X Change 2012 Huddle Leaders

X Change Huddles are small group break-outs led by enterprise analytics managers and senior practitioners.

Andrew Bakonyi of HP

Andrew leads the Analytics organization for HPDirect, HP's WW B2C eCommerce organization, which is #17 on the Internet Retailer Top500. He's spent the past four years building a multi-disciplinary Analytics team with locations in both the US and India. HPDirect is a fully integrated Manufacturer direct online website and is the only place where customers can buy custom configured HP PCs to their exact specifications. Previously, Andrew has worked in Sales, Marketing, Channels, Business Development, Strategy & Planning, as well as Online & Retail Merchandising for HP. With his extensive business background Andrew drives a very pragmatic approach to Analytics that always starts with a clear understanding of the business problem and ends with actionable insights that drive tangible business results.

Automation for (Data) Monkeys

What's the most common lament in today's enterprise analytics? It's probably. "We spend all our time creating infrastructure and running reports!" What's the solution? If you can't more people (and even if you can), automation may be the best answer. Reporting offers numerous opportunities for automation, but it's not the only place where automation can make the difference between a successful analytics effort and a team drowning in day-to-day tasks. Automation of maintenance and classifications, of administrative tasks, and tag management and auditing are all potentially invaluable time-savers. In this session with HP ecommerce measurement leader Andrew Bakonyi, you'll trade ideas for effective automation including the best targets for automation and the best techniques for getting the job done.

Educating End-Users

Interpreting Web Analytics can be difficult even for people actually doing Web Analytics so imagine how difficult it is for End Users to consume your reports/analysis. What are the best practices for ensuring that your work can be quickly digested with the minimum of misunderstanding. Techniques could include: slide notes/appendices, internal blogs, custom/individualized reports, etc.

Tom Betts of the Financial Times

Tom Betts joined the Financial Times in 2009 and is Head of Web Analytics for FT.com. Analytics is a significant and fast growing part of the FT's digital business, vital for business optimisation in all areas of online operation. He leads a globally focussed analytics team with analysts based in the US, UK and Asia.

Prior to joining the FT, Tom operated in a consultancy capacity delivering large scale data mining projects in a number of industry sectors. Tom led data analytics projects focussing on customer insights for some of the largest organisations in the UK in telecoms (Three, Vodafone, T-mobile), insurance (Royal Bank of Scotland Insurance, Insurance Fraud Bureau) and government.

Tom holds an MSc in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh, and a BSc in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Sussex.

Democratising data - breaking free from standard tools

With data presented to you in your tool, it is tempting to view the world through the lens of your web analytics supplier. That lens isn't necessarily optimal - potentially obfuscating salient trends, and rarely tailored to the needs of your business colleagues. Usability can play a huge role in adoption of your analytical insights, so how do you make complex behavioural data accessible to non-technical colleagues, and more importantly, how do you get them to use, take ownership and feel empowered by this information? In this huddle, we'll explore getting data out of web analytics tools and techniques for presenting it back to your internal customers. From dynamic dashboards to building bespoke interactive data visualisation tools plugged into your clickstream data pipe. If you're interested in information visualisation, replacing static reports with bespoke interactive data tools and finding ways of opening up 'train-of-thought' analysis beyond the analytics team then this conversation is for you.

Mobile in the mix - integrating multichannel data for 360 degree visibility

As the market for mobile app and web analytics matures, organisations are increasingly getting value from these solutions as they help to direct their mobile strategy. For many organisations, the growth of mobile channels is unprecedented and are on a trajectory to usurp desktop web access in a matter of years. But how do you evidence that mobile is bringing in incremental revenue or benefit to your organisation? This is especially true when analytics tools often view channels in isolation from one another. To what extent are you bringing in new audience, or have you just displaced your existing customers? Tom Betts, Head of Web Analytics for the Financial Times, has faced these challenges and turned to multichannel data integration to help provide answers. Bringing customer together data from a variety of digital channels into a clickstream data warehouse has helped provide complete visibility of customer interactions, allowing the Financial Times to understand the cross-channel preferences of their readers, measure platform cannibalisation and strategically plan their mobile development roadmap. Join Tom to discuss your mobile and multichannel challenges and consider how to use joined up data to answer these key business questions.

Brandon Bunker of Sony

Brandon Bunker has a combined 9 years of analytics experience with Sony, Nike and the Department of Defense. These companies have pushed Brandon to the cutting edge of analytics. While Brandon has worked with many of the major analytics providers, he also has expertise in developing analytics software to provide unique solutions.

Advanced Tag Management

This huddle will focus on innovative ways to use Tag Management Systems. Some of the topics discussed will be Tag Management of Social, Mobile, and offsite data capture/integration.

Driving Personalization with Analytics Data

Behavioral data is one of the strongest predictors of future actions. This huddle will focus on ways to use Analytics data to drive on-site and off-site personalization.

Tom Cattapan of Turner

Tom Cattapan is the Sr. Director of Digital Research and Analytics in Turner Broadcasting's Corporate Strategic Research and Audience Analysis department in Atlanta, GA. Tom works to establish digital research best practices across Turner properties including CNN.com, NBA.com, NASCAR.com, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim. His team is responsible for vetting the many digital research vendors in both the online and mobile arenas as well as supplying Turner corporate executives with analytics and insights of Turner's digital businesses including online video and mobile applications. Tom joined Turner Research from Tribune Interactive in Chicago where he was Sr. Manager of Research & Analytics. During his time at Tribune, Tom oversaw consumer research, measurement, and web analytics for Tribune's digital properties including LA Times, Newsday, and the Chicago Tribune. Earlier in his career Tom spent 6 years on the interactive media planning and buying side of the business at Starcom MediaVest Group, working on accounts such as E*TRADE, Motorola, McDonald's and Miller Brewing Co. Tom is a graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Digital Vendor Melee

You know Web and Mobile Analtyics is a good business to be in when there seems to be a new company entering the space on a daily basis. The problem is how to keep up with them all and determine if you need to work with each new product. There are many slightly over-lapping categories of vendors – traditional analytics (Omniture's Adobe, WebTrends, IBM, etc.), syndicated analytics (comScore, Nielsen, Quantcast, etc.), social media tools (Radian 6, Crimson Hexagon, Sysamos, this list goes on and on), and video vendors (Visible Measures, Conviva, Akamai) etc. This list could go on to include Multivariate testing vendors, vendors that specialize in Mobile Apps, and on and on.

