Aaron Ginn, Growth Product Manager, Everlane
Ginn likes a good debate over politics. But when it comes to marketers and customers, he tries to please both parties. In one case of creating a win-win situation, he spearheaded Everlane’s integration of Facebook Messenger at checkout; in another he led development of the e-tailer’s first mobile app—both of which have dramatically improved customer engagement. And when a data scientist on his team recommended a required sign-in from customers coming to the site via email, which Ginn thought would be a poor user experience, he ran tests anyway, and conversion rates doubled.
Defining moment: Working on growth for the Romney campaign. It was a lot of money, a lot of attention, [and] a lot of users. It’s also probably one of the biggest challenges that you can take on working on growth. You want to change the leader of the free world.
Words to live by: Good people make good work.
Strategy shift: People need to come multiple times to look at something before they commit to it, which makes sense because that’s how people shop offline…. Seeing the difference between same-day conversion versus week conversion, the order magnitude to effect is massive. You may focus a ton of energy on same-day conversions and trying to move it from 2 to 2.1%, when in reality you may need [to include] another visit because [shoppers] need to come back one more time. So, then you focus on repeat [visits] the next day, which is a much easier metric to move.
Up next: One of the visions of Everlane is to see how you can design a completely 100% online company but still have that emotional and rewarding connection to the user in a physical way. I’m excited to see how the Internet of Things could possibly fill that void.
Advice to young marketers: [Solomon’s] “This too shall pass.”
–Elyse Dupré
