(Bonus) 2024 Listener Survey...Wrapped!

Summary

The Analytics Power Hour: Bonus Episode Summary – “2024 Listener Survey...Wrapped!”

Released on January 14, 2025

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Introduction

In this special bonus episode of The Analytics Power Hour, Val Kroll from Facts and Feelings joins co-host Julie Hoyer to unveil and analyze the results of their 2024 Listener Survey. Aimed at understanding their audience better, the survey offers valuable insights into listener demographics, behaviors, content preferences, and brand perception. This episode serves as a comprehensive breakdown of the survey findings and outlines how these insights will shape future content.

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Survey Methodology

Val Kroll begins by explaining the foundation of their survey:

• Launch and Promotion:
  “We launched it at the end of May and we closed it in July” (00:48). The survey was promoted exclusively through pre-roll advertisements in two separate podcast episodes, avoiding broader social media channels to target active listeners directly.

• Structure and Content:
  The survey comprised four primary sections:

  1. Listener Profiling: Understanding who the listeners are.
  2. Listening Behavior: How listeners engage with The Analytics Power Hour and other podcasts.
  3. Content Interests: Identifying topics listeners are keen to explore.
  4. Brand Perception: Gauging overall sentiment towards the podcast.

  “We wanted to keep it as slim as possible because, you know, we're not making million dollar business decisions off of this” (03:19). With approximately 15 questions, including a few open-ended ones, the survey was designed to be user-friendly and mobile-compatible.

• Response Rate and Incentives:
  The team aimed for 47 completions but exceeded expectations with 88 responses. To incentivize participation, respondents were entered into a raffle for merchandise like sweatshirts and stickers.

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Key Findings

1. Audience Demographics:

   • Primary Setting:
     “We had two-thirds say that they were in-house, client side, really” (05:07). This was higher than anticipated, followed by 15% working in agency or consultancy roles.
   • Analytics Proficiency:
     “Nearly 50% self reporting as intermediate” (06:14). This balance supports the podcast’s aim to cater to a mid-level audience, offering both foundational knowledge and advanced insights.

2. Discovery Channels:

   • Listening Platforms Dominate:
     “42% of people said that they discovered it within the listening platform, like it was suggested to them within really Spotify, Apple podcasts.” (09:40). This was surprising, surpassing traditional word-of-mouth and LinkedIn referrals.

3. Listener Feedback and Perceptions:

   • Positive Attributes:
     Listeners described the podcast as trendy, insightful, laid back, and affectionately nerdy. Julie highlighted, “one of my favorites was someone said it felt like listening to Inside Baseball” (07:25).
   • Co-Host Mentions:
     Tim emerged as the most frequently mentioned co-host, indicating a strong connection with the audience.

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Actions Based on Survey Insights

Utilizing the survey data, The Analytics Power Hour has strategically planned its future content:

1. Topic Planning:

   • Analytics Engineering:
     The top requested topic, with 66% interest, led to the production of Episode 251: The Continued Rise of the Analytics Engineer (11:54).
   • AI Enhancing Analyses:
     Responding to Trending Topics, Episode 257: Analyst Use Cases for Generative AI was developed to address the increasing fascination with AI in analytics.

2. Addressing Open-Ended Suggestions:

   • Career Development:
     Inspired by listener interest, Episode 255: Dear Affy, I'm Always Torn as it a P H E focused on career inflection points.
   • Shifting Analyst Environment:
     Episode 252: The Ever Shifting Operating Environment of the Data Professional delved into the evolving roles and expectations for analysts.
   • Goal Setting:
     Episode 258: Goals, KPIs, and Targets. Oh My. featured practical examples and discussions on effective goal setting.
   • Data Storytelling:
     Episode 260: Once Upon a Data Story provided insights into crafting compelling data narratives.

3. Enhanced Accessibility and Engagement:

   • Thematic Webpages:
     A new webpage, analyticshour.io/themes, was created to group past episodes by theme, making it easier for listeners to find content relevant to their interests.
   • Podcast Recommendations:
     Listener-suggested podcasts and YouTube channels were compiled on the AnalyticsHour.io/survey page, fostering a community of shared interests.