And yet each category is becoming increasingly overlapping and competitive as each vendor tries to get into the others space. Omniture making a MRC approved syndicated data source and a Social Media tool, comScore producing a web analytics tool, etc. This session would be dedicated to discussing questions about this phenomenon:

• How does one select vendors to work with when so many are overlapping?
• Is it worth working with separate vendors for each of these, or can a company consolidate and focus on one? Or is it better to tag for various vendors and pull all of the data in house into an enormous internal data ware house?
• Is it even necessary to tag for a larger percentage of these companies?
• What criteria do companies use to determine who to tag for our use?
• Who is the best at each of these specialties and who is most likely to succeed in the long run? In other words, is anyone willing to guess who will win the Melee?
• For tag or beacon vendors, does it make sense for us as an industry to push for one tag that all vendors would use? This could reduce weight and page load times.
• Are we doomed to having to forever explain why the data from each of these vendors doesn't match, or can we work towards standards across each of these tools?
• Does having more competition between tools create more confusion, or more opportunities for standardization?

Kiele Cauble of American Airlines

Kiele Nelson Cauble leads web analytics at American Airlines, an initiative of AA’s Interactive Marketing Strategy team. She is responsible for the global analytic needs of the 58+ domain AA.com enterprise. As Analytics lead, Kiele implemented the Omniture Insight tool, helps leverage reporting analysis for strategic decision making and champions web analytics within the enterprise. She continues to help AA teams understand their data, enabling analysis and data-driven decisions; Kiele is the main Omniture Insight trainer at AA for tool users across the globe.

Prior to AA, Kiele worked in analysis and database reporting, focusing the last nine years on customer conversions, online business strategy and website optimization. Kiele has both Fortune 500 businesses and ad agency experience, supporting well-known brands such as Acer, Adaptec, Citrix, Compaq, Epson, Freeman Companies, Gartner Group, Hilton, IBM, Intel, Kodak, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgear, Nissan, Principal Financial Group, Purina, Symantec, TDK Electronics and Verizon.

Kiele holds a Graduate Marketing Certificate from Southern Methodist University and a BA in Mass Communications from Texas State University. While at Texas State, she was nominated as Advertising student of the year for two years in a row and a Direct Marketing Education Foundation Collegiate Institute scholar. Kiele has also earned for her work a John Caples International award as well as an Adweek Technology Marketing Icon award.

Big Data, Big Deal? It's the next bandwagon, so what?

And why are there conflicting definitions around this term? Come talk about the various uses and understanding of the term and how vendors are using it. Discuss whether or not big data is for your organization - what you can actually use it for and learn from it. Where might it actually fall for sponsorship and support? Learn what technology and vendors have brought to the table to lessen common fears and avoidance.

Jumping Ship: Have you accomplished everything you expected to at your company?

If no, is it time to push a little harder, find new sponsorship internally or possibly time to jump ship? Come discuss with your peers some techniques and tips for getting executive attention and support. What kind of timelines and progression should you really expect? Can you possibly change the internal dynamic, find new sponsorship or support without negative political drama? Discuss common signs and issues that indicate the business may not be as committed to becoming data-driven (or even want to be data informed??) as you thought. When is it time to give up and move on?

Colin Coleman of Turner

Colin Coleman is the Sr. Director of Data Strategy within the Strategic Audience Solutions team at Turner Broadcasting. In this role he delivers enterprise-wide audience data strategies and capabilities for properties such as CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, NBA, NASCAR, TruTV, TNT and TBS, across online, mobile and linear platforms. His responsibilities span the audience data lifecycle, from identification of data monetization business strategies through implementation of cross-platform data integration, management of global data standardization programs, and ultimate delivery of audience insight and best practice capabilities. Colin has led analytics- focused product management, product development and operations teams across a broad range of verticals, including media, financial services, supply chain, B2B eMarkets and aerospace. Colin started his analytics career with NASA and has a Ph.D. in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University.

Looking for Unicorns; the search for the new breed of Digital Analysts

The last year has seen several topics around Big Data and data integration across channels. We've discussed the mechanics of how web analytics data needs to be combined with other sources of audience data, such as advertizing data or e-commerce/CRM data. And we've discussed the technologies and data integration strategies required to pull this off. With these systems now coming on-line, the challenge has now become extracting the audience insights that we desire. Tools are easily bought or configured – the real challenge is finding a new breed of Digital Analyst. These Digital Analysts need to be true hybrids. Not only do they need a combination of deep analytical skills and a desire to find "the truth" in the data using tools such as SAS, but they must also have working knowledge of web analytics data – traditionally where marketing and research groups have played. And to top it all off, these hybrids must be right and left brained – puzzle solvers who also are natural consultants and "people persons". Finding these hybrids is becoming a choking point for the full utilization of new cross channel data sets. And finding these hybrids is becoming akin to searching for Unicorns. In this session we'll discuss each organization's need for "Unicorns", and how we've gone about finding them or steps we've taken to train from within our ranks. What risks do we run in waiting to find these Unicorns versus settling for "a horse" and training them? What will happen to our Big Data dreams if Unicorns don't appear fast enough?

