Invited by an ex-colleague, she is now working with Cathay Pacific Airways, to share about my experiences in Adobe Analytics. To talk about how I become a champion and what activities and opportunities as a champion, in her department learning and development session. It was a new kind of sharing experience for me, to share privately with another company.
The journey was a decade-long for me from encountering Adobe Analytics to becoming a champion. I started to use Adobe Analytics back in 2011 and learned about the solution. With all the learning, I excelled in the solution to a master level. From there I started to share the knowledge both internally and externally. Through external sharing, I became a champion in Adobe Analytics.
Learn
As mentioned above my journey with Adobe Analytics started in 2011. By that time, the company decided to take on a digital transformation journey and I internally transferred to a newly established digital strategy team in Group Marketing. We have plain Google Analytics on all anonymous corporate websites but hardly looking into the data in details. There was also an exercise to standardize the design and information architecture for all corporate websites across the entire organisation. Reviewing the digital analytics tool was one of the exercises. Of course, Adobe Analytics was the winner at the end.
We implemented Adobe Analytics as part of the revamp project for all corporate websites and with the support of an external consultant since we were not familiar with the tool. There was only basic tracking, as websites were still rather basic compared to today. The tracking was implemented via page code as well where we needed to put Adobe Analytics tracking code everywhere.
Progressively, we expanded the Adobe Analytics implementation to login portals, agency tools, and even mobile apps with native tracking many years down the road. Moreover, we also changed from page code tracking to tag manager solutions.
There were a lot of things to learn and the golden sources of information are the official ones.
There should be some other official documentation for Adobe Analytics before. However, Adobe did a good job of consolidating documentation of all Marketing Cloud (now Experience Cloud) solutions into one single Experience League documentation, https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics. Apart from simply documentation, there are also tutorial videos on many topics to learn more about Adobe Analytics.
When speaking of videos, the Adobe Analytics YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8I6bqCk7gO6YdoMz6W5fvw, is another good starting point. Over a hundred videos and well organized into different playlists suitable for users at different levels of knowledge in Adobe Analytics to learn more.
No matter how good those materials are, we are the ones to learn and we are the key. I always emphasise three key aspects of learning:
- Observe, we need to keep watching. The first thing to learn is to take information in. Be mindful of everything we see, no matter the lines in the documentation, options and messages in the system, parameters in a network call of a webpage, and more.
- Think, we need to process information after taking it in, to turn it into knowledge of ours. Three common questions on what, why, and how could help. For all the things we see. What really happens and means? Why did that happen in this way, not the others? How are things happening behind the scenes?
- Try, we need to put our knowledge into action to try it out and prove it correct. Try out examples or exercises that have been documented, make some changes to see differences, and create something brand new to validate the knowledge and hypothesis.
For me, the technical background is definitely helpful. Since I have been working on website development, a lot of knowledge such as HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and even networking, firewall, and web server configuration is not new to me. After all, digital analytics are the analysis of user behaviour on digital properties, which are technology artefacts.
Excel
Two driving forces turned me from a learner in Adobe Analytics into a master: Demand and Curiosity.
The adoption of Adobe Analytics in the organization was ever-growing in the organization by that time. There were 18 different markets for the organization and multiple digital properties per market. They all asked for tracking to be implemented in their digital properties to gain insights into how users are using the tools. There were pre-login websites, post-login portals, and mobile apps, covering both external and internal users. There were over 200 digital properties with Adobe Analytics implemented by the time I left the role.
The level of demand was high and with few resources to help me, it required another level of observing, thinking, and trying. To develop a standardized approach to cope with that level of demand, which I concluded into flexibility, reusability, and scalability. I observed digital properties to understand what user interactions are available and what tracking is required. Then thought about how to generalize those requirements into some smaller and repeatable ways of measurement and reporting. Finally tried them in different digital properties and adjusted along the way.
As said, the approach is flexible, reusable, and scalable. I always use the Lego block metaphor to describe it. There are some small pieces of block in different generic shapes, which are the small and basic measurements we are taking from digital properties. However, we can create many different models with pieces of those blocks together and arrange them in a particular way, just like the user journey in the digital properties can be preciously described with many small measurements.
If mastering a skill only with demand as a driving force, it can be very painful and many may drop in midway. Curiosity is a more positive driving force to advance. How thing works? How to do things better with less effort? Are there any functions/features in the system not being used and what it will do? What are those digital properties actually doing? What are users really asking in tracking and reporting to address what business problem?
Curiosity gets us beyond the demand and truly excels. It will bring in and generate more knowledge and experience than required in simply answering direct questions. That excessive knowledge and experience could be useful in resolving new challenges in the unseen future.
Apart from demand and curiosity, empathy solidifies both of them. In a role at the group office defined Adobe Analytics for an organization with 18 markets. Markets may encounter difficulties in complying with the standard, no matter skill and knowledge or any uniqueness locally. Empathise the challenge they encountered was pushing the curiosity to understand them more, to better support the demand from markets.
