How do you explain your profession to people outside of the industry? What do you find most exciting and/or rewarding about this work?
What are the core requirements of your job and how do you measure success?
As the Senior Digital Marketing Manager, my role is to oversee all of Native Roots’ digital channels, including ecommerce, social media, email and SMS marketing, digital advertising and our in-store digital screens. We strive to provide a best-in-class digital strategy that seamlessly integrates the digital and in-store experience for our customers. We monitor and analyze KPIs and metrics for each channel on a weekly and monthly basis. My job is to meet our customers where they are, wherever they are, with content that they find useful and make shopping with Native Roots an enjoyable experience.
What is one notable professional achievement you've made over the past year that you are most proud of?
There is a lot of opportunity in the cannabis industry to adopt a website strategy that puts the customer first and brings the traditional retail ecommerce experience customers recognize closer to our business. In the past year, I was very proud to play an integral part in the development and launch of the new Native Roots website, which does just that for us. We started from scratch and completely rebuilt the entire site with a customer-centric approach in mind. Every customer is different, and each one wants a tailored experience in store based on their needs and preferences. An effective retailer brings that same experience to the digital space and the new site allows us to do that.
What professional challenge or failure has stuck with you, and how did you embrace it?
In marketing, we are always taking calculated risks to accomplish our objectives. We do the best we can to ensure our strategies and tactics are sound and that we can reasonably expect them to succeed. But there are times when the ROI just doesn’t materialize. For many years, when an effort did not have the impact anticipated, I would be so disappointed and feel like I had failed. But I have learned to have a tougher skin and recognize that in marketing, 2+2=4 does not always apply. Although it never truly gets easier, I have adapted to embrace this uncertainty and take these “failures” as an opportunity to learn what worked, what did not work and how we can improve moving forward. Risk taking and unanticipated results are part of the job when you work in marketing. I’ve learned to embrace that uncertainty and use it to challenge myself.
What trend or technology do you believe will have the most profound impact on your work (and the work of your peers) over the next year?
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to advance personalization will be a big thing in all industries, but particularly in the cannabis space. We now have more technologies gathering more data. With the help of AI, we can create more personalized marketing campaigns and content. We can produce more customized product recommendations and targeted advertisements to help drive customer engagement. I think this will be a game changer over the next year and beyond.
If you could say one thing to your younger self, what would it be?
When I was younger, I thought adults and professionals had it all figured out. But that is definitely not the case — at least not for me. I have learned how important it is to stay curious, ask questions and never stop learning.
