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Kevin Milnes, Head of E-commerce National Express
Kevin Milnes is Head of E-commerce for the UK's number one coach company National Express, running both their digital marketing and web development teams. With more than six years of pure e-commerce and digital marketing experience, Kevin has been instrumental in driving forward National Express’ digital channel, making it their single biggest channel of trade and the UK's third largest public transport website (source: Hitwise UK 2007).
E-consultancy comment: “To be fair, Kevin wasn’t originally down to do the Acquire Keynote. But then he sent us the following: "We have recently done a bit of research into our acquisition activity. We already do consolidated tracking across search, affiliates, email and display, but we wanted to know more about how we were influencing peoples travel habits. Specifically, whether we were driving new customers or simply cannibalising customers from other sales. Its all pretty fresh off the press, but I think it would make a blinding presentation." We agree, that fresh data would indeed make a blinding presentation…” |
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Shiona McDougall, Group Marketing Director, Harper Collins
Shiona joined Harper Collins as Group Marketing Director in June 2006 with a remit to develop and deliver truly interactive communities of authors and readers. Marketing, the internet, retail, globalization and consumer expectation are changing the publishing industry faster than at any point since Gutenberg requiring the kind of new and different skills that Shiona has to help drive innovation. Before joining HarperCollins, Shiona McDougall worked as Senior Strategist at Agency.com. Prior to that she was Marketing Director for Virgin Wines, and, before that, Customer Acquisition Manager at ntl / Cable and Wireless.
E-consultancy comment: "Shiona is a veteran of the Masterclasses having spoken at this event many moons ago in 2004. Back then she was Marketing Director at Virgin Wines and was talking about how she used data to drive successful, personalised, relationship marketing online - and how that drove sales of lots of bottles of wine. Continuing her pioneering and innovative online work, Shiona is now very much immersed in the social media world of "web 2.0" and gives us a practical insight into how this approach is driving customer acquisition at Harper Collins." |
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Martin Aylward, Head of Acquisition, EDF Energy
Martin Aylward is Head of Acquisition at EDF Energy where alongside his responsibility for delivering sales targets through a combination of online and offline channels, he has P & L responsibility for new customers. Previous to working at EDF Energy, Martin was at MORE TH>N since its inception, where he had a lead roll in the creation of morethan.com and the marketing of the site. He subsequently became Marketing Planning Manager and was a key player in making MORE TH>N one of the fastest growing financial services companies in the UK. Martin is a member of the IDM’s Data Council and speaks regularly on online and integrated marketing.
E-consultancy comment: “Martin is also a Masterclass speaker alumnus, back when he was working at MORE TH>N. Then he was talking about things like econometric and regression analysis as applied to online customer acquisition models when most of us were still bigging up how many hits we got to our site. So think now just how much this guy must know! Perhaps most interestingly Martin has a much broader (multi-channel) view of custom acquisition and we’re all desperatingly trying to figure out how best to mix and optimise our media. Come and hear what Martin has learnt.” |
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Richard Sedley, Director, cScape
Richard leads the cScape Customer Engagement Unit (CEU). His team design bespoke customer engagement strategies for leading brands including Barclays, Centrica, Microsoft, CIPD, Ministry of Sound and the Carbon Trust. Prior to his position at cScape Richard led his own multichannel design and marketing agency Cameron Sedley, which was acquired by cScape. Richard is a frequent speaker on his current research interest: the science of ethical influence and persuasion on online conversions.
E-consultancy comment: “‘Customer engagement’, ‘customer experience’, ‘persuasive design’… Richard is right in the thick of all the hottest buzz words. But, to be fair to Richard, he’s been preaching the customer engagement mantra for a long time now. And, unlike, most, he a) really knows what he’s talking about and b) has practiced what he preaches. Read his blog at http://richard-sedley.iuplog.com/ if you want a taster. We all know about usability but what really persuades users to buy / act online? What cunning emotional and psychological triggers can we use online to tempt customers to engage with us? How can we use social persuasion factors online? Richard reveals all." |
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Sarah Blair Gould, E-commerce Manager, Boden
Sarah moved from offline marketing at Time Out Publications to the online world eight years ago. She survived the ‘boom and bust’, despite working for a string of start-ups, before taking the altogether more stable position of E-commerce Content Manager for Post Office Ltd. Sarah has now been E-commerce Manager for Boden.co.uk and BodenUSA.com for 12 months and is responsible for online acquisition, revenue generation and the online customer experience.
