Data meets affiliate marketing with Kevin Hartman author of Digital Marketing Analytics

the amount of data the data Reliance that we see in affiliate marketing that's going to become even more important that's going to allow for greater personalization and targeting and understanding of both consumers that are are working their way through the affiliate networks as well as just conversion conversion what that means how that's predicted and how that's how that's estimated so that that for me is going to take I think an area of measurement around affiliate marketing that has always been somewhat nebulous somewhat nebulous right and

bring a lot more clarity I'm John Wright and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by stat strong welcome to the affiliate bi podcast I've got our very first guests here and it's someone that I know I like to think I know very well I took his course in data visualization last summer so I Kevin I'm going to let you do it a quick introduction to yourself sure thanks Sean um I'm Kevin Hartman uh I am let's see

the last 11 years at Google most recently I was Google's Chief analytics evangelist uh I have now made a move into Academia and I am a associate professor of marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business so late career change for me but something that I've always wanted to do also as John you mentioned I teach on some online platforms and I just get to do a lot of those things that I really love all around data storytelling and data analysis data analysis

and so how did you end up in the space of data visualization because it's uh I think in the world of business intelligence it's almost like uh I wouldn't call it an afterthought but it's kind of on the side it's uh very important and obviously I have a better understanding by accidentally stumbling upon your course uh just scrolling through databiz on Instagram kept seeing this elevator course I'm like Kevin Google I'm like this sounds like it could be pretty good so where did how did you

get end up in this journey I let me say first that you uh you would not be wrong by calling it an afterthought I think it's one of those things that it's just so critically important and it's often uh or nearly always uh taken for granted or underestimated and certainly not taught well uh so it's it's we are out there doing doing the good work of trying to evangelize good data visualization and it's it's something that you know for me it was sort of a a

little bit of talent a whole bunch of opportunity and just a lot of luck kind of put me where I am now I I math was something that always came easy to me but I I never wanted to be that math guy I wanted to be an artist but I just didn't have the the ability right that is necessary there and so once I started my business career and I found this idea of analyzing data leveraging those math skills and statistics skills that I had with

the ability then to pull out stories and tell those stories particularly visually wow it was just exactly what I wanted to do and it it just so happened that you know I'm of an age that I was doing these things right around the time that data and digital analytics was really starting to grow and so and so um I I just serendipitously got an offer to do some teaching and the next thing I know is it's turning into almost a second career of me teaching at

a number of places data analytics data visualization so it was a kind of right time right right place um but but one that I'm I'm just so fortunate to have been a part of because it's something that I really do love yeah I remember uh in your course showing us some of the dashboards you made a long time ago and as much as we can kind of look at them and almost laugh at them I just look at that and go I mean imagine doing that

for a solid 10 years I think that skill set would be very valuable today yeah yeah I hope so right I mean we I have learned personally just so much and I think I've I've hopefully um uh taught so many people on the right ways to visualize data and particularly build dashboards dashboards are one of those things that um if you can understand all the concepts of telling a static story based in a presentation those same ideas should translate over to a dashboard and they almost

never do right so that's been it's been a real focus of mine uh and it's it's hard for me too to look back at those dashboards that we created so long ago but they they provide perfect opportunities for us to pick them apart and really understand what uh what good really should be yeah they're excellent case studies and obviously I mean I think would be very difficult for you to not look everywhere that you like in everyday life and not see dashboards and database everywhere so

what what are the things that you see in most Industries or everyday life that you're like this needs to change and this is yeah absolutely backwards yeah I see it everywhere and again it's because it is very much an afterthought I think there's such an emphasis placed um the analysis of data and uh in my experience analysts who get really invested in analysis believe that the stories they pull out will speak for themselves that they are obvious right um and it's it's just that is a

condition of being so close to the data and losing perspective and empathy and those are major things that we try to introduce in the course the idea of how much planning needs to go in to building an appropriate story and the correct using the correct data and then there is certainly the what I call the data designer elements to the output as well which frankly just aren't taught um and I see this everywhere right it doesn't matter if uh which industry we are talking about I

