#11 - Building and leading high-performing eComm teams with ILIA's Cherene Aubert

If you listened to last week’s conversation with Celina Wong and Sara Livingston, you learned just how critical it is for data leadership to equip business stakeholders with clear, translatable and presentable data. But, depending on an organization’s position on the data maturity curve, this task could also fall on the eCommerce and growth operators themselves.

This begs the question: when you’re both data analyst and the data consumer (optimizing media w/ data) — how do you keep yourself and your team focused while juggling it all? Cherene Aubert, the VP of Digital & eCommerce at ILIA Beauty, brings a scrappy, high-growth mindset worth learning from this week. Prior to being tasked with scaling ILIA Beauty’s growth, she supported Bobbie as VP of Data & Growth from their Series A to Series C - and at a time where infant formula production screeched to a halt.

Listen to how she molds high-performing eCommerce teams from zero to 💯 amid high-growth environments below:

🎯 The TL;DR of our conversation 🎯 

1. (5:40) Grounding staffing decisions in the P&L isn’t just good business, it creates a trusting, stable people culture. ILIA employs in-house operators, but also a mix of consultants and agencies to fill the gaps. Understanding the ROI of those consultants and agencies most importantly informs her when more in-house personnel is needed, and de-risks making hires at the wrong time.

2. (10:29) We talk about a common staffing dilemma: Do you need a new head, or is it an operational inefficiency instead? Cherene thinks eComm leaders can run in to the trap of bloating teams with additional headcount instead of fixing core operational swirl, which eliminates the need for a hire to begin with. She gives a few examples of how you can avoid painful layoffs that damage team culture when you get to the heart of why you need an additional headcount.

3. (15:37) An ability to understand and socialize financial performance is a huge differentiator for the modern growth operator. Teaching this can be difficult in a remote work environment, but Cherene intentionally carves out time in her day to screenshare financial models and exercises with her direct team, and develop their financial literacy. She also stresses that she wants her team members to feel comfortable relaying finance and marketing metrics to brand and creative stakeholders so that they see the outcome of their work.

4. (19:55) As a leader, knowing precisely where your organization fits on the data maturity curve prevents you from making costly long-tail vendor and headcount decisions. And, with a proliferation of new technology and channels in the ecosystem, it’s necessary for leaders to assign clear ownership across the team (i.e. if you pay for a brand lift study, who is end-to-end evangelizing the results to other stakeholders?)

⭐️ North Star Metric & Key Data Tools ⭐️ 

North Star Metric:

New Customer / Returning Customer split and Contribution Margin

Key Data Tools:

Asana for driving clarity around ownership for different channel or vendor initiatives

ProQuo AI to track brand sentiment against market competitors

For more from Cherene and other Don’t V*LOOKUP guests, don’t forget to check out our YouTube channel, or listen on Spotify or Apple.

You can also dig more in to Cherene’s fascinating background on LinkedIn and X, and she offers consulting sessions through MentorPass.