If you haven’t already read it, you will now:
I am super delighted to have you with me on this entrepreneurial journey. Thank you!
Wow! What a week it’s been since the last newsletter. The dev team’s hands have been extremely full and very active. Our team of advisors has been amazingly helpful. Our fundraising is going really well (despite the haphazard approach). And interest in the MeasureMatch service continues to grow across the board.
That said, it really is still very early in the development of the MeasureMatch service.
It’ll no doubt feel a bit slow to evolve and it’ll be a wee bit of a bumpy ride now and again, but we’re determined to create something extraordinarily special and valuable for everyone involved. That especially means you!
Many thanks for your commitment, your patience and your understanding.
As you know, MeasureMatch is a freelance (aka “gig economy”) marketplace dedicated to marketing technology, data/analytics and research/insight services.
We’re starting by creating the tools for companies of all sizes to easily find, communicate with, hire and pay independent #measure, #martech and #mrx professionals for project-based work.
Most companies have not yet used an on-demand marketplace for professional services, but they will. We know. We interviewed and asked a large-ish number of them.
We opened our doors for business on 1 February 2017.
The team pushed into production a number of new new website and brand designs which are being received very positively. Do check out the websiteand tell me what you think.
I’m regularly asked, “Which services can I buy through MeasureMatch?”
I’ll use a select few categories from Scott Brinker’s 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic to illustrate and answer this question.
This is a category that I’m especially intrigued by. It is, arguably, still a very nascent space. We’ll see lots of advances in capabilities, many new entrants and a fair amount of
consolidation over the coming years. Krux’s recent sale to Salesforce is a great example of the latter.
A growing number of MeasureMatch Experts have hands-on DMP planning and deployment skills and experience.
There are many, many more (and many more flavours of) analytics systems in the market than what are current stuffed in the box above, but you get the picture. The value opportunities in each are enormous, if not primarily because most are not very well deployed in the organisations that have adopted them.
The MeasureMatch community of Experts is [currently] skewed heavily toward the skills and experience required to create tremendous value from these and related #measure products, and the data sets they collect.
Who doesn’t love to see their business data presented in a way that’s easy on the eye, easily shared and easily/realtime updated? No one, that’s who.
We have a large-ish (and growing) handful of #dataviz wizards on the platform.
Of the vendors in this space, I’m most familiar with the Tag Management products and the business problems they’re quickly developing to address. The value opportunities from these solutions go well beyond the management of adtech and other martech systems’ data collection scripts and tags, and now commonly include customer identity resolution, data integration, attribution, customer insight and more.
Naturally, many of our Experts know these systems well.
And, lastly, for now…
The demand for this category of expertise has been something of a surprise for us and so we’re planning on attracting more independent consultants to sign up as MM Experts.
According to CabinetM, there are more 6,000 marketing technology vendors out there. We are on a mission to create an amazing community of independent Experts who can terrifically and professionally service most, if not all, of these systems for MeasureMatch Buyers.
And so, we’re actively on the hunt for more independent consultants (i.e. freelance, contract, contingent workers) to become MeasureMatch Experts.
Do you know someone who might like to sign up? Please encourage her/him to visit MeasureMatch and apply to become a MeasureMatch Expert today. Thank you!
A referral programme will launch next week, so watch out for that in the platform (login required).
We’re ramping up our invitations to companies (we call them Buyers) to post marketing tech, data and insight projects e.g. Salesforce reporting, Hubspot account set-ups, Optimizely experiments, Google Analytics revamps, surveys, Tableau campaign performance dashboard builds and the like.
A number of projects are under review now and will be posted shortly. We’re taking extra steps to create the best possible customer experience for Buyers and Experts alike, so it’s taking a little longer than anticipated to get the first projects live.
Notifications will go out to Experts via email when projects match their profiles.
Note to Experts: Update your profiles to contain all of the possible language you can think of to describe your tech, data, service skills and experience.
I need to talk with several more marketing/data tech vendors to put the final touches on what is my most exciting MeasureMatch roadmap item: an unparalleled library of relevant lessons, courses and certification programmes valuably integrated with Measurematch Experts’ profiles. Please get in touch if this is you.
There are, of course, many others. More next time.
It was International Women’s Day on Wednesday this week and I’m still celebrating. I hope you are, too. I am a very proud father to two wonderful, bright, ambitious young women and my life partner, Valeria Leonardi, COO at the EdTech darling Primo Toys, is one of the most inspiring people I know. They are encouraged and supported by me daily to be bold, to learn, to seek out and embrace life-enriching opportunities, to cultivate relationships from all walks of life and they will no doubt change the world.
I am also trying my best to #BeBoldForChange as I build my company to be gender-balanced and terrifically diverse because I know that success is driven, in great part, by a broad range of ideas and methods to create value (e.g. through solving business problems, designing wonderful products and customer experiences, generating revenue, developing a community, etc).
Instantly get matched to highly skilled independent consultants and consultancies via MeasureMatch.
I’ll be at MeasureCamp in London on 25 March 2017. My company, MeasureMatch, is a sponsor. It’s our first marketing initiative and I’m thrilled to support Keely Jacob, *Peter O’Neill, the MeasureCamp team and the MeasureCamp community. I love every second of these events, the people I meet, the entrepreneurial spirit and the enthusiasm for solving business challenges through creative applications of technology, data and insight. #measure
*Peter is an Advisor to MeasureMatch
The I-COM Global Summit, this year in Porto, is going to be huge. I’ve attended 6 of 8, sponsored 2 and thoroughly enjoyed all of Andreas Cohen’s “Data Marketing revolution” events. I highly recommend them. I’m hoping I can attend this year’s as well.
I’m attempting to make a little real what is often virtual in online marketplaces. So, I’ve created the Independent MarTech, Data & Insight Experts Meetup. The the inaugural event is scheduled for 19 April 2017 (in London). Sign up here to meet, geek out, trade ideas, debate and solve marketing tech and data problems. One or two emerging martech companies will tell us about their wares.
One of the best, if not the best, digital analytics events is back in the US again this year. This time in New Orleans. If you haven’t experienced a Digital Analytics Hub conference yet, do try. I highly recommend it. Matthias Bettag and Michael Feiner are outstanding organizers and hosts, and this year’s event will no doubt be a blockbuster affair.
Below are a couple of organizations from which I draw much inspiration and motivation:
And, for good #measure…
And that’s all for this time.
Get in touch. I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what we can do to make your MeasureMatch experience amazing.
Feel free to book time in my calendar here.
Thank you,
James
Here's an update on our journey of building MeasureMatch. So, welcome to issue number 1 of [drumroll please] MeasureMatch News...
In case you missed it in yesterday’s newsletter, there’s a new meetup in London Town. It’s called the Independent MarTech, Data & Insight Experts Meetup and all are welcomed to attend and participate...