I would say that the industries that are a little more immersed in data or have more access to data I find to be particular violators of many of the the tenants of good visualization and I think it is because they believe that the data speaks for itself or they believe that they have the newest tool which should do all the work for them but it is such a human approach uh to uh to data storytelling um or such a human approach is required for good data

storytelling it's just things that uh unless you've been taught it and been taught it correctly you can't really expect to know it that's a very interesting insight to me because I mean I showed you some of the affiliate marketing dashboards that I've been dealing with and I'm not going to name some of the companies involved but I shared some of the largest uh like 100 million dollar type of companies and I said are you seeing what I'm seeing and ironically enough it's in affiliate marketing we

have access to so much data and we run into so much data and you'd think we're some of the most data driven uh you know businesses around but it's the opposite the opposite the opposite yeah and and I remember seeing those those uh the the dashboards and and I remember being struck by two immediate thoughts one they're beautiful because there's clearly a lot of effort and development time placed in creating good looking looking looking interesting uh visualizations right the second thought I had just as immediately

was there's no story here like all it is is data right and that's I think the big Pitfall that we fall into that we we believe that the the the dashboard is there to communicate the data data data it is in part but there's really three questions that any good dashboard should be answering one is what's the performance that's the data and that's critically important critically important critically important the next is what does it mean what's the interpretation what's the Insight right and then the third

is what do I do that's the recommendation a good dashboard will do all those things and I remember looking at those dashboards and uh just feeling like that there wasn't there wasn't a story there it wasn't telling me anything it was giving me a lot of information but if you are someone who is immersed in this world with the kind of skills needed to pull stories from those uh from your analysis and from the to your point the vast amount of data that we have if

you are creating a dashboard that's just displaying that data you are effectively just turning the story over to whoever's looking at it right you are taking yourself completely out of the process and and so that's that's what I try to to Really enforce with enforce with people that I get the pleasure like yourself to work with you have the critical skills that your stakeholders don't they shouldn't that's why they brought you in so you need to use that particularly when it comes to analyzing those data

finding the stories telling those stories and your dashboard should just be a reflection of that yeah well not to give too much credit and complimence for your course but I felt like I gained that extra level of insight after the course I remember the first third of the course when we're focusing on the storytelling part I was like let me look at these dashboards again and then basically applying the basic principles and I said it's definitely exactly how you described it it's flat data there's no

story behind it there's no even a gateway to achieve that story and it wasn't until you know I decided to take one of the projects that let me work on the data that I see day in day out and I decided to learn Tableau and then once I started putting a bunch of filters together I mean the stories almost told themselves I said this was just shocking it the affiliate program actually gave me the same dashboards that I gave myself I would just be shocked and

then of course it created more stories where I started asking affiliate programs that said do you know the conversion rate of all your landing pages and most of them said about half of them said yes but then I said would you be interested in a data survey where I would help you optimize it and most of them said yes I'm like you wouldn't say yes to that unless you actually didn't have a problem or you already knew what your conversion rate was so it was just

the total irony yeah well and that's you know that's a great example of you beginning in the right place and we talk about this in the course too right is you you begin any kind of analysis that will result in a dashboard or some kind of story that you tell by getting together the right questions identifying the right data that you'll need to answer those questions right and and that's where we begin we wind up in a place where we can answer those things but what

you've in that story what you've you've just what you did was present those questions and and and your stakeholders your affiliate Partners you know look they've got businesses to run right like they've got they have short-term demands to meet and so they don't always have the opportunity to step back and look at those broader bigger questions uh and and this is why again right it's almost a responsibility of those dashboards to answer those things for them not just focus on the short term to give them

