It’s Time for a New HiPPO in Data-Driven Marketing

Paul Rouke, founder of PRWD, a UK-based con­ver­sion opti­mi­sa­tion agency and Adobe part­ner, recent­ly pub­lished an excel­lent arti­cle on the Econ­sul­tan­cy blog that explores how the tra­di­tion­al “HiP­PO” (High­est-Paid Person’s Opin­ion) so often holds busi­ness­es back with its harm­ful com­bi­na­tion of ego­tism, arro­gance, and cowardice.

In light of these prob­lems, Rouke pro­pos­es a new alter­na­tive HIPPO mod­el, in which the acronym stands for Humil­i­ty, Integri­ty, Pas­sion, Pos­i­tiv­i­ty, and Openness.

I couldn’t agree more. In fact, here at Adobe, we fre­quent­ly point out that the tra­di­tion­al HiP­PO neg­a­tive­ly effects com­pa­nies’ mar­ket­ing strate­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of test­ing, per­son­al­i­sa­tion, and optimisation.

As I read Rouke’s arti­cle, I was struck by the rel­e­vance of his five alter­nate HIPPO prin­ci­ples to the field of data-dri­ven marketing.

Here’s how your team can ben­e­fit by adopt­ing these HIPPO values.

Humil­i­ty
An effec­tive mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy starts with the real­i­sa­tion that you don’t have all the answers. If your lead­ers assume they already know every­thing impor­tant there is to know about your audi­ence, you’re nev­er going to improve your ROI or con­ver­sion rate, because—despite all the things you may be doing right—you’ll nev­er find out what you’re doing wrong.

Instead, invite mar­ket­ing insights from peo­ple through­out your busi­ness. Get every­one involved in con­tribut­ing and test­ing ideas, informed by their own exper­tise. For exam­ple, one trav­el com­pa­ny in the UK has work­shops where every­one in the company—not just the mar­ket­ing people—can sub­mit ideas for new mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives. Not only does this result in sur­pris­ing new tac­tics, it also strength­ens com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trust through­out your organisation.

Integri­ty
It’s easy to feel excit­ed when an ini­tial test seems to con­firm your hypothesis—especially when you’re test­ing an offer or cam­paign in which you were per­son­al­ly involved. But ini­tial results alone can’t tell you the whole story.

That’s why it’s cru­cial to keep run­ning tests for the full length of time that your sta­tis­tics cal­cu­la­tions spec­i­fy. Don’t let your­self be swayed by ini­tial results—or by the opin­ion of the pub­lic, or of your inter­nal experts. The only reli­able results are the ones you’ll get from hard data, gen­er­at­ed by a test run prop­er­ly, for the full allot­ted time.

Alter­nate­ly, use your mar­ket­ing software’s auto-allo­ca­tion capa­bil­i­ty to serve cre­atives and oth­er assets to each cus­tomer in real time, based on the lat­est mar­ket data.

Pas­sion
One of the surest ways to ruin a mar­ket­ing cam­paign is to treat it like “just anoth­er exer­cise.” When you’re enthu­si­as­tic about your test­ing plans and goals, that excite­ment is infec­tious, and will spark ideas and cri­tiques from peo­ple through­out your organisation.

Make a point of learn­ing from peo­ple out­side your own busi­ness or indus­try. Go to test­ing events like WhichT­est­Won or Con­ver­sion Con­fer­ence, and read books like Web Opti­mi­sa­tion: An Hour a Day and Don’t Make Me Think, to dis­cov­er the lat­est tac­tics used by mar­ket­ing experts around the world. The more pas­sion and insight you bring to bear on your mar­ket­ing chal­lenges, the more unique and effec­tive your solu­tions will be.

Pos­i­tiv­i­ty
Be pre­pared to fail—and to get right back up tomor­row and try some­thing else. As the say­ing goes, “fail­ing means learn­ing,” and that’s espe­cial­ly true when it comes to test­ing. If you get dis­cour­aged by fail­ures, that neg­a­tive atti­tude will spread out­ward through­out your team, and peo­ple will begin to feel that it’s all right to give less than their best.

If you’re intrigued by fail­ures, on the oth­er hand, and treat each one as a learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty, your team will pick up that atti­tude from you. Always be ready to jump in and learn every­thing you can from a fail­ure, no mat­ter how frus­trat­ing it might seem.

Open­ness
If some­one on your team is hid­ing neg­a­tive results, they’re only hurt­ing your busi­ness. Set the exam­ple of report­ing back to your lead­ers reg­u­lar­ly and open­ly, regard­less of the results, and let­ting peo­ple know what’s work­ing and what isn’t.

Pub­lish a roadmap doc­u­ment­ing your suc­cess­es and fail­ures, so every­one in your organ­i­sa­tion can see your suc­cess­es as well as how you’ve learned from tests that might not have worked. This will inspire oth­ers to do the same—and it’ll make your team much more respon­sive to prob­lems, so you can fix them before they get out of hand.

As you can see, all five of these val­ues tie into one anoth­er, and feed off each oth­er. The more humil­i­ty you bring to each test, the more you’ll be will­ing to stay pos­i­tive in the face of neg­a­tive results, and report them open­ly. The more integri­ty you bring to each test, the more pas­sion­ate you’ll feel that you’re han­dling every stage cor­rect­ly. Bring the new HIPPO val­ues to your team, and you’ll find that the road to effec­tive per­son­al­i­sa­tion and opti­mi­sa­tion becomes much clearer.