What have Richard Longhurst, Alison Lancaster, Priya Prakash, Sean Duffy, Martin Gill and Richard Evans got in common?

A passionate customer experience and digital marketer, she has over 25 years brand marketing, CRM, database and multi channel retailing experience.

Prior to joining Morrisons, she was Cross Channel Director of award winning fashion retailer, White Stuff, having been appointed Interim Home Shopping Director in November 2009. During that time, her consulting portfolio of Clients also included Feather & Black, Gant UK and Astley Clarke.

Previously, Alison was Marketing Director of Harrods Direct and Charles Tyrwhitt, and before that was an acknowledged Internet and multi channel pioneer with Innovations Mail Order, Burton Home Shopping (Arcadia); Debenhams.com and then John Lewis.com from 2001.

Alison is a regular speaker at international conferences, and she appears in the 2012 eTail Power Top 50, Retail Insiders Top 100 Movers & Shakers, and 101 Directorsof.com listings. Alison is previous Chair of CatEx, the Direct Commerce Association

A board level Product Director with 12 years hands-on experience, she has built, led, motivated ninja teams and personally contributed to developing new disruptive cross-platform products or experiences such as BBC iPlayer, BBC Mobile portal, Trusted Places, the Digital Wellbeing Showroom, Sugarscape and significantly increased Flirtomatic’s user revenues.

When not working, she dreams of starting her social enterprise and is fascinated by mundane habits, daily behaviours and the social anthropology/commentary around fashion especially street style blogs. Prakash is a RSA fellow with a MA in Interaction Design from Royal College of Art and holds patents for iPlayer.

He has helped develop the email marketing campaigns for brands such as toptable.com, GoCompare, England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and The Hoseasons Group.

Sean heads up the Consulting team at Emailcenter; a UK based provider of email marketing solutions founded in 1999. Emailcenter specialise in assisting advanced digital marketers implement smarter email marketing programmes through greater customer engagement and campaign automation.

Martin serves eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals. His focus is on the eCommerce market within the European Union, with a particular interest in the retail industry, covering both pure-play online and multichannel retailing. His current areas of research include the application of location- and context-aware mobile applications to the shopping experience; social commerce; the integration of interactive media such as video into the eCommerce mix; and physical/digital channel integration.

Martin’s background spans both business and IT roles. He joined Forrester from the retail industry, having worked at Boots, a major European health and beauty retailer, for a number of years. His role there was to establish and develop a business aligned enterprise architecture function, delivering transformational strategies for a number of key retail areas, including boots.com, the Advantage Card loyalty scheme, and the retail and pharmacy store systems. Prior to that, he worked in a variety of roles at Egg.com, Europe’s largest pure-play digital bank, ranging from mergers and acquisitions to new product development for both Egg and PruDirect.

Martin holds a first degree in manufacturing engineering and operations management from Nottingham University and a Master of Philosophy from Newcastle University by research covering the simulation of commercial systems.

He began his career at Bhs but his fascination with ecommerce started when he joined the IT team at the Carphone Warehouse where he was responsible for the redevelopment of the first Carphone website. A move to the commercial team as Head of eCommerce meant his passion for usability and online marketing could be utilised to exponentially grow their online sales.

Later part of the team that delivered the market changing ‘Free Broadband’ initiative for TalkTalk and recently as MultiChannel Director at Ryman, he has a broad experience in managing successful online businesses.

With more than a decade of experience in the field of email marketing, Evans currently leads Silverpop’s marketing efforts throughout EMEA. Prior to his role in EMEA, he managed product marketing for Silverpop, developing the company’s go-to-market strategy for its Engage product line.

Before joining Silverpop, Evans was vice president of interactive services at Target Resource Group, where he spearheaded the development of a suite of online marketing tools, and provided marketing counsel to North America’s largest and most renowned performing arts companies in the areas of email marketing, direct marketing and ecommerce. He has also served in executive and marketing roles as the managing partner of EM Interactive Media in Atlanta, as well as at Nortel Networks.

Richard attended Georgia Institute of Technology where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in public policy with a focus on Internet and telecommunications.