Kevin Cobourn and Cameron Alverson of Dell

Kevin has spent 8 years practicing web analytics and living the life of an online enthusiast. Currently he is a Sr. Web Analytics Manager at Dell. Here he is currently responsible for online global strategic analysis programs involving voice of customer data. He’s also involved with helping Dell shape strategies for things like mobile and online support. At Dell, Kevin previously led analytics and measurement for content programs such as expert 3rd party content, online video, dell.com homepage optimization, and shopping help content.

Prior to working at Dell Kevin led web analytics at Volusion shopping cart software, managed a team of web analytic consultants at Versata Software, consulted at Clicktracks Web Analytics, and managed web analytics for Reynolds & Reynolds auto dealer websites.

Cameron Alverson is an online business manager at Dell. He helps incubate innovative programs on dell.com and helps program teams understand how to think strategically about their programs and make them better. Like many analysts, Cameron stumbled into web analytics by accident. He has provided consulting for Fortune 500 companies and small businesses. He sometimes does his own shadow puppets.

Creating and managing web content - so what's the ROI?

Your marketing department is planning to launch a whole bunch of new website content. Are you prepared to tell them how each this new content generates ROI with or without running a test? This huddle is going to focus on understanding elements involved with measuring website content ROI & the problems associated with measuring content financially. Discuss how to successfully address modeling ROI with testing and without testing. Explore how to earn buy in from your finance people.

Quantify, and I spy! Observing people using your site

Today's web analytics professional has access to more than just numbers. Tools like Clicktale, Tealeaf, and usertesting.com are intended to help business understand why people do what they do on your website. This huddle discusses how organizations leverage these tools and discuss how to best leverage these tools consistently in our analytics process. We will also discuss the pros and cons of various types of approaches to using customer experience tools or usability labs.

Anne Commisso of Cisco

Our website is the largest channel through which our customers experience "Cisco". Visitors leave behind a digital imprint of their experience. That imprint can be used by marketers to engage prospects and customers, in a deeper and more meaningful way. As Manager of the Cisco Web Marketing Metrics team, Anne's goal is to provide analytics to measure and drive web effectiveness in this dynamic online environment. Anne Commisso has worked at Cisco Systems, Inc. for 11 years, and has a total of 15-years experience in Web Marketing in the high-tech, B2B industry.

Bright and Shiny Objects

What are your big, highly-visible projects? What direction are your Executive Dashboards taking? Are you developing animated-dashboards or web-based scorecards? What types of Ops Review metrics are you responsible for? What types of skill-sets are you looking to add to your team? Do they need to be experts in Excel, having VLookup, Templates, and Macro experience? Do they also need programming skills in PHP to develop web-based scorecards? Do they also need Powerpoint experience and the ability to present findings? Join this huddle, moderated by Anne Commisso, Manager Web Marketing Metrics for Cisco.com, and share your thoughts, suggestions and best practices.

Measuring B2B Website Effectiveness

B2B website and marketing campaign effectiveness is a challenge. Even our Offers have to creative because we're not offering discounts or deals. What tactics do you use to position your team as strategic and gain recognition from your executives? Join this huddle, moderated by Anne Commisso, Manager Web Marketing Metrics for Cisco.com, and share your thoughts, suggestions and best practices.

Alex Destino of TIAA-CREF

Attribution and the Theory of Everything Description

All tactics contribute to all customer outcomes to some degree. Sometimes you have customer level data (e.g., email) and sometimes market level (e.g., media). Throw in the challenge of getting stakeholder buy-in and you have an attribution problem that is fundamental to web analytics, core to marketing, and at the root of your entire business. We will break down this problem and discuss the major facets: analytical methods, data/process integration, and enterprise level governance.

Cross-Channel Fountain of Insights

Cross-channel analysis at the customer level sources powerful insights to serve the breadth of your online objectives. Sometimes cross-channel behaviors indicate a preferred experience, but more often it signals channel abandonment and customer pain. We will discuss key cross-channel metrics such as web channel "containment" and analyzing self-service abandonment. If you have the luxury of working with high authentication rates that give customer detailed interactions across multiple channels, then this huddle is for you.

Susan Fariss of the American Chemical Society

For the past 10 years, Susan has accumulated extensive experience in web evaluation, web content management, search engine optimization, information architecture, and user-centered design, working on award winning sites such as Business.gov, MedlinePlus.gov, and USASearch.gov. Her experience encompasses a strategic view of web site maintenance, improvement, and development, her focus on the use of evaluation techniques and standards-based design and best practices in order to create a truly usable site/application. And on top of that, she’s also just a very nice person.

Your Users Are Talking to You: Site Search Analytics

Do you look at searches users conduct on your site? Site search is a great way to find out what users are looking for that you don't have, or content you do have that they can't find. How do you use site search to optimize the performance of your site content and designs? Come talk about site search pattern and failure analysis and how it can help you understand your users' intent in qualitative ways.

The Web Analyst as the Customer, Tools and their Vendors

In the Web analytics community, we live and breathe tools. And because our tools are important to us, so too are our tool vendors. This is a rare opportunity for the analyst or analytics manager to be the customer and, of course, it's harder than it seems! In this Huddle, we'll discuss how to best influence product quality and feature development, how make sure your vendor is responsive to your needs, how to create good customer service relationships, how to manage the vendor relationship, and, even how to know when it's time to cut your ties and look elsewhere (and how to break-up gracefully). Getting the most from your tool vendors is an art, and it doesn't come easy for most of us. This is a chance to compare notes and help develop real strategies for maximizing the tool vendor relationship. Note: Because of the nature of the topic we request no vendor sign-ups…

Bill Gassman of Gartner

Bill Gassman has been an industry analyst at Gartner for 14 years, and is part of the Business Analytics research team. He is the lead analyst for the topics of Web analytics and intelligent process operations. Bill has more than 35 years of experience in the information technology industry, also including roles in network operations and product management, marketing and support.

