My Ecommerce Hero is a series celebrating brilliance in ecommerce, in association with eCommerce-speakers.com, an initiative from Entropy‘s Alex Tait to encourage more female speakers at industry events.
Montserrat Cano is a digital marketing and growth specialist.
Who is your ecommerce hero?
My ecommerce hero is Arianne Donoghue, Associate Director at Edit.
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
There are many people I could also mention here. Arianne wins because she keeps proving that success is possible despite difficulties. She is an inspiration to many in this industry, and her achievements are true testament of her strength and resilience.
She is also brave enough to discuss on stage challenging issues in an industry where most people only talk about achievements. It takes some courage to stand on stage in front of demanding audiences and call the attention of marketers to the fact that people may not think and evolve as fast as we think we are or why we shouldn’t be afraid to fail.
It is little wonder that she has recently won the UK Search Personality Award 2019.
How has their heroism helped drive ecommerce?
Her knowledge and commitment to learn and progress. Having worked briefly with her on a challenging project, I have had first-hand experience of how knowledgeable she is. I enjoyed her positive attitude, and her clear advice on how to tackle that project was invaluable.
She also trains marketers to better use paid search which, having been myself a former teacher and trainer, I know it is a big commitment.
What the biggest challenges in ecommerce we need another hero to solve?
Apart of the challenges in the political and economic realms, the biggest issue that affects digital is the use of data in the overall customer experience. In a crowded environment, the brands that are able to provide better customer experience than their competitors are currently winning.
We need data for that to know our audiences and the way they interact with brands to improve their experience, however good it currently is, and a measurement framework to provide some structure to the way we collect it and manage it.
Particularly now, with the rise of different technologies, such as AR, and the use of voice search and voice assistants, customers can discover and interact with brands in different ways. I am still finding many examples of companies where this doesn’t exist.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in ecommerce?
It might not be heroic, but I am very proud of having exceeded the very high ROI targets when I was at a charity. I set up and directed the Christmas campaign for their secondary ecommerce brand, and my role was purely achieving that target. I invested heavily in acquisition, customer data segmentation, measurement and creativity in terms of utilising the marketing mix to achieve that growth.
What I feel most proud of though is the collaborative aspect of the campaign. Rather than working in isolation and ignoring an offline channel that was used to sell those products, I chose to work with that team. I also advised them as to how to use digital channels and choosing KPIs. It paid off in different ways.
Is there a diversity problem in ecommerce and how can we best address it if so?
Gender is not a reason for talent, although I can still see more men than women in digital generally, especially on the events circuit. This is why groups like She Does Digital or the various women-centred meetup groups in marketing and technology are so valuable.
