End-to-End Personalized Experiences w/ zulily

zulily’s marketing success in recent years has been driven by serving an end-to-end personalized experience using advanced machine learning and data science techniques, from customer acquisition to retention. Hear how the zulily Marketing Analytics team built out models that focus on listening to our customer, increasing active customer base while maximizing lifetime value and finally, sending the right message at the right time in the right channel to their customers.

Tim Ragland, Director of Marketing Analytics and Sasha Bartashnik, Manager of Marketing Analytics @ zulily, will walk the audience through creation of in-house text-based analysis, predictive LTV calculations and purchase propensity modeling. Topics include:

1. Introduction to zulily & our Discovery-Based shopping model; leaning into the concept of the 3rd way to shop
2. How zulily utilizes text from our customers to get a pulse on customer experience and the necessary improvements and enhancements
3. Building predictive lifetime value models based on early engagement and how this allowed for more rapid active customer growth
4. Examples of a more personalized 1 to 1 Marketing model utilizing in-house models
5. Brief vision of the future of Marketing (& analytics specifically) at zulily

About Tim and Sasha

Timothy Ragland, Director of Marketing Analytics
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-ragland-197a603/

Timothy Ragland became Director of Marketing Analytics for zulily in October 2017. In this role, Timothy leads a team responsible for driving customer acquisition, retention and engagement through a proprietary marketing data analytics platform leveraging machine learning and Big Data. Key projects include the development of predictive customer-level revenue modeling, attribution of offline media and quick, iterative testing and reads on marketing led programs such as customer returns and zulily private label credit card, which exceeded expectations with over 160K new accounts activated in less than three months. Additionally, Timothy has led his team to reassess and establish new, innovative methods on how zulily acquires new customers through advertising channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Google Display Networks. His team has helped grow zulily’s active customers 24% YOY to 6.1M, along with increasing Return on Ad Spend consistently year over year.
Timothy was previously in Financial Planning and Analysis at zulily, managing budgets and investments of millions in the Marketing space. Under his guidance, return on marketing spend increased and zulily’s topline revenue grew exponentially. Before joining zulily, Timothy spent 4 years at Sephora in various Finance roles including supporting the Sephora inside JCPenney partnership. Prior, he served as the financial business partner to Avid’s Audio product lines. Previously, he began his career at Plantronics also in the financial planning and analysis group. Timothy earned both is B.A. of Business Management and M.S. of Applied Finance and Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Sasha Bartashnik - Marketing Analytics Manager, zulily
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sashabartashnik/

Sasha leads a team of analysts focused on optimizing $1.6B online retailer zulily’s multi-channel marketing strategy. She helped the team transition to self-service analytics using Tableau, enabling a shorter cycle between data and action, to help drive a recent 24% YOY increase in active customers – to 6.1M. Prior to zulily she worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center applying predictive modeling and visualization to solve strategic problems in healthcare. Sasha is passionate about data visualization and has taught its basic principles via Tableau at the NYC Data Science Academy and as a guest lecturer at the Pratt Institute. She volunteers with DataKind, an organization focused on harnessing the power of data science to support mission-driven organizations.