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Drew Dillon, @drewdil, vp of product & engi... (more) @drewdil, vp of product & engineering at AnyPerk47 upvotes by Adam Pisoni, Sean Rose, Kiran Naiga, (more)Loading...
So...
I don't want to give away any secret sauce or our best interview questions. But here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to give you a long-winded semi-crazy metaphor and see if you can pick up what I'm laying down.
The best metrics aren't just a big dump of stats and the best data people aren't just statisticians, they're economists. A site like Yammer isn't just a bunch of people logging in and clicking on things, it's an economy.
An island nation, if you will.
Okay, you're the governor of Yammer Island and you're facing a serious trade deficit. Your only hope is to open up your borders to tourism, to get people to stop spending money in other countries and spend it in yours.
How do you do that? How do you measure success of your programs?
Well, first you need to get some people coming. You launch a kickass PR campaign and get a few folks in the door. Cool, you've got some adventurous visitors, that's a good start.
This is a modern age, though, direct marketing is only so helpful. You need these adventurous visitors to become advocates. You need them to bring their friends. So you want to track whether these people are telling their friends and how the next batch of tourists got there. Did they see their friends' posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email? How do you encourage more of that kind of sharing?
Now, there are things to do on your island. You think they're fun, but maybe there's not enough to fill a week. Or maybe you're not giving your visitors the feeling that they would miss something by not coming back.
So you introduce helicopter rides over Mt. Snowball.
Of course, you want to be scientific about this. If people come back for the helicopter, you want to make sure you're capturing that. So you only hand out the flyers for the helicopter rides to 20% of visitors to Yammer Island. Do those people come back again soon? Do they even ride the helicopter or is it just an expensive hunk of junk sitting around that you have to fix all the time?
Regardless, the helicopter isn't really the reason you want people to visit. You need cash. You need to understand the inflow of this cash. And you have to keep an eye on those people who got the helicopter flyers, make sure they're at least not spending less cash on the day they're going to the helicopter. Basically, if they're on the helicopter, what aren't they doing and is that other thing more important?
If people are coming back, telling their friends, spending more money, and riding the helicopter? It's time to give those flyers to everyone.
So here's your action plan, Governor. If you want to boost the economy on Yammer Island, you need:
And any new attraction you add needs to add to one of those without degrading the others (in as much as one is a priority for that phase of your tourism expansion).
Congratulations! You're ready to run a banana republic or check out our "Program" (Product) Manager job listings.
I don't want to give away any secret sauce or our best interview questions. But here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to give you a long-winded semi-crazy metaphor and see if you can pick up what I'm laying down.
The best metrics aren't just a big dump of stats and the best data people aren't just statisticians, they're economists. A site like Yammer isn't just a bunch of people logging in and clicking on things, it's an economy.
An island nation, if you will.
Okay, you're the governor of Yammer Island and you're facing a serious trade deficit. Your only hope is to open up your borders to tourism, to get people to stop spending money in other countries and spend it in yours.
How do you do that? How do you measure success of your programs?
Well, first you need to get some people coming. You launch a kickass PR campaign and get a few folks in the door. Cool, you've got some adventurous visitors, that's a good start.
This is a modern age, though, direct marketing is only so helpful. You need these adventurous visitors to become advocates. You need them to bring their friends. So you want to track whether these people are telling their friends and how the next batch of tourists got there. Did they see their friends' posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email? How do you encourage more of that kind of sharing?
Now, there are things to do on your island. You think they're fun, but maybe there's not enough to fill a week. Or maybe you're not giving your visitors the feeling that they would miss something by not coming back.
So you introduce helicopter rides over Mt. Snowball.
Of course, you want to be scientific about this. If people come back for the helicopter, you want to make sure you're capturing that. So you only hand out the flyers for the helicopter rides to 20% of visitors to Yammer Island. Do those people come back again soon? Do they even ride the helicopter or is it just an expensive hunk of junk sitting around that you have to fix all the time?
Regardless, the helicopter isn't really the reason you want people to visit. You need cash. You need to understand the inflow of this cash. And you have to keep an eye on those people who got the helicopter flyers, make sure they're at least not spending less cash on the day they're going to the helicopter. Basically, if they're on the helicopter, what aren't they doing and is that other thing more important?
If people are coming back, telling their friends, spending more money, and riding the helicopter? It's time to give those flyers to everyone.
So here's your action plan, Governor. If you want to boost the economy on Yammer Island, you need:
- People to show up
- Repeat business
- Referral business
- For them to spend their money in the places that are most important for Yammer Island at any given time
And any new attraction you add needs to add to one of those without degrading the others (in as much as one is a priority for that phase of your tourism expansion).
Congratulations! You're ready to run a banana republic or check out our "Program" (Product) Manager job listings.
