Ellen Smolyar
Marketing Director
Greater Chicago Area
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Summary
Highly analytical Marketing Director with deep expertise in setting strategic media goals, leading the development of innovative communication plans, and effective execution of acquisition and retention programs for a portfolio of Crate and Barrel brands. Created mechanisms to provide leadership and data-oriented approach to reduce time, increase revenue, and improve media efficiencies. Partnered with cross-functional teams on promotions and sales incentive planning, forecasting, and implementation.
Big picture thinker who developed and implemented digital transformation media strategies utilizing insights, segmentation, data enhancement, omni-channel alignment, regression modeling, and attribution to deliver continuous improvements. Merged data and analytics with intuition and creativity to achieve individual and collective media channels KPIs.
A key member of a collaborative leadership team who instilled data literacy as part of adaptable, fast-paced company culture. Partnered with internal teams and external partners on audience development, targeting, messaging, positioning, briefs and integrated engagement plans to focus on what matters, results. Hired, engaged, retained a highly resilient team and mentored colleagues to advance skills to leave a positive impact on their professional and personal lives.
Experience
2018
Sep
-
2019
Oct
Associate Director | Brand Marketing
Crate and Barrel / Northbrook, IL
Brand management includes: Crate & Barrel, CB2, Crate & Kids, Hudson Grace
Leveraged vast practical hybrid direct marketing and digital media planning knowledge and performance insights to build solution-oriented strategies and translate them into customer acquisition and retention plans. Oversaw development of goals, planning, budget, segmentation, and content development for the portfolio of brands. Systematically realigned financial spend through KPI-driven attribution to answer, “how can I best invest my budget?” and through test and learn framework.
• Doubled CB2 direct mail sales over 2 years through media realignment, guided by marketing research and attribution.
• Acted as a marketing consultant to C-suite for media efficiencies, sales, VOC, and “What if…?” scenarios.
• Developed and communicated seasonal brand briefs to align cross-functional teams on goals and desired outcomes.
• Optimized SEM strategy by aligning retention and acquisition goals for digital and traditional media channels.
• Guided Crate & Kids rebranding including assortment, segmentation, media mix, and frequency through data analysis.
• Build a product mix optimization process to align the Share of Voice positioning across traditional and digital channels.
• Launched AI-powered programmatic direct mail/email programs resulting in a +20% efficiency.
• Researched and analyzed competitors promotional and strategies to optimize brand positioning.
• Reengineered CRM processes without IT resources resulting in mailing more for less.
Optimized mix of targeted customer sales incentives and company-wide promotions leading to a +10% in marketing efficiency.
• Engineered new planning and forecasting discount model, accelerating C-suite decision making.
• Collaborated with e-Commerce on the A/B test of AI-powered real-time incentive offers resulting in a 15% lift.
Transformed print and digital signage processes resulting in 10% savings and reduction in resources.
• Overhauled planning process for 70% of signage by strategically designing for a season vs. an event.
• Pioneered tiered signage strategy and RACI processes to free up creative capacity.
2012
Jan
-
2018
Sep
Director, CRM
Crate and Barrel / Northbrook, IL
Crate & Barrel and CB2 brands
for strategy, media planning, budgeting, execution, analysis and continuous improvement of 120M+ in direct mail, and 1.2B+ in email accounting for over 50% in company revenue. Built flexible processes and agile systems. Acted as a business lead on IT projects to improve customer journeys, media targeting, personalization at scale, and customer data management. Led cross-functional teams to ensure CRM best practices were embraced and executed leading to higher efficiencies.
• Integrated customer profiles into marketing plans to optimize media frequency and ROAS.
• Doubled revenue by leveraging 50% of total advertising spend to plan and execute direct mail/email strategies.
• Aligned consistent KPI efficiency goals across digital and print, guided by attribution/media mix modeling.
• Guided build and integration of segmentation and predictive modeling to optimize customer contact frequency.
• Increased sales without increases in spend through novel use of personalization in email, direct mail, and digital.
• Optimized direct mail format to double sales in 4 years in competitive New Homeowners space.
• Influenced selection of best in class vendors for martech.
• Hired, coached, and empowered direct reports to collaborate and innovate efficiencies.
Capitalized on customer journey opportunities to grow customer file and increase sales.
• Designed and built a UX strategy to expand cross-functional paperless receipt Retail program. As a result, email capture grew from 14% to 50% in 3 years without additional spend or loyalty program.
• Leveraged marketing automation tools to orchestrate triggered program targeting 1st-time buyers at 30:1 ROAS.
• Launched top 3 revenue generating B2C and B2B customer journey programs targeting new homeowners, eCommerce email interrupter, and loyalty program for interior designers.
2005
May
-
2011
Dec
Senior Manager, Sales and Circulation
Crate and Barrel / Northbrook, IL
Crate & Barrel and CB2 brands
Created transparency by driving organizational change to remove channel silos and influenced technology roadmap. Built business rigor around key customer journey touch points and turned actionable insights into relevant customer experience.
• Doubled revenue and optimized customer contact frequency by integrating innovative predictive analytics & segmentation strategies.
• Realigned acquisition spent by source, resulting in a +20% in customers acquired on flat spend.
Oversaw development, marketing launch and rollout of new CB2 brand and subsequent marketing programs.
• Increased CB2 customer file by 400,000+ customers in 5 years.
• Streamlined operations of the 3-member team to manage CB2 brand without additional staff.
1998
Aug
-
2005
Apr
Manager, Sales and Circulation
Crate and Barrel / Northbrook, IL
Hired into a new position to oversee the rebuild of the customer database, in-house catalog circulation, customer segmentation, and execution with responsibility for sales plans, P/L management, and customer demand forecasts.
• Established a high-performance team, built or streamlined processes to reduce waste, re-built technology, agencies, and vendor network.
• Created forecasting models to project KPIs using customer, revenue, and investment targets.
• Increased efficiencies through the built and implementation of optimization tools to double ROAS.
Education
University of Illinois
Bachelor of Science (BS) Marketing | Bachelor of Art (BA) Art History / Marketing, Art History
Skills
