How Does Data Drive Shorter Time to Value for E-commerce?

Whether you’re investing in a new marketing solution, looking at potentially migrating to a new platform/vendor, or adding new point tools to your existing stack, it can be challenging to understand how, exactly, this new ‘thing’ is going to drive value.

Alex Timlin, VP of E-commerce and Retail at Emarsys illuminates an often neglected aspect of new tech adoption — time to value! In this episode, you’ll learn:

How turnkey tactics and embedded knowledge impact time to value

Tips for managing and transferring data to new tools or tech

How to estimate how long it will take before you can expect value with new tech

Key metrics to focus on improving value

Top performing brands that have seen quick time to value

“The marriage of #customer, product, & transational #data is quite new for a lot of #retail companies,” says @ARTimlin CLICK TO TWEET

The remedy to combat long, drawn-out time-to-value schedules lies in turnkey solutions with embedded industry knowledge — which is a new approach for marketers as well as a paradigm shift in how we think about driving value with tech.

Show details and highlights

► (2:50) What do turnkey tactics and embedded knowledge mean?

► (7:44) Data transfer when adopting new martech

► (13:20) How to estimate time-to-value during evaluation stage

► (17:00) What are you trying to achieve with new tech?

► (18:52) Metrics: AOV, CLTV

► (23:50) Alex on the future of marketing: AI

“A 3-6 month implementation for a really big, transformational project isn’t actually that big of a deal… [what about] after you’ve done the implementation? What about doing the next use case and the one after that and the one after that? That’s where we’re trying to shift this conversation in terms of time-to-value… plan not so much for how to check the boxes and the requirements of that RFP today, but ask ‘what are we going to do 3-6-12 months later? How are we going to be able to exploit and leverage new opportunities with this new integration that we’ve done? How extensible is that piece of technology? How mature is it in terms of its roadmap? How does it help us do new things constantly rather than just upfront?’ A lot of people aren’t really planning ahead to look at use cases on an ongoing basis — they’re just looking at the one thing they could do right now.”

Alex Timlin

VP, Retail & E-commerce, Emarsys

@ARTimlin

“Don’t just check the boxes & requirements of that RFP for today – think about use cases you’ll want to do in 3-6-12 months down the road,” says @ARTimlin CLICK TO TWEET

As Alex discussed, a 3-month timeline for an implementation really isn’t that long — but marketers continue to face increasing pressures to perform. And, with a typical quarter of just 66 days, companies need to start driving return faster than ever.

Realizing value with new technology is often more drawn out than had been originally anticipated.

Other information

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Resources and links discussed
Grab Emarsys’ latest whitepaper on achieving faster e-commerce growth, here.

Check out our recent time-to-value content on the blog:

Those Who Drag Shall Also Lag — Why Decision Makers Procrastinate Buying Better Marketing Technology

Why Does Time-to-Value Matter so Much? [Podcast]

Connect with Alex on LinkedIn, Twitter, or email him

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