The goal of this interview series is to inspire and help people to transition their career into a new or next experimentation related role. In this edition Kelly Wortham shares her journey. You can contact Kelly via LinkedIn, Test & Learn Community and on forwarddigital.org.
Keep engaging. Connect with your peers. Ask (and answer) questions. That’s how we grow and learn. The digital communities of analytics and experimentation are truly wonderful.
Kelly Wortham
Hello all! My name is Kelly, and I consider myself a learner and a connector, then (hopefully) a teacher. Before beginning my experimentation journey, I worked in academia at Missouri State University as an instructor of Organizational Communication and Quantitative Research. This is where I discovered my love of teaching stats and using data to make better decisions. When I left academia for a job in Corporate America, I didn’t at first find digital analytics and experimentation. That took about five years. But when I did find it, I fell hard and fast in love and haven’t looked back.
A little over ten years ago, I founded the Test & Learn Community (TLC) as a place for those in analytics and experimentation to gather to learn from each other in an environment free of sales and solicitation. The goal was to ask and answer questions about what we were doing at work, discuss big industry topics, and invite industry experts to teach us. Over time, the original group of 20 grew to over 1,200 members we have today, and we just celebrated moving to nonprofit status!
What is your current experimentation role and what do you do?
Beyond being the founder and Executive Director of the Test & Learn Community, I am also the founder of the newly launched ForwardDigital.org consulting firm!
Forward Digital provides world-class, decision science research, consulting, and training workshops with a generosity-generating approach. That is, we are a for-profit-for-good company—we forward twenty-five percent of all profits from paying clients toward paying for in-kind services or donations to our nonprofit and community fabric clients who make the world a better place and who often can’t afford these services. It’s important for us to not only do good work for clients but to do good for our communities, too.When I’m not working with clients, you can find me most often on the Test & Learn Slack Community (or on the Women in Experimentation, #measure, or Experiment Nation Slack Communities) or attending as many industry events as possible. If you’re attending the DAA One Conference in Chicago, IL (US) in October, Conversion Hotel in Texel (NL) this November, or Superweek in Budapest (HU) in January, I’d love to see you!
How did you enter the experimentation space? What was your first experimentation-related role?
That’s a fun story! I actually was working at Circuit City corporate as a Forecast Analyst. But not on the digital side of the business. I was encouraged to apply for the job of managing the email marketing program based on my Strengthsfinder results. My top five were Analytical, Strategic, Learner, Relator, and Responsibility. Apparently, Circuit City had analyzed and found that individuals with specific “strengths” would work well in that role, and I had four of the five they were looking for. (I still don’t know which four).
My boss had just gotten a new job at SAS (where she still works today, by the way), and I wanted a new challenge, so I applied, knowing very little about digital or email marketing (or marketing, for that matter). Amazingly, they hired me, and I started the next week and fell head over heels in love with the ability to test headlines and content and make decisions with data like I had never been able to do before. My first major win was an email subject line test for a big sale we were having in the summer. I still remember the winning subject line: Déjà vu: Black Friday is Back!
How did you start to learn experimentation?
I’m still learning. Aren’t we all? My favorite thing about the Test & Learn Community is how much I continue to learn from our members daily. I say I’m a learner first and a connector second. And then (hopefully) a teacher. Part of the reason I say that is because the best way to learn is to try to teach something to someone else. When you try to teach some concept to someone else, and they ask questions, you realize how much you still have to learn.
So, I started to learn experimentation by trying to teach it to others. And then by asking questions, building the Test & Learn Community, and always surrounding myself with people smarter than myself. I am so inspired by our amazing community of incredible thinkers and educators. And they are so willing to educate, debate, and share! Where else in the corporate world can you find huge communities of people working together so that rising waters can lift all boats?
Which developments in experimentation excite you? How do you see the field changing in the next 5 to 10 years?
I love how people who work in marketing experimentation are just starting to interact with people who work in product experimentation and vice versa. And people in different countries are just discovering one another as the silos are coming down. Communities like the Test & Learn Community and Experiment Nation break down barriers and bring people together.
The more this happens, the more we learn from one another, and the more rising waters will continue to lift all boats. I’ve been a part of so many conversations over the last 15+ years with industry leaders who were “so tired” of teaching the same thing repeatedly. But I’m not tired. I’m excited! Because I see people truly starting to get it! I see light bulbs firing everywhere, not just in an echo chamber. Sure, I see a lot of click-bait inaccuracies and generalities crafted for reactions on social networks, but I see a lot more people gently calling people out with comments of, “Sorry mate, but did you check the power on that?” Or, “I think that may be a case of Twyman’s Law.”
I’m also excited that the field finally realizes there’s more to experimentation than conversion rate optimization. I’ve been calling it “decision science” for years, and it seems to finally be taking hold in some small way. I hope that in five (or maybe ten) years, we’ll all call it that. Our field isn’t just about testing. It’s about using science to make better decisions with data. Let’s help people understand that!
Is there anything people reading this can help you with? Or any parting words?
Yes! Join the conversation. Between LinkedIn, #measure, #tlc, #experiment-nation, and #women-in-experimentation, there are so many communities where we can find support, connect, share, and learn from one another. Keep engaging. Connect with your peers. Ask (and answer) questions. That’s how we grow and learn. The digital communities of analytics and experimentation are truly wonderful.
Which other experimenters would you love to read an interview by?
Bithika Mehra, Juliana Jackson, Eden Bidani, Elea McDonnell Feit
Thank you Kelly for sharing your journey with the community.