The Role of the IT Organization in Digital Marketing

The need to marketing organizations to keep up with new technology is a challenge that all but the best are falling short on. While many cloud based solutions simplify the marketing tasks, complications are still dealt by data integration needs across point-of-sale, mobile, social channels, big data issues and the plumbing that automated processes require. This huddle explores how these issues are being addressed and specifically where (if at all), a company's IT organizations are able to help.

Social Analytics – What is Working, What is Not

The promise of social analytics is backed by over 200 companies that offer solutions, but many are expressing dissatisfaction with deployed solutions. This huddle examines the types of tools being used and separates the hype from reality about what is working. In addition, we will look at how social analytics is being combined with other analytic functions and processes to get action out of insight.

Enrique Gonzales of the AARP

Enrique Gonzales is a lead member of the analytics team at AARP. In his role, he has been involved in the implementation, reporting, training and analysis of tracking AARP’s digital efforts, essentially every aspect of analytics at nation’s largest non-profit focused on 50+. Prior to AARP, he worked as the lead analyst at NPR, breaking ground in podcast tracking and analysis at the national news organization. He has also worked at USATODAY, the Gannett newspaper division and HISPANIC Online, a former AOL partner site in the early days of AOL. A former journalist, he has worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Austin American Statesman and the San Antonio Light.

"Where does all my time go: Or why can't I do the analysis that I love."

The idea is to break down all the functions of the modern web analyst. In the early days of digital, many organization's had one "web master" that did art, copy, html, JS, sys admin and other functions. I think we're at a juncture were the web analyst role can be more specialized from implementation, admin, campaign manager, database architect, ETL (extract, transform, load) and other functions.

Web Analytics "Gotchas"

We've all had the experience of an analytics "gotcha" – a situation where, despite careful preparation, something leapt up and caught us off guard. These surprises can come in all shapes and sizes – even the small ones can have a huge impact on the integrity of your data. In this huddle, we'll discuss ways to avoid the potential pitfalls inherent in digital analytics.

Steve Harris of Capital One

With more than 14 years of digital measurement, mobile and technology experience, Steve joined Capital One as the Senior Director, Web Analytics in the Enterprise Digital Group. Steve leads the enterprise-wide Web Analytics efforts, driving usage, implementation, integration and visualization of Web data across the enterprise.

Prior to Capital One, Steve served as the Director and Global Head of Web Analytics at Hilton Worldwide, where he led the global Web Analytics practice for the company’s nine brands and more than 3,000 hotels, providing data, analysis, insights and recommendations on site performance and marketing efforts to senior management, brands and hotels across the world. Steve also worked as the Director of Performance Management for Clearspring Technologies, where he developed and delivered all client-facing analyses and industry data on widget and social media performance, and he was instrumental in developing and presenting industry standards on viral and social media analytics.

Prior to Clearspring, Steve led a multi-national Business Intelligence team at AOL Search and served as a Client Services Manager at comScore. In his early career, Steve worked as an electrical engineer, designing cell phone sites and providing various engineering solutions for communication systems sharing the same spectrum. Steve holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland and an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Data Warehousing - Integrating with Offline and Customer Data

The move to warehousing Web analytics data feels more like a tsunami than a wave in 2011. The integration of Digital data with Customer Data is probably the biggest single reason driving the trend. Steve Harris of Capital One will lead this exploration of the why's and how's of data warehousing and customer/offline data integration. From establishing the value of CDW/Digital integration, to choosing technologies, to finding the biggest opportunities and paybacks from integration, this Huddle will cover the key strategies and techniques for driving a data warehouse integration to a successful outcome.

Web Analytics Leadership

There's no getting away from politics at the enterprise level. To be effective in a large organization, you need resources, access, and enough pull to make your voice heard. Web Analytics is a young field that's still finding its way among a host of more mature marketing and research disciplines. Because of that, there's no guaranteed place at the table for Web analytics, and it's sometimes a fight to make sure your voice is heard. Join Steve Harris, Sr. Director of Web Analytics at Capital One, for an exploration of the ins-and-outs of promoting Web Analytics in the enterprise. If you're a Web Analytics Manager at the enterprise-level, you know that this is, in many cases, job one. How to communicate the value of Web Analytics, how to create and maintain trust, and how to find and own the right place in a large organization are all critical pieces of the management challenge that you'll discuss in this Huddle!

Rhoda Ingberman or The Economist

Monetizing Social Traffic -- Beyond Fans and Followers

No area of digital measurement is growing faster than social media measurement. Like early Web analytics, social media reporting has focused largely on basic metrics - things like mentions, Fans and Followers. Most social media campaigns end up being targeted toward the acquisition of relationships. But how valuable are those relationships. The demand for a better understanding of the impact of social media is growing across a wide variety of industries. Join Rhoda Ingberman of The Economist in this exploration of the methods for monetizing social traffic and the measurement that follows. If you've ever heard the question: "What's the real value (or ROI) of social media?" then this is the session for you.

What is a page worth? -- calculating ROI

One of the most challenging aspects of digital measurement is understanding the impact of Content. Measuring the value of content is obviously critical to publishers, but the problem is potentially much broader. Content costs money and it consumers real-estate. So there is both a development, deployment, and opportunity cost to deploying content. That makes it important to understand the actual value of content and then be able to assess the true ROI. Join Rhoda Ingberman of The Economist in an exploration of the measurement techniques for assessing the impact and value of content - as well as the work necessary to truly understand the cost.

