“That’s where the game begins”: Daniel Ferro, ex-Mercado Libre

A conversation with the former CMO of Mercado Libre about the most common mistakes stores make when trying to grow, the real weight of retention, the data almost nobody uses, and what the most successful e-commerce in the region will look like five years from now.

Having an online store is no longer a differentiator. Building the site, uploading the catalog, and waiting for sales to arrive on their own is, according to Daniel Ferro, only the starting point: the game, he says, actually begins there.

Ferro spent years leading marketing at Mercado Libre. We asked him to get concrete about the decisions that separate the stores that grow from the ones that stall: where the money leaks, which data to watch, what role AI plays today, and what will be essential five years from now. What follows is the conversation, no fluff.

 

Daniel Ferro led marketing at Mercado Libre for years. In this interview he shares his read on how growth is built — and how it stalls — for an e-commerce store in Latin America.

After so many years leading marketing at Mercado Libre, what would you say is the most common mistake e-commerce stores make today when trying to grow?

There are 3 that strike me as very common:

1. Having your own e-commerce (outside a marketplace) just sitting there isn’t enough to sell. You have to put in real thought and grit to generate relevant traffic. Many brands make the effort to build their digital assets and stop there — but the truth is that’s where the game actually begins.
2. Competing on price alone is a race to bankruptcy. You have to create value beyond price: subscriptions that add convenience, distinctive and relevant content, product and service bundles, recommendations that lead each user profile to the right long tail, and so on.
3. A marketing operation that only does acquisition is very hard to sustain economically. As far as the categories you offer allow, you have to play the omnichannel game — probably with different roles for each channel (e.g., acquire on one and build loyalty on another). Sell online efficiently, but create memorable experiences in physical environments.

Many brands watch their CPA rise constantly, making acquisition increasingly expensive. Given this scenario, what would you recommend to a store owner?

Do whatever you can to have an offering that lets you tap into retention by increasing frequency and cross-selling.

The vast majority of visitors leave a store without buying. What strategies would you recommend to increase the chances that those users eventually become customers?

The first thing is to figure out whether what they’re looking for is something you actually offer on the site (whether it’s part of your offering). If people come looking for X, you need to have X — and if you don’t, look into why. If you do have it, the next step is to consider that your category may be a commodity and someone else may be selling it cheaper. Urgent tip: pay attention to what people type into your site’s search bar.

What role does personalizing the shopping experience play?

Creating the right value. We’re individuals, with our own particular tastes and needs.

What data should a store take advantage of to make better decisions and sell more? Which data usually goes to waste?

What they search for — and I mean it: not aggregated searches, but what X searches for and what Y searches for. That’s usually where the richest information about your visitor lives.

There’s a lot of expectation around artificial intelligence. In which areas of e-commerce do you think it’s already producing concrete results?

AI has 3 big areas of application: innovation, efficiency, and risk management. The problem is that the world is currently going through a kind of action paralysis, which pushes you to choose efficiency projects over truly innovative ones.

To close: how do you picture the most successful e-commerce in Latin America five years from now? What capabilities won’t be optional?

If there’s one thread running through the whole conversation, it’s this: growth isn’t on the other side of more traffic — it’s in making better use of the traffic you already have. Listening to what your users search for on your site, creating value beyond price, and treating retention and frequency with the same seriousness you give acquisition.

That’s exactly where TITANPush works: reading your audience’s real behavior — including those on-site searches that, as Ferro points out, hide the richest information — and activating retention through the highest-open-rate channels, without relying on paid media alone.