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One of the coolest Portland ecommerce jobs around!
HARRY’S COMMENTS: We are working with Fuerst Group (parent company of KEEN Footwear and Chrome Industries) in their search for a Director of Ecommerce Marketing based in sexy, hip, funky, and edgy Portland, Oregon.
Ever been to Portland? Me neither. But every time we do a search in Portland, ALL of our candidates — even the ones who don’t get a job offer — LOVE interviewing there.
Here’s why …
Not many people have heard of Fuerst Group, but everyone loves KEEN and Chrome.
Founded in 2003, KEEN pioneered the concept of “hybrid footwear.” KEEN’s original Newport sandal, which crossed a sandal with a hiking shoe, was an immediate iconic hit and set the company on a path of driving consistent product innovation that exists today.
KEEN’s sister brand, Chrome, is one of the biggest apparel, footwear, and messenger bag names in the urban cycling community. Chrome’s shoes, such as the Kursk Pro, are known for their unique sizing, tough construction, and somewhat stiff feel in order to better manage clipless bike pedals.
People don’t just wear these shoes. They swear by them.
Now then, I’m going to do something I never do: Tell you to leave this page. If you are really serious about this gig, take three minutes to read this recent article about KEEN and Chrome on Forbes.com. It’s pretty incredible.
Back so soon?
What did you think of the author’s contention that customer experience is becoming a “product” — an offering as valuable to retailers as the items they sell? And how’d you like John Evons‘ comment that Fuerst Group is “an event company” whose goal is to incorporate its passion for events into retail experiences? Good stuff.
The fact is, Fuerst Group’s Ecommerce team is one of the ONLY ones I know of that’s developing a real process to innovate around a hybrid (offline / online) customer experience. Lots of IR-500 members talk about this stuff. Few do anything with it.
In this role, that’s the kind of team you’ll be working with.
This killer new Director of Ecommerce Marketing job is a global portfolio-level role working across brands, responsible for leading direct-response marketing channel initiatives and performance optimization across the KEEN and Chrome web sites and social platforms.
In this capacity, you’ll oversee conversion-centric acquisition and retention programs to ensure traffic growth, sustained revenue growth, and increase brand awareness with target consumers.
This is a “global” role in the sense that although it leads digital marketing globally, it doesn’t have full ownership of global marketing: Individual marketing functions will report up to their individual GM’s Ecommerce functions. You’ll guide digital strategy across those brands as a shared service.
In a sense, you’ll bring a direct-response mentality to brands that, while much beloved by their fans, haven’t spent much time selling to them directly.
Fuerst will look to YOU to understand the motivations, behaviors, and touch points that new and existing consumers choose to engage its brands. That’s the “Who / What / When / How / and WHY” behind their behaviors, and it’ll be your job to bring an advanced understanding of multichannel KPI’s to the firm’s efforts in SEO, SEM, retargeting, display advertising, email marketing, affiliates, and consumer data modeling.
As a team leader, you will help build and develop a team of marketing-channel experts to understand the firm’s competitive position while lighting a fire under its direct-to-consumer business. You’ll be a steward of the firm’s brands, too, tasked with balancing site conversions with brand building, to help KEEN and Chrome build their fan bases now and in the future.
Are you right for this role — and this company?
To win in this role, you’ll need both drive and commitment. We’re looking for someone who demonstrates initiative, self-reliance, and a strong sense of urgency. You’ll need to work constructively under pressure and maintain a constructive outlook in all situations. The team works on complex issues, often under tight deadlines. While handling multiple projects, you’ll need to stay focused while maintaining high quality standards.
Easy to say. But it takes a pro to do this consistently.
As usual, we spent a ton of time on the phone with this client teasing out exactly what you’ll need to KNOW and DO to hit the ground running in this role. Some of the things we can share with highly qualified candidates include …
- The “real” background requirements for this position, along with the top five things all resumes MUST have to be considered for the role.
- The top five problems that exist due to this position being open. These are the little fires you will be expected to put out during your first month on the job. Every job has these — whether your recruiter wants you to know about them or not!
- What your average day / week will look like in this role. There’s what you read in the standard job posting … then there’s reality. We’ve got the reality.
- The top KPI’s that will determine your success in this role. In a nutshell: How you keep score.
- The major projects you’ll need to complete by Day 100 to be considered a home-run in this position. We’ve got the lowdown on how you can plug-and-play and drive REAL value in this job.