4. Data Sharing:

   • Open Data Set:
     The anonymized survey data was made available for listeners to download and analyze, encouraging engagement and collaborative exploration.

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Cautions and Considerations

Val emphasizes the importance of recognizing sample bias:

“The people who are going to be filling out the survey are people who listen to the episodes where we mentioned it. So this isn't necessarily a representation of all analysts across the globe” (21:05). This reminder ensures that interpretations of the data consider the engaged and possibly more invested segment of the audience.

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with heartfelt thanks to the listeners for their participation and insights. Special acknowledgments are given to Josh Crowhurst, the producer, for his behind-the-scenes efforts. Val and Julie encourage listeners to engage further through various platforms, including the Measure Chat Slack group, LinkedIn, email, and YouTube comments.

“No matter how many podcasts you listen to, keep analyzing.” (22:40) serves as an inspiring closing remark, reinforcing the podcast’s commitment to continual growth and community engagement.

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Notable Quotes:

• “We launched it at the end of May and we closed it in July.” – Val Kroll [00:48]
• “We wanted to keep it as slim as possible because...we're not making million dollar business decisions off of this.” – Val Kroll [03:19]
• “We had two-thirds say that they were in-house, client side, really.” – Val Kroll [05:07]
• “42% of people said that they discovered it within the listening platform...” – Val Kroll [09:40]
• “One of my favorites was someone said it felt like listening to Inside Baseball.” – Julie Hoyer [07:25]
• “No matter how many podcasts you listen to, keep analyzing.” – Val Kroll [22:40]

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Connect with The Analytics Power Hour:

• Website: analyticshour.io
• Slack Group: Measure Chat
• LinkedIn: The Analytics Power Hour
• Email: [e-mail]
• YouTube: Analytics Power Hour Channel

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This summary encapsulates the key discussions, insights, and actionable outcomes from the bonus episode of The Analytics Power Hour, providing non-listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the episode’s content and its implications for future podcast directions.

Transcript

[Val Kroll]

Hey, everybody, and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Analytics Power Hour. I'm Val Kroll from Facts and Feelings. Believe it or not, Spotify wrapped launched nearly 10 years ago, and nowadays we've become quite accustomed to data driven year in review summaries. It's a moment of self reflection and an opportunity to learn things about yourself that you might not have otherwise known. In 2024, we launched a listener survey to learn some things about ourselves as well as our listeners and their behaviors and perceptions of the show. We so appreciated the ability to dig into this data, and we were surprised by a few things and thought it might be a fun opportunity to share some of it back with our audience. For today's episode, I'm joined by Julie Hoyer from Further. Julie, are you excited for today's special episode?

[Julie Hoyer]

Oh, heck yeah. I love an analysis readout. I can't wait.

[Val Kroll]

It's like putting it to practice. I love it. All right, so before we dive into some of the nuggets and learnings from the survey, because, you know, we do know a thing or two about our audience, we thought we'd walk through some of the methodology details just so that we can kind of kick it off on the same footing about how we even got this data in our hands in the first place. Does that sound like a good place to start?

[Julie Hoyer]

Absolutely. Because, you know, it was going to be my first question to you. I need to know everything. How'd you design it? When did it launch? How'd you make choices about the questions?

[Val Kroll]

So we launched it at the end of May and we closed it in July. So the window is pretty much the month of June. We promoted it only through pre roll, so it was kind of advertised at the beginning of two separate shows that launched. So we didn't promote it on social media or anything like that. It was just for the people who were tuning in and listening to those episodes. And we had four primary sections, so we asked some questions just to kind of better understand who our listeners are, profiling them a little bit, digging into their listener behavior of the Power Hour as well as other podcasts. Then we did a deep dive in content interests and upcoming topics that they might be looking forward to and then overall brand perception. So that was kind of like the core of it.

[Julie Hoyer]

And how many people actually ended up responding to it?

[Val Kroll]

Oh, good question. So because, you know, we like to eat our own dog food, we did have some. Some targets set for ourselves, and we said that if we had 47 completes, that we could feel pretty confident in our ability to draw some conclusions from this data. That was a compromise between someone throwing out a 45 and someone throwing out a 50.