Matthew Kaminski of Constant Contact

As Senior Web Analyst at Constant Contact, Matt runs both the web analytics and optimization programs for their acquisition site. His team is responsible for using data to find actionable insights that can be tested, and will ultimately make a positive impact on revenue and customer growth. Prior to joining Constant Contact in 2009, Matt worked as a Data Analyst at Media Contacts, a digital ad agency in Boston. Prior to Media Contacts, Matt was an Associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Boston.

An Analyst's Guide for Using Data to Influence your Website

Being an effective web analyst is hard, we're faced with multiple tools & technologies, a myriad of ad-hoc requests, an often misinformed set of stakeholders with an appetite for "clicks" and "page views," and a rapid organizational pace wanting data now, now, now! We don't want to be reporting monkeys! How do we become analytical leaders within our organizations? Web analysts are smart people! It's not a hard job because we can't find the little bits & bytes of data with great insight everyone is looking for, sometimes those things are discovered quickly. It's difficult to be an effective analyst because often times nobody is listening... You can have the best analysis in the world, downright proving something is broken or shows a huge opportunity, but without a process to analyze, log, prioritize, and execute the work, those Excel spreadsheets with beautiful charts and recommendations will just gather virtual dust. We will discuss and share effective, real world examples of great analytical frameworks and processes that enable regular "checks" on website performance (meaning both conversion and visit success) which can drive specific and measurable improvements. We will dive deep and share real world examples of how a web analyst can take those discoveries from part 1 and make sure a hypothesis is formed for why something is broken and come up with a test plan (if needed) to make effective changes to the site. We will also touch on how to work effectively with your internal organization to properly share, backlog and prioritize the work so it doesn't get forgotten.

Managing a B2B website in a multi-product world

So your website doesn't serve consumers, it doesn't have a shopping cart or capture revenue, and only has one main conversion objective per product, to generate new [leads, free trials, registrations, new users]… (Oh yeah, and once your visitors convert you rarely "see" them again.)

If you find yourself in this position you have to start thinking outside the box to measure the success (or failure) of your site. Most analytics tools have a whole slew of great "out-of-the-box" reports and metrics like orders, revenue, cart abandonment, and purchase funnels… Well we can just toss those out the window!

In order to effectively measure a multi-product B2B site you need to peel back the layers of almost every KPI and learn to find insights in remote corners of your analytics tool. How do you decipher a visitor's intent? How do you measure conversion rates? How do you focus your analysis with multiple "homepages?" How do you optimize your site to cater to all visitors? What do you do with prospects not quite ready to take the plunge? What about the maze of digital campaigns each with distinct creative and CTAs?

In this huddle we will discuss tips, best practices, and effective measurement techniques for B2B websites with multiple products / audiences. Get ready to share and learn from your peers!

Lynn Lanphier of Best Buy

Applying Agile Development Methodologies to Measurement

If you've been following trends in IT, you know that Agile development has become the norm. By creating smaller, incremental releases, organizations have found that they can greatly improve their responsiveness, timeliness, and ability to adapt to feedback and experience. The same methods have created great interest in the Web analytics world - partially because our measurement cycles must often now be responsive to Agile Website deployments. The Agile methods seem ideal for the lightweight world of measurement infrastructure and Lynn Lanphier of BestBuy will lead this exploration of how they can be used to improve your Web implementation processes and cycles.

Strategies and Tactics for Managing Digital Analytics Talent

Hiring is the bane of every enterprise analytics manager in the world. But if hiring is that painful, what does that tell us about the importance of retention? Keeping and growing your digital analytics talent is probably job one for any enterprise manager. But we spend far more time talking about how hard it is to hire! Not here. Lynn Lanphier of Best Buy will lead this discussion of techniques for grooming, managing, and retaining your analytics talent. From creating career paths, to building a sense of value, to managing compensation, you'll discuss every aspect of today's complex digital talent environment.

Dylan Lewis of Intuit

At his role at Intuit, Dylan, and his team, is focused on translating the actions, experiences, and attitudes of visitors into the language of the business. Dylan joined Intuit in 2005 after working as a Senior Consultant at Visual Sciences, and Director of Marketing at SmartDraw.com. With an MS in Psychology, Dylan is focused on the TurboTax.com web experience.

Becoming the Trusted Analyst

Nothing is more important to the Digital Analyst than trust. Trust is the difference between making a difference and punching a clock. When decision-makers trust the numbers and trust the analyst, they trust the opinions they hear - and they make decisions informed by those opinions. But how do you build trust with the rest of the organization? It isn't one single thing. Dylan Lewis of Intuit will lead this discussion of all that's involved in creating and maintaining trust in the organization. You'll discuss everything from data integrity (and what do and say when things go wrong), to building consensus, to challenging the status quo of accepted corporate wisdom and to using the right language when communicating numbers. Trust is your most precious capital as an analyst; here's a chance to dig deeper into how to build it, how to bank it, and when to spend it.

The Big-Data Problem Set

Big-data is our most popular topic in 2012. But that's because its, no pun intended, so very broad. From technology to people to integration, big data breaks the fundamental paradigms of Web analytics and is forcing us to re-consider everything we thought we knew for sure. In this Huddle, you'll tackle the problem set big-data technology opens up and allows you to explore. Dylan Lewis of Intuit will guide a conversation around the implications of having event and customer level data and the types of analysis that are most interesting and appropriate. You don't use big-data technology to generate page-views reports. But are you sure what you do use it for? Something a little more specific than "detailed" analysis is called for - and this is your chance to swap ideas and explore how to best use these powerful new analytics toys.

Tom Lingdell of The Hartford

Experience with analytics in financial services and insurance acumens to define and shape the collection of analytics data. I have kept a focus on balancing a line of business view with and enterprise view of the digital assets in a multi-line company. Building expertise in joining on-line click streams with disparate sources of off-line data to identify future asset enhancements, find issues/errors on production assets and striving to include a predictive analytics model.

