Lee Isensee - Licensee Man

The web analytics community is full of interesting people, and I’ve conned a few into interviews with me…

Today, international man of beardiness, Lee Isensee.

Lee, please give us a serious description of you and your background in the third person.

With 15 years in online delivery, ecommerce, and analytics, Lee is a highly regarded marketing analytics expert that has experienced the sometimes painful, and often successful, ventures of the evolving marketing world.  Lee has played a key role in ensuring solid strategy and design for hundreds of marketing organizations globally, including several Fortune 500 organizations. His expertise ranges from traditional web analytics, conversion optimization, multi-channel analysis and targeted marketing. Lee is also well rounded in multi-channel solutions to take advantage of enterprise data warehouse integrations which allow online and offline to be understood and actionable for a holistic marketing solution.

Summary of the above:

I received the oddest compliment today: ‘You make analytics and fun no longer seem mutually exclusive.’
But later (different person): ‘I’m not sure you do anything smart …’ ”

If you were a metric, which one would you be and why?

Bounce Rate, it would be interesting to see how long it would take for someone to walk out of one of my presentations.

What’s the best nerdy joke you’ve ever told?

Q:        How many analysts does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:         Which executive is asking and when do they need it by?

Which is your favourite web analytics blog (apart from mine – too obvious, of course)?

I never avoid the Web Analytics Demystified blogs but these days I mostly troll Twitter.

Who is your superhero-sans-cape in the web analytics community and why?

I’m going to go with the Clark Kent of web analytics, John Lovett.
While being a mild-mannered guy during the day, at night he is able to predict what is going to happen then next day/week/year with amazing accuracy. I’m guessing he either has a crystal ball or sold his soul to the devil.

What is the best thing that has ever happened to you following the presentation of web analytics findings?

I don’t know if you would call it “the best” but years ago I was working on a project at a rather high profile organization and we were doing some data validation. After excluding all internal traffic, robots/spiders and other non-human behavior they dropped to less than 20% of their original number that they had been reporting for over a year.
The director of analytics brought me into their office and told me point-blank “put it all back or we will have to fire people”.
Trying to argue the importance of data accuracy was not going to be listened to.

What is your wish for 2011?

Very simple, for web analytics people to stop talking about moving beyond reports and get into making the data actionable. This doesn’t mean take the reports to someone that could do something with the information but rather take the data and integrate it into a predictive modelling solution or bring it into an enterprise data warehouse and start spinning that cube!

If you couldn’t work in the web analytics industry, what would be your dream job?

Funny enough before all of this interwebs stuff became popular I was into marine biology (saving dolphins, protecting turtle eggs, blah blah blah). Ahh the ambitions of a young soul; who needs money, food, a place to sleep – just give me an open ocean and I can change the
world.
You don’t need keep an animal off the endangered species list to influence people and marketing pays better.

What do you think is the greatest threat to the future of web analytics?

Lazy people, but I don’t think it is a long term threat but rather a blemish on the industry which will flush itself out. As I mentioned above, being a report monkey is ok for a start to help show value to an organization that things are moving (or not) with your internet
presence. Eventually there comes a time where you need to step away from Excel and other reporting solutions and start doing something aside from e-mailing information around.

YODA: “No, try not, do or do not…there is no try… ”

Either you are doing it or not, stop talking about “thinking about” doing it.

If you put an analyst, a cat, a snake and a gerbil into a bucket and sealed it for 24 hours, how many compound metrics could a 5-year-old compute?

One, awesomeness percentage – 10,000,000%

Do you know who Jojoba is?

I’m not sure but they sound like trouble. (right Michele?)
It is too soon to start calling her Jojo-clicks? (as in Ja Ja Binks)  Jojo The Hut would just be mean.

Check out the full list of interviews in the Silly Series here!