[Julie Hoyer]

I was gonna ask how do we get there? That's very specific, that seven.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah. So that was our target. So we were actually super excited that we had 88 people respond to the survey. That's a ton. So super thankful. And as a thank you to the people who completed the survey, they were entered into a raffle for some swag. So some sweatshirts were sent out, which are pretty cool. And we also sent some stickers off to folks as a thank you for taking the time to share with us.

[Julie Hoyer]

That's awesome. And actually to go back to your primary sections about how many questions did you do per section? Was it really hard to choose how to survey each one of those topics?

[Val Kroll]

I think they kind of varied in the number of questions per section. We obviously wanted to keep it as slim as possible because, you know, we're not doing, we're not making million dollar business decisions off of this. But we wanted to make sure that we had like a robust enough understanding to answer some of our questions, which drove the research. So I would say that we were most heavy in the section asking about content interest and behaviors of how people, you know, even choose to listen to which episodes as an example. So that could really drive our strategy moving forward.

[Julie Hoyer]

And so about how many total questions did we have and did someone have to fill out the whole thing to finish it? Because I know we've talked a lot about, at least you and I personally, the ux, the experience for a user to actually take a survey. And I'm sure you have some strong thoughts on that. What was that experience like for them?

[Val Kroll]

So none of the questions were required. So we wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone to kind of zip through it again because we didn't have a lot of logic in the survey like you might if you were actually like a company or a brand. It's wanting to understand like an awareness before you dive into questions about specifics. So there was just like a single track on this one. So nothing was required. And I think there's about 20 questions total and. Or not quite 20 questions total. I should say maybe about 15. And a couple of them at the end were open ends just kind of asking for if you would, if you'd like to enter into the sweatshirt raffle, give us your email address. So not all of them were hard hitting. What content do you want to hear in 2025? Kind of a Thing. Yeah.

[Julie Hoyer]

Some nice value exchange on that last one too. Sweatshirt, hopefully.

[Val Kroll]

Hopefully. That's what we were hoping for.

[Julie Hoyer]

That's awesome.

[Val Kroll]

So diving into some of the things that we learned about our audience, one of the first ones that we wanted a better understanding of is what is even the setting that our audience primarily is in. Are they in house on the client side? Are they practicing inside of an agency or consultancy? Are they at a vendor? Are they freelance? Are they in education? We had a couple different options, but we had two thirds say that they were in house, client side, really, which is higher than I expected actually followed by 15% in agency consultancy.

[Julie Hoyer]

Ah, okay. That's so funny because we're like so skewed the opposite co host wise.

[Val Kroll]

Right.

[Julie Hoyer]

I don't know. I'm very shocked, but very cool. Our in house. Our in house peeps. Here they are.

[Val Kroll]

Represent. And this was really helpful because obviously we have like our LinkedIn page where you can look at some of the analytics and the makeup there. But that's obviously, you know, a different cut of our audience of people who want to also follow us on the socials and stay engaged with us in that way. So it was interesting to kind of see some of the differences between the two as well.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. When we've looked at LinkedIn before, it definitely looks like a different mix than this.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah. One of the other questions that we asked is we wanted to understand like the general familiarity with analytics that our audience was. And this is a really important one for us to have in the back of our minds in the backdrop as we're planning content and thinking about potential guests and topics. Is, are we skewing to the more advanced audience? Are we skewing to more the beginner audience? But we actually ran right down the middle with nearly 50% self reporting as intermediate.

[Julie Hoyer]

Wow.

[Val Kroll]

So this is kind of like the altitude that we had been planning for all along. But it was really nice to be able to say, like, actually, yeah, like half our audience says I'm kind of somewhere in the middle.

[Julie Hoyer]

So that is great because listeners, if you don't know, there's a lot of conversation about like, at what level should we do a topic? Is this topic the right granularity or depth for a certain audience or are people going to want to hear it this way? So that is really good. That's exciting.

[Val Kroll]

Much, much debate.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah. Yes, Healthy debate.

