Justin Foulk ’10 is making sure it is easy for you to find and buy products from Anthropologie. He’s the “data guy” for one of the nation’s most popular women’s clothing brands. With a background in finance (he was a business administration major at the College of Charleston), he uses numbers and data to improve the online user experience.
anthropologie.com mobile checkout
Q: What is your job title and how would you describe your job?
A: I’m a digital marketing analyst at Anthropologie, a women’s clothing brand. I would describe my role as fast paced and dynamic. I analyze specific processes or pages on our website and provide recommendations for improvement. For example, I recently analyzed the checkout process on the Anthropologie mobile site. I dug into the data of how our customers were moving through each step and created recommendations on how to improve our checkout process. I also run multivariate tests to see what works the best. Recently, I tested our quickshop function to see whether shoppers preferred a specific icon or if they even used quickshop.
Q: What was your path to Anthropologie?
A: When I first graduated from the College, I actually began my career in corporate finance. I quickly realized that I enjoy working with numbers, but I also love interacting with people and teams, so corporate finance wasn’t the right fit. I transitioned to the world of marketing analytics where I have remained ever since.
How I got this position at Anthropologie was quite a blessing. Prior to Anthropologie, I worked for QVC within their ecommerce division. My boss left QVC to start the digital analytics group at Anthropologie and shortly after she left, she reached out to see what my interest would be in helping her grow and promote the digital analytics realm at Anthro. This was a unique opportunity with a great company, so I jumped at the chance.
Q: Was it a tough transition from finance to marketing analytics?
A: The transition was actually much more of a transition than I thought. Marketing analytics is more about helping to drive the business, rather than just reporting on it. I was overwhelmed with how fast things moved in marketing.
One of my favorite things to do in my current role is to use data I have to work with our various teams on new ways to do things. I feel that I now have the perfect balance.
Q: Anything new we can look for at Anthropologie?
A: I would say that there are some exciting things in Anthropologie’s future. We are working on some major changes to our mobile site that will hopefully make shopping on Anthropologie.com easier and more brand appropriate.
Q: What advice would you offer current students?
A: The biggest advice I would give current students is to continually polish and grow the soft skills that you currently have. I never realized how important skills such as interpersonal communication and emotional intelligence were until I was out in the real world. The ability to effectively communicate and understand others is hugely impactful within the corporate world.
