John
*comes in and sits down…
Beate
welcome, welcome
We are two bozos short
John
lol
Simon
Hello
Beate
⏱??
John
#BALLBUSTERBEA
Beate
Jeeeeeen…?
Jennifer!
John
JLO?!?!
Jen
I’m here I’m here
oh good morning all!
Beate
ok! So. Our surprise guest host is stuck in a snowstorm, so it’s just the familiar lobsters today.
John
BOOO
Beate
I still want to talk about the stuff that we’re measuring. Metrics and KPI’s.
Any immediate hot takes?
Let’s get the rants out of the way first
John
ooooo sexy time
Jen
Measure what matters.
John
which is – your loving donors
not how much money they have you greedy batards
Beate
Love is not a metric, John.
John
it is in my world Beate.
❤
ARE WE NOT HUMAN???!??!?!?!
Beate
I don’t know if that is sad or sweet
Simon
Measuring is weird because:
– It’s a pain in the arse.
– Usually we don’t have the time or knowledge.
– Most nonprofits don’t have the volume for measurement to mean anything.
– Benchmarking of others isnt necessarily relevant to your own situation.
– At the end of the day so many people believe their feeling over data.
Fin.
Mic drop
Oh shit that wasnt my mic it was my drink
Beate
Well. conversation over.
You just said it all.
John
good.
well done Simon.
Simon
Haha
Huge levels of sarcasm incoming, thank you
But really I have a lot of feelings on measurement
Beate
Wasn’t sarcasm, surprisingly!
Jen
All true Simon!
Beate
I’m of two minds. I measure everything, I spend far too much time on it. But:
When someone asks me “what can I expect from that”, and they have NEVER done anything like it, there are a thousand variables, and no prior knowledge, then how the fuck can we answer that question??
Jen
And the other part of the conversation is measuring over time. We are slaves to 12 month budgets
Simon
I remember when I started working in a small nonprofit and we had 2 monthly donors, and some marketing expert told me to split test
John
lol
#slowclap
Jen
Wait, wasn’t that John?
John
😐
Simon
Yes the 12 month trap again. But hard to say what the right span of time is
John
not everything in our world is a straight line
Simon
Nothing in our world is a straight line
John
humans dont move in straight lines
which is why a lot of what you’re trying to measure
cant be measured
Beate
i think metrics are a crutch sometimes
You don’t want to make a decision without knowing what it will lead to
but it’s the future – there’s no possible way to know for sure!
John
because it’s math. cant argue with that right?
Jen
You don’t want to be judged for what happens if you did’t get your metrics, or get them right
Simon
I remember someone tweeting a while ago the uncomfortable reality that there is no data to back up the entire advertising industry
Beate
hahah yes
I worked in sales for the yellow pages ages ago, and we used the old adage that “only 50% of marketing work, you just don’t know which half” (of course arguing our half did and we could measure it)
Simon
“What we can learn from the booming yellow pages industry”
John
I’ve got a post brewing how we are a sector tied up looking for definitives… which is why we have seen so little growth over the years…
there are very few definitives in this work…
Beate
Everybody out-ranted?
John
life has no guarentees
Beate
haha
so measuring dumb things is dumb
John
lol
Beate
What should we measure? what’s good use of kpi’s and metrics?
does anyone have a favourite kpi
?
John
sigh.
Simon
I think a good rule is measure everything but not at the cost of doing
John
100% this.
Beate
wow mister hard truths and thought bombs today!
Simon
My brain is working well today, it’s true
Like you could spend your full week watching live google analytics
Beate
And so many do!
Simon
Oh its so much fun! I love watching the live stats
“Who is this Irish prick that has just been sitting on my homepage the whole time I’ve been watching the analytics?”
Beate
Usually yourself
honestly, when my former employer was doing tv ads for the month leading up to christmas, analytics live was my second screen for the entire month
had it on all the time
Jen
That makes my brain freeze
John
mine too partner
Jen
Imagine old lady Jen trying to decipher that shit with my glasses on the end of my nose and my tea or sherry spilling on the keyboard
Simon
?? “Google Ana…what?”