[Val Kroll]

And so I know that you took some time to dig into some of the open ends as well. What were some of the Things that you found.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah. So looking through those responses, it was actually really fun. I really enjoyed, like hearing the listeners, you know, voice in the open ended question. They don't get to look at much of that data in my current role, so that was fun. And something I, I just found fun was that people actually mentioned us swearing in like four different responses, but all in a positive way. So I was like, oh, okay. So maybe they like the number one explicit podcast.

[Val Kroll]

We should keep it up.

[Julie Hoyer]

I guess so. I guess so.

[Val Kroll]

Keep our guards down. That's right.

[Julie Hoyer]

And then the other one that I thought was really sweet was we got quite a few mentions of being trendy and insightful and then even laid back, which I felt like those three are, are good words that I think we aspire to be. Maybe trendy more so like on trend with the industry is kind of how I took that. I don't think any of us are too cool because we also got called officially nerds again. We take that as a positive here. So that was, that was good. Yeah. And then actually one of my favorites was someone said it felt like listening to Inside Baseball and I was like, oh, that makes me feel good.

[Val Kroll]

Oh, that gave me the warm fuzzies for sure. Right.

[Julie Hoyer]

So that was really cool.

[Val Kroll]

If we had to pick like a list of attributes of things that we would want to exude or people to perceive of our content, I mean, those are some great ones. I love that.

[Julie Hoyer]

Right? I know, I know. So that was definitely a pick me up going through those responses.

[Val Kroll]

Very nice. We love our listeners. Okay, so here was the most surprising one, which I have held these results from you. I hid this from the data that I sent you because I was so excited from this reveal. Okay. One of our questions asked, do you remember how you first heard about the analytics power Hour? And so we had like a laundry list of different options. People could select whether it was from social media, from Measure Slack. It was referred to you from a friend or colleague. So what do you think? I'm not going to give you the fullest, but what do you think was the number one way people heard about the analytics power hour?

[Julie Hoyer]

I'm gonna guess like word of mouth or LinkedIn.

[Val Kroll]

Very good guesses. Unfortunately, incorrect.

[Julie Hoyer]

Dang it.

[Val Kroll]

But this is so surprising. 42% of people said that they discovered it within the listening platform, like it was suggested to them within really Spotify, Apple podcasts. Yeah. Can you believe that?

[Julie Hoyer]

Hey, I'm not their recommendation algorithms anymore. I guess maybe they know what they're talking about.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah, I Was really surprised because I would have guessed word of mouth or you know, LinkedIn or knowing or working with, you know, someone who was a guest or one of the the co hosts. But totally, yeah. So super surprised by that. 13% was the second most popular answer which was the referral which we kind of expected to see crap up there but was very impressed with the number of people who stumbled into our content based on their prior listening behavior.

[Julie Hoyer]

So I love that. Maybe that's why it seems like a good fit for people.

[Val Kroll]

That's great.

[Julie Hoyer]

Oh, you want to hear something else fun that I did poke into in the open ended? Yes. Who do you think was mentioned the most by name of the co host?

[Val Kroll]

Oh, I'm going to guess Tim.

[Julie Hoyer]

Correct. But let me tell you too, it was kind of hard to find the mentions and count them because you know, how many things have Tim in them time sometimes like the list goes on and on. It was quite a manual Peck and Hunt. Luckily we, you know, had 88 respondents and not like a thousand.

[Val Kroll]

I love that. That's so fun. I love that you also had that question and had to research it down. Wasn't going to let that go. That's fun.

[Julie Hoyer]

I like I had to know.

[Val Kroll]

So one of the other things we wanted to share back with our listeners is now that we have some of these learnings about our audience and some of their behaviors and thoughts, what are we going to do with this data? What are the some of the things we're going to do to put this data to productive use? So the first one and one of the primary drivers of us launching the survey in the first place is for future topic planning. So one of the questions was asking about do any of the following potential topics stand out to you as particularly interesting? And the top response was analytics, engineering. 66% of people said that that was particularly interesting to them, that they really wanted more content on that one.

[Julie Hoyer]

Wow. Did this also coincide with a lot of the respondents having that role? Did we look at that?

[Val Kroll]

So we didn't have the specifics down to that level of role within the survey just because if we blew it out to that level that would have been quite a long list and we wanted to make it mobile friendly. Maybe our 2025 survey we'll more specific a really good hypothesis that it's very near and dear to their hearts because of what they do day to day or potentially something that they're interested in moving into.

