Influence Analytics from “Wandering” Dave Rhee

As I recently mentioned on the Web Analytics Forum, I’ve accepted a position as Analytics Country Manager for Germany with OX2, the leading pan-European interactive agency for web analytics. I explored opportunities with a number of different firms, and concluded that this was clearly the right one for me. When I first decided to move to Europe some time ago, I made a list of criteria and desiderata for my ideal situation. Let’s see how well I did….

Find a truly international environment, not simply move to one new country. Well, I’m now living in Frankfurt, will work with clients throughout Germany and neighboring countries, and work for a pan-European interactive agency that is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the Capital of Europe in many ways. My colleagues are Dutch, Spanish, Belgian, French, and between them speak English, French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, and probably a dozen other languages they’re too modest to mention. So I feel comfortable checking this one off the list.

Continue to work with thought leaders in web analytics. Aurélie Pols has become known as the leader of the European “Web Analytics Dream Team,” and no enlightened firm can survey their peers about analytics without having her name and OX2 come up as a recommendation. But it’s not just about the expertise that OX2 has already developed — they’re eager to help advance the state of analytics throughout Europe, both by being one of the few truly vendor-independent agencies in the region (not uncommon in the U.S., but fairly rare here), and also by organizing educational events like the second annual European Web Analytics Day on September 14, 2007. As volunteers and members of the Web Analytics Association, they also support the global influence of the WAA on our industry, lending their unique perspectives to the standards, membership, marketing, and other committees.

Work with a variety of clients, in different industries, and with different web site goals. Having gone through a complete integration cycle with the eCommerce analytics platform for a major US PC manufacturer, I was eager to see how the analytics world looks from an agency point of view, and engage with clients whose sites are not necessarily eCommerce focused. Given OX2’s impressive client roster (and the web analytics subsidiary company’s own client roster, which I’ll have the opportunity to help grow, particularly in Germany), this one is also clearly a “win” for me. And that’s not even counting the fact that OX2 has even developed its own, surprisingly powerful and competitive web content management system, Onisystem, which is capable of building in the analytics tagging automatically! How many other agencies can boast that?

Keep abreast of the latest and greatest about other analytics platforms in the market. Let’s see now — besides being a long-time WebTrends Certified Partner (and only European member of the WebTrends Insight Network), OX2 is one of the few Google Analytics Authorized Consultants on the continent. Not only that, but the first public demo of Microsoft’s long-anticipated free web analytics platform, Gatineau, will be at the OX2-organized Web Analytics Day. Is that cutting-edge enough? Naturally, OX2 also works closely with Omniture as Certified Professionals in Belgium, France, and Germany, with Unica for analytics and their open marketing platform, and Visual Sciences / Web Side Story, IndexTools, as well as a number of regional players with a strong local presence in this space.

Continue to develop analytics for social networks, Web 2.0 initiatives, and other customer influence methods. I’ll be able to take advantage of the OX2 development team, as time permits, to create an influence analytics engine. Using proprietary algorithms developed in my incomplete doctoral dissertation, we’ll see how much additional lift can be generated by scoring members of an online community by their ability (proven and predicted) to influence others to purchase. Essentially, creating an additional segmentation variable as a community purchase predictor. Of course, it’s somewhat more complex than that, which is precisely why the existing tools for Social Network Analysis haven’t been able to encapsulate this additional value proposition in a way that’s useful to advertising, sales, and marketing organizations. Hopefully, we’ll be able to change that. Feel free to link to me on LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, or any other of the major professional social networks, as they each have something slightly different to offer practitioners in the web analytics community.

Continue serving the greater web analytics community. I’ll have the opportunity to expand my role as a mentor to those new to the profession of web analytics, and contribute more to the Web Analytics Association, the Web Analytics Forum, various local communities throughout Europe, the US, and the rest of the world, as well as assist in the knowledge management efforts already underway through initiatives like Dylan Lewis’s Wiki Web Analytics collaborative site. As I say, the opportunities will be there, but the truly scarce commodity here is time! These are very important, though, and if you agree with me, I hope you’ll also make an effort to contribute even a few hours a month to give something back to your peers and colleagues by being an active community member both online and off.

Escape the influence of Eric Peterson. Except that his top-shelf consultancy, Web Analytics Demystified, is already a key partner of OX2’s, and he and I will both be presenting at the upcoming European Web Analytics Day. In the words of Homer Simpson, “D’oh!” Okay, 6 out of 7 isn’t bad — and since analytic interpretation is often a “close enough for horseshoes” sort of discipline, we’ll just give it a big green light on the dashboard, call it a perfect score, and bury the details in a spreadsheet.

