Dave Mack, Vice President, E-commerce, The Source, proudly announced that the site hit $1 million an hour this year. The Canadian retailer has been extremely agressive in its online and offline marketing campaigns, using digital mediums including its website, mobile site, e-newsletter, mobile newsletter, blog, e-flyer, mobile flyer, YouTube and Facebook.

Mack says getting internal resources and support to accelerate growth is critical, but that has to be done via calculated efforts that bring attention and respect to digital channels. In a presentation at eTail Canada this week, Mack outlined three ways to ensure that’s happening in your retail organization.

Dave Mack

1) Online leaders need to be driving value back into every area of the organization – unprompted!
Bring human resources into the conversation – help get their message in front of the best available talent through:
– Google keyword ranking to help extend reach and hit target demographic
– Geo-targeted reach for recruiting support in difficult geographic locations
– Best practice support for social marketing campaigns

He noted that the best learnings were home grown. When addressing marketing and getting more attention on digital channels, he realized areas where his team could add value such as traffic and merchandising. Over time, some real estate on the print flyer that he would have asked for and not gotten years ago was made available; “You can’t just ask for it you have to earn it,” he said.

2) Guarantee an ROI on the $$ the company re-directs to your online biz, if you can’t do that…reconsider
Mack quoted a famous business man who said, “What’s my return on investment in ecommerce? Are you Crazy? This is Colmubus in the New World. What was his ROI?” Mack said this might seem a logical way of arguing but that ultimately, you must prove ROI for your ecommerce operations.

3) Know the basic attribution case studies out there and use this data to help support your cross channel impact

For every $1 online, Mack guarantees $3.45 in store. “It’s a two way street,” he said. “You have to show value.”