E-commerce technology leader RevLifter have today announced the appointment of Chris Dobson as chairman.
Using a combination of behavioural and contextual data, RevLifter’s platform delivers hyper-personalised deals across the entire customer journey. RevLifter tailors 1-2-1 messages and offers to each of their customers by using a merchant’s goals and business rules as a foundation, which in turn drives both increased revenue and profitability.
Chris, who joins RevLifter in a non-executive role, has propelled businesses at the forefront of marketing industry disruption over the past two decades. He was formerly CEO of The Exchange Lab, a first-of-its-kind programmatic platform that delivered effective media execution by aggregating valuable audience data from leading DSPs, data providers, and booking systems. The Exchange Lab was sold to agency holding company WPP in 2015 to bolster the Group’s bespoke technology offering in the rapidly growing programmatic space.
Prior to The Exchange Lab, Dobson led efforts to transform BBC Worldwide into a premier global omnichannel media property by successfully combining TV and digital assets. Before the BBC, he drove global commercialisation for MSN with MSN Messenger, achieving 10X revenue-growth by pioneering the targeting value of audience data – a method that now powers all digital media.
We were able to catch up with Chris, who spoke to us about personalisation within performance marketing and his new role.
How will you use your past experience in your new role at RevLifter?
My past experience in technology, e-commerce, and advertising-based businesses will be applied to help with a number of elements essential to the next stage of RevLifter’s expected exponential growth.
These include customer-driven roadmap development, the hiring of key staff, international expansion – with a big focus on the US – and several go-to-market considerations to fit client needs. I’ll also be working toward the completion of scalable business and tech infrastructure to power our growth while giving space to the leadership team to effectively apply their passion for RevLifter and its customers.
What influenced your decision to join the team?
When I look at a business, there are a number of things that need to be in place to capture my interest. With RevLifter, I was immediately impressed by the passion, vision, and drive of Simon [Bird] and Ryan [Kliszat], the Co-Founders, and the culture they have created across all teams.
The next test is ‘how genuine is the technology?’ So many young businesses are optimistic about what they can do, but I was really impressed by the power, scalability, and market-leading features of RevLifter’s hyper-personalisation platform. This, coupled with the foresight to realise what a business will need to scale, and the diversity and skillset of the board members, made it an easy decision.
How do you plan to collaborate with RevLifter as it works towards international expansion?
My role is to advise on key hires and business and management models as the company becomes, by definition, more distributed across multiple territories.
International expansion is a crucial and essential step, but it heralds a lot of change for everyone in all disciplines. My whole career has been founded in building and fostering international, culturally diverse teams to capture the advantages of that diversity but still helping them work together to achieve their common goals. I would hope my experience across many businesses can be applied to ensure RevLifter fast-tracks to success across multiple markets.
Simon Bird, co-founder and CEO of RevLifter, said: “Chris Dobson has been at the vanguard of transformation for so many elements of marketing strategy and execution. E-commerce is on the cusp of the same fundamental reinvention through the power of hyper-personalised offers and experiences. As RevLifter continues to expand globally, Chris will play a critical role in helping us better serve brands and making our technology an essential part of the e-commerce stack.”
We’d like to thank Chris for taking the time to talk to us. It seems bright things are on the horizon, and it will be interesting to see how Chris uses his expertise to guide RevLifter in their global expansion.
