EATALY 

Eataly is Italy. In many ways, truer words have never been spoken. A 50,000-square-foot Italian village in the middle of Manhattan is a unique thing, and I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor. Throughout my four years as an Eatalian, I shaped the brand voice in the US market, applying my real-life experience living and working in Italy to communicate an accessible authenticity to Italian food and wine aficionados and novices alike. As Social Media Manager, I scoured the store every morning with a camera to capture flour-caked bakers kneading dough, mozzarella makers massaging milky curd and butchers breaking down the day's freshest cuts. I launched eataly.com and created every concept and piece of copy for its e-commerce marketing efforts — from email subject lines to product descriptions to social media and blog posts. Here's a window into some of my work. 

Giro d'Italia

Each month, Eataly dedicates its retail merchandising and restaurant menus to a different theme. In honor of the annual Giro d'Italia bike race, the NYC store drew inspiration from its route up and down the boot. I wanted to create a corresponding social media experience that conveyed that sense of movement in a playful way, while also making it visually obvious that we were talking about a bike race. Our very dedicated intern agreed to be our subject, and we were able to get our hands on an Italian bike. We created a calendar that connected the course timeline and locations to corresponding regional retail products and menu items and posted every day that the cyclists had entered a different region. In Liguria, our cyclist was all about olive oil, while in Trentino Alto-Adige, he was craving German-influenced beer and speck. The campaign increased engagement and gave visibility to the diversity of products and dishes Eataly offers in a dynamic way.

April Fool's

April Fool's is a big deal in the digital space, especially when it comes to e-commerce. Brands try to out "punk" each other in the hopes of generating buzz and acquiring new customers. I wanted to come up with a joke that captured the Eataly ethos in a topical way. In 2014, the press was constantly speculating about their next opening — where would it be, how big would it be, when would it happen? I decided that we should give the customers what they wanted, the inside scoop on Eataly's next location. And, why shouldn’t that next location be in space? I created an integrated digital strategy across email, social, the blog and website that teased customers to stay tuned for a big announcement. Eataly.com traffic increased that day by 400%, and we boosted referrals through press coverage that praised the campaign in Bon Appetit, Eater and The Chicago Tribune. 

Connecting the Digital Dots

The beauty of digital is that you can know everything. I enrolled in General Assembly's 10-week digital marketing class to enhance my analytical skills to successfully measure a campaign and produce actionable data. My goal was to take Eataly's email marketing efforts to the next level, and I identified Click Through Rate, Open Rate, Sign Up Rate, Average Orders Per Day and Conversion Rate as our KPIs. In order to collect data accurately and efficiently, we refined our email UTM codes to track user behavior in Google Analytics. We began to develop our first A/B testing strategy with email subject lines as the variable and designed a newsletter sign up modal equipped with a conversion tracking pixel. To boost orders per day and conversion rates, we evaluated segmentation and retention strategies to implement during the holiday rush. Pushing the conversion needle is at the core of my creative thinking and understanding how a campaign performed often leads to my next idea. 

Hurricane Sandy 

During Hurricane Sandy, Eataly closed its doors for one week. I wanted to acknowledge our wonderful team and fans while keeping the gravity and magnitude of the destruction in perspective. "We are fortunate" generated an unbelievable outpouring of well wishes, support and general kindness.