Anthropologie’s Elizabeth Preis: Creativity-Led, Data-Informed, & Consumer-Inspired

Guest speaker: Elizabeth Preis

For the last 25 years of her career, Elizabeth has developed and established her Marketing expertise at the uppermost echelons of the beauty and fashion industries. Prior to beauty, Elizabeth led the direct-to-consumer marketing efforts at J. Crew and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Currently, Elizabeth is the Chief Marketing Officer at Anthropologie Group, a global, full- life’style’ brand.

Episode summary

This episode features an interview with Elizabeth Preis, Chief Marketing Officer at Anthropologie. As CMO, she leads the team that implements all brand marketing, customer insights and analytics, and editorial content across all social, digital, and print platforms, and online and in stores. Previously, Elizabeth spent a decade in the beauty industry leading strategy for integrated marketing at Estée Lauder and BH Cosmetics.

In this episode, Kailey sits down with Elizabeth to discuss taking risks at the right time, designing impactful omni-channel experiences, and crafting concise stories through data.

Key takeaways

Taking risks is imperative to being successful, but you have to know when to take them. Trying a new promotion around major shopping events like Black Friday probably isn’t in your best interest. So, figure out a smart time to take a risk that will allow you to fail fast and cheap. It’s also important to be aligned internally so that all teams understand what the risk looks like.
Online stores are nowhere near as sensorial as in-store physical experiences. However, that doesn’t make them any less impactful on the overall customer experience. Implementing things like ratings, reviews, and written marketing materials can round out the digital experience.
Marketers are tasked with crafting stories, but don’t overwhelm your customers with words. Be concise and back your anecdotes up with data and you can deliver an impactful customer experience.

Speaker quotes

“If we're in the job of actually crafting the story and writing the poetry, then it's more than just knowing the words and the letters and how to put together a sentence. It's also making sure that in a short number of words, we're making the biggest impact with the mounds and mounds of data sets that we have available. What are those key elements that we want to make sure that not just the marketing team is clear of, but actually the entire organization is clear of?” – Elizabeth Preis