Welcome to another edition of Meet Your Pod Squad! Today, we speak to Isabel Gagnè, our social media analytics & insights specialist.
Isabel is our in-house analytics expert! With it being such a busy role, Isabel has organized her position into three main categories to keep herself and our team organized:
1️⃣ Oversees ProudMouth’s analytics (e.g., social media, website, in-house podcasts, etc.)
2️⃣ Tracks, analyzes, interprets, and provides insights on client-specific analytics
3️⃣ Stays up to date on advancements in digital marketing, financial services marketing, podcast marketing, and analytics
Let’s get to know Isabel and her role at ProudMouth…
(Listen to Isabel’s interview with our CRO, Matt Halloran, or keep reading!)
Important question first! What’s in your mug right now?
Right now? It’s a London Fog. I love coffee. I think like most people do. But I’m also a pretty avid tea drinker.
I think if there’s one interesting fact about me it’s that I don’t ever have a consistent order anywhere. Like each time I go to Starbucks I like to switch up my order. Even at Subway, I rotate through about five different sandwich combinations and every once in a while I’ll try something new to see if I want to add it to my repertoire.
If you had a podcast, what would it be about?
You know what’s funny about this question? About a week before ProudMouth first got in touch with me about this job opportunity, one of my best friends sent me a message saying, “We should start a podcast.”
Before this, I had never given much thought to starting a podcast, but she had some great ideas. You see, both her and myself are Indigenous, but we’re also mixed. My dad is Métis and my mom is white. And my friend is both First Nations and Jamaican. So, she had this brilliant idea about starting a podcast that discusses Indigenous issues in Canada and around the world, as Indigenous women ourselves, who may not look like what society would expect us to look like. We could then raise awareness for many of the issues that our communities face, while also shining a light on what it means to embrace your culture, no matter what you look like –– or what society thinks you’re supposed to look like.
And then, coincidentally, two weeks later, I was offered a job with a company that does podcast production. So, I guess this might be a sign that we should actually start this podcast one of these days.
I hope you do! Now, which TV shows and movies do you enjoy?
I really wish I had a profound answer to this question. So many people I know are into some really cool and critically acclaimed films and TV shows. And, don’t get me wrong, I like them, too…sometimes.
But if I’m being honest, I love teen dramas. I watched a lot of TV with my friends when I was in high school, we watched a lot of teen dramas together, and I thought I really enjoyed them because I was also a teen at the time. The thing is, I haven’t been a teen for years, and I still love these dramas. Also, I wish I could say I go back to them just for nostalgic reasons, but if a new drama comes out on Netflix, I will watch it, and I will enjoy it. There’s just something about ridiculous dramatic storylines in these TV shows and movies that keeps me forever entertained.
Do you have any hidden talents?
This isn’t necessarily a hidden talent, but it is a bit of a secret success story.
So, when I was in my first year of undergrad, I made a quick little video about “How to analyze a print advertisement.” I uploaded the video to YouTube so that I could easily incorporate it into my PowerPoint presentation for class. I had no intention for this video to do anything other than to help in my school assignment. Except, well, since then, this little video has gained over 59,000 views on YouTube! Even now, I sometimes check on the video just to see how it’s doing, and I’m still getting over 1,000 new views a month. When I reached 55,000, my family got an ice cream cake to celebrate my little secret success. I’m currently debating whether I need to wait for a number like 75,000 to have my next celebration, or if later this week when I hit 60,000 that’s enough for another party.
We’re so thrilled to have you as our analytics expert! Can you tell everyone what’s involved in that role?
My role is one that’s constantly changing. I oversee and look after basically all things analytics. There are three main areas in my role. Or, that’s at least how I’ve broken it down.
The first main area that I oversee is our company’s analytics. This includes tracking analytics for our social media, email marketing, website, SEO, sales, and our in-house podcasts, “Top Advisor Marketing Podcast” and “Be Your Own Loud Podcast.”
The second main area is our client-focused analytics, which includes tracking clients’ social media, LinkedIn connection boosting, and podcasts.
Finally, the third main aspect of my role involves staying informed on new advancements in digital marketing, financial services marketing, podcast marketing, and analytics.
