A question that's often asked of evangelists and advocates is "What's the ROI" of the activities they perform. In this talk from Dev Rel Con London 2015 I cover how I feel about developer relations, how Pusher has approached dev rel activity over the past 4 years, what we can learn from that, what our focus is now and why you sometimes simply have to believe.

1. What’s the ROI?
PHIL @LEGGETTER
Head of Developer Relations

2. What’s the ROI?
PHIL @LEGGETTER
Head of Developer Relations

3. Credit to Joe Nash (@jna_sh) for the inspiration

4. Developer Relations is like
The Force
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/The_Force

5. Somebody will question
the ROI
…sorcerer’s
ways…

6. And it makes you want to…

7. …

8. Ya know…

9. But you don’t want to join the
dark side

10. http://www.comicvine.com/forums/battles-7/jedi-council-vs-the-inheriters-1670973/
We are part of the Jedi order

11. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Yavin
So we use stats to track the
ROI of what we do

12. Developer Relations
@ Pusher

13. What we used to do
• Blog posts/Demos
• Tutorials
• “Thought Leadership”
• Events
• Hackathons
• Give talks
• Rock the sponsorship booth
• Sales
• Pre-sales technical calls
• Community/Customer Service
• Support
• Provide input into 3rd party libraries
• Product
• Gather feedback
• Maintain libraries
• Write & update docs

14. AARRR! Metrics, Dave McClure 500hats.typepad.com/
500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics.html

15. AARRR
1. Acquisition = Signups
2. Activation = 5 Connections
& 100 Messages

16. Activation
If we can achieve activation,
48.69% of those accounts will
result in $$.

17. What we focus on now: Acquisition & Activation
• Blog posts/Demos
• Tutorials
• “Thought Leadership”
• Events
• Hackathons
• Talks
• Rock the sponsorship booth

18. What can we track?
Digital
Events
blog
website
referralssocial

19. Digital Tracking ROI
53% of our signups can be
attributed to digital content

20. Tracking Events
• No direct tracking
• We could use coupons at signup - do they really work?
• We could get business cards and then check if they’ve signed up
• We could go digital
• Event website/social referrals (we do this)
• Related blogs
• Webinars & Live Coding

21. Qualitative Analysis of Events
• Cost
• Target developers
• Number of attendees
• Talks quality
• Attendee engagement
• People in your talk
• How many had heard of Pusher before

22. Correlation
• Matching Developer Relations activity…
• Publishing content using technology X
• Being at an event focusing on technology X
• With stats…
• Sign-ups using technology X
• API usage from technology X

23. With Developer Relations
Without

24. Glaring Omission…

25. We build
RELATIONSHIPS
photo credit: Kalexanderson via photopin cc

26. You can measure the ROI of Developer Relations

27. But sometimes you just need to believe… and use
the Force
use the force…
let go…
trust me …

28. PHIL @LEGGETTER
Head of Developer Relations
phil@pusher.com