What is the ICE Prioritization Framework?

•

Marketers love coming up with new ideas for things to test. But how do you prioritize which tests to run next? That’s where this prioritization framework comes in. [🧵 thread]

1/ What is the ICE Scoring Model? This framework from Sean Ellis helps you prioritize experiment ideas by multiplying 3 numerical values assigned to each project: - Impact - Confidence - Ease

2/ How does it work? Each area is given a score from 1 – 10, with all 3 numbers being multiplied for your final ICE score. Then, simply test the highest-scoring idea first, followed by the second-highest-scoring, etc.

3/ Here’s an example Let’s say you came up with 2 test ideas, but you only have enough site traffic to test 1 of them this month. Test idea 1: Add a video to the hero section of the landing page Test idea 2: Change the form on the landing page from single-step to multi-step

4/ Impact When looking at this metric you will be answering a simple question: “How much does this contribute to the goal if it works?” It is important to remember that you want to think about the best-case scenario when scoring impact. - Video idea: 5 - Form idea: 7

5/ Confidence For this metric, the question will be: “How confident am I that this strategy will work?” Whereas impact takes into consideration the best-case scenario, this metric represents how confident you are that this strategy will work. - Video idea: 6 - Form idea: 8

6/ Ease Now that the impact and confidence have been evaluated, the difficulty of implementing the strategy needs to be addressed. To evaluate this metric you need to answer the question “How hard will this strategy be to implement?” - Video idea: 3 - Form idea: 6

7/ Multiply it all together If we multiple the ICE scores for each idea, we’ll get this: 90 for the video idea and 336 for the form idea It looks like the multi-step form idea is our winner! Let’s test that next.

8/ The downsides of ICE Just like every framework, there are some downsides to this methodology. The biggest one is that different people could come up with wildly different scores for the same ideas. To avoid this, consider making it a team effort and average scores together.

9/ Still better than no framework In summary, if you are looking for an easy method that allows you to quickly decide what strategy to prioritize without having to rely on the HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) method, ICE can be a great prioritization framework to use.

If this thread was helpful, feel free to give me a follow for more marketing frameworks and tips. If you have any questions, ask away. Thanks for reading.