Analytics Views – Customer Vs Business outcomes

As companies grow in their reliance on data driven decisions, can you balance your analytics view between customer experience (customer in) and revenue driven (business out)? Both views are valuable to the company, customer loyalty and growth, but many times opposed in the keys to your data. Let's balance it out and build the discipline. Web Analytics – How to negotiate actionable changes with the continuous debate about measurements, KPIs and analytics how can the team use data to influence positive change. Many of the standard reports delivered tell the story of trends in time but can we change the question about number of visitors to the value of a visitor or change to an organization. We can discuss the methods of conveying a message of change by shaping the opinions of the business leaders.

Incomplete Data-Right Balance between them

Digital Analytics – Where is the authoritative source Web traffic is no longer enough to harvest challenging business questions about digital assets. Joining data can be very expensive. What is the right balance between an incomplete analysis due to missing data and the effectiveness of your digital assets or information bloat? Too much can cause waste and/or confusion. Defining the depth and breadth of data sources to join to your web traffic information shapes success, not only in analytics but also in shaping the business.

David McBride, Director of Analytics, Comcast.com

David leads the Analytics team at Comcast's Video Services business unit. David's team is focused on measuring and maximizing the value customers obtain from Comcast's video experience across web, mobile and the set-top box.

David has built the Analytics practice at Comcast through a focus on staffing, offshore labor integration and vendor management. He also has responsibility for Comcast's panel dictionary, tool migration, analytics budgeting & forecasting and strategic measurement initiatives. Under David's leadership, Comcast has made recent progress in cross-enterprise analysis, predictive modeling, cloud processing, testing, mobile measurement and content analytics.

Before joining Comcast in late 2006, David was a product manager at Dell. He earned an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA where he also received an International Management certificate, focused on Japan.

Subscription analytics

Subscription businesses are unique and they require their own set of analyses. You may start with existing subscribers, add in new subscribers, subtract churn and think you've got your ending subscriber number, but there is a lot more to subscription analytics than that. We will talk about monthly cohorts, measuring retention, critical mass and how to head off claims from every corner that "my project reduces churn." And if you've got a subscription, you probably have a unique identifier that enables all sorts of exciting cross-platform and persistent analytics. Come share ideas on how to get the most out of this amazing asset.

The enterprise data warehouse chimera

Why are you trying to build a data warehouse when what you really need is an analytics tool? Enterprise data warehouses are helpful for census-level reporting, but they take forever to perfect. Perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Sometimes all you need is a sample. Participants in this session will discuss cases where analysts effected great change by eschewing the perfect and focusing on the good enough.

Andy Nelson of REI

Bio goes here

Agile Analytics

How to make Analytics and Optimization Work in an Agile Development Organization For many companies, a move to Agile development means sacrificing complete and accurate tagging and forgoing testing in favor of rapid iteration. How can tagging and testing be successful when releases happen every 2-3 weeks? How can analytics inform the work being done on your website and help gauge its success without severely slowing down the process? Bring your experience and ideas as we share what has worked and what hasn't.

Multi-Channel Retail Analytics – Best Practices and What's Next

Retailers have been analyzing cross-channel data for years to understand phenomenon like channel shift and to model circulation for direct mail and email. More recently, many retailers have combined online and offline data to understand how a customer's online behavior affects their offline behavior and vice versa. Now, retailers have the opportunity to leverage this cross-channel data in interesting ways such as on-site personalization, re-targeting and even in-store experience. What are current best practices for leveraging cross-channel data to better understand customers and create a more relevant experience in the retail industry? What's next on the horizon?

Jason Paulsen of Avnet

Bio goes here

Using Tag Management to Drive Analytics

We use web analytics to improve our decision-making process for growing our business. However, the quality of those decisions is often only as good as the quality of web analytics implementations. Tag management systems (TMS) allows users to fine-tune and constantly optimize their analytics implementation without heavy reliance on IT. How is TMS used within the organization? How should it be used? Is TMS the answer? What are the limitations?

Joe Reach of Merck

Joe is the Global Lead of Multi-Channel Analytics for the Human Health Division at Merck, one of the world's top pharmaceutical companies.

He is responsible for the strategy, orchestration and implementation of digital and multichannel analytics capabilities, helping the marketing organization achieve a more data-driven culture. Joe has been with Merck over 25 years during which time he excelled in a variety of marketing and customer-facing roles including marketing communications, marketing services & operations, database & direct marketing, and call center service & sales. He has been responsible for physician and consumer marketing, covering programs for both the US and global.

Prior to Merck Joe was primarily in software development and consulting. He designed and developed custom and turnkey applications for a variety of industries such as home health care, property management, title insurance, distribution, and employment/recruitment services.

Measuring Multichannel Performance on a Global Scale

Measuring website performance can be complex. Measuring multichannel campaign performance is "complexer". But perhaps the "complexest" is collecting, summarizing and leveraging performance data across all brands and countries for a global corporation. Like many analytics efforts, technology is often the least of the challenges. Cultural differences, time zones, different business models/operations are among the many barriers to alignment. But a successful approach – one that is truly embraced and supported by senior management – is pure gold. If you are with a large corporation – or any corporation with a global presence – than this huddle is for you! If you have already dealt with this and have a fantastic global dashboard – share your learnings. If you are faced with this challenge, share your fears!