International expansion is high on the agenda for Lovehoney in 2012 and beyond. The company has launched US retail site www.lovehoney.com and purchased a warehouse in Dallas ready to switch fulfilment from the UK to the US.

Richard discovered the internet in 1994 when plucked from the obscurity of reviewing flight sims and RPGs for PC Format to be deputy editor on the launch of .net, the first glossy magazine about the internet. Having got the hang of “netsurfing” in something called “cyberspace”, Richard became editor of .net before leaving Future to pursue a career as a freelance journalist while secretly hoping to become a dotcom millionaire playboy.

Paul Francis is Head of Commercial Systems at Domino’s Pizza. He is responsible for extending and maintaining all web and mobile ecommerce channels. His job is to provide a simple, convenient and reliable experience to all Domino’s online customers.

Coming from a software development background, Paul has led both small and large (60+) teams to overhaul the digital sales channels of some of the UK’s leading online retailers including easyJet and Figleaves.

In 2006, Dabs.com was sold to BT Retail and, as Marketing Director, Jonathan helped with the integration of Dabs into BT and the transition of the BT Shop onto Dabs’ E-Commerce platform.

Jonathan left Dabs in September 2008 to become CEO at Flowersdirect.co.uk, one of the UK’s leading online florists. With its 900 member florists across the UK offering same day delivery of flowers and gifts, Flowersdirect is on its way to being established as a strong challenger to the established hierarchy in the Floral sector and, during his time there, Jonathan oversaw a business transformation that included a new business and E-Commerce system and the overhaul of the product offering.

In April 2010, Jonathan took on the role of Group E-Commerce Director of Shop Direct Group, the UK’s leading Online and Home Shopping Retailer. With control of the commercial performance on the group’s websites, Jonathan’s expertise is being used to drive new visitors to the sites, which include brands such as Very, Littlewoods and isme. Jonathan’s remit also includes the optimisation of these sites and improving conversion rates and visitor journeys.

Walter Blackwood joined Mothercare this year, as Director of Group Logistics, swapping sides from Supplier to Retailer. He is well known within the Express Parcel industry having led the development of three UK parcel delivery networks, Parcelnet (now Hermes), HDNL (now Yodel) and most recently Collect+.

During his 15 years at the forefront of B2C Logistics he has worked with most of the major retail organisations in the UK and now brings that experience to developing the multi-channel proposition within one of the country’s most iconic businesses.

Before Oracle, he was vice president of EMEA for Stellent, a web content management company acquired by Oracle. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Sciences from Manchester University in the UK.

He took up his current role in 2010 and restructured the Ecommerce department to make it better suited to the demands of growth at a thriving multi-channel retailer.  2011 was a busy year with substantial sales growth, introduction of new services to the customer and the successful launch of a fuller mobile offer. 2012 has been no less busy, with tablet optimisation and internationalisation at the top of the list.

Prior to joining my-wardrobe.com in April 2011, Rob held the position of Head of Marketing at travel and experience ecommerce business lastminue.com. In his role at lastminute.com Rob was responsible for the creation and execution of the global multi-channel marketing strategy and campaigns.

Prior to joining lastminute.com in 2009, Rob’s previous roles include Global Campaign Manager at Nokia and Marketing Manager at Honda, where he managed all consumer brand marketing.

Rob’s expertise lies in consumer brand and digital marketing experience across both online and offline channels. He was most recently listed as one of the five top Marketing Professionals by Wired.com.

Gracia currently heads up the ecommerce team at Topman. She has a Masters Degree in Sinology and Business studies from the Leiden University in the Netherlands. Previous to Gracia’s role at Topman she received a 500K venture capital investment to set up Graciaamico.com, an online luxury fashion retailer. Six years after the successful launch of Graciaamico.com Gracia set up another dotcom company Worldoflinens, specialising in home textiles and accessories.

Worldoflinens.com turned over 5 million within its first year of trading. In 2007 Gracia spent a year at the luxury fashion company Burberry to set up their ecommerce marketing strategy. In January 2008 she started her role as Head of eCommerce for Topman (Arcadia group) where she is responsible for all aspects of their global ecommerce business, including multi-channel development. Topman currently trades in 134 countries and have dedicated websites for UK, US, France, Germany and EU.