Align the Core – My Presentation at Etail Canada 2017

Etail Canada 2017 took place from May 16-18 in Toronto at the Hyatt on King Street. The yearly event brings together top retailers in Canada, as well as some of the brightest Digital Marketing and Ecommerce minds in the field. It was the 6^th edition of the Etail Canada event, part of the WBR events series, and was one of the best. (Disclosure: I am on the Etail Canada Board of Advisors).

For the 4^th year in a row, I got to speak to the Etail Canada attendees. The name of my talk was Align the Core: How a day in July Turned Vendors Into Partners and the talk detailed some steps Mark’s and L’equipeur have taken on our Digital Transformation journey.  (It was a similar presentation I gave at the ForeSee Summit in Phoenix a month prior, though I altered it for the Canadian audience)

A few months before the ForeSee Summit, our former Account Executive, Jennifer Macintosh, asked me if I’d be interested in speaking at ForeSee. I said absolutely! And then she said she had the perfect topic. In July of 2016, Mark’s had organized a Digital Partner Summit, and ForeSee was invited as one of our core partners. Many partners in that room said it was the first of its kind that they had been a part of. It was an amazing day, and I felt our partners and internal team were more aligned than ever. It was also intricate, as some of these partners were indeed competing for a share of our budgets. However, we have fantastic partners, and the day went perfectly.

Anyhow, back to the Connect Conference. As I got to outlining the topic and preparing my slides, I started noticing something: the Digital Partner Summit we held at Mark’s was only a part – albeit a big one – of what we were accomplishing. Mark’s was on a Digital Transformation journey.

From company-wide education sessions, to using ForeSee and analytics data to tell our story, which netted us more budget and resources (i.e. we doubled our budget and our team), these were pieces of the transformational framework coming into place. As we started putting more and more pieces together, we were realizing these pieces were part of our Digital Transformation.

Here are some pics of the event and some of the slides that resonated with the audience.

I also got to host a panel with some fine Canadian-based retail stars who work at awesome retailers like Bentley, BestSeller, and Holt Renfrew.

And the day was capped off for me and Mark’s by winning the Best Paid Search program. Etail Canada introduced an awards program this year. Mark’s submitted for Best Paid Search Program (of 2016). I was honoured to accept the award right after my Etail Canada Presentation. Event Director Megan Kessler came on stage and announced that Mark’s had won, and presented us the fabulous award. That was a nice touch by Megan.

Here’s some more information on the next Etail Canada event.