Aligning Analytics with Marketing Communications Processes

"We launched our campaign…so how did we do? Get me some data!". Did you every get this question, then ask yourself "What campaign!?", "What data?!!?!!". Were any objectives, KPIs and goals set? Are any data to be found in the first place? Was the tagging setup properly? Or any tagging at all? Unlike closed environments such as inventory and order processing, digital analytics depends on capturing that fleeting moment, when the customer clicks. But it doesn't end there. Marketeers often loath process or, at best, consider analytics to be at the end of a "plan – design – launch – measure" process. We all may want an approach to have analytics woven into the DNA of the marketing process, but how can we really do that? What tools and techniques break through? If you frequently find yourself "flopping around" at the tail end of the process, this huddle is for you! If you have solved this challenge, come share your tips.

Steve Robinson of AutoTrader

Data Leakage: the Enemy Within

As web analytics continues to mature, it must address all the same issues that other data-centric decision support applications face, including data governance, stewardship and security. The proliferation of measurement applications, along with the tags they bring, are creating the need for people, process and technology to monitor and control the highly valuable data your site produces; making sure it does not fall into the wrong hands. Even the most sophisticated sites from an analytics perspective can easily let their tagging and data get out of control. It is hard enough to get rapidly evolving events captured quickly, completely and accurately. Keeping track of who has access to that data often gets little or no attention. Sites and applications, along with tracking, advertising and merchandising solutions are often provided by vendors who can easily insert 'Trojan horses' that can be hard to detect unless there is a focused effort to guard against them. Please come to this huddle prepared to share your stories around who, what, when, where, and why of data leakage events; along with proven and potential approaches to the problem.

Managing Scrapers and Robots

Scrapers and other robots are not something we like to talk about. They steal our content, corrupt our data and distort our metrics. They generally create a major nuisance and distract us from our primary mission of providing actionable decision support. Many of us think there is nothing to be done about them. There are, however, ways to deal with them and their impact. Come to this huddle to address the myths about scraping and share your successes in addressing the threat they pose. Among the myths we will address: -My analytics vendor handles that -Advertisers don't expect you to correct for robots -Nobody else really takes them out of their numbers, so why should I? -Scrapers do not fire JavaScript tags -Robots avoid mobile sites -All scrapers and malevolent -All indexing robots are virtuous -There is no way to stop, or even deter them.

Russ Rueden of Kohler

eMail Targeting and Personalization

When Kohler wanted more bang from their email program, they turned to their digital analytics department led by Russ Rueden and dumped the whole personalization and optimization problem in his lap. eMail targeting and Personalization is the single most important analytics opportunity for most enterprises today. It's easier, technologically, than real-time site decisioning, but it demands advanced segmentation, IT integration, and true customer analytics. Russ will lead a discussion of the analytics and integrations necessary to building an effective email targeting and personalization program. From data integration to data enrichment to customer segmentation and digital triggers to outbound, you'll cover every aspect of the best opportunity for driving significant marketing ROI with analytics.

Driving Incremental Site Improvement Cycles

It's classic Web analytics with a vengeance. Lots of organizations talk about incremental improvement, but how many actually use their Web analytics to drive it? Russ Rueden of Kohler oversees a program where every major Web property undergoes regular analytic reviews based on a combination of Web analytics and integrated Customer Sat. data. In this Huddle, you'll discuss how to setup incremental improvement programs, the analytic techniques that drive real site optimizations, the role for both attitudinal and behavioral analysis, the organizational techniques for creating virtuous cycles of improvement, and challenges of managing ongoing cycles of real, deep-dive analytics.

Peter Sanborn of Microsoft

Recruiting and Keeping Analytics Talent

Having trouble recruiting and retaining analytics talent? Well rest assured, just about everyone else is too. Finding and keeping analytics talent is one of the biggest challenges managers face today. Where do you find talent? What are the compelling hard and soft benefits that will attract the best talent? What challenges will they look for? Is it possible to grow analytics talent from other job roles within your company? Once you have the talent on board, how do you keep them?

Advancing Your Career in (and maybe outside of) Digital Analytics

A career in analytics is not for the faint of heart. Unlike finance or the legal profession, the steps for advancement aren't clearly defined and many of us are left to blaze our own trail. Join this session to share your "trail" into the profession and, more importantly, how you have successfully continued to advance your career. What challenges do you face as a professional? What does a career path in analytics look like in your company? Is there a "ceiling" for a career in analytics and, if so, what do you do when you hit that ceiling?

Alex Schultz of Facebook

Alex is a director on the growth team at Facebook where he has worked for almost 5years. His team use email, notifications, sms, onsite merchandising and search marketing to help drive retention and acquisition of users for Facebook. Prior to that he worked for almost 4years at eBay on the affiliate, paid search and targeting teams in London and San Jose. He is originally from Great Britain and has an MA, MSc in Experimental and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University.

Optimizing for Mobile Only Growth

Join Facebook's Alex Schultz for an exploration of Mobile as an independent channel. For many businesses, Mobile is another cog in a larger digital system. For an increasing number of businesses, however, Mobile is becoming the main focus of digital programs and the driving force behind digital growth. When Mobile is THE channel, a lot changes - including your approach to measurement and the techniques for driving Mobile adoption and optimization. A deep-dive exploration in the techniques for measuring and driving Mobile adoption with an emphasis on driving real-world performance and actionable results.

Re-Targeting Optimization and Metrics

Today's enterprise isn't much interested in Analytics without a purpose. And more often than not, the purpose of analytics comes down to better targeting of customer offers and messaging. Alex Schultz of Facebook has been driving their re-targeting and engagement programs and exploring ways to use digital behavior to find and engage with customers at the right time and with the right conversation. In this Huddle, you'll explore the methods of re-targeting, the measurement of re-targeting efforts, and the opportunities for re-targeting that different types of web properties present.

Joe Shantz of Yahoo

Behavioral Segmentation approaches

We will tackle approaches to segmentation via behavioral targeting. In this huddle, we'll discuss: Best in class methods for segmentation analysis, benefits/Limitations of segmentation models, appropriate aggregations for behavioral targets, analytical tools - strengths and limitations. What has worked and what has not worked.

