Breaking new ground, Sears names Thomas Emmons m-commerce leader
By Bill Siwicki
One day in early 2007, Thomas Emmons, a new member of the innovation group at Sears Holdings Corp., was tapped on the shoulder by the vice president of e-commerce and asked to draft a strategy on what mobile technology in e-commerce could look like for the retailing giant. Emmons got to work. Before long, the e-commerce chief summoned Emmons to the office of the chief information officer. The e-commerce chief introduced Emmons to the CIO as Sears’ new mobile team leader.
That was news to Emmons.
He hadn’t even completed his strategy and the company had decided mobile commerce was so important it needed its own leader. Excited, Emmons dug back in and finished his presentation that showed how text messaging could be used in marketing and order online/pickup in-store, how a mobile commerce web site could help customers on the go or even in a store looking for more information and reviews, and how downloadable mobile applications were on the horizon.
The big pitch
The vice president of e-commerce, Rob Mills, then took Emmons and his mobile strategic plan before the CIO and other top Sears executives. Emmons made his pitch. The reaction? Sears gave Emmons and Mills the green light.
Two short years later, Sears boasts a popular m-commerce site (Sears2go.com), a strong text messaging program, and a new iPhone application that leverages GPS and personalization technologies to create a unique mobile shopping experience for every customer.
“Tom’s varied background in technology and innovation, his willingness to wear multiple hats, and his ability in leveraging new technologies to simplify rather than complicate solutions made him ideal for this spot,” Mills says.
In the past few years, an increasing number of retailers have begun text message marketing campaigns and launched m-commerce sites, making significant bets on the future of mobile commerce. Other retailers are hesitant, taking a wait-and-see approach.
But as more consumers switch from conventional phones to smartphones—and their numbers are growing fast, thanks in large part to the iPhone—and gain access to faster 3G wireless data networks, they are expecting site publishers and retailers to provide rich mobile web experiences optimized for their devices of choice.
Mobile innovation
Because Sears has been in business since 1893, it knows how to tell the difference between a trend and a fad. It concluded mobile would be an important and permanent part of its multichannel strategy moving forward. And, more than most retailers getting started in m-commerce, it’s put its money where its mouth is in the form of Tom Emmons. And it changed the name of its innovation group. Today it’s the mobile/innovation group.
“Mobile is the most graspable of the kinds of new technology,” Emmons says. “The world is really changing. If I go to my wife’s parents’ house on the weekend, for example, I can bring my iPhone and leave my laptop at home. If as a retailer you don’t have an answer for that, you are really going to be left out. A lot has happened in the last eight to 10 months, especially with the release of the iPhone 3G where the vast majority of our mobile traffic comes from.”
Sears created the post of mobile team leader to have someone who could stay on top of, and, as much as possible, ahead of, the fast-paced, ever-changing world of mobile technology and the mobile web. It needed an executive who could guide the retailer through new and uncharted waters.
Today, most retailers in m-commerce assign mobile leadership and responsibilities to the director of e-commerce or similar title. Some split responsibility between e-commerce and I.T. or e-commerce and marketing.
But it’s going to be an imperative sooner rather than later that larger multichannel and web-only retailers that want to lead have an executive devoted to m-commerce, says Jim Okamura, senior partner at retail consulting firm J.C. Williams Group Ltd.
“It’s a title we will start to see become more commonplace, with a strong connection up to the hierarchy, for the foreseeable future through the director of e-commerce,” Okamura says. “As a part of the overall direct and cross-channel alignment, it makes sense for mobile to have representation among executives, to direct an organization through this technology new to retail, to have a champion that can fight for internal resources.”
Emmons and company
Emmons leads a team of four and reports to the director of technology, Ravi Acharya. He also is charged with working with two mobile technology vendors: Usablenet Inc. and an offshore development firm.
“We have a collective responsibility as a group to keep the ball rolling to stay one step ahead of what customers want, offering value in this new channel and working with all the different organizations within Sears where mobile makes sense,” Emmons says. “A third of my time is spent doing strategy work, another third project execution, and the final third operations.”
Another reason Sears created the post of mobile team leader was because mobile efforts require time and energy—and the director of technology already had many other projects that required his attention.
“It boils down to focus: Mobile takes time and persistence,” Emmons says. “It took two years to get where we’re at today. A lot of that was chasing people down, talking with anyone who might work with us. Now the situation is flipped: We have lots of people interested in working with us. Focus is why we’re able to continue.”
In addition to focus, Sears understands that mobile is a highly specialized arena, and as a result, an m-commerce chief needs freedom.
“We’re given a lot of free rein on what the direction is for these projects, because you really need to be close to the technology to understand how things work and what the user experience should be like,” Emmons remarks. “If you don’t understand that at a low level, it will be difficult to make business decisions. So we’re much more of a bottom-up innovation area than a top-down.”
