Ahead of eComm Live, we caught up with Ryan McErlane, Co-Founder of Dataships, who is speaking and exhibiting at the conference on Thursday 27th April.
Q. Can you tell us a little bit about Dataships and how it helps eCommerce stores grow their marketable audiences?
Dataships optimises consent collection at the checkout for e-commerce stores. Prior to Dataships, most stores are using the Shopify one-size-fits-all approach to collection marketing preferences, which results in an average of 25% of individuals becoming marketable. Dataships optimises consent collection by region to allow stores to capture more marketing permissions, resulting in an average of 72% of individuals being marketable.
Q. What inspired you to create Dataships? Was there a specific challenge you were trying to solve?
We’re data privacy experts at heart and we began our journey helping e-commerce companies comply with global data privacy regulations. We found the biggest problem that brands were encountering was who they to market to, through which channels and in which regions. The more brands we worked with, the more it became clear that how data was being collected was the key problem and limiting factor in brands being able to get the most out of their data. We realised that if we helped brands take control of this themselves, not only could we ensure they were collecting data compliantly, we could actually optimise this collection to allow them to collect more data that could be used across more channels.
Q. How does Dataships ensure marketing compliance for eCommerce stores?
We embed our consent collection widget at the checkout for eCommerce stores. This widget determines what country the consumer is in, among other factors and displays specific language and options to the end user ensuring that this complies with local data privacy regulations. We then build a robust compliance log for the individual in question. We subsequently create specific audiences per channel and link these with where the brand is using that data (e.g Klaviyo, Attentive etc).
Q. How do you see the eCommerce landscape evolving in the next few years, and how does Dataships fit into that picture?
Technology innovation and the rise of first-party data has allowed brands to engage one-to-one with consumers and reach them with hyper-personalised messaging. Whilst this has proved effective for brands, it can often raise eyebrows with consumers as to how the brands are able to be so specific and question the personal data behind this approach. It is increasingly important for brands to build trust with their customers and be transparent as to what data they hold and how they are using it. By meeting consumers in the channels of their choosing, at their preferred frequency and giving them access to their personal data, brands can build this trust and ultimately a lifetime relationship with their consumers.
Q. Looking ahead, what are your long-term goals for Dataships, and how do you plan to achieve them?
First-party data and with it hyper personalisation is getting more and more important in eCommerce and in parallel, the legislations governing personal data are continually evolving. These can seem daunting for eCommerce professionals but we relish not only helping brands navigate these changes, but showing them how complying with data privacy legislations can quickly result in rapid growth for their brand. We love turning sceptics into believers and showing how building healthy data relationships, or as we call them Dataships, builds trust with users, grows marketing opt-ins and ultimately revenue.
Q. Tell us about what delegates can expect to hear from you at eComm Live?
There are a few quick wins we love showing eCommerce stores, one or two quick easy changes they can make to unleash growth for their stores. They really are must-knows for anyone in eCommerce, especially those working in email & SMS.
Don’t miss Ryan and the Dataships team at eComm Live on 26-27 April 2023. Tickets available here.
