Neil Hoyne - Converted : The Data-Driven Way to Win Customers Hearts

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Copyright 2022 by Neil Hoyne

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hoyne, Neil, author.

Title: Converted : the data-driven way to win customers hearts / Neil Hoyne.

Description: New York : Portfolio/Penguin, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021022910 (print) | LCCN 2021022911 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593420652 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593420669 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Customer relations. | Internet marketing. | MarketingStatistical methods.

Classification: LCC HF5415.5 .H69 2022 (print) | LCC HF5415.5 (ebook) | DDC 658.8/12dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022910

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022911

book design by chris welch, adapted for ebook by estelle malmed

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate internet addresses and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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To Liza, my love and partner on this incredible journey, and my children, Hamilton and Elizabeth, who provide the endless inspiration for it.

This book represents the opinion and independent research of the author and is not sponsored or endorsed by Google.

INTRODUCTION

Digital marketing is about keeping the faith. The faith that you can seduce someone to buy more, vote differently, or just love your brandall in a 250 x 250pixel box as theyre scrolling through websites, purposefully trying to avoid the message youre sending. Its about timing, extraordinary scale, and hoping that customers willing to pay full price dont find that 15 percentoff coupon code first. Its also a promisehelp the customer reach their ambitionswhile you get yours: their money.

My world, digital analytics, is the science behind proving that this faith hasnt been misplaced. That the messy pile of actions and metricsthe impressions, clicks, and conversionswouldnt have happened without exposing users to that six-second pre-roll ad on their way to watching another unboxing video on YouTube. Its not a perfect world. Heres reality: shoddy, imperfect experiments that need ninety days but only get a dozen, and porous data sets that may represent as much of reality as a coin toss.

In this space, Ive been an analyst, researcher, inventor, lecturer, programmer, and, most shamefully, the father of many forgettable slides of glossy funnels and Venn diagrams. A witness to and participant in billion-dollar successes and expensive failures driven by ego, ambition, and, much less often, pragmatism. A key player in the executive rallying cry to be more data driven.

My latest gig, spanning more than a decade at Google, has given me the privilege to lead more than 2,500 engagements with our biggest advertisers. I have overseen initiatives that have acquired millions of customers, stretched conversion rates by more than 400 percent, and supposedly generated more than $2 billion in incremental revenue. (I dont know how the economists derived that number, but I like it, so Im going with it. I have my sins too.) But, like for most analysts I know, its the failures that made me second-guess my career choices, if not my sanity. Its a messy world, and Im part of it. We all are.

The moments that make you think your finely tuned model might as well be a random number generator? Ive had my share. Ive seen researchers remove individual survey resultsoutliersuntil the results matched the product managers convictions. Ive worked with executives who demanded absolute accountability for every dollar spentuntil it came to buying the naming rights to a college football game. When their sales numbers showed they would have produced better returns had they wrapped their products in hundred-dollar bills and tossed them into the crowd, they questioned the data. And once, I had to partner with a particularly egregious group of consultants who pulled a revenue estimate right out of their asses. I know that because the footnote was literally Replace these numbers I pulled out of my ass. They didnt even proof it. But nobody reads footnotesapparently not even the board.

Well-intentioned executives and graduate students used to ask me about the secret to building a successful marketing organization. Was having one more success than your failures enough? Or was it found in embracing some Silicon Valley platitude like Fail Faster?

I wanted to know. And I have spent my career in search of an answer.

Youll find me in Googles Partner Plex, located on our Mountain View, California, campus, surrounded by relentlessly brilliant engineers who make serving up results to forty thousand search queries every second look effortless. While the engineers crank out code, manage systems, and do the heavy math, my team talks and strategizes with customers. We welcome them to our part of the campus with an AI-powered piano that composes its own music, a rainbow staircase of the latest search trends, and a virtual reality rig to paint in 3D. Its enough to make Willy Wonka wish he had a golden ticket.

We also have conference rooms. Thats where the work gets done. Theyre more than your normal meeting space, because theyre purpose-built for the tasks ahead. Stuffed with power and bandwidth, sugar and caffeinecourtesy of microkitchens tucked into a series of pull-out cabinets with Drink and Eat laser-etched into the sides. The conference tables, built from the same dark, laminated wood, could be branded with Think. Here we collaborate with Googles largest customers on the future of their products and verticals.

Today I hold the title of Googles chief measurement strategist, but ever since starting out as an analyst, I was always curious to understand how executives made decisions based on the work my team produced, and why two companies often acted differently when shown the same data.

The question presented itself again and again. Why did companies use identical information to compete in entirely different ways? Over time, a pattern became clear. Most companies were focused on a single moment, a single sentence, a single interaction: Hey, take my offer! They were using the data to change creatives, colors, and targeting, changing words and tone across endless experiments. Anything to get the immediate yesbut everything was short term.

It made sense. CFOs demand accountability. Digital advertising gave it to them. They could instantly connect clicks to action. They spent a dollar and then the customer spent ten. It set the strategies and their weekly dashboards. But it was boxing the CMOs in. That one moment was all that mattered and all that was measured.