real value uh and unlock real opportunity and I can say from what I'm seeing in the past year that there are more people jumping into the affiliate marketing space or being hired to take on some of these jobs so there are changes yeah the next question I wanted to ask is you know you must have seen a lot of different data stories where things just came to life and you're like wow this is absolutely phenomenal if you have any any to share yeah there's a number

of them right like um there's this wonderful story that I you know true honestly I have tried to uh find the um the news article that was the source of this I never have been able to so I just have a sense that this was kind of handed down through Silicon Valley lore but there's this great story of how Bezos Bezos um identified book buyers and book readers as high value customers and that hence is why Amazon began as a Bookseller right to to focus on

this this uh valuable customer segment uh and and I think you know for a company that has uh resulted in what Amazon has become I think those those are that's a wonderful beginning right that that comes right from an Insight much more contemporary uh examples I've seen recently uh are are all around how people are reacting to the pandemic experience that we had right and and how that impacted business and how businesses were able then to create differentiated service levels and and service offerings allowing customers

to choose what they wanted to choose uh and and basing those offerings on data that they had collected Lululemon for instance has a great story of doing just that and allowing customers to either shop online entirely shop online pick up and store use a uh a guide like a shopping a shopper guide uh employed by the company to help them as well all these things came from a better understanding of data but really I think the best story that I was personally involved in and that

I I often reflect on it just get a kick out of was a story that turned out not to be there we I I was helping um I was helping the auto manufacturers really release build and then release this this car configuration technology right which you see everywhere now the ability to sit down and build yourself a car online and when it was first coming out like we thought what we had found would be this tremendous tie between people who were going to buy a car

and exactly what they wanted it'd be a great way for us to connect their their uh needs to our offerings and so um you know we we launched these Technologies to Great Fanfare and unfortunately it turned out that there was no connection no correlation really at all between utilizing a car configurator and then ultimately buying that car it it turned out far too often these were 16 year old boys who were just building the cars of their dreams right uh so these are things that we've

learned along the way right and and I think one of the reasons why I love that that data story is because it goes to show that sometimes the stories aren't what you think they are right and as long as you let the data tell you the story and follow let it organically come from the data you're going to wind up in a good place so those are those are just a few of my favorites I guess yeah we don't want to be wrong but at the

same time there's uh there's definitely a value in into not like putting all your eggs in one basket because you believe something to be true and if you just did that one little data experiment you would uh find out maybe you should pivot to something else yeah well it's learning right the whole thing and this is analytics it's the pursuit of questions and and when we do it right and we we get toward an answer of a question it creates a half dozen other questions for

us and so that's one of the reasons why I think to be really immersed in this space you have to really Embrace curiosity uh it has to be a characteristic that you that um you you feel core uh to yourself right my next question is you know uh how long have you been doing the the data visualization course with elevator and you must have seen some Trends over time um like in terms of more uh students kind of signing on and I'm just kind of wondering

what's your take of what are you seeing in the world of everything from data science data visualization business intelligence it looks like this is just starting to explode right now yeah we we've been doing it for about five years so I think this was this was a pretty early Runner but I I really do believe that prior to the work we've done most done most data visualization education revolved around learning a tool becoming proficient in a visualization tool right learning all the functions and features and

uh what we've done is taken that step back and a harder look at what makes for good data stories and good visualization and how do you ultimately get there the tool is important but it's just an add-on right so what I have seen is um uh certainly growth I mean the every single time we run the course we get more and more people um into it it's the popularity has just continued to increase and I I believe that what is happening in the market has been

really good for business for us and that is in the market just further developments of tools further focus on on technology to create visuals to analyze data right particularly the move towards artificial intelligence and and all the wonderful things that that can do it is effectively uh I think for many people taking the the human a little further away from the process um because these tools are so great and proficient and effective you know you can you can let it do its thing a little more