[Julie Hoyer]

Oh yeah, we'll have to see.

[Val Kroll]

Yeah. Well in the topic that we decided to bring to our audience in the second half of 2024. Based on this was episode 251, the continued rise of the Analytics Engineer, which was a really good one.

[Julie Hoyer]

If people have not listened yet and you want analytics engineering, definitely take a listen to that one.

[Val Kroll]

I loved it. The second most popular response in that question was all about AI enhancing analyses, which not surprised, very much tied back to trending topics in the Zeitgeist. Right. So that was another one that we were able to already record an episode on 257 analyst use cases for generative AI. Did you have a chance to listen into that episode? Because I don't think either of us were on that one.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, no, that was a great one. Yeah, I guess. Nerd alert. I do listen to the episodes that I'm not a part of because I do think the other co co hosts have such good information. So I took a listen, it was great. And I actually got to see the guest at Marketing Analytics Summit to speak. So it was really fun to see that content again. And that guest was very knowledgeable. So it's a good one.

[Val Kroll]

I love it. And then so that was our like pre filled list of topics that were some of the ones that we've been talking about in our monthly meetings. But we also asked like an open ended question that was if you know not from the list you just saw, are there any topics that you would love to hear the crew cover? And there were quite a few from that one as well. Right. I know you looked at some of those open ends.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, yeah. A big one that came out of that question was actually career related is what people were looking for. And like you said, since we've done this survey we've been able to record quite a few episodes and we actually did one recently. It was number 255. Dear Affy, I'm always torn as it a P H E but it's Dear AFY career inflection point. So it was that round two of listener questions for us, all career focused. So that was a really cool one to record and that could be a great one for people to check out. Another topic that came out of those open ends was the shifting environment for the analyst. And so it's funny that it said shifting in the open ended because we then recorded episode 252, the ever shifting operating environment of the data professional. And that discussion I think really touches well on the topic of like what is the industry looking like for analysts? What's it like being an analyst in different spots in an organization? So that one went pretty in depth there. And then the next one that was mentioned a lot was actually goal setting, which is, as we know, very near and dear to our hearts. We love some goal setting. And that one we got to record with Tim Wilson as our quote unquote guest, which was very fun. We did commit to the bit. Spoiler alert everyone. That's episode 258 goals, KPIs and targets. Oh my. So that was one of my favorite ones to record.

[Val Kroll]

That was a really good one. I loved in that one too. Mo had so many practical examples from her real world experience to really pressure test some of the things that we kind of talked about in theory, which I always think is so helpful to really make some of it come to life.

[Julie Hoyer]

And then lastly we had the topic of data storytelling. Again I think this one we touch on here and there, but most recently we had a really great one which was with Duncan Clark. It's episode 260, Once Upon a Data Story. So hope you guys check those out. If any of you are interested in those topics or were one of the.

[Val Kroll]

Responders, there you go. And I also just want to call out from this to you that as we were combing through some of those responses there were lots of requests for topics that we have previously covered. So maybe you discovered us in your Spotify algorithm after that topic had come out. So we decided that we were going to create a webpage analyticshour IO themes that thematically collects some of the past episodes that people are asking for. So there was one requesting MMM and so there's MMM episode from 199 with John Wallace and some others that are kind of related to that. A Dr. Joe episode I think is actually one of them. So on the on that page you'll be able to dive into some of the themes, especially from some of the most popular requested topics from the survey. And also just want to mention that if you're looking for a theme that's not covered on that page, that we actually do have a tag based search on our episodes. So that would be another way to dive into some specific contents that you're looking for.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, those search functionalities are so helpful, but I'm pumped about the thematic page too because that'll be even easier I think to get that roll up people are looking for. Oh and by the way, again for some of the open ended val, I ended up looking at the question about are there any guests you think we should have on the show? And what I found interesting was the top Three mentions were actually around having guests we've previously had come back and do another session.

[Val Kroll]

Love that. Who were they?

[Julie Hoyer]

I know. So our first one was Austin Byrne. And then we also had Kathleen Maley and to no one's surprise, Taylor Bonacour Guthrie, who we love from the question episode. But all of these guests were awesome. I would love to have them back. So if you're listening, come on back.

