Are these two separate ideas, or just opposite ends of the same stick?
In a world increasingly driven by data, and as someone who has been known to rant about the necessity of measuring marketing efforts in order to build a better ROI on marketing investments, where does emotion fit in?
Data is a bit like the framework of a house, you can see where the bedrooms and bathrooms are, how big they are, are there any windows, and so on, but that is a sterile, emotionless representation of the home that framework can become. Add some colour, furnishings, a kids teddy on the floor, and the framework becomes a home. It is these additions, the accoutrements of life these added things that all have their own stories that adds the emotion to the framework of the house.
We are rushing headlong into a world run by data, but it would be a mistake to let the pendulum go too far, and overwhelm the emotion, as we live and remember with stories, and memories, data is just the means we use to make them more accessible.
As you contemplate the analytics on your web site, and the data in your CRM system, don’t forget that each data point represents a human story, experience, feeling, and some sort of emotion, and it will add great value when you are able to incorpoare that into he way the data set works.
