Improving Lives Through Business

Katie Doyle is the Marketing Manager at PlanetShoes and has been working there for just over a year now. Katie explains that PlanetShoes has three core values: wellness (taking care of yourself,) taking care of the earth, and giving back to others. These three pillars are used to make business decisions and marketing is directed around these crucial concepts. PlanetShoes.com is always giving back to the world and to the community. One of Katie’s own ideas was to set up a Toy Donation online for the holidays, to encourage customers to give $10 to Toys for Tots. For their generosity customers are always rewarded, and are given a $20 gift card for donating.

3 Questions with Katie Doyle

1. Do you have specific rituals for re-setting your team to be creative?

Our brand is young enough that we don’t necessarily need to reset our creative side. For us, it’s more important to be consistent so that customers can see an email, a blog post, or a tweet and say: “That’s PlanetShoes!” We make an effort to show the same look, tone and message throughout all of our communication channels. The tone is always making people feel good, whether we are making their feet happy, or by making them feel great about reducing their carbon footprint with carbon free shipping.

2. How do you identify trends? What resources does your team use to spot trends and consumer insights?

We stay connected, and this means different things to different people in the business. Our merchants regularly attend fashion and footwear trade shows, as they view product and meet with vendors to stay on top of trends, and find emerging brands. Our marketing team spends a lot of time reading, researching, and attending conferences to ensure we’re aware of changes and trends in the e-commerce space. Our President stays active within the footwear industry, attending conferences and networking, which is very helpful in keeping the PlanetShoes name out there.

3. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced an innovation at your company?

Yes, we are currently working on an improvement to our rewards program that was inspired by the credit card companies. Without getting into too much detail before launch, our idea is to make using and cashing in rewards points simpler for all of our customers. We hope that it will promote customer loyalty, and encourage shoppers to come back to PlanetShoes for all their shoe and accessory purchases. Social media also influences us, as we launched "Share Your Shoes,” an app that allows customers to post an Instagram photo with a PlanetShoes hashtag. It is important to get into the social conversation.