Blog : data

Make a Date with Data Protection
Emma Paul

Make a Date with Data Protection

So what can I say about GDPR? Sadly for the Stripe team the term doesn’t stand for God Damn Public Relations, if it did we’d ace that.

What I’m talking about is the General Data Protection Regulation, not the most exhilarating topic perhaps, but please don’t stop reading, let me explain…

The regulation is a new law that will come into force across the EU (including the UK, we’re still in it for now) this May. The law makes it incumbent for businesses to safeguard all their staff, client and supplier private information; meaning that they have to be a lot more sensible about the personal information that they collect and store.

The UK’s existing data protection law was created back in 1998, the same year Geri left the Spice Girls, Titanic was top of the Box Office and two PhD students from California created a little-known search engine named Google. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then and the law relating to data badly needed updating for a new generation, one that communicates, shops, banks and does business online.

Almost every week the media reports on yet another company that has either fallen prey to hackers or has inadvertently shared customer information with a third party. This dissemination of personal information leads to an array of problems, ranging from nuisance phone calls (“Have you been mis-sold PPI?”) through to fraud and identity theft.

Last month the user database for popular app My Fitness Pal was hacked. I’ve intermittently used the app to chronicle my various failed attempts to shape up. As a result of the hack, I now know that my contact details and (even more terrifyingly) my weight could be in the hands of anyone. And this is small fry compared to other headlines – the patients whose NHS medical records were hacked; or the Grindr users whose HIV status was sold to a third-party marketing firm…Life is getting a little too Black Mirror, and that is exactly why we need GDPR.

Like most professions, in the comms industry we do, by trade, collect some personal data. In preparation for the upcoming law change, we’re implementing new and secure processes for managing data, emails and encouraging our clients to do the same. Our goal is to ensure all the data we keep on file is up-to-date, relevant to our business, and above all, stored safely.

The law sets a new standard for data protection and makes businesses accountable for how they control and process data. It will require changes in mind set and processes, but ultimately, the outcomes are positive; the law will help us ensure our privacy and reclaim a degree of autonomy in the digital age.

Three cheers for data protection.

Tackling the challenges of gender inequality through listening and empowering
Juliet Simpson

Tackling the challenges of gender inequality through listening and empowering

Today the Marketing Society Scotland called for the industry to commit to building an equal and thriving community after new research found the sector to be rife with inequality and gender discrimination.  The research makes some stark reading but am I surprised? Sadly, no I’m not.

For me, Mind the Gap started a year ago when I joined a group of members to see if we could get something off the ground which would help us understand the issues relating to the retention of women and devise a plan to raise awareness and make a difference. I don’t think we ever imagined that we would be where we are today.  Whilst the state of equality in our industry is not something to be proud of, we are at least admitting there’s a problem. There’s no hiding from the fact that almost half (48%) of women in the marketing community in Scotland have either definitely or possibly experienced gender related discrimination compared to 16% of men.

Mrketingpoll2

I feel incredibly proud of the Society’s openness to accepting where we are and more importantly, supporting a proactive plan of action to drive significant change.

In my career, I feel very lucky that I’ve always worked in environments where my gender has never been a barrier.  Sure, there are countless things that have been said or done which have been inappropriate or crossed the line, and rightly or wrong I’ve always just accepted that’s part of being a woman, but much more importantly I never let it distract from what I needed to do.  You see, regardless of what’s said or done I truly believe I am equal and as we know, lacking self-confidence is one of the greatest barriers to women’s success.

At Stripe this is an issue close to our hearts.  Like the rest of our profession the majority of our team are female. Whilst our Board is 50/50, our leadership team in Scotland is entirely female.  For us however, this is not about gender, it’s about culture.  We believe if we put our people at the heart of every business decision, we will create an environment where they are motivated to deliver great work and the business will succeed. When you run a small business, you experience the full spectrum of life’s ups and downs and we recognise that what’s going on for people out of work impacts the role they play in the business.  In the last five years 25% of our team and 90% of senior management have taken time off to have children. When faced with this challenge rather than viewing it as a problem we decided to treat it as an opportunity.  We set out to champion flexible working and the retention of women, so that first and foremost we could retain our talent, whilst hopefully setting an example for others.

I recognise that the Stripe culture and approach is unique. It isn’t just about a policy in a handbook, it works because our leadership team get it. There’s an unspoken understanding that it’s hard to balance everything, that you’re constantly making choices about what to prioritise and that sometimes you just need to be somewhere else. I believe more than anything it is our culture that helps women thrive. We listen and support, but we also try to inspire them to have the confidence to fulfil their potential, which from my experience is more important than anything. That said this is a business and it isn’t a one-way street. In return, we ask for their continued commitment and drive to help the business fulfil its potential too.