In all these areas, I’m not only focused on tracking the data but also on analyzing and interpreting data to provide actionable insights to our team, so we can improve and grow.
So, what does a typical day look like?
I’ll tell you this –– no day (at least, so far) has been like any other day. Many days, I’m working on a special project or trying to set up automated tracking methods for something new. Some days, I’m generating reports based on my insights, or I’m meeting with account managers to discuss client-focused analytics. And then I also spend a lot of time strategizing new ways to track specific metrics. But, mostly, I do a lot of analysis.
My mentor recently, actually, gave me a new technique for this analysis. What I do is block off a couple hours at a time, sit down in front of whatever data I’m analyzing (say, in Google Analytics for example), and I tell myself that in this period of time, I need to find at least one actionable insight. So, I do that a lot now. I turn on some background music, I ignore all outside distractions, and I go through the data until I find a piece of gold.
What do you enjoy about working at ProudMouth?
I enjoy how dynamic this company is as it grows. I think earlier when I mentioned not having a regular Starbucks order, you can kind of see that I’m not someone who loves routine.
When I was in my second year in management at McGill, in my organizational behavior class, we took a personality assessment. In the assessment, I scored in the 99th percentile for openness to new experiences. I love change. I love facing new challenges every day. I think that if I were in a role that looked the same every day, I wouldn’t be able to face it. ProudMouth is moving fast, and I love all of the new things I get exposed to and that I get to tackle along the ride.
How will data answer questions about how we can replicate our successes
Edwards Deming, who was a famous engineer and statistician, once said, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.” I really like that quote because it’s so true.
In management, we often have a lot of opinions on why something succeeds or doesn’t. With data, we get to know exactly why something succeeds or doesn’t. One of the best things you get to do in management is to run data experiments. For example, I can set parameters, take two groups (one being a control group), and I can try a new tactic on the experimental group, compare it to the control group, and get a clear picture of whether or not this new tactic actually works.
You can think of it kind of like a paint by numbers. Anyone who can see the finished painting can see that it’s a success, but it’s the numbers behind the paint that tell us exactly how we got to that successful outcome. If we want to recreate the success of that painting, copying the finished picture may get you close, but you can only get an exact replication of that painting by following the paint by numbers again. In this analogy, the paint by numbers in the background represents the data. The data tells you exactly how you arrived at your success. Therefore, you can now replicate it.
What stories do you hope your role will help ProudMouth and our clients tell?
I want my role to immediately provide value to clients and to our own team. My hope is for both groups to tell stories about how they received actionable insights that resulted in their direct success.
I want that W. Edwards Deming quote to feel real. I want us to tell stories of how we no longer operate in just opinion, but that now we have the facts and know exactly what to do with them.
I want our clients to tell other people, “If you want to podcast, you need to be with ProudMouth because they provide more valuable data and insights than anyone else. And, for me, it’s made all the difference.”
One more question! What are some ways that you help our team and clients make sense of all this data?
This is a great question. There are different levels of data analytics. Descriptive analytics, which tells you what has happened; diagnostic analytics, which tells you why it happened; and predictive analytics, which tells you what may happen.
I can easily provide our team and clients with tons of different dashboards, which they can use to interpret their own data (i.e., descriptive data), but unless they have the time and ability to analyze this data for themselves, this will serve no true value for them. Essentially, they’ll be sitting on a pile of information that they won’t be able to use.
This is why part of my job is to provide insights. I get to tell you why something is happening or has happened (i.e., diagnostic analytics), and I can sometimes even offer insights into what may happen if, say, we don’t change course in some way (i.e., predictive analytics).
Insights –– these are the true value-add. So, to make data digestible, I’ll still provide those dashboards, which make the data to read. But I also hope to provide our team and clients with insights and interpretations. In other words, I will analyze the data and tell you what it means. In the monthly podcast analytics reports I send to clients, I also provide a video to help them understand and interpret their data. Eventually, I’d also love to teach a course that helps our clients learn how to analyze the data for themselves. This way, they can manipulate the data to accomplish their own goals or desires.
