Great Moments In Database Marketing #4: Interpolating Iowa

We go back to 1989 in the great State of Iowa, for this Great Moment in Database Marketing.

Iowa was a state burgeoning with opportunity in 1989. Kevin Costner was filming "Field of Dreams". And the Iowa State Fair boasted the World's Largest Pig.

At The Garst Seed Company, a little-known Statistical Analyst named Kevin Hillstrom was working on measuring corn hybrid performance in Iowa.

One might think that corn grows well in Iowa. But there are subtle differences in performance by geography. We executed numerous tests across the state, trying to understand which hybrids performed best across various geographies.

We used a tool called "linear interpolation". In essence, if you didn't conduct a test for a hybrid near Mason City, IA, you "interpolated" the results of the test, based on surrounding test plots North, South, East, and West of Mason City. You "averaged" the performance based on surrounding tests.

Interpolation yielded beautiful three-dimensional maps of Iowa (or any other state), with high terrain representing high yields, and valleys representing poor yields.

Fast forward to 2008. Our "on demand" world of rapid metrics gives us an endless array of fascinating insight into online customer behavior.

What Web Analytics fails to give us is interpolation.

Look at the following pair of tables, measuring conversion rate by prior visits to the website, and by depth of visit into the website (an "x" means there isn't enough data to obtain a valid estimate).

Before Interpolation
			Visit Depth
Visits	One	Two	Three	Four	Five+
One	1.0%	x	5.0%	4.0%	x
Two	x	6.0%	x	x	x
Three	x	x	7.0%	x	4.0%
Four	3.0%	4.0%	6.0%	x	x
Five+	2.0%	x	x	7.0%	6.0%
After Interpolation
			Visit Depth
Visits	One	Two	Three	Four	Five+
One	1.0%	3.0%	5.0%	4.0%	3.0%
Two	2.5%	6.0%	7.5%	6.0%	3.5%
Three	2.8%	5.0%	7.0%	6.0%	4.0%
Four	3.0%	4.0%	6.0%	6.5%	5.0%
Five+	2.0%	3.0%	6.0%	7.0%	6.0%

Interpolation helps one visualize the peaks and valleys inherent in all of our data. In this case, the Web Analytics experts observes optimal conversion among customers with modest number of visits and modest amount of site depth. Folks visiting only once but browsing deep into the site do not convert at a high rate. Folks visiting the site often, but only viewing the home page, do not convert at a high rate.

It's been a theme across this series. Just because we have instant access to hundreds of on-demand metrics in our Web Analytics package doesn't mean we have genuine insight into how our customers behave --- we simply have a lot of metrics! There is an art to transforming incomplete data into a compelling and actionable story. Interpolation is one of the tools that can be used to tell the story.

Are Relationships Changing?

My first two jobs were at intensely competitive companies.

At the Garst Seed Company, we were fourth in market share, losing money, fighting for our existence. We were fighting against the big boys at Pioneer.

We were downright competitive at Lands' End, too. Stuck in the middle of the country, with L.L. Bean to the east and Eddie Bauer to the west, we wanted to win in the early 1990s.

Two of my favorite experiences were part of cross-functional teams. Getting Eddie Bauer Direct to go from break-even to an at-the-time record $26,000,000 EBIT was fun, and it was especially neat to see merchants, brand marketers, finance, information technology, online marketing, contact center operations, creative and circulation all work together to make it happen. We openly talked about and shared ideas. And for a brief period of time, we were a well-functioning team.

The other really enjoyable experience was in 2003-2004, when Jim Bromley unified a similar team, a team that turned Nordstrom Direct from an epic failure to a money-printing machine.

Since then, the internet and blogosphere seem to have changed things.

Our allegiance to cross-functional teams within a company is being transformed by cross-company teams within an industry.

I see this happening every day. I follow an e-mail discussion group that talks about various topics within the e-mail industry. There are blogs for just about every possible discipline. Fans of any discipline can readily exchange ideas and thoughts with each other, across industries, within industries. You'll see folks from one competitor share ideas with folks from another competitor.

The changing face of relationships was illustrated to me earlier today. In the e-mail forum I follow, an individual asked if anybody leveraged partnerships with the web analytics folks to complement the metrics used to analyze e-mail campaigns.

This question was almost unfathomable to me. Fifteen years ago, you would simply walk down the hall and ask somebody to help you.

Today, you float your idea into the ether, to see if others in your field are already implementing your suggestion.

I'm not sure whether this is good or bad. In the old days, you'd develop your ideas internally. Some companies would win, some would lose. You learned things when you left your company, and went to work somewhere else.

Today, the ideas are homogenized. How many clever e-mail, web analytics, marketing, creative or merchandising ideas can there be if they can all be readily shared in nano-seconds on a blog or message board?

Ok, your turn. Do you notice that relationships are changing? Is this good or bad for an individual person's career? Is this good or bad for the profession we work in? Is this good or bad for the companies we work for?