Welcome to Episode 27 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Inderpaul Rai, Head of Acquisition at ufurnish.com. Indy has had a remarkable career spanning from small-scale SEO to award-winning paid work on the agency side, to enterprise in-house teams and all the way back to a startup environment. We discuss all that, and along the way we talk about what a modern partnership-driven affiliate model looks like, plus the importance of paid and organic search harmonisation – or in other words, taking a total SEM view. Also, culture is a topic that Indy radiates, and this gets a spotlight as well.

1. Career highlights and lessons learned - 2:39
2. Modern partnership-driven affiliate model - 24:19
3. Paid and organic search harmonisation - 28:00
4. What is next in digital marketing? - 36:31

Welcome to episode 26. of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Alex Greifeld. Alex has a long background in ecommerce and until recently she was a director at Tapestry, which collects brands you'll know from the luxury space like Coach and Kate Spade. Now, she's acting as an ecommerce growth advisor, so she's a really perfect fit for this podcast.

We talked through age-old debates like retention versus acquisition and newer ones like Return on Ad Spend versus Marketing Efficiency Ratio, as well as Customer Lifetime Value versus first-order profit.

Listen to the new Growing Ecommerce episode and learn more about:

1. Product, forgotten P of marketing - 02:39
2. Customer Retention Vs Acquisition - 04:19
3. ROAS vs MER? -17:13
4. CLV vs first-order profit? -26:51
5. What's next for ecommerce - 36:31 

You can hear more from Alex by subscribing to her very popular ecommerce newsletter, No Best Practices: https://nobestpractices.co/

Welcome to Episode 25 of Growing Ecommerce. This time, Mike is joined by Katherine Munro, a data scientist at smec. If you have a stereotype in your mind that data scientists are brilliant, then Katherine will not disappoint you. She is a fountain of knowledge – disciplined and scientific as you might expect, and also incredibly creative in her thinking.
We catch up about some current projects she’s working on and then dive into CLV, or Customer Lifetime Value. What is CLV exactly, what are approaches to calculating or modelling it? How can we use it in an ecommerce setting? We talk cohorts, categories, and KPIs.

1. What is it? How to calculate or model it? - 04:19
2. How to use CLV in an e commerce setting? -17:13
3. The value of CLV for your business? -26:51
4. Beyond CLV - 36:31 

Welcome to episode 24 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike is joined by Kirk Williams - his own professional hero. Kirk is a PPC and digital advertising expert who runs his own PPC micro agency, ZATO Marketing. In this episode, Kirk and Mike ponder about the Google advertising space, both the challenges and opportunities moving forward, as well as the role of data collection and privacy in the ecommerce operating environment. This episode gives an interesting counter or companion perspective to the recent episode with Ginny Marvin -Google Ads liaison. Feel free to have a look at the article Kirk refers to or listen to Kirk host Mike in the podcast episode.

1. What is healthy ecommerce growth? - 08:34
2. Google Ads and how to optimise campaign performance - 19:12
3. Performance Max-Google’s automation concept - 28:02 
4. Compliant data collection and privacy moving forward - 42:34 

Welcome to episode 23 of Growing Ecommerce.
In this episode, Mike is joined by his colleague from smec, Markus Harant. He is an online marketing expert who leads the Programmatic Advertising and Analytics team. Markus talks us through the technology behind programmatic, ecommerce use cases, how to view these campaigns, and What's going on with the dichotomy between brand and performance? If you wish to read about Programmatic Advertising instead of listening about it - have a look at the Programmatic Advertising ebook. And news of Microsoft and Xander winning Netflix's ad business

1. Technology behind Programmatic and its adoption? 
2. Top or bottom of the funnel? Programmatic Performance and how to measure it.  - 9:21
3. Programmatic Advertising budget: machine learning capabilities, cost, and value.  - 18:00
4. Microsoft to power Netflix’s advertising. What to expect?  - 31:18

Welcome to episode 22 of Growing Ecommerce. In this episode, Mike was lucky enough to speak with Ginny Marvin, Google Ads product liaison. She supports communication and the working relationship between Google's product team on the one hand, and the advertisers and partners who use that platform on the other hand. In this episode you get introduced to Google’s latest resources to help you steer your retail business: your guide to  search automation, Google Ads best practice guide and  performance max best practices guide. 

With these resources and everything Mike and Ginny discuss in this episode you’ll dive deeper into:

1. From all search engine marketing to client interactions and product updates. How does Google connect with advertisers? 1:34
2. The future of Google Ads? Automation, maximized conversions and machine learning capabilities  8:36
3. Business or product Insights? Insights that marketers should really be looking to manage campaigns 18:16
4. Differentiation in an automated environment  31:00

Welcome to episode 21. of growing ecommerce. 

In this episode, Mike is joined by Karin Schallauer, smec’s product marketing team lead who just came back from K5, one of the biggest ecommerce conferences overall in the German-speaking region. Tune in as Karin and Mike take you down the ecommerce landscape and discuss:

• Managing marketplace, supply chain, personalisation, and digital transformation
• Sustainability:  the footprint of your sales - 5:47
• Marketplaces: should I stay or should I go? - 11.25
• Social ecommerce: Trend or reality? - 17:34
• Pandemic playing field: disruptions, opportunities, and trends - 27:14
• What is healthy ecommerce growth? - 30.40

Welcome to episode 20. of Growing eccommerce.  

In this episode, Mike is lucky enough to speak with Max Hallerstede, CEO of Hallerstede gmbh, a long-running family business in Germany that Max helped bring online under the ecommerce trading brand Kofferworld. What's so special is that Max is a real pro in logistics, purchasing, and pricing and he talks to us about:
How years of consultancy helped him prepare for the disruptions of the last couple of years
How strong brand relationships have secured his business against new competitors 
How he has used forecasting and endurance to avoid losses and make profitable sales. 
Pricing tools and strategies 

It’s just a really great chance to reflect and learn. Particularly, in the current inflationary climate with ecommerce under pressure and everything else going on right now.

Dive deeper into:

00:00 Intro
01:33 TAKING OFFLINE RETAIL ONLINE: How to digitally transform a family-run business?
09:37 HOW TO MANAGE SUPPLY CHAIN? The right tools to measure your stock, sales, and supply
18:02 STEPS TO SETTING THE RIGHT PRICES: Pricing tools, profitability, and operational efficiency.
34:02 HOW TO STAY AHEAD OF PRICING REGULATIONS?

Welcome to episode 19. You can think of it as part 2 to the previous conversation with Christopher Rogl in episode 15 - Performance Max: One campaign to rule them all. In this episode, Mike Ryan gives you a brief context for the PMax, a framework for smarter PMax retail campaigns, and ideas for bringing that framework to life.
Mike, smec’s portfolio strategist keeps you up to date with:

1. What are Performance Max  campaigns?
2. Advantages and disadvantages of PMax
3. Moving forward with PMax
4. PMax Segmentation
5. PMax framework and practices
6. PMax optimisation

Welcome to episode 18. In this episode, you get a deep dive into the story of healthy ecommerce growth and everything from attribution to efficiency metrics like MER and ROAS through the prism of challenges modern brands and retailers face daily: 

the dense ecommerce playing field, the volatile media buying landscape, and the conundrum of profitable marketing efforts. 

Mike, smec’s portfolio strategist is joined by David Rekuc, VP of marketing at 4x400, holding company of the direct-to-consumer brand Bambu Earth. Dave is a forward thinking marketing professional with a great deal of knowledge about marketing measurement and the economics of marketing. Among other topics, he describes the detective story of attribution and shares a grounded but constructive take on the current economic conditions.