We have a massive amount of proprietary intel to share with qualified candidates. Our industry research for this assignment exceeds 100 pages! Be sure to TEXT Allan Seibert for this info at (706) 318-1196.
Or simply use the email link when you apply for the role below.
View Harry Joiner’s profile
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Lead the team to develop bottoms-up channel strategies, forecasting approaches, and a comprehensive and accurate tracking framework to ensure that marketing channels are operating at full potential.
- Partner with Brand Marketing, eCommerce, and Creative leadership teams to develop an aligned digital broadcast marketing calendar to support both brand key initiatives and eCommerce-specific channel opportunities.
- Evaluate existing marketing agency and technology vendor landscape and determine a go-forward strategy to both build existing relationships and foster new relationships.
- Partner with Brand Editorial, Social, and eCommerce Merchandising teams to develop holistic content strategy targeted toward on-site organic performance, blog, social, and advertorial PR.
- Define a set of industry benchmarks that can be used to evaluate the ongoing performance of KPIs and business compared to best-in-class competitors and the overall marketplace.
- Partner with the Sr. Manager, Analytics & Insights to build a comprehensive CRM and insights platform to provide transparency and actionable data points for marketing efforts.
- Partner with local leadership teams in Canada, Europe, and Japan to develop local digital marketing strategies and benchmarking tools to evaluate opportunities for continued expansion in those markets.
- Build a set listening tools that can be used to inform the business on significant changes in overall brand sentiment, changes in competitive landscape, and retail partner strategies.
- Define a CRM strategy to enable the business to have a more comprehensive view of its fan-base. This should include dynamic segmentation capabilities (shared across consumer-facing platforms), life time value analysis, RFM modeling, and lead the vision and requirements to build a modern data framework for building ad-hoc queries, dashboards, and reports.
- Leverage initial investments in business intelligence tools (i.e. Tableau) to build powerful and dynamic reporting capabilities in concert with a vision to build a modern data warehouse.
- Partner closely with internal Finance leadership teams to quantify marketing investment efficiency and confidently manage variable spend models per established ROI & ROAS targets.
- Bring historical expertise in eCommerce marketing budget management to advocate for innovative ways to shift legacy investments toward measurable, digital expansion efforts.
- Be a key partner to the Directors of eCommerce for both the KEEN and Chrome brands as they lay out overall digital commerce strategies to reach top and bottom-line growth goals.
- Bring an informed point of view on day-to-day marketing process modeling to complement and evolve existing tools, workflow, and prioritization methodologies for cross-functional business execution.
- Champion development of eCommerce capabilities and marketing programs which will drive business growth and stimulate consumer engagement for the US and global regions.
- Determine the skills, investments, and structural shifts that are needed to set an aggressive trajectory for growth over the firm’s long-range planning time horizon. This should include a methodical team build-out and skills enablement strategy to empower its marketing operations for growth.
- Work with cross-functional user experience architect to assess current state and prioritize future enhancements to optimize conversion funnel and overall consumer satisfaction.
- Provide regular performance and consumer feedback for the benefit of senior management and other functional areas within the company.
- Bring an informed point of view on loyalty program development and an ability to define a loyalty roadmap to drive overall life time value and relationships with the firm’s fan-base.
- Develop bottoms up annual digital marketing budget for each business and ensure profit targets are reached through brand-right initiatives.
- Recommend reallocation of budget or shift in investment as necessary based on changing conditions and discovered opportunities.
- Develop a mentorship-driven culture where cross-functional knowledge sharing and expertise building is a core focus of the departments goals and focus.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- 5+ years in eCommerce marketing, with at least 2+ years in senior-level, team and budget management. Track record of rapid advancement for successful eCommerce businesses. Preferred exposure to Canada, Western Europe, and Japan markets.
- Deep understanding of the Marketing Technology landscape with proven track record of vendor enablement to drive growth.
- Effective negotiator with previous experience of managing a portfolio of external vendors and agencies. Proven ability to understand and communicate with internal legal counsel on contract optimization and structure.
- Previous experience building an eCommerce marketing department to >$50M in annual gross revenue.
- Experience building an eCommerce marketing organization to drive sustained growth and skills development.
- Demonstrated team building, planning and innovation skills.
- Strong data and analysis skills with expert-level understanding of eCommerce KPIs
- Bachelor’s Degree from a four-year college or university – academic focus in marketing, eCommerce and/or business preferred OR equivalent experience.
Applications for this position are being coordinated by Allan Seibert. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to email Allan for additional information that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation for these interviews with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.