[Val Kroll]

I love that those guests were excellent. And I also think that those topics were really, like, they just really hit, I think Austin Byrne that covered the data products one, and then Kathleen Mealy. I mean, she just has such a rich depth of experiences, just even talking about how she thinks about setting up analytics organizations and programs to best orient against business outcomes. So she was. Her topic was about crossing that chasm from data to meaningful outcomes. And I thought that very well done. And then Taylor Bunnicore Guthrie all around asking better questions. Oh, like that's just episode 240. I have it like memorized because I tell people about it so often. I hope they come back. That would be amazing.

[Julie Hoyer]

Yeah, we would love it. Love it.

[Val Kroll]

Amazing. Okay, so a couple other things we wanted to do with some of this data that we got from our listeners is one of the questions was asking what's another podcast you love and what do you love about it? And this was supposed to help us just kind of better understand, you know, the minutes, the listening minutes we're competing with and like what people use this podcast for. Is it like when they're driving to work or when they're working out or, you know, between meetings while they're trying to get some work done kind of a thing. But nearly everyone answered this question and what this turned into was this like, treasure trove of like podcast suggestions from people who are like minded. So and because when, when people answered this question, a lot of times there was three suggestions that they gave back.

[Julie Hoyer]

Oh my gosh, that's great.

[Val Kroll]

So it felt like we just can't hold on to this because I've actually discovered some podcasts and have started subscribing to some that pulled from this list.

[Julie Hoyer]

Stop gatekeeping, Share it, Give it to us.

[Val Kroll]

So we created another page on our website, AnalyticsHour IE survey, where we have thematically grouped all of the podcast and YouTube channel suggestions from all of our listeners of things, everything from crime to history and science. There's some data recommendations, but it really rans the gamut. So yeah, that's available for you all as well.

[Julie Hoyer]

Sweet. I cannot wait to see that some.

[Val Kroll]

Good ones in there for sure. And then last on our list is because this is a data set that we could kind of easily scrub and anonymize, we wanted to make this available to our listeners so that, you know, maybe you don't always have a chance to play with this type of data. So it's not a huge data set, but you're able to download it also from the AnalyticsHour IE survey page. And hey, if you come up with anything that we didn't call out in this episode that you found interesting, be sure to let us know what you found. But that's another little nugget we wanted to give to our audience as well.

[Julie Hoyer]

Which is so great because like I said, I don't get to dig into much data like this as an analyst. So if you're someone out there that feels the same and wants to try it out, like, this is a great opportunity. And actually, Val, I'm interested to ask you, you designed the survey and so what are some things that people should look out for when going in to want to do an analysis on this? Like, are there any pitfalls or, you know, watch outs you would tell them about?

[Val Kroll]

I'm really glad you asked that, Julie, because one of the main ones that we definitely kept front and center when looking at this data is just sample bias. Right. The people who are going to be filling out the survey are people who listen to the episodes where we mentioned it. So this isn't necessarily a representation of all analysts across the globe, but just keeping in mind that these are probably, probably friendlies. And so these are people who are engaged with the show to some degree. And so there's some natural biases that will occur as well. So that's just definitely something to keep in in mind for the context of how to read some of these.

[Julie Hoyer]

Totally. That is super important.

[Val Kroll]

All right, well, another thank you again to everyone who completed even part of our 2024 listener survey. We have used and leveraged and mined that data for all it's been worth to help us plan future content, think about guests, and just to better understand who you are to make sure that what we're putting out there is something that hopefully you're interested in listening to. So, of course, no show would be complete without a huge thank you to Josh Crowhurst, our producer, who does all the stuff behind the scenes to make the show possible. So huge shout out to Josh as always, and we would love to hear from you listeners so you can find us on the Measure Chat Slack group on our LinkedIn page. You can email us at contactalyticshourio or we'll see you in the comments of our YouTube channel. So feel free to reach out about anything we mentioned here or otherwise. I know I can speak for my co host Julie when I say no matter how many podcasts you listen to, keep analyzing.

[Julie Hoyer]

Rock Flag. And we love our listeners.