‘To get c-suite buy-in on insight, give them a chance to be part of the story’
Bringing together diverse data to tell a compelling, actionable story is the key to getting the C-suite to buy into insight.
By Sarah Vizard
Speaking at Marketing Week Live yesterday (28 April), JustGiving’s head of insight, Elizabeth Kessick, advised insight teams not to blind the boardroom with graphs, but to use data to tell a comprehensive story that makes them sit up and take notice.
“It’s about storytelling and bringing all diverse data points together. You need to be able to say the quantitative data says this, the qualitative data says that, this is the deep dive and this is what we need to do next to action upon the story. First you win over one person on the C-suite and then give them the chance to be part of the story too,” she said.
For Camelot head of insight Nick Bonney, the key to gaining traction with the C-suite is to make sure insight relates to business KPIs.
“In one sense [the C-suite] world is way more simple as they are focused on the critical KPIs that drive the business. If what’s we’re presenting doesn’t ladder up to one of the KPIs then I have to ask, why would they care?
“We need to be talking in pounds not percentages and keep it simple, focusing on what matters for the business.”
Nick Bonney, head of insight, Camelot
Bonney, who two weeks ago started reporting into Camelot’s newly appointed chief data officer Mike Donoghue, believes insight teams should start to take direct accountability for the part of the revenue, rofit and loss their insight grows
Chief executive of marketing agency Hiveworks, Pierre Briffaut, argued that for insight to be good it needs to be useful, actionable and link the company with the user. “It really helps to create a user persona, which is one step further than segmentation as you’re looking at the user behaviour and how that affects their journey. We are seeing more and more persona based insight,” he said.
Kessick agreed that the best insight comes from analysing the user’s behaviour and motivations, then figuring out what comes next. She encouraged insight specialists to start working with user groups as soon as possible to make their data more meaningful and relevant.
“If you have people using your products or services then you have a user group. Getting customers involved as soon as possible is so important as it makes the discovery process more effective,” she concluded.
