New York City, April 19th, 2023

Emplicit is an e-commerce agency that helps brands reach their maximum potential by delivering highly-specialized Amazon and other platform expertise that’s tailored to their clients’ unique needs. The agency offers a wide range of services that include SEO, strategic planning and consulting and managed Amazon advertising, among many others.

Seb Lyner is the VP Commercial Director at Emplicit in New York City. In an interview with TIA, Lyner highlighted the egalitarian creative culture at the agency, welcoming ideas from everyone, and went through his career path. He also listed the challenges faced by brands on Amazon and explained their usual processes when working with clients.

To kick things off, as a local, what do you love most about your city?

So many things, but everything in NYC being so close and convenient means you can spend more time doing the things you love rather than travelling there.

For those who aren’t familiar with your career, can you provide an overview?

I’ve spent my career moving back and forth from London to New York, working in agencies of all shapes and sizes. I started in traditional direct marketing and CRM agencies, so it was a natural progression to move into the digital side of things, and into ecommerce.

Could you explain to us briefly what your role as VP Commercial Director?

It’s both an internal and external role. I am focused on growing the agency through development of services which incorporate new ecommerce channels, marketing platforms, and technologies. At the same time, I work with the delivery teams to ensure that we maximize our client’s revenues, by implementing strategic solutions incorporating the services mentioned above. So no, despite the title, I’m not a bean counter and have never used QuickBooks.

How would you describe the creative culture of Emplicit?

Egalitarian. We welcome ideas from everyone and anyone. Everything in ecommerce is interrelated, so it’s great to see ideas coming from departments not primarily involved or more junior staff. They tend to not be constrained by the art of the possible, which can stifle creativity.

What are your main focuses at the moment?

Amazon is known for its rapid development and innovation, and regularly releases new marketplace features and functions, reports, and ad products. However, the last few months have seen two significant changes – Amazon Attribution moving into general release from beta and the launch of Amazon’s new capacity management system replacing storage limits and restock limits.

Amazon Attribution means that brands can now track conversions from off-platform traffic. This opens up the opportunity to increase ROIs using off-platform media while benefitting from a rebate of 10% on Amazon sales, and Amazon tweaking the ranking algorithm to favor sellers driving external traffic. This means we’re focused on creating integrated marketing plans to ensure our off-Amazon to Amazon activity doesn’t compete with our DTC activity.

Amazon’s new capacity management system places a whole new importance on selling through inventory because this factors more heavily in capacity limit calculations. This plus the ability to bid on additional inventory and recoup those fees turns inventory management into a much more strategic endeavor that clients are now relying more heavily on us for.

What are the challenges faced by brands on Amazon and how can they overcome them?

Amazon has become significantly more competitive in the last 5 or 6 years, and sellers can no longer rely on creating an acceptable listing and running on-Amazon ads to be successful.

There are now literally hundreds of individual factors which contribute to improvements in algorithmic performance, organic and paid rankings, click-throughs, and conversions, all of which contribute to sales performance.

No one person can possibly keep abreast of all these factors and their relative importance, or understand exactly where and how they overlap. This is why agencies like Emplicit are crucial for long-term success. The agency model is 10% of 10 experts, rather than 100% of 1 generalist, and nowhere do we see that being more applicable than when selling on Amazon.

How do you work with clients to develop a comprehensive ecommerce strategy that meets their unique needs and goals?

A comprehensive ecommerce strategy should not only define how to promote the products, but which products should be sold, on what channels, to whom, and for how much. Clients with almost identical products can have very different financial structures, so all of this needs to be tailored to their specific manufacturing, logistical, and customer models. We achieve this through transparency, analyzing client product, sales, and margin data from Amazon, their website, other marketplaces, and social shopping, to form a product and pricing strategy.

Can you tell us about a particularly successful project or campaign you’ve worked on in the past, and what made it so effective?

The most satisfying projects are where we take a client struggling with sales or plagued by compliance issues on Amazon and turn things around for them.

However, the success of a quirky campaign from years ago just popped into my head. It was July 2016 and Pokémon Go had exploded in popularity just a week after launch. One of the team was playing with the app at lunch, when they had an idea to promote Service King collision repair by using the non-copyrighted Pokémon Go icon and the hashtag #DontCatchAndDrive. 3 hours later we had digital billboard ads all over the country. The campaign drove a huge spike in bookings and garnered massive brand exposure. I think simply because it tapped into the cultural phenomenon in a relevant and unforced way. Article about the billboards here (subscription required).

