Author: Martin P.
Title: Content Marketer
EP 42: Experimentation Program RASCI Matrix
Our method was to develop integrated products, and that meant our process had to be integrated and collaborative — Steve Jobs
What’s up folks
Martin P — Speero here.
Is everything fine with the new format?
I won’t bore you with details this time.
Just remember to reply to this if you got any interesting podcast, blog, or event to share.
Let’s jump straight into:
This Week in Experimentation:
Maturing of the week: [Strategy & Culture > Culture > Collaboration / CoE] Make it easier for the whole company to join experimentation. Read out how below.
Blueprint of the week: Experimentation Program RASCI Matrix — create a clear structure on who’s responsible and accountable, who supports, consults, and informs. Link.
Talk of the week: Optimize CLV, Not CR — after decades of acquisition marketing, cookie depreciation, and higher acquisition costs require a different approach. One focused on CLV, rather than conversion rate. Link.
Read of the week: Decision-Making model for experimentation teams — how to clearly define who has input, who gets to decide, and who gets it done. Link.
Event of the week: CommerceCon Spring Edition — from what to do without cookies to optimizing beyond low-hanging fruit and customer retention in DTC, this YoutTube event has it all. Link.
Speero Story of the week: For one of Speero’s clients, data showed that users who search convert 300% higher. What to do? We decided to test opening the site search by default. Read below.
Maturing of the Week: Collaboration / Center of Excellence
Pillar: Strategy and Culture
Subpillar: Culture
Activity: Collaboration / Center of Excellence
Why aren’t we all lone-wolf entrepreneurs if we live in a free society? Why isn’t everyone running their own business? Because there’s power in collaboration. Big collaborations (in other words, organizations) outcompete, outdo, and outgrow lone stars every time.
However, even organizations get stuck in a rut. They silo departments, believing that hoarding information makes it more valuable. In today’s world, the opposite is true. Information becomes obsolete fast unless it gets enriched, iterated, and used by employees.
Here’s how you can promote experimentation collaboration inside your organization:
How to Promote Collaboration (Internally)
Start Small — you can experiment without impacting the whole organization. Start with projects and teams on a ‘safe’ scale. Once the leadership sees the initial wins, start thinking about scaling collaboration.
Cultivate Curiosity — everyone in the org has to value surprises, even though most are used to predictability, wins, and stability. If and when curiosity prevails, others can see fails as opportunities to learn, not costly mistakes.
Democratize Experimentation — templatize test setup and test reporting, make everyone use the same tools, create a test repository and data pipelines, and develop a Center of Excellence to train and support others in experimentation. This way, others from the company can join in generating test ideas, suggesting tests, and analyzing tests easily.
Follow the North Star — Align everyone around a North Star Metric and have a clear metric system. Your co-workers need to see how their experiments and hypos fit the overall picture. Helpful Blueprints: Goal Tree Map, Strategic Testing Roadmap,
Develop a Center of Excellence — CoE dedicates some employees to the central, experimentation function and disperses the rest throughout other departments. The central function develops tools and processes while leaving the collection to the individual branches.
Gamify Experimentation — Run polls for guessing the winning test. Give awards for great experiments or learnings.
Train the team — Develop and run workshops for Training, Ideation, and Solutions.
Develop a Data-driven Culture — standardize procedures and processes, data collection, data transparency, choose your metrics carefully, etc.
Feels over Reals — Appeal to feelings, not reason. Make stories out of experiments, learnings, and insights. Show how experiments benefit your C-level and team members personally.
Sharing is Caring — Share learnings during a meeting. For instance, at Speero we share a single interesting experiment and what we learned from it in Weekly company meetings. Anyone can add feedback, peer review it, then we all discuss it.
Create Communication — have a communication channel for experiments, their results, and learnings. Then automate it. At Speero we use a Slack channel.
How to Promote Collaboration (Externally)
An external agency can quickly and easily provide you with frameworks and help you establish a Center of Excellence (hybrid or full model), get buy-in from leadership to prioritize experimentation and data-driven culture through a ‘just-roll-it-out’ mentality.
Most Helpful Blueprints:
— How to Drive Engagement and Culture around experimentation.
Blueprint of the Week: Experimentation Program RASCI Matrix
When you start putting together an experimentation team, either by hiring new people or just asking people who were already part of the company to support your experimentation activities, it is easy to struggle with defining who's expected to do what in a specific activity.
Who's responsible for this and who's accountable for that?
So the idea behind introducing a RASCI matrix, which is a pretty well-known tool in the program management world, is to visually represent:
— who's responsible
— who's accountable
— who supports
— who's consults
— who's informed about each one of these activities.
So in the example you see right now, we make an example based on positions, but in your case, you might want to just add actual names into the picture, as well as modify the activities you are running, performing, and expected to complete.
Talk of the Week: Optimize Customer Lifetime Value - NOT Conversion Rates with Valentin Radu
After decades of acquisition marketing, companies are waking up to the fact that optimizing the entire lifecycle of the customer is the way to go.
That happens due to rising acquisition costs, cookie deprecation, siloes, company mentalities, etc.
In this session, Valentin Radu will share the insights that he got during his 12 years journey, transitioning from CRO - website optimization to increase the conversion rate to CVO - experimenting towards improving the CLV.
Read of the Week: Who has the D? Decision-Making model for experimentation teams
Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. Every success, mishap, every opportunity seized or missed stems from a decision someone made — or failed to make.
Yet, in many firms, decisions routinely stall inside the org, hurting the entire company's performance.
The culprit? Being vague over who's accountable for which decisions.
Here’s how to clearly define who has input, who gets to decide, and who gets it done.
Event of the Week: CommerceCon Spring Edition
CommerceCon Spring Edition is happening on April 27, 2023, on YouTube. The agenda includes:
Beyond Clicks: The Next Level of CRO for Ecommerce Growth — In the world of eCommerce, it's no secret that conversions are key. But what happens when you've optimized all the obvious areas of your online store and still aren't seeing the results you want?
Goodbye, Cookies! The Rise of DTC Marketing in a Post-Crumb Era — a thought-provoking panel discussion on the future of direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing in a post-cookie world. A panel of experts will offer valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of DTC marketing in this new era.
Retain or Regret? Exploring the Best Approaches and Tactics for Customer Retention in DTC Brands — In the competitive world of DTC brands, customer retention is key. This discussion panel will delve into the strategies and tactics that successful DTC brands have implemented to retain their customers.
Special Event — Enter the CommerceCon pitch competition and cast your idea to their panel of VCs. This is a unique opportunity to practice your presentation, have your idea heard from some very influential names, and maybe even land some powerful new connections.
Speero Story of the Week:
For one of Speero’s clients, data showed that users who search convert 300% higher. Moreover, the client’s site search wasn’t prominent on mobile. What to do? We decided to test opening the site search by default.
Scorecard Stage:
Primary Metric: Conversion Rate
Outcome/Takeaway: Winer - Implement
In the end, we discovered that opening the site search by default on the client’s mobile Homepage caused a significant increase in site search usage and in turn, positively impacted the conversion rate.
Although the dashboard data shows a reduction in quantity metrics, this increase in conversion rate is large enough to make up for this in terms of overall revenue.
.svg)