E-consultancy comment: “Boden was founded in 1991 and the first website was launched in April 1999. Boden now has over 500 staff and despatches over 3,000 orders every day. Boden is one of the great multi-channel retail success stories. Time and again they are given as examples of best practice - their distinctive copy style being just one example. They do pretty much everything in-house so that they can maintain control over their exacting quality of customer experience. Sarah herself is a self-confessed control freak - and we like that because it means she has real and deep insight into what is working and what isn’t in terms of optimising her conversion rates.”
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Angus Cormie, Senior Site Manager (Consumer), Dell
Angus has been working in the digital space for more than 10 years. In 1998, following a career in marketing with two multinational companies, he became a co-founder of Genie, a web and mobile portal that flourished and eventually evolved into O2 Online - where Angus led the online web portal, customer experience and development strategy for 3 years. After setting up his own digital media consultancy business in the mid '00s, he took a permanent position as Managing Director of an online gift retailer, Dream Internet. In early 2007 Angus moved into his current role managing the Dell Consumer web site across Europe.
E-consultancy comment: "In Angus’ own words: “…happy to provide valuable insight into how we track our metrics to drive (at a hugely granular level of detail) conversion, or the 3 “C''s of consideration, conversion and convergence, as we focus on in Dell. I could also talk about ho we use AB / Beta testing - and our plans for Multi-Variant testing to test various initiatives to drive up our 3 C's. I can also talk about what works and what doesn't, and how the weekly cycle of merchandising and promo 'muscle' are flexed to adjust to changing business needs”. Need we say more?"
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Vanessa Coussens, Former Head of E-commerce, Churchill (RBS)
Almost a decade of hands on e-commerce within financial services, Vanessa pioneered e-commerce at Churchill, winning numerous awards with a proven ability to devise and execute e-commerce strategies that deliver real business benefit in a competitive market place. The former Head of E-commerce is highly regarded for developing and implementing cutting edge e-commerce solutions.
E-consultancy comment: “Financial Services is clearly a big and important sector when it comes to online, not least in the world of customer retention and value growth. But most big FS organisations remain tight-lipped when it comes to giving away their insights by speaking too openly. Which is why we jumped on Vanessa (not literally, you understand) when we heard she was leaving RBS. We’ve asked her to give her perspective on where we’re at with customer retention online, what’s working and what’s not, and where it’s all going…”
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Jonathan Davies, Head of E-commerce and Relationship Marketing, Eurostar
As Head of E-commerce & Relationship Marketing for Eurostar, Jon has responsibility for Eurostar's online sales and marketing in all markets and manages customer relationship management including the Frequent Traveller loyalty scheme. In his 4 years at Eurostar Jon has managed a three-fold increase in online sales making Eurostar.com Eurostar's most significant direct channel. Prior to Eurostar Jon was responsible for online sales at London Underground and managed the launch of Oystercard.co.uk.
E-consultancy comment: “St Pancras to Paris in just over two hours eh…?! Maybe if we’re nice to Jon we can blag a free ticket? Eurostar is now looking increasingly to compete with the short haul airlines and repeat travellers are clearly very valuable. The battle ground is largely one of convenience and experience — so how are Eurostar using interactive channels to keep people loyal to train travel? How is e-mail being used to target different behavioural segments? How is web content being used to deliver brand experiences that drive loyalty and increased spend? Find out from Jon…”
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Lucy Conlan, Senior Marketing Manager, The Barbican
Lucy Conlan has a strong direct marketing background gained at management level in the charity and cultural sector, with previous posts held at British Red Cross, Help the Aged and the Natural History Museum. Recently, Lucy has been working on Customer Relationship Management and campaign integration activity at the Barbican Centre, including the successful re-launch of the membership scheme. She contributes to the strategic development of the multi award-winning Barbican website.
E-consultancy comment: “It’s clearly vitally important for most charities and arts organisations to be effective at keeping their members, visitors and benefactors. Equally, these organisations usually have quite a range of publications, events, education and other offerings to cross-sell to their members. As such they are more sophisticated than most when it comes to customer segmentation and direct marketing across multiple channels in the most efficient ways possible. Under Lucy’s guidance, the Barbican have been doing some fantastic (and deservedly award-winning) work in CRM and cross-channel campaign integration. Come and learn how you might apply this to your own business.” |
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