Peer-Reviewed Ecommerce Awards, Recognizing Marketing Achievements Among Retail and Ecommerce Professionals
The annual ecommerce awards program was developed to recognize and celebrate the year’s best marketing and ecommerce programs. Winners were selected based upon votes by CommerceNext’s judges of industry leaders along with an equally weighted popular vote.
The CommerceNextys are our way of honoring those individuals and companies that deliver truly breakthrough results in customer acquisition and ecommerce. After reviewing 75+ nominations, we narrowed it down to 31 finalists across 8 categories. Below are the winners—check out past winners from previous CommerceNextys shows. Thanks to Bloomreach for sponsoring this year’s ecommerce awards!
Best Use of Data or Technology
Winner: Julie Bornstein, Founder and CEO at The Yes
THE YES is a new retail platform that is much more customized and curated, using human expertise and machine learning to power the most complex algorithm in fashion.
THE YES has grown organically 50% month over month. To date the app has had over 100,000 downloads and over 8 million “YES” and “NO” clicks within the app.
Most Impactful Social Responsibility Campaign
Winner: Patrick Walsh, VP of Commercial Growth and Transformation, Foot Locker Inc.
Foot Locker has built upon their social responsibility and community values and made a $200MM commitment to the Black community.
First quarter 2021 comparable-store sales increased by 80.3 percent. Total sales increased by 83.1 percent, to $2,153 million in the first quarter of 2021, compared with sales of $1,176 million in the same period last year. Excluding the effect of foreign exchange rate fluctuations, total sales for the first quarter increased by 79.4 percent.
Most Effective Brand Storytelling
Winner: Alex Waldman, Co-Founder at Universal Standard
Universal Standard promotes “size equality” for luxury customers through partnership with Erdem. The brand lives up to its name, creating a new clothing standard that embraces more of the world, offering fashion freedom to everyone from a size 00-40, and featuring models of various age ranges, ethnicities, body shapes and identities.
The collection is an all-too-rare moment where one of the world’s premier fashion luxury labels is accessible to a wide range of people.
Outstanding New Ecommerce Experience
Winner: Ben Kaufman: CEO at Camp
CAMP was honored with this ecommerce award for launching the world’s first ecommerce platform for kids. With Present Shop, a new ecommerce platform, kids ages 3-12 can now discover, choose and send the perfect gift directly to parents, teachers or friends, a safe and modern-day shopping experience for kids while also allowing parents to save time and money.
CAMP’s first iteration of experiential ecommerce took place during the holiday season and was its virtual take on the classic white elephant gift swap. The program ran for three weeks and at its peak had 20,000 people playing in one day on Christmas Eve, driving in a total of $1 million in sales during the first 10 days alone, according to Kaufman.
Best Use of a New Channel
Winner: Jarid Lukin and M&M’s Digital Team, Market Director, M&M’s Digital
M&M’s won for launching an influencer campaign on TikTok for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. They wanted to help people connect with others who they may not have been able to see in person and worked with over 150 TikTok influencers to offer their community a free gift containing personalized M&M’s.
For Mother’s Day and Father’s Day combined, over 1/3 of the influencers posted original content with their personalized gifts to their audiences, creating over 50 pieces of high-quality, engaging content for free! The content on TikTok generated over 5 million views and over 100k engagements in just a few weeks. Furthermore, the UGC outperformed traditional creative in paid social marketing A/B tests. Finally, the company saw a 67% increase in sales of Mother’s Day gifts and a 457% increase in sales of Father’s Day gifts, compared to 2020.
Marketing Innovator of the Year
Winner: Ekta Chopra, CDO, E.L.F.
e.l.f. Cosmetics won for launching the first-ever TikTok reality show. “Eyes.Lips.Famous.” was inspired by the brand’s commitment to empowering its community to go after their dreams. The show offered three lucky creators the opportunity to build their skills with some of TikTok’s most notable influencers.
The reality show “Eyes. Lips. Famous.” led to 3,300 UGC submissions. Fans loved it, passing 40 million views and a 57% spike in followers on e.l.f.’s TikTok channel, @elfyeah. The winners can now be found as familiar faces on e.l.f.’s TikTok channel. In fact, they’ve been featured over 24x to date.
Global/Cross-Border Launch of the Year
Winner: Kathy Ando, Vice President of DTC & Marketing at TILE
TILE was recognized for expanding its direct-to-consumer channel into the UK and EMEA markets. Tile launched storefronts in 16 territories in just three months with local currencies and integrated with domestic fulfillment partners to better provide customers with optimal shipping options.
Tile concurrently launched new storefronts in 16 territories, with local currencies, in just 3 months. This speed to market is unheard of in the eCommerce industry. Additionally, the new storefronts have already increased brand awareness with an outstanding 1.7million new users. Not only was the launch quick and efficient, it was also seamlessly integrated and customized to best serve Tile and its customers.
Women in Retail’s Top Woman of the Year Award
Honoree: Taryn Rayment, CMO at FTD
This ecommerce award was presented in partnership with Women in Retail Leadership Circle and recognizes women leaders in retail who have contributed to the community and mentored others to get ahead.
Taryn Rayment joined FTD as Chief Marketing Officer in April 2020, faced with leading a new team in a remote setting and had to think quickly about how FTD’s marketing strategies needed to change due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last year, Taryn has completely shifted the brand’s marketing approach. She’s focused on taking FTD’s marketing efforts from more traditional to data-driven, by working with a designated data team and using tools to develop marketing focused reporting in order to see performance in real time and optimize accordingly.
Taryn’s modern approach to marketing drove growth in acquisition and reactivation audiences for FTD over the last year with acquisition +39% YOY and reactivation +26% YOY from January 2020 to January 2021. Taryn’s marketing efforts and ability to tap into new platforms has also proven to translate to a younger audience, lower than FTD’s median audience age of 45. Efforts to target this new audience began in April 2020 and went from 24% below 45 last year to 31% of buyers in May 2021.
To learn more about this year’s CommerceNexty ecommerce award winners: click here.
