about dgtl dept
dgtl dept* is a Substack about e-commerce strategy, AI infrastructure, and marketing operations — the things I’d say in a room with the door closed. Build logs, frameworks, and step-by-step guides from someone currently operating across all three, not reporting on them from the outside.
I write about the systems, not just the tactics. The team dynamics, not just the dashboards. The political reality of getting good work through a bureaucracy, not just the good work itself.
The work I cover is real and current — what shipped this week, what broke, what I’d do differently. Strategic essays on why companies keep making the same mistakes, how to lead through organizational transformation, and what actually works when you strip away the conference-talk version of it.
posting schedule + pricing
One essay a week. Tuesday mornings at 9 AM ET, sometimes Thursday when the week gets away from me.
Right now, every essay is free. If you want to support the work, paid subscriptions are $12/month or $120/year. There’s a $300/year founding tier for readers who want first access to the office hours and other perks coming later in 2026.
about the author
Rebecca Rae Barton is a digital and e-commerce executive based in Brooklyn, NY. She is the Founder of RRBC though which she serves mid-size and enterprise brands as a fractional CMO/CDO and advisor.
As VP Digital at Net32, she drove 25%+ in top-line growth, built a 40-person team, designed a retail media program from zero to 25+ advertisers, and drove triple-digit EBITDA growth through a PE exit. Before that: 431% e-commerce revenue growth at Snowe, 300% YOY at Paravel, and luxury brand marketing for Alexis Bittar and Carolee through the Brooks Brothers jewelry portfolio.
She started in art school (BFA, University of Alabama at Birmingham) and ended up running P&Ls. The path between those two points involved an early Tumblr following, an internship that became a directorship, and a decade of building marketing teams and digital infrastructure from scratch.
Her stack: Shopify Plus, Klaviyo, GA4, Snowflake, dbt, AB Tasty, Algolia, Braze, Amplitude,and more. She thinks in systems — LTV/CAC and RFMT models, cohort analyses, contribution margin frameworks — and builds the infrastructure to make them work.
She started her career as an Apple Genius who accidentally became a marketing director because her Tumblr account got the right person’s attention back in 2012.
None of that was the plan. All of it matters.
You can find Rebecca on her website, LinkedIn, Twitter, Crunchbase, Figma, Instagram, Spotify, and anywhere else chronically online millennials are sold.
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