How does Emplicit leverage data and analytics to optimize their clients’ Amazon ecommerce presence?

Without giving away our secret sauce… here is one way that data plays a part in how we ensure client success on Amazon.

Tools like Helium 10’s Cerebro, enable easy reverse ASIN lookup to see which keywords your main competitors are ranking for on Amazon. This plus keyword search volume data enables you to identify the most relevant keywords. However, the smart part is combining this with the sales and conversion data that Amazon also provides, to identify which keywords will drive qualified traffic and have the greatest purchase intent. This enables you to focus less on the high frequency search terms which everyone is busy stuffing into their listings, and more on the more unique keywords that consumers will purchase from.

Amazon ranks high-converting and better selling products higher in organic search results, so on top of increased sales, there is a knock-on effect to using the most relevant and highest performing keywords.

What are some potential cost efficiencies that businesses can achieve through omnichannel ecommerce solutions?

Recent developments like Buy With Prime, mean that you can share inventory across Amazon and your DTC website. This, combined with smart package design to qualify for lower FBA cost plans, can significantly reduce shipping and storage costs.

A centralized ERP, such as Linnworks, can feed multiple marketplaces and ecommerce websites, saving you considerable time and resource when managing your catalog and orders.

Finally, when you’re running omnichannel ecommerce and utilizing multiple media channels, an integrated marketing strategy will ensure that you’re not competing against yourself, and will create media efficiencies and increase margins.

In a world of emerging streaming platforms and metaverse, how do you think these technologies will reshape e-commerce?

Streaming has revolutionized how we consume content. Video is becoming the most popular way for consumers to receive product information from brands, and user-generate video content is already the most trusted source of product recommendations.

I think technologies which provide unintrusive marketing and allow purchases without leaving the experience, like social media apps have done, will re-shape shopping as we know it. To do this effectively I think we will move away from traditional branded video content and pre-roll ads, and see streaming technologies start to offer a virtual content layer similar to a HUD in the BMW i7 or Audi Q4.

I think the Metaverse missed the mark because it’s too immersive. Modern consumers like to multi-task and it requires too much attention or dedicated time. I’m old enough to remember Second Life, and although the Metaverse isn’t Second Life 2.0, I suspect it (or a future version of it) will be used for escapism and consumers may resist ecommerce within it.

What are your thoughts on AI?

Eventually it will revolutionize how we work. Currently, to get the best from AI, you need to invest in training the AI and then spend time creating detailed prompts, so it’s not the zero-effort wonder tool that hysterical news articles claim.

As of now, AI can’t create new ideas or its own strategic thoughts. This is because it simply learns from, some might say “rehashes,” the data that is already out there. AI is great for giving you background on a topic, getting you started, or refining what you’ve created, all of which can save time and effort. But AI can’t generate concepts from scratch… yet.

One possible way to challenge this limitation is to integrate AI with multiple data sources such as tools that monitor consumer trends, keyword shifts, shopping behavior, and competitive data. Given the right training, AI tools should be able to draw conclusions and make recommendations, then it really will revolutionize how we work.

From your personal standpoint, what is the greatest challenge of our time?

Rebalancing equity to improve people’s lives.

What do you like doing in your free time?

Anything except shuttling my son to all his sports – baseball, soccer, football, and surfing. No seriously, the opposite is true as it’s great to see him enjoying life.
Camping, hiking, and everything outdoorsy with the family, climbing if I can find a belay partner (my son isn’t old enough yet), and watching and playing rugby (more watching these days if I’m honest).

Is there any lesson you’ve had to learn multiple times?

Don’t wait. If you spot an opportunity for clients or the agency, don’t waste time validating it, just go for it because the market doesn’t stand still. “Bias for action” became one of Emplicit’s values when we rebranded, and it’s transformed how we think and work. This applies to hiring too. If you meet a candidate who you can’t fault, don’t wait to compare with others as they’ll find another job – been bitten by that a couple of time.

Thanks Sebastian!

• Learn more about Emplicit at https://emplicit.co/
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