Apadmi’s new Chief Growth Officer shares mobile experience and ambitions

We are pleased to announce that as of August 1st, Mark Collin officially steps up to the role to lead the charge in crafting next-generation mobile experiences for major brands and businesses.

Mark has a wealth of experience with mobile at high-end retail brands, large consultancies and specialist advertising agencies. So what drew Mark into the world of mobile, what has he learnt on his journey so far, and what are his plans for Apadmi’s growing roster of clients?

Welcome to the team, Mark! Tell us a bit about how you first became interested in tech and everything mobile? 

I first really started observing tech trends in my early roles as the smartphone and the advent of the iPhone took everyone by surprise. Working in the first version of Digital OOH advertising at start-up CitySpace, there was a huge shift as clients began asking to move spend from traditional display advertisements in the street to mobile-focussed advertising with J2ME apps. 

That transition into smartphones and mobile was very quick, and we all had to adapt swiftly to the new mobile world. That’s when I began to understand the importance of keeping track of new technologies - if they emerge past you, you can find your business model in real trouble. 

You have worked with, and for, some of Europe’s biggest retail and fashion brands - how did you see mobile impact these businesses?

Mobile made a massive impact on all the businesses I was working with during my time at ThoughtWorks. As Head of Retail there for the European region, I had the opportunity to help brands such as JD Sports, Tesco, and Shop Direct build out their mobile experiences and online marketplace strategies. There was huge momentum behind mobile, and this is where my passion for delivering innovative digital experiences really started to grow. 

When I moved on to Yoox-Net-A-Porter Group, focussing on product and customer experience technology, less than 10% of Richemont Group sales were online, mainly through web/desktop. There was a huge task to move customers online, and from desktop to mobile. 

We started building mobile experiences that delivered better customer experiences - we quickly found that mobile delivered higher retention rate and higher purchasing frequency. Eventually, we got to the point where 70% of sales were through mobile, and apps became customers’ preferred purchasing experiences. 

What were some of the challenges of this huge, rapid shift to mobile for retail?

At Yoox-Net-A-Porter Group, we had 25 different brands under our umbrella - the challenge was each of these brands had their own sense of identity. We had to shift our thinking from brand structure to product structure. By productising our approach, we were able to address this and allow mobile to become our anchor channel across our brands. 

Another challenge was data - initially when moving customers over to mobile, you’re more focussed on basic data capture to understand who your customers are, purchase frequency, basket sizes etc. But with one million repeat customers annually, billions of transactions, and twenty years worth of data, we were doing very little to fully harness this. 

To tackle this, we started to introduce features to understand more about customer preferences, and this helped us set up a proper data team to build propensity models and more algorithmic ways to know when to notify customers about the latest products and when to send marketing communications. With time, we were able to become more data-driven, and this unlocked huge value for us, and our customers. 

How much experimentation were you able to implement , and why is experimentation so key for growth?

We were lucky at Yoox-Net-A-Porter as the CEO loved tech and mobile, and was always keen to experiment further to explore new opportunities. In my third year there, I inherited the R&D team which allowed me to drive some of this experimentation myself. 

We actually put experimentation platforms in place, allowing the team to do 100,000s of different experiments simultaneously across different brands and channels and to gather that data. This was really important to distil and assess data - we got really good at being able to do this at scale.

The team built models to understand customer behaviour - we wanted to see if we could mimic a personal shopper, could we give styling advice with data and technology? Although we got good at that, we didn’t completely replace personal shoppers, but for those customers beginning to show propensity, we were using this to put the right products in front of them at the right time using AI, back in 2019 - before AI was really a thing!

Without this kind of experimentation, you really can’t unlock the full potential of your business and your customers. Experimentation allows for innovation, and allows you to stay competitive in the market, it should be a non-negotiable for any brands and businesses that want to survive in the mobile world. 

So what will your role at Apadmi entail, and what projects are you diving into first?

I am delighted to be jumping in at this moment in time. Being ‘back home’ in Manchester for the first time in nearly 20 years in Apadmi HQ is fantastic. It is a blessing to be able to spend so much time with our teams here, but also in Amsterdam and Oslo as our presence grows on the European side of the business. I get a lot out of face-time - it is really important to me. I have joined a super ambitious team with big expansion plans, that really excites me.

I knew instantly after meeting the leadership team, and our CEO Garry Partington, that Apadmi is the perfect fit for me. The brief is clear; grow the business, its people, our capabilities, our European footprint, and most importantly the relevant and valuable services we offer to our clients to create even better mobile experiences for their customers. We are on the cusp of another transformational shift with AI on the device, AI freely accessible in the cloud. It’s our job now to guide clients through this to help shape the next generation of mobile experience (MX) that brings this all together.

With such a strong reputation for doing this already through previous mobile shifts, Apadmi is perfectly placed to achieve this. With so many iconic and household names, as well as many break-through ‘innovators’, in our existing client portfolio we are already a trusted delivery partner - at scale and in a distinctive and assured approach. We are looking forward to adding many more as we expand across Europe. We are building on all of this with the launch of our Apadmi MX model to provide strategy, product, design, build, optimise, and innovate services to ensure that where business models meet mobile, meet AI, we are the go-to partner for our clients.

What’s exciting to you about joining back on the consultancy side at Apadmi?

Mobile, digital experiences are a passion for me, and I have an affinity with others with the same passion - so naturally I feel very at home at Apadmi, surrounded by those with similar focus and goals. 

People at Apadmi understand and appreciate the importance of understanding emerging tech, and are constantly inquisitive when it comes to extracting value from this tech for our clients, their businesses and their customers. There’s a huge opportunity here.

I’m excited to explore more; are we approaching zero-interface models where experiences are prompts such as a voice? Or do we need to rethink navigation and re-design app experience because we’ve got different interfaces available to us on the cloud and in-device?

For me, it’s fascinating to have the chance to innovate in this next wave of mobile.