Share
Accumulated knowledge and experience in Adobe Analytics over 10 years. I started to share those with people internally and externally.
Internal sharing was part of the daily job to support users in using Adobe Analytics. However, instead of simply answering questions, I started to go deeper into explaining what, why, and how. To get other people to step into the learning journey I have gone through. I wanted to equip them with the skills and knowledge to find answers themselves, so we could all together do a better job for the organization.
I shared the overall flexibility, reusability, and scalability with all users. More on how to implement tracking with new approaches with developers. Sharing what is the right way to capture data and report with business users.
Those sharings could be posts on a SharePoint site, which serves as a blog like this. Or classroom training in the markets with well-defined syllables. More often were meetings and calls as part of the on-going project deliveries and supports.
Externally sharing started from the Adobe Experience League community forum. Other Adobe Analytics users posted questions in the forum and answered by Adobe employees and more often by other Adobe Analytics users. For a while, I spent an hour during lunchtime every day, going through those questions and trying to answer as much as I could.
With some consistent sharing and answering questions on the Experience League community forum, other more interesting and interactive sharing opportunities were coming by themselves, such as webinars and conferences. Those sharings had gone beyond just answering questions from others but to my ways of working in digital analytics and digital marketing through the past 10 years.
Champion
Champion is the name of an Adobe advocate program covering Adobe Analytics, Adobe Experience Manager, and Marketo. There are two more Adobe advocate programs, Adobe Community Advisor and Adobe Experience Maker.
Adobe Champion opens for applications by existing users of corresponding products annually before summer. 40 champions are selected per product over the summer and the class of championship starts in September. Adobe Champions are a pool of enthusiasts and experienced users for the corresponding products to provide not only help and support to other users. They also share feedback, comments, and even suggestions on new features directly to Adobe. They are also a pool of potential speakers for various Adobe webinars and even conferences, such as the Adobe Summit. For Adobe Analytics Champions, one of the most consistent activities is the monthly Analytics Office Hour, to answer questions from other Adobe Analytics users in live sessions.
Adobe Community Advisor is around the Adobe Experience League Community Forum. This program opens for applications twice a year to select community users who are actively participating in community discussions and providing solutions to questions asked by other users. Adobe Community Advisors are also a pool of potential speakers for various Adobe webinars. They can also accept a reply to questions in the community forum by other users as a solution. Recently, there were also new activities for Adobe Community Advisors as mentors in the Community Mentorship program. It is a program to pair up advisors (and other experienced users participating in forum discussions) with new users in Adobe products as aspirants. During the mentorship program, mentors provide support to aspirants to complete their study by sharing resources on schedule and answering questions, to ultimately for aspirants to complete an Adobe certification examination.
Adobe has a certification program for products in Adobe Experience Cloud, https://learning.adobe.com/certification.html, which serves as a good learning and proof of knowledge and skillsets. There are different levels of certification for users with different years of experience and different roles in using those products.
Apart from those official Adobe advocate programs, this personal blog is another platform to demonstrate the championship to share and prompt my philosophy in digital marketing and marketing technology. There is a considerable amount of dedication and effort to writing articles and also running the blog, at least there are costs to keep it running.
Conference speaking and competition jury opportunities came naturally when there was sufficient exposure to other activities. Conference and competition organisers are actively looking for experienced experts in different areas to join. Those are opportunities for me to deliver my experiences and beliefs directly to audiences in the same industry or function. It is also a close loop to the social sharing below that they support each other.
It is similar to what we are working for our companies in the day job. When there is a product, this blog and articles for my case, we have to market it and have more people aware of it. Sharing on social media, especially LinkedIn as it is on professional topics, is a basic strategy. Apart from simply sharing articles on my blog, there are sharing for other activities such as speaking at conferences and being judges for competitions. Those sharing can help to build a stronger profile which eventually leads to more article readership.
Journey Goes On
Learning and development is a never-ending journey. Especially on the digital one nowadays where new developments consistently coming up. My domain is no longer only digital analytics but extended to MarTech: marketing technologies. In my definition, it covers data collection, analytics and reporting, data platform, marketing automation, testing and personalization.
學而不思則罔 思而不學則殆 – 孔子
This is a quote from Confucius, who was a Chinese philosopher and educator almost 3000 years ago. The quote roughly translated into “If you learn without thinking, you will be in vain. If you think without learning, you will be in danger”. It highlights the “observe” and “think” mentioned above. “Try” is what I added to the picture and I am still applying them to catch up on all the latest developments in MarTech and how that can help the business to do better.
To learn about professional knowledge and skills, the “try” is more important than the “observe” and “think”. Taking classes, checking websites and documents, understanding the concept, etc, could only contribute to 20% of the time in learning and development. The remaining 80% should be putting those learnt skills and knowledge into real cases, to try them out and solidify the learning.
Another phase from another ancient Chinese philosopher, Zhuang Zhou, “Life is limited, knowledge is not”. Knowing the limit is also important so we can set focus and priorities on what direction we are going to.
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