Beate
You don’t like watching numbers roll in?
it’s like counting money!
so much fun
John
ugh
Beate
but entirely unproductive
like it doesn’t change the amount of money in the pile
Jen
Other things I don’t watch “roll in”: election results
Beate
obsessively
I think it gives me a feeling of control
Working with people who make me wait a month for the numbers makes me itchy
Simon
I do like all that data and stats and election stuff and as it happens analytics
But the truth is…and I say this in a lot of chatcasts…nobody knows what they’re doing
Jen
Like Jen
Simon
Years ago tried to hook up google analytics and donation reports to a giant live screen that would blast over us like a boiler room
Beate
I actually did that and it was wonderful!
It made other people engage with the fundraising
So, what are GOOD metrics to keep an eye on?
John
for our clients – you got measure the bottom line of ALL the channels….
good individual fundraisng programs will see lifts everywhere…
Jen
This! Ideally for any given campaign you have print, online and in person/phone calls happening to raise money for X. Measure the totals, not the email vs appeal vs phone call and then decide what to keep and cut.
Simon
There’s a happy medium right? We need these stats fast, and we have to let them influence our decisions
Simon
But they’re not gospel
And taking action is more effective than analysing forever
John
just because I let you buy me a drink on our first date Simon doesnt mean I’ll marry you…
Simon
I do a great first date
Beate
And i think we need to have the confidence to only measure against ourselves and not always worrying how we stack up against everyone else
John
agree Beate.
Jen
THIS must not get lost in the dating analogies
Simon
Yes absolutely! Interesting and useful to look at others…but it’s not the final answer
Jen
we had some hilarious chats this year with clients about how they can’t compare to sick children or puppies…and what they were trying to raise money for was space exploration!
Everyone thinks their charity is the hardest to fundraise for, and that they still try to measure against their stiffest competition
Beate
hahaha
yep
I think the more uncertainty there is, the more people long for a metric that will tell them they’re doing the right thing.
Simon
The cause is always greener on the other side
John
exactly right.
Beate
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” <- donorlove
John
❤
i’m happy to let the counters count… but i like to focus on doing MY part… i’ll let donors do THEIR part… whatever that might be
Beate
So do you use metrics much at all with clients in the day-to-day, or mostly long term?
Simon
More longterm…but keep an eye on the day to day to make the slight tweaks
But most of my clients are smaller so measurement is cautious
Jen
We review project to project and also review long games. Especially in legacy metrics, which we touched on over on twitter with Clare Levy
My Dad has an almost unintelligible legacy tracking spreadsheet but once you lean into it, it’s very valuable
Beate
What does he track?
Jen
Mostly engagement — other ways legacy donors are connected to your program. Which breaks brains sometimes but when you can actually measure it, very valuable
John
bit of both. of course with online and offline – you get data… which is infomrative.. but really – just cos the appeal about frogs didnt do well… what do you change? never talk about frogs again?
i ❤ frogs btw
but they do shit in testing
Jen
I call BULLSHIT
when have we ever tested frogs against something else?
Beate
Maybe you just made very bad frog appeals?
John
lol
Jen
Maybe John did bad frog appeals elsewhere?
All my frog appeals have fucking slayed
John
but DID YOU TEST IT?
Jen
Back to Simon’s 2 monthly donor split test….see? It IS John!
Simon
What’s mad is when we take test results as fact forever. I know people are still quoting one piece of thank you research from decades ago
John
same. that’s a REALLY dumb idea BTW…
Beate
yeah. or looking for “what works on facebook”, like, it changes on an hourly basis!
John
so friends – dont do that
Beate
Ok. So, let’s wrap up with a lobsterfact
and, I would like you to rate it out of ten
John
mmm
Beate
To provide a metric
John
i love lobster
i could take down 3 lobster rolls right now
Beate
here’s the fact, from our surprise host who is not here:
Lobsters have teeth in their stomach.
Simon
9
John
i’ve heard this
Beate
that is not a score, john
once again, you’ve missed the brief
Simon
Qualitative
John
what am i scoring FFS?
that i like it?
Jen
oh man, john…
Beate
“out. of. ten. ”
John
fucking 100
Jen
That’s a solid 9.5 fact
Beate
Interesting. Not what I had benchmarked as a kpi in advance
I was way off market
John
this is dumb. I’m leaving.
Beate
5.30 peeps!