I Just returned from Madrid, where I did the keynote at the wonderful web analytics conference, practitioner web analytics. The conference was announced and promoted as a conference for data driven professionals – which I took very literally and went all in, with a rather geeky presentation (at first sight). I do believe though, that choosing your optimization goals is not taken as seriously as it should be, by most analytics teams (whether internal or external).

My primary point is that, in any optimization activity, you must serve the overall purpose of the organization – and if so, can you honestly say that your optimization goals are KPI duplicates? and if NOT KPI duplicates, can you confirm them as KPI derivatives? And if NOT KPI derivatives, you must certainly be able to confirm them as KPI derivative proxies ?

If none of the above, then I believe it is fair to say that the further away your optimizations goals are from your organizational KPIs – the higher the risk of applying direct harm. (turning decent marketing initiatives into organizational de-optimization exercises).

My conclusion was (is) that you want to create marketing scenarios, where you can predict an organizational aligned outcome with a high level of confidence.

Find my slides below (which of course doesn’t do justice to my presentation, as the text is only pointers to the subject). Anywho, thanks to Andres, Luz, and team for a splendid day in Madrid (*even with the challenge of a power outage, mid-presentation)

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)