First stop: texting
Emmons’ strategy called for text messaging to be the first stop for mobile—specifically, texts tied to Sears’ popular order online/pickup in-store program. It’s very simple: A customer receives a text message alert the second an order is ready for pickup. Emmons says the opt-in program has become very popular among customers.
Though simple, these text messages exemplify how mobile can be multichannel, something at the core of Emmons’ strategy, and one of the reasons texting came first. “Mobile helps us differentiate as a multichannel retailer,” he explains. “Mobile is great at cross-channel.”
Early last year, Sears expanded its text message program to include marketing. One example: a text-to-win contest designed around the release of a new film, The Incredible Hulk. The contest was promoted on signs in stores and on the e-commerce site. Shoppers texted ‘Hulk’ to KMART (56278, the telecommunications short code for Sears’ sister retailer) to enter. They were immediately notified if they won or lost.
“We had great response from our customers,” Emmons says. “The thing I loved was people did text back their addresses to enter. And the vast majority of those addresses were usable. We had to call a few people. It really worked. It was real time, people were told they won right away and mailed their prizes. Those who didn’t win were prompted to enter again the next day. These customers were significantly more engaged with the brand.”
To really engage customers in the mobile realm, though, a retailer needs what is central to mobile commerce today: an m-commerce site. Which is why after text messaging, Emmons steered Sears’ mobile ship to Sears2go.com, a mobile web site developed with vendor Usablenet and launched in November.
“Before we developed Sears2go, we did the research and found there was a decent amount of traffic coming to Sears.com from mobile devices. But the site was not providing an optimized experience for mobile devices,” Emmons explains. “With Sears2go.com, we have a great place to send these people for a quick, clean, fast experience.”
The perfect storm
To make Sears2go.com happen, Emmons and his team did some PowerPoint pushing throughout the organization. Then came a fortuitous confluence of events.
First, the number of customers visiting Sears.com using smartphones and other mobile devices significantly increased. Second, the retailer found in Usablenet, Emmons says, an easy and cost-efficient way to develop and launch an m-commerce site. And third, with some education from the mobile team, departments throughout Sears bought into m-commerce.
“We were able to justify a business case behind it based on the increase in traffic we saw to Sears.com on mobile devices,” he says. “Then we got a ton of support from our internal business teams, finance teams, all sorts of people who saw our PowerPoint decks and realized the potential of this technology. It was the perfect storm.”
There was so much support and enthusiasm for the m-commerce site that development was fast and furious, in part because Sears wanted Sears2go.com live for the 2008 holiday season. The amount of time between the decision to create the mobile site and when it went live? Three months. “For a big company, this happened as fast as it possibly could,” Emmons says. “It was as quick as we could have gotten anything done.”
Sears declines to give exact m-commerce sales figures. But since it launched, Sears2go.com has been a learning experience for Emmons as an m-commerce leader.
“We’re happy. It met our expectations of traffic and sales—but in different manners than we had anticipated,” he explains. “An example: the places people are buying from. I thought use would come from a lot of urban areas. But there has been a decent amount—more than a blip on the radar—from rural areas. We’re not yet sure why.”
Emmons also learned about category and product selection in the mobile world.
“We started out with products we thought were good for the holidays. And they served us well,” he says. “But as we added things we thought were not initially important, we were surprised. Almost every day one of our top searches, for example, is ‘wheels’ or ‘rims.’ And we didn’t think people would be buying appliances on their phones, but they’re not afraid at all. We’ve been wrong in places—this is a test-and-learn team.”
The big cheese
While the team has been given a lot of freedom and has accomplished much in two years, it does depend on higher-ups for help. As the mobile leader, Emmons must work with other executives to achieve goals and continue to innovate. Creating a tight relationship between m-commerce and e-commerce has been key.
“I get a lot of ideas and access to people through our vice president of e-commerce, Rob Mills. This is a huge place, with thousands of people at the home office,” Emmons says. “Rob also will give a push now and then, which is good. But he really helps by giving us the space to develop these technologies and test and learn and get them out. He was instrumental in our mobile coupon efforts, for instance. When we were first starting that, he was the one who got all the people who needed to be in the room.”
Today, Emmons and his team have been focusing on the recent launch of the Sears mobile app, an important new component of m-commerce because it uses the computing power of a device, bypassing the need for mobile web pages, to offer a richer, more optimized customer experience. The new Sears iPhone mobile app, for example, uses the GPS technology native to iPhones to create an experience unique to each customer.
Mobile apps are the next step in m-commerce, after text messaging and m-commerce sites. Their popularity is soaring along with use of the mobile web—yet another indicator, Emmons says, of the shape of things to come.
“It’s happening as we speak,” says Emmons of m-commerce coming into its own. “I was at a conference recently and talked with a number of retailers and almost everyone was interested in getting involved. If more retailers looked at how many people are trying to access their sites on mobile phones, they would be a lot more worried about properly serving these customers.”
bill@verticalwebmedia.com