Behavioral Targeting approaches

Often, we find it useful from both a content and an advertising/marketing perspective to target users based on usage segmentation (i.e. heavy, medium, light). In this huddle, we will discuss: optimal ways to classify users based on usage, classification stability/instability, alternate approaches for classification.

Joe Stanhope of Forrester Research

Joe is a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, serving Customer Intelligence professionals. He is a leading expert on Web analytics, online testing and targeting, and Web site optimization technologies. His research focuses on the generation and application of marketing intelligence from interactive channels to deliver highly relevant and engaging online and multichannel customer experiences.

Prior to joining Forrester, Joe was the vice president of Platform Strategy at Alterian, where he focused on product strategy, product marketing, analyst relations, and corporate development. Prior to Alterian, he was vice president of marketing and product development at MarketerNet. Joe began his career at Experian, where he held a variety of roles spanning technical project consulting, business development, and product management.

The Emerging Role Of The Data Scientist

The flood of digital data has put more data at our fingertips than ever before, but it's pushing our technical and analytical capabilities to their limits. As firms recognize the need to leverage the full value of data, the data scientist role is becoming more popular. Once an unusual job title seen only at the largest internet pureplays, data scientists are becoming increasingly common at firms of all stripes who share a common attribute: mountains of underutilized yet valuable data. This huddle will discuss the the definition of the data scientist role and put it into context for analytics practitioners: * What is the remit of a data scientist? * What skills do data scientists need: technology, analytics, advocacy, and business skills? * How is the data scientist role different from existing analytics roles in the organization? * In what types of organizations is the data scientist role a good fit?

Do You Need Real Time Web Analytics?

A number of solutions are on the market to support real time web analytics, from specialty solutions to add-on modules from major web analytics vendors. To be sure, visualizations of site traffic changing before your very eyes are fascinating, but what is the business benefit? This huddle will look underneath the covers to determine when real time web analytics makes sense, and for whom: * What are the use cases for real time web analytics? * What are the ideal methods of presenting real time web data? * To what degree should real time web analytics be rationalized with traditional site analytics? * How is real time web analytics data actionable? Back-up huddle idea - Ramping up an effective and scalable testing program. Running a successful online testing program is about more than technology. This huddle will discuss the organization, processes, and staffing requirements to operate an online testing program at scale, as well as tips for anticipating and addressing the common obstacles that practitioners encounter throughout the lifecycle of a testing program.

Alice Watson of The Men's Wearhouse

Building an Analytics Community from the ground up

Strong analytics and effective data mining are vital for an online enterprise. Thegradient of analytics usage across enterprises is vast from companies with large teams of analysts that are accountable to key stakeholders, to those with minimal investment and little awareness or usage of analytics. Many smaller to mid range businesses are at this latter end. With a predicted large talent gap in the data science field*, importing that talent will be expensive and competitive. How do you keep up? This huddle will focus on key strategies and tactics on building an analytics awareness and a more data focused team for those companies that are just realizing the value of online analytics.
*Source: EMC Data Scientist Study, 2011

Tablet Analytics: Understanding and Optimizing Tablet Usage

With the debut of Apple iPad in April 2010, tablet usage has taken off to be over 5% of online retail traffic. This trend will continue to accelerate with many Apple competitors building their own tablet computers. Tablets are fertile ground for online analysis, as in many ways it's a novel user experience and does not fit in easily into either the "mobile" or "laptop" buckets. This topic will discuss tactics to segment the tablet user and share analytic findings on how we should cater to the tablet customer.
*Source: Coremetrics Benchmark Data

Kelly Wortham of Dell

Show me the Money - Testing!

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. The importance of replication and iteration in testing. When are we done testing? Never. Are you sick of hearing, "but you tested that last year!" or "Everyone knows x is not best practice." Or "but why are we still testing on the same page?" In this huddle, we'll talk about the importance of both replication (for validation or globalization) and iteration (for continuous improvement) and discuss how best to communicate both to stakeholders to get their support. We'll talk about how to know when you should replicate an idea exactly as tested vs when it's time to iterate.

Global Vs. Regional

When in Rome…When should global sites bow to regional customer preferences? Your brand is global. Your global design and marketing teams demand consistency. But do your customers care? More importantly – do they vote for regional inconsistencies through testing results? What should we do when global companies test across regions and find differing results? What if business customers in the US respond to different motivations than consumer customers in China… Do we have room for regional variation? Should we even be testing globally if not? What can we learn from regional variations in test results? How can we utilize a global organization to test more and faster?

Joel Wright of HP

Global Web Analytics Implementations: What works and what doesn't

More than half of X Change's attendees come from true, multinational enterprises. The potential challenges when building a Global Web analytics infrastructure are truly daunting. Multiplicity of language, sites, report suites, IT Teams, deployment processes, CMS systems, etc. can make planning and executing a global implementation truly frightening. With Joel, you'll cover the ins-and-outs of large-scale implementations - from creating a global ready design, to providing the right scope to local teams, to training and coordinating IT and QA functions, to managing the transition and creating the right post-implementation environments.

Big Data Technology for Web Analytics: What to do first (and what not to do at all)

We're all investing in (or at least thinking about) big data technology for digital measurement. In this Huddle, Joel Wright of HP will guide a discussion around some of the big questions when tackling a big-data system. Can your existing database system scale? Can Hadoop be used effectively for digital analytics? If you're investing in a big-data solution, what problems do you tackle first? Deciding on the right technology and the right problem initial problem set are critical to program success - especially when you're launching a Proof-of-Concept. Share your experiences, thoughts, and opinions on key directions in the front-lines of big-data.

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