I’m not going to lie, we haven’t always got it right and we’re constantly learning, but we’re fully committed to creating an environment where all our staff regardless of their gender can balance their home and working lives and continue to have a successful career.

Quite honestly I don’t understand why any business would not want to help every individual fulfil their potential, so enough now. Let’s close the gap.

To find out more and pledge visit:  www.mindthegapscotland.co.uk

Understanding data part 2: Appearance
Darcie Tanner

Understanding data part 2: Appearance

Following on from the post last month on understanding data acquisition, this post is going to address the fact that there is so much data out there – how do you know what you should be looking at, what good data looks like and which bits are genuinely useful. You are probably thinking this already, and you’re are right to do so. What constitutes good data depends on your objectives. For some it will be high numbers in social sharing or comments, for others it may be traffic to a specific web page or time spent on site.

What is good data?

It’s any data that allows you to better understand and deliver quality, contextual content to users.

What could this look like?
Data sample points that help you to understand your consumers/users wants, dislikes and behaviours:

Data Points
Social sharing (top left), Newsletter A/B testing (top right), Traffic referral source (bottom left), device source bottom middle), Visitor demographics – gender (bottom right)

Additional data-points to consider:

  • Time on site
  • Un-opened newsletters
  • Platform performance
  • Unfollows/unlikes

Too many look for high numbers across the board – particularly when using these figures to address KPIs. The issue here is that to achieve success in a certain space, to hit a certain objective, may mean that you have to sacrifice increasing figures in another area – and that’s okay. It’s important to set clear objectives and KPIs to reach those. Don’t just measure for measurements sake and cause strain to increase everything at once.

When looking at how people use your platforms or channels, for example, people may engage more with a post on Twitter than Facebook, even though the content was the same/similar, it’s key to take the learnings into account to ensure that you are delivering the right content types, topics and formats that the audience want to engage with.

The article you see shares for above (top left of image) shows that 2x more people were likely to share the post on Twitter than Facebook, particularly in the first 24 hours of the post being live.

Looking at the those figures (first 24 hours live) one might claim that the article was something people would associate themselves with and share out, so they must believe in/agree with the article, however it’s not something they want to share with their closer knit circle (Facebook) and not with their pure business circle (LinkedIn) which sits at zero. At the time, that may be a logical assumption, however when the same article was looked at a couple weeks later (see the sharing figures below), you’ll notice that Facebook has increased slightly and Twitter stayed relatively the same, however LinkedIn increased significantly, suggesting that the article might actually resonate even further with the more professional side of readers interests.

The key takeaway: Don’t look at your data to pull insights until you absolutely have to. Ensure you’ve given plenty of time for consumers to behave naturally with how and when they prefer to engage with your content.

But Twitter went so high, so fast, what’s up with that?
My hypothesis with 98% of the Twitter shares happening in the first 24 hours is that many people saw the article heading and shared/tweeted/retweeted without actually reading. They may have saved it to a read it later type app, however many people don’t actually take the time to read full articles anymore, and often take the risk of sharing any content that they think sounds like them from the title (yes, this can be dangerous, but that’s another post!).

Key takeaway: make sure when reviewing if your content is successful, don’t look purely at social shares alone. Make sure you overlay this information with data such as time spent on the page and bounce rates.

There is so much more that goes into understanding what good data is for you and how to use it to ensure it’s useful for your needs. In the next piece, we’ll look at the application of data and how to make it work for your needs.

Understanding data part 1: Acquisition
Darcie Tanner

Understanding data part 1: Acquisition

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data.

Whether you’re a small organisation, independent or part of a large organisation, you are not only creating some of that data, but you will be acquiring and probably own a bit as well.

Recently I spoke at MagFest2015 (read our summary of the day) on the use of data in publishing and over the next month I’ll be sharing aspects of the presentation on the Stripe blog. The three areas covered are:

  • Acquisition – ways to collect and collate your data
  • Appearance – what different types of data look like and which bits are useful
  • Application – how to use the data ongoing

Acquisition
The amount of data can be paralysing for many, knowing what you want to acquire and how to go about acquiring it is hard – and believe it or not, for many people, the next question is “Why should I bother?” The benefits can be vast – data can:

  • Provide feedback that you don’t get directly from users via support channels (people always talk about things they don’t like or that are broken – but don’t often talk about things that are working well!)
  • Raise questions that you may not have considered about how people use your content/channels
  • Enable you to create the content wanted by your audience, as opposed to what you think they want
  • Overlay with any target audience data for granular targeting and ad placements
  • Give you the insight to apply a strategic approach to your short and long-term planning

Ultimately, all of the above helps to deliver a stronger return on investment.