get yourself less involved um because the the AL AI algorithms are are able to so effectively discover patterns and collect and analyze you know enormous uh sums of data you can take you as an analyst a little further out of the process and so what we are talking about the result of that is is really at the end of the day poor data storytelling poor visualization poor visualization right so what we are talking about is the opposite it's it's getting the the human really entwined in

the story getting the analysts back into the data um and so we you know because of this this Market Trend toward tools I feel that we're becoming even more appreciated for what we are doing in in this in this course um it's also it's it's been amazing to me just how rapidly the tool Market moves and develops and now with data privacy uh and other concerns coming in many of the the uh the tools that we would have relied on um no longer work or have

just fallen from the market right so it's been a very interesting thing to see how the tool Market has progressed while knowing that what we're doing is pretty Timeless and it doesn't matter those tools everything else is happening are just just things that that the human analyst needs to be aware of but we're we stay very focused on the human analyst yeah just in my own personal experience of you know building stats tools and not really understanding I was actually going down this path of data

science and data analytics uh I've just noticed that you know the interest in what we do has gone from oh that's a kind of boring topic to now it's like um you know just more people in my own affiliate marketing space wanting to talk and you know just going okay what what's what's out there for data stories and what can we uncover and what are people doing and the stories behind the scenes uh because I'm now in this space I get to talk to a lot

of these people and it's just absolutely fascinating so my last question is what do you see for the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence yeah I mean it's really exciting right and it's and it's and it's um um because uh it is such a data intensive category right uh I think it's going to be impacted pretty significantly at least it has the opportunity to be impacted significantly and if you understand understand understand the way that data can help you as a company

you can you can be very successful with as these these tools and uh business intelligence tools continue to evolve I mean it's there's many more advanced analytic techniques that you'll be able to apply just like we do in in every market right in every industry but I think again the the amount of data the data Reliance that we see in affiliate marketing that's going to become even more important that's going to allow for greater personalization and targeting and understanding of both consumers that are are working

their way through to the affiliate networks as well as just conversion what that means how that's predicted and how that's how that's estimated so that that for me is going to take to take to take I think an area of measurement around affiliate marketing that has always been somewhat nebulous somewhat nebulous right and bring a lot more clarity um both in terms of the ability for business intelligence tools to to better predict uh value as well as better attribute value as well I think that's another

area that uh that that the the evolution of business intelligence is is going to bring and all those things together you know it's just going to create even even greater Partnerships even greater collaboration is going to allow you know you to understand which partners are are truly performing which ones aren't as well and and then even gain a deeper understanding of when performance isn't what you want it to be why why why right and and pinpoint for those that are are going to be successful and

it pinpoint those those pain points and really solve them too so I think there's a lot on the horizon for for affiliate marketing and it'll be really exciting to to watch it evolve uh and see what happens yeah I'm pretty excited I mean just I feel fortunate to be in the space at the this time and uh yeah my job now is to make sure that I've got my foot in the door outside the industry where I'm spending time with data scientists and basically taking a

step into your world and making sure that these two start talking to each other great yeah well uh uh you know I hope you're doing that with the the kind of understanding of of data storytelling that we we would have talked about um and that you are you're able to to evangelize some of those ideas as well and bring some much needed better data visualization to a category that that really is is really requires it yeah the databiz is a work in progress and the storytelling

uh that's uh maybe challenging but that's the fun part where we can uncover stories and work with Affiliates and say if you can help us we'll look at your data and you know let's see if we can make some case studies and the case studies are where things come to life yeah Kevin uh thank you so much for doing this uh I'm gonna share your contact information for all your courses and uh your books as well so if you just want to share how people can

get a hold of you yeah I I'm on LinkedIn uh connect with me there for sure uh that's that's probably the easiest way for you to reach out uh and I spent a good deal of time there I I also my my email address uh I'm happy to give that as well it's just Kay Hartman at nd.edu that's uh that's my teaching address and where you'll you'll always be able to reach me awesome thank you so much of course thank you John thank you for tuning

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