questions, for more analysis and reports.
•Using the data, develop optimization sprints, test hypothesis and implementation plans.
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RYAN KOONCE CEO, SaaS Management Group
@RyanKoonce
THUE MADSEN Marketing Operations Manager, Kissmetrics
@ThueLMadsen
Questions?