Reeling it in – some sources to begin gathering data:

Be proactive – there are ways you can go and search for data not directly through your channels, utilising tools and sites (free and paid) such as:

There are several reasons that keep people from taking advantage of the data, such as knowing what’s useful, set-up, implementation, understanding what the data means, pulling useful insights, resource and time. There’s the excuses out of the way and it’s never too later to a) get started or b) get it set up so that you are tracking and reporting properly. As the saying goes, we never have time to do it right, but we always have time to do it over.

Remember that just because you didn’t do it from day one or haven’t been tracking doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start (and if you want some help, don’t hesitate to get in touch!)

Magfest 2015 – Create Inspire Evolve
Emily Puddephatt

Magfest 2015 – Create Inspire Evolve

On Friday 18th September we headed to Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall for the fourth PPA Scotland Magfest. A day of presentations, discussions and celebrations of all things magazine. In 2015, this means not just chatting print, but addressing the various communications channels and challenges that modern publishing is presented with.

Create

Magfest 2015 kicked off with Cannes Lions CEO Phil Thomas tackling the topic of creativity head on. ‘Any brand can be creative’ he said, and the award winners at Cannes Lions illustrate this as well as anything else. Just consider the now infamous Volvo trucks spot featuring Jean Claude Van Damme – the biggest winner the festival has seen yet, despite the distinctly ‘unsexy’ product. Creativity matters not just because it can be a force for change and for good, but because it directly drives higher ROI for businesses. This is important for brands to get their heads around, and for the agencies that work with them to reiterate. Not their capacity to be creative – all know this, though not all apply it – but the evidence that great creative work itself delivers higher share value and drives long term business impact. Bravery pays off.

This sentiment was echoed by several other speakers. For BBC Worldwide, creativity is part of how they do business, not something they apply from time to time. Marcus Arthur explained that the BBC Worldwide team know that if they’re creative and build the reputation of the BBC then financial success will take care of itself. This focus on being creative and getting the best ideas to come to fruition delivers better results than focussing on the finances as the sole end in themselves.

Driving Online revenue Panel Discussion at Magfest 2015

Throughout the day the spectre of ‘disruption’ was present: disruption of the publishing industry, of TV, culture, advertising models, customer loyalty and news discovery. For the BBC, as for many of the other businesses in attendance, creativity has been what has allowed them to overcome some of the challenges that disruption has created and led to new and exciting outcomes they perhaps had not anticipated.

Inspire

Disruption need not be seen as a negative force, but an opportunity that should inspire change. For example, the last few years have seen ever more conversations about the ‘death’ of newspapers and the decline of print, but to paraphrase Francesco Franchi of IL magazine, “it’s not that newspapers are dying, it’s that one way of making newspapers is coming to an end”. This is by no means unique to the newspaper business, and how individual companies react and adapt is helping to inspire others and shape the long term future of a swathe of industries.

Evolve

To mitigate some of the risk that goes hand in hand with treading new ground, more and more publishers and brands are looking at how they can intelligently apply data. Our own Darcie Tanner spoke about how organisations of any size can make sense of ‘big data’ and draw useful insights from the mass of information out there and data got called out as a priority consideration in a number of talks throughout the day.

Darcie Tanner, Stripe Communications at Magfest 2015

Kerin O’Connor revealed some of the ways they’ve used data at The Week to inform their evolved print and digital model and consistently grown both strands by ensuring they really understand their audience. With staggering renewal figures and a progressive test and learn approach to new activity, they’re continuing to see returns and have sidestepped the issues that have affected many peer publications.

Kerin O'Connor, The Week at Magfest 2015

Understanding your audience was also at the core of Mimi Turner‘s session, where she discussed how The LAD Bible has come to know more about the tricky to reach 18-24 males group in the UK than perhaps any other organisation. With a reflective, community led proposition they are committed to going where their audience directs them and making it easy for them to find what they want. She advocated a shift for publishers from being ‘doers’ (which is a role now belonging to the audience) to being listeners. This is a tricky notion for some brands and publishing businesses to apply, having kept customers and audiences at a distance from the inner workings of their business , but if they’re to succeed in a modern, integrated communications landscape then it’s something that can’t be ignored.

What was clear from all of the speakers and the discussions amongst attendees was that the sector isn’t sitting still and there’s a lot of positivity about what the future might hold. With so much changing and so much interesting work happening to meet the challenges this brings, it’s an exciting time to be involved in publishing.