Recap of ObservePoint’s Validate Conference

I’m writing this while on a plane from Salt Lake City back to the Bay Area, despite a 3 hr delay at the airport, with a smile on my face. Validate 2019 by ObservePoint was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in quite some time. Why? What made it so special? It combined all the right elements: great and inspirational speakers, awesome networking opportunities, and an absolutely stunning setting.  Let’s break it down. Great speakers, collaborative sessions The speakers at Validate 2019 were top notch, with heavy hitters in the Analytics industry such as Adam Greco and Michele Kiss of Analytics Demystified, James McCormick of Forrester, and Kevin Jorgeson, world-class athlete and climber of the Dawn Wall in Yosemite.  Kevin’s talk was especially inspiring, as he talked about
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5 Tips to Getting More out of Google Optimize

Martijn Scheijbeler and I recently presented at MeasureCamp London (and he again at MeasureCamp Amsterdam) on our best practices and tips for getting more out of Google Optimize. The response was great, so we decided to pen these thoughts as a blog post to share more broadly.   Tip #1: Identify key segments of users to target  (Krista) One of the things that makes Optimize so powerful is it’s deep integration with Google Analytics. You can use your Google Analytics data to identify key segments of users to target users as audiences shared Optimize. Examples: Loyal customers: Been to your site X times and purchased Y instances/value Status groups: Premium frequent fliers, Economy standard fliers Geo-location: Special offer for San Antonio residents Once you’ve identified these key audiences, create a unique
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The Education Series: 5 Tips for Becoming a Public Speaker

This post is part of the Education Series, a series focused on learnings and tips for the softer skills of digital marketing, many of which come from my experiences over the past decade in this industry.    One of my first (large) public speaking engagements was in front of a crowd of about 300 young adults at a political networking event in Washington D.C. in the summer of 2007. I was running the event and was the Emcee + speaker for organization background and event purpose, prior to introducing our keynote for the evening (a US Congresswoman). My voice quivered uncontrollably, I turned bright red and felt faint as I stumbled my way through. Friends in the audience promised I didn’t sound nervous, but I never believed them. After a second
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Women in Analytics: Finding Allies

This past weekend I had the pleasure of participating in my first MeasureCamp event. This was actually my first un-conference, and even though I had a vague idea of how the day would go, I had no idea what to expect when it came to running a session. I had heard many things about strategizing to pick the best session slots (and avoiding the time slot Simo chooses), room layout, etc. Thankfully, MeasureCamp founder Peter O’Neill recommended a specific room to me after I described the setup/style I was after. I was also not sure which time slot to book, but I ended up grabbing session #3 which was right before lunch. I figured that this could either be a blessing or a curse, depending on how hungry people were.
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I’m a Woman in Tech: How it Helps Me and Hurts my Gender

I’m an analytics professional. A teacher. An advocate. An advisor. I work in tech. I work with engineers, developers, marketers, sales, product, and ops. I work with all levels, from analysts to executives. And I am a woman. Until recently, I’ve hadn’t put much thought into what that really meant for me professionally. I attribute that to a couple of reasons: I’ve (almost) always had managers who have treated me with respect and pushed me, advocated for me, and promoted me based on the quality of work and the contribution to the business I’ve delivered. Not based on my gender. And also because I’ve never seen myself as a feminist (I’m not saying this is good or bad or that being a feminist would require me to think about what it
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Join the DAA SF Symposium on Nov 13: Getting Data Right with Quant AND Qual!

Originally posted on the official Google Analytics Blog, reposting here: This year the annual Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Symposium is taking place on Thursday November 13th and will be hosted at University of San Francisco. The theme is “optimizing performance using quantitative and qualitative practices”. The DAA SF chapter has lined up industry leaders who will be sharing their thoughts and experiences. We are expecting a great afternoon of discussion followed by a networking reception. Following are the event details: Our lineup of wonderful speakers is focused on presenting real-world solutions to the optimization challenges we all face everyday. They will be discussing the principles of qualitative data collection, optimization and the relation to quantitative data they’ve put into practice. This year we are piloting a new, more interactive
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Your Optimization Program’s First Hire

Just starting out in web optimization? I recently spoke on a panel at Optimizely’s Opticon and one of the questions that came up was ‘who would be your first hire’ for a new optimization program. There were a few different opinions on the panel, ranging from someone who gets stuff done, to an analytics rockstar, to that rare unicorn who can do it all. While all of these are good places to start, I tend to take the viewpoint of optimization through a solid analytics background as the best place to start. (Of course there are many optimization all-stars who didn’t come from an analytics background.) Why? Here are a few of the reasons why I’d look at hiring an analytics rockstar as your optimization lead: 1. They know data
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Adobe Summit 2014 Recap

Summary & Key takeaways from Adobe Summit 2014 The Adobe Summit has exploded over the past 3 years as it moved away from the Grand/Little America, where it was still hyper focused on analytics & testing (~2,000 people attending 1-2 years post Omniture acquisition), to a large scale (6,000+ people) pan-digital marketing showcase hosted at the Salt Palace Convention Center. The growth and integration with other tools in their suite has allowed them to shift focus from solely an analytics/optimization product line to a ‘Marketing Cloud’ of tools marketed to the CMO and used across the digital/marketing organization. Here are my top high level takeaways from this year’s Summit: Key themes: Testing, Platform, & Personalization Takeaway #1: Over the past 2 years Adobe has pushed hard on integration & product
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eMetrics Sydney Recap

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend and speak at eMetrics in Sydney, Australia. This was the first conference I had attended or spoke at outside of the US, and a very unique opportunity to see how the digital analytics industry is thriving elsewhere. One thing that stood out to me: the analytics industry in Australia is a tight knit community with a ton of engagement via IAPA which is a similar organization to the Digital Analytics Association (DAA) in the US. It was great to meet and talk with everyone at this event and I walked away very impressed with the level of talent and enthusiasm that I saw. The second thing that stood out to me: Twitter is still an up and coming medium for
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