SPEED: A Process for Continuous Improvement in Digital

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Everyone always wants to get better. But without a formal process to drive performance, continuous improvement is more likely to be an empty platitude than a reality in the enterprise. Building that formal process isn’t trivial. Existing methodologies like Six Sigma illustrate the depth and the advantages of a true improvement process versus an ad hoc “let’s get better” attitude, but those methodologies (largely birthed in manufacturing) aren’t directly applicable to digital. In my last post, I laid out six grounding principles that underlie continuous improvement in digital. I’ll summarize them here as:

  • Small is measurable. Big changes (like website redesigns) alter too much to make optimization practical
  • Controlled Experiments are essential to measure any complex change
  • Continuous improvement will broadly target reduction in friction or improvement in segmentation
  • Acquisition and Experience (Content) are inter-related and inter-dependent
  • Audience, use-case, prequalification and target content all drive marketing performance
  • Most content changes shift behavior rather than drive clear positive or negative outcomes

Having guiding principles isn’t the same thing as having a method, but a real methodology can be fashioned from this sub-structure that will drive true continuous improvement. A full methodology needs a way to identify the right areas to work on and a process for improving those areas. At minimum, that process should include techniques for figuring out what to change and for evaluating the direction and impact of those changes. If you have that, you can drive continuous improvement.

I’ll start where I always start: segmentation. Specifically, 2-tiered segmentation. 2-tiered segmentation is a uniquely digital approach to segmentation that slices audiences by who they are (traditional segmentation) and what they are trying to accomplish (this is the second tier) in the digital channel. This matrixed segmentation scheme is the perfect table-set for continuous improvement. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to drive continuous improvement without this type of segmentation. Real digital improvement is always relative to an audience and a use-case.

But segmentation on its own isn’t a method for continuous improvement. 2-tiered segmentation gives us a powerful framework for understanding where and why improvement might be focused, but it doesn’t tell us where to target improvements or what those improvements might be. To have a real method, we need that.

Here’s where pre-qualification comes in. One of the core principles is that acquisition and experience are inter-related and inter-dependent. This means that if you want to understand whether or not content is working (creating lift of some kind), then you have to understand the pre-existing state of the audience that consumes that content. Content with a 100% success rate may suck. Content with a 0% success rate may be outstanding. It all depends on the population you give them. Every single person in line at the DMV will stay there to get their license. That doesn’t mean the experience is a good one. It just means that the self-selected audience is determined to finish the process. We need that license! Similarly, if you direct garbage traffic to even the best content, it won’t perform at all. Acquisition and content are deeply interdependent. It’s impossible to measure the latter without understanding the former.

Fortunately, there’s a simple technique for measuring the quality of the audience sourced for any given content area that we call pre-qualification. To understand the pre-qualification level of an audience at a given content point, we use a very short (typically nor more than 3-4 questions) pop-up survey. The pre-qualification survey explores what use-case visitors are in, where they are in the buying cycle, and how committed they are to the brand. That’s it.

It may be simple, but pre-qualification is one of the most powerful tools in the digital analytics arsenal and it’s the key to a successful continuous improvement methodology.

First we segment. Then we measure pre-qualification. With these two pieces we can measure content performance by visitor type, use-case and visitor quality. That’s enough to establish which content and which marketing campaigns are truly underperforming.

How?

Hold the population, use-case and pre-qualification level constant and measure the effectiveness of content pieces and sequences in creating successful outcomes. You can’t effectively measure content performance unless you hold these three variables constant, but when you control for these three variables you open up the power of digital analytics.

We now have a way to target potential improvement areas – just pick the content with the worst performance in each cell (visitor type x visit type x qualification level).

But there is much more that we can do with these essential pieces in place. By evaluating whether content underperforms across all pre-qualification levels equally or is much worse for less qualified visitors, you can determine if the content problem is because of friction (see guiding principle #3).

Friction problems tend to impact less qualified visitors disproportionately. So if less qualified visitors within each visitor type perform even worse than expected after consuming a piece of content, then some type of friction is likely the culprit.

Further, by evaluating content performance across visitor type (within use-case and with pre-qualification held constant), you have strong clues as to whether or not there are personalization opportunities to drive segmentation improvement.

Finally, where content performs well for qualified audiences but receives a disproportionate share of unqualified visitors, you know that you have to go upstream to fix the marketing campaigns sourcing the visits and targeting the content.

Segment. Pre-Qualify. Evaluate by qualification for friction and acquisition, and by visitor type for personalization.

Step four is to explore what to change. How do you do that? Often, the best method is to ask. This is yet another area for targeted VoC, where you can explore what content people are looking for, how they make decisions, what they need to know, and how that differs by segment. A rich series of choice/decision questions should create the necessary material to craft alternative approaches to test.

You can also break up the content into discrete chunks (each with a specific meta-data purpose or role) and then create a controlled experiment that tests which content chunks are most important and deliver the most lift. This is a sub-process for testing within the larger continuous improvement process. Analytically, it should also be possible to do a form of conjoint analysis on either behavior or preferences captured in VoC.

Segment. Pre-Qualify. Evaluate. Explore.

Now you’re ready to decide on the next round of tests and experiments based on a formal process for finding where problems are, why they exist, and how they can be tackled.

Segment, Pre-Qualify. Evaluate. Explore. Decide.

SPEED.

Sure, it’s just another consulting acronym. But underneath that acronym is real method. Not squishy and not contentless. It’s a formal procedure for identifying where problems exist, what class of problems they are, what type of solution might be a fit (friction reduction or personalization), and what that solution might consist of. All wrapped together in a process that can be endlessly repeated to drive measurable, discrete improvement for every type of visitor and every type of visit across any digital channel. It’s also specifically designed to be responsive to the guiding principles enumerated above that define digital.

If you’re looking for a real continuous improvement process in digital, there’s SPEED and then there’s…

Well, as far as I know, that’s pretty much it.

Interested in knowing more about 2-Tiered Segmentation and Pre-Qualification, the key ingredients to SPEED? “Measuring the Digital World” provides the most detailed descriptions I’ve ever written of how to do both and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Gary Angel
Gary is the CEO of Digital Mortar. DM is the leading platform for in-store customer journey analytics. It provides near real-time reporting and analysis of how stores performed including full in-store funnel analysis, segmented customer journey analysis, staff evaluation and optimization, and compliance reporting. Prior to founding Digital Mortar, Gary led Ernst & Young's Digital Analytics practice. His previous company, Semphonic, was acquired by EY in 2013.

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