Finally, I want to offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to those of you who provided me with your generous personal guidance and advice during my transition, both about the geographic move from the “New World” back to the “Old World,” as well as from client-side to interactive agency. I look forward to continuing our discussions about the differences and similarities across all the segments of our industry, as well as working with each of you towards our mutual success.

I want to thank you for your support of the Web Analytics Association, the Web Analytics Forum, and especially those of you who have helped me personally throughout this transition period.

As always, please let me know if you have ideas about how the Web Analytics Forum can better serve all of its members, and in particular, the Global Web Analytics community, and how, as an individual author, might help contribute further to the value of our community, profession, and society.

Best,

“Wandering” Dave Rhee
Web Analytics Forum Moderator
OX2 Analytics Country Manager, Germany
Author, Influence Analytics Blog

In the Web Analytics Forum, Patrick asked whether the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits were really worth attending. As some of you know, I’m already on record as having said that eMetrics (formerly Emetrics — sorry, Jim!) is the one conference that you MUST attend, if you have anything at all to do with web analytics — even if your employer won’t sponsor you, so you have to use personal vacation days to get the time off of work, and pay the travel, lodging, and conference fees out of your own pocket. I’m partial to the “big” Summit in San Francisco (formerly in Santa Barbara), but all of Jim and Matthew’s Marketing Optimization Summits are amazing, and definitely well, well worth the investment.

Anyone considering attending the Washington, DC, eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit — or anybody reading this, for that matter — should join the Web Analytics Association. I’m a big proponent of WAA membership, and believe all of us have a responsibility to join it in support of our profession and our peers and colleagues who in turn support us and our industry in numerous ways. The Web Analytics Forum is moderated by WAA volunteers, and even though I have the pleasure of serving as primary moderator, I still pay for my WAA membership personally. It’s sort of like being a master chef and owning your own knives — you don’t expect the restaurant you work for to teach you how to cook, and while they may own the pots and pans, your knives are a personal investment and contribute an essential ingredient to your skills as a chef. Why trust something so critical to the whims of an employer?

Of course, there are numerous benefits to being a WAA member — the occasional free pass to webinars and seminars, and hefty discounts to some of the best trade shows and conferences in our industry and related others. For eMetrics, the discount more than pays for your WAA membership, so you have no reason not to join!

So getting back to eMetrics — why is it so valuable? Well, with all due respect to Jim, Eric, Avinash, and the rest of my esteemed colleagues, web analytics is not easy, and it’s not hard, and it’s not a process — analytics is a culture, and the best way to become “of” the culture is to immerse yourself in the company of your peers. (That’s emic, as opposed to etic research, for you academics and cultural anthropologists.)

Immersion in the culture of web analytics doesn’t mean, “read summaries online,” nor does it mean “attend, watch, and observe,” but instead, “interact, converse, explore, and respond, in intimate small groups, as well as in large ballroom presentations.” Sure, the Web Analytics Forum is a great way to continue the persistent conversation — based on my extensive experience, I’d say it’s one of the most well-run professional social networks for any industry. But it’s still no substitute for Web Analytics Wednesdays, or eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits, or hanging out for “a beer or something” with the Aussies.

Now when I suggest that analytics is a culture, I mean that in several different ways. Like a seed in a petri dish, it has to be incubated and cultivated carefully until it’s strong enough to take root. If you’re the only evangelist within your organization who is not only quantitatively metrics-minded, but also driving management to make decisions based on realistic interpretations of the data, then you’ll have a difficult time succeeding until you network with peers throughout the organization to gather support.

Another hallmark of our culture that those smarter than I have written about is that analytics is an ongoing process, and a mindset. It’s not a tool so much as an attitude. Not a report, so much as a perspective. And it’s not undertaken by an individual (no matter what their title) so much as by a group — a group committed to improvement at the expense of sacrificing sacred cows and overturning widely-held historical beliefs using the pry-bars of reliable data.

Okay, so maybe I’ll retract some of what I said earlier — analytics is easy, and analytics is hard, and analytics is a process. But one thing analytics is not, is a solitary practice. The practice of analytics requires a culture of support. Not simply within your organization, but oftentimes across a team of tool vendors, partners, and consultants as well. And most importantly, given the rapidly changing pace of the technological advancements we see regularly, the successful practice of analytics requires the shared knowledge of all the practitioners within our community. And that, is why adopting the perspective of viewing analytics as a culture will help guide you to success.

But analytics is not only about culture — it’s also about influence. That’s a topic for another post, though.

What do you think? What value have you found in attending the eMetrics Summits? Thanks for sharing your thoughts!