As a marketer, the data geek side of me is just dying for a magical piece of software to make decisions for me. Who should I target? What should I say to them? What's the magic formula for getting someone to join/register/buy?
But true "Freakonomics" momentsâ€"where the singular pursuit of data analysis reveals a truth no one ever could have hypothesizedâ€"are rare and overrated. By overindulging in a gluttony of data, you lose track of cause and effect and weaken your findings. For me, the real value of data is the ability to test ideas from real people who are bringing all of their experience and real-life interactions to the table. In other words, learning directly from our co-workers, partners and members, and then double checking what we're learning against our data.
It's no accident that Google has built human bias into their algorithm, or that human-powered search like Mahalo is all the rage.
At the ASAE Tech Conference in January, David Gammel and Wes Trochlil presented on putting the intelligence back into business intelligence. I was really impressed with their insight, and so I'm tagging them both on this post. I'm also tagging Mads who was at the swap;-) I hope you guys will share your considerable knowledge on the topic of data mining.
So the question is, does it make sense for a membership organization to spend time and resources on predictive modeling, or is